The orange girl

It is quite often that I am told I should read this or that, but it is so very rare that I actually do.

Depending on who makes the recommandation, I might start reading, but I will more often than not give up the book after I realize it isn’t for me or it isn’t as worth it for me as the one I was already reading. I have a limited amount of time to read, so unless I find an audio version I might not even start it.

I wanted to say that I haven’t read something recommended by others since 6 years ago, thought I have started some and never finished. At the beginning of this year, I read The wind in the mind by Ursula K. Le Guin, though I am sure it was audio. However, I would have read it regardless because of the person who recommended it, and that I really enjoyed the book.

This time, I was told to read The Orange girl by Jostein Gaarder, by my first love no less, whom I’ve recently reconnected with. She told me she thought about this book when I was telling her about my dove.

Apart from my emotional motivation, the book is really good and written in a way that makes you go through the emotions of the character and connect with him. It is constructed a bit like inception – a story in a story and it is very powerful, plus the shift between present and past is done so very easily. It is as if you were there looking over the shoulder of the main character while he was reading the letter from his dead father and he would stop from time to time to confess to the reader what he wasn’t even ready to tell his mother.

I did see some resemblance between my story and this one, except the Spain part, which didn’t actually turn out the same for me. All the better because I do not want to die in my thirthies and coming to think of that, it is not the first time I think that might have happened if things went that way…

The reason I am writing this though is because I realized that my bachelor degree was supposed to be about an Orange girl, but my teacher went prude when she saw nudes or freaked out that I wanted to do some unconventional weaving and lacing which of course we weren’t thought at the University and she didn’t know how to handle. I didn’t have the nerve to fight for that project, but I did unconventional weaving nonetheless in the end inspire her discouragements. The work didn’t look how I wanted, but at least I won that.

I am thinking about the Orange girl work I never made though…

It was inspired by a Romanian poem:

Amnezie by Emil Brumaru

dacă iei o portocală

și-o dezbraci în pielea goală

ca să-i vezi miezul adânc

peste care îngeri plâng

cu căpșune-n loc de ochi

și aripi de foi de plopi

se întâmplă să uiți totul…

Amnesia by Emil Brumaru

 

If you take an orange

And undress it ’til it’s naked

To see its deep seed

Upon which angels cry

With strawberries for eyes

And wings from poplar leaves

It so happens you forget it all…

Next month I will take a performative writing course based on contemporary Romanian poetry (I generally ignore poetry, though I like reading it). It feels like making a full circle…

I wonder if I can find the Orange girl project…

I could weave it with aluminium and lace it with rope. 😬😆