Écriture États d'âmes

Ce texte me hante

11 janvier 2012

J’ai lu (comme plusieurs de mes amis Facebook et Twitter) Date a girl who reads l’automne dernier. Depuis, je ne peux m’empêcher de le relire de temps à autres tant il m’a touchée. Je le partage ici aussi, au cas où il vous aurait échappé. Je ne suis pas arrivée à retracer le billet original (il a été blogué et reblogué à l’infini), mais l’auteure serait Rosemarie Urquico. Désolée, c’est en anglais.

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.  She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

«Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.» Et vous? Moi, je n’arrive pas à me décider.

(Pour ceux que ça intéresse, Date a girl who reads a été rédigé à l’origine en réponse à ce texte. Il y a deux pages. Intéressant, surtout vers la fin: «You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied»…)

Vous pourriez également aimer

8 Commentaires

  • Répondre François Grossin 11 janvier 2012 - 13 h 39 min

    Vraiment génial ! Merci Marie-J 🙂

  • Répondre Nadia 11 janvier 2012 - 13 h 50 min

    Où était ce texte le reste de ma vie ???? The girl who reads, C’EST MOI ! C’est vrai que j’essaie de vivre dans un monde fantastique que je rêve, c’est pourquoi je travaille en politique…
    J’ai rêvé au prince charmant et vécue une vie de jeunes adultes digne des meilleurs livres de chick lit… J’ai donc marié un homme qui m’a demandé en mariage à Vienne, qui m’a acheté ma bague à Verone et avec qui j’ai échangé mes voeux dans l’arène de Nîmes devant les madames de la boutique souvenir comme témoins ! À notre retour au Québec, méga party de noces déguisé sous le thème des années 20 avec mobilier d’époque, vendeuses de cigares, band live et une nuit à se rapeler quand j’aurais des rhumatismes de vieillesse 😉
    Finalement, je voyage, j’ai ouvert un resto aux îles-de-la-Madeleine, j’ai des amis fidèles et des nouvelles connaissances avec qui je partagent mes idéaux, mes rêves, mes coups de gueules mais quand j’ai fini de tenter de vivre comme une héroine de roman, je me réfugie dans un livre et alors, mes battements cardiaques ralentissent au même rythme que mon imaginaire s’envole.
    Merci Marie-Julie de m’avoir fait voir ce magnifique texte.

  • Répondre Marie-Pascale 11 janvier 2012 - 14 h 29 min

    il m’a aussi chavirée… merci de le partager encore une fois. Un vrai bijou.

  • Répondre blog voyage 14 janvier 2012 - 5 h 34 min

    Un texte magnifique, merci de l’avoir partager!

  • Répondre Sandra Dubé Blanchet 16 janvier 2012 - 22 h 11 min

    Wow. Je n’avais pas eu la chance de lire ce texte. Je l’adore. Merci de le partager.

  • Répondre Caroline 18 janvier 2012 - 20 h 58 min

    Très beau, touchant… Pour toutes les lectrices de la planète, complètement folles qui s’achètent livres par-dessus livres en se disant que çà n’a pas de bon sens… (euh… je m’inclus ici, là…) Merci d’avoir partager! 🙂

  • Laisser un commentaire

    %d blogueurs aiment cette page :