Saturday, May 06, 2006

I have this sort of pact with the library guy in the market. He has my phone number and he calls me every time something interesting comes up, actually not anything he has a list of the magazines that I want. It’s a good symbiotic relationship. And I am pretty satisfied with it. But there is a problem, and it’s not about the librarian it’s in me (as usual). You see I have this sort of obnoxious attention-mania. I always felt invisible to others, and whenever I get the chance to please anyone I do everything I can and sometimes more. So when someone asks something from me nicely I just can’t refuse.

So every he calls me I go down to the library and buy it, meanwhile he suggests some other magazines that I don’t usually buy in case I’d be interested in the titles, sometimes I buy, sometimes not. During last year I had some money that I had saved during the summer, and so I was able to buy all the stuff I was interested in, now that I’m totally broke and borrowing money from my mom and my brother I can’t buy everything. So I have to decline many of the librarian’s suggestions. And I suffer stomach aches every time I do so, a weird feeling of unjustified guilt.

The worst is the guy’s repeated attempts to idealize the stuff that he’s suggesting, it’s not his fault he’s a salesman after all. But I hate it.

I suppose I just hate myself for being myself. I just want to be someone else.
I just feel sick

5 comments:

NOMAD said...

ok girl, he is a business man, and he wants money, !

in courses of business you learn to be kind with people to make sure it's a purpose of sentiments !

you fail,


you have to learn to be more realistic

mama francese

Pazuzu HSP said...

I know, I know, It's just so hard. I know it's just business but I can't help it.

Pazuzu HSP said...

thanks for dropping by Kris. And glad you liked it.

jokerman said...

pazuzu
I understand how you feel. I go to a bookstore & the guy there knows me , he doesnt own the place, but he suggests some books & out of every 10 he shows me, i find one good title. The thing is, in beirut you have alot of excellent publications so it will cost you a fortune if you buy them all.
Regarding the salesman, one must appreciate that he calls at least, some others dont bother & dont care about selling or not.
by the way, did you mean lebanese publications or foreign ones?

Pazuzu HSP said...

When it comes to reading books, I often read in french, although I often read in arabic too. But I am not buying books anymore, I have a membership in the CCF that gives me access to a good collection of books to borrow for free.
I was talking about scientific magazines, I'm a biology student. Most of these magazines are french too. I doubt that there are much arabic magazines in the scientific field, there were the arabic translation of the scientific americain but it wasn't that great. But the english scientific magazines are good too, only not as available as french. The national geographic is an excellent magazine, it's halfway between science and artistic science.