[New-Poetry] On Being Married to a Man Who Is Married to Books

Fri Jul 3 09:42:08 EDT 2009

I love this. What is funny about this writing is that this morning while
swimming I had already thought several thoughts that Obododimma had written.
No wife for me, but a strange life. I sometimes come home full of energy and
of ideas to write and do and read, switch on the pc, sit down, and several
hours later I get up and feel as if I didn't do anything, and the day is
gone. Lists might be the dead of the Author, the same Internet might be, and
yet, how much and how much more...?

Have a nice weekend!
Anny

On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 2:28 PM, Obododimma Oha <obodooha at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On Being Married to a Man Who Is Married to Books<http://x-pensiverrors.blogspot.com/2009/07/on-being-married-to-man-who-is-married.html>
> By
>
> Obododimma Oha
> *
> http://x-pensiverrors.blogspot.com/2009/07/on-being-married-to-man-who-is-married.html
> *
> I have heard it said that an intellectual is a polygamist, for s/he may not
> just be wedded to a human being whose needs and desires must be given some
> consideration, but also be similarly attached to books, to academic
> activities, to the endless pursuit of knowledge. These two commitments do
> not always submit to each other peacefully and may become the cause of
> serious agony for the married intellectual. As it is for men who are
> academics, so it is for their female counterparts. Perhaps, viewed from the
> perspective of women who are academics, the conflicting demands are more
> intense in their own case than in the case of men who are academics. In
> spite of the changes brought into the family by gender sensitization in
> modern life, women still have to make the home, catering for their husbands
> and children. And this does not excuse them from living up to the demands of
> their jobs: as academics they still have to carry out research, read books,
> teach students, supervise projects, publish articles or books, and engage in
> other professional activities. Indeed, as Virginia Woolf writes in A Room
> of One’s Own the woman as a (literary artist) needs a space of her own,
> economic freedom, and freedom to use her mind, in order to function
> productively and meaningfully. It is certainly not an easy thing for her to
> have a “room of her own” in the space of her husband when she functions as a
> scholar. As a male scholar, I imagine, therefore, that it is not very easy
> for my female colleagues.
>
> As a male scholar married to a woman and to my books, what does my
> “polygamy” orchestrate for me in my family life? Am I not like the man
> invited by his chi and his father-in-law to work on their farms on the same
> day at the same time? If I ignore my father-in-law and decide to work on my
> chi’s farm, my father-in-law would be mad with me and withdraw his daughter
> (at least, as culturally permitted in the Igbo society in which I was born
> and raised). If I ignore my chi and decide to work on my father-in-law’s
> farm, my chi would also be mad with me and take my life. So, my tragedy is
> located somewhere between the possible loss of a wife and the loss of my
> life. And, being a faithful husband (oh yes I am!) I don’t want to lose my
> wife I swear, neither do I want to lose my life and leave her a widow!
>
> It is 2.00 am and I am in my study, working at the computer again, fighting
> back the hands of sleep that have been trying to shut my eyes for me. I have
> to finish reading an article sent to me for assessment and feed in my report
> on the e-page of an electronic journal. Deadlines are deadlines, especially
> for electronic gatekeepers. Moreover, I have to prove to the editor of the
> journal that scholars based in Africa as not as “dead” as the world is made
> to believe. So, I am here, not really in my study anymore, but in
> cyberspace, mutually hallucinating with other cyborgs (thanks to Mel Gibson
> for that idea). I don’t know whether I am asleep or awake again, just as I
> can’t say whether I am really Here or There, whether I am real or unreal!
> Well, in my nowhereness, I see her on the screen of my laptop, first as a
> pop-up, then as an emoticon. She is snoring and her snores are angry words.
> A software now, she jumps out of the screen and gets installed on my mind
> the real computer. I am browsing my mind now, my laptop has vanished and my
> mind is saying to me …
>
> Are you real? Are you really here? Are you really unreal? OK, she is your
> art now, she that you cannot browse. She is the message now the medium , she
> that cannot give you a deadline. Are you not just another brand of
> falsehood? Sometimes when she needs your attention, you have a book in your
> hand or you are sitting before a computer, and you must chase that idea
> through the paragraphs and pages of some fields of thought. Sometimes she is
> kept waiting in the bedroom, and you are trying to finish writing that
> article to beat a deadline. Sometimes the food kept for you on the dining
> table – because you could not join the family at mealtime – gets cold and
> you have to eat it quietly like a dog, afraid to complain, so as not to
> start a war. After all, if you didn’t want it cold, you should have come to
> eat it warm!
>
> Books and books and books everywhere. Books on the shelves. Books on the
> floor. Books on the table. Books in cartons. Books sitting on books. Books
> inside books, to mark where you have to return to, after angrily going to
> find out what she wants you to come and see. Books in the study. Books in
> the bedroom. Books and books and more books arriving. You cannot provide
> more money for weekend shopping, for you say the pay is low, the tax is
> high, and you have children’s fees to pay soon, but you can’t remove your
> eyes from books. You buy more and more books and smuggle them into the
> house! Sometimes you claim you got the books for free, even before she
> accuses you with her eyes. You keep buying books, sometimes three or four
> copies of the same book. Some copies for yourself; some copies for your
> students to borrow and disfigure through photocopying or sheer
> carelessness.
>
> This conference and that seminar and those workshops … where you shop for
> ideas on how to stay away from her! Absentee husband, you nickname is
> Professor Awayness, for you are busy providing awareness away from her and
> the children. Sometimes a week. Sometimes two weeks. And when you are
> returning from this one, you are leaving for that one. Sometimes you
> trans-conference or trans-seminar, after all, what’s the point coming home
> to say you are leaving soon?
>
> And your way of thinking! Haven’t you been hardened by all those crazy
> ideas and tortured language that communicates them? So, what do we have
> here: a human who can really sleep when he is asleep, play when it is
> playtime, and do stupid things when fun demands it, without caring so much
> about what this or that theory says? You are discussing a point with her.
> Just a little argument and you take off as if you are in one of those crazy
> listserv debates, quoting this book and that book you have read. You see;
> that’s a symptom of the illness that I mentioned earlier! Can you similarly
> quote her, your wife? No, not all! Has she got quotable ideas? It is books
> that tell you what to do. It is books that are right enough decide a little
> exchange between a husband and a wife!
>
> Yes, she needs a husband, not necessarily an academic hero. But you think
> that being an academic hero counts much in satisfying those needs of hers.
> And that’s one problem: who determines her needs: you, your books, or she?
> She wants you to include her in your scheme of things, if not the main
> programme of your life. And you are uncomfortable about this, very. You
> think your academic life and pursuit could be hindered, if not ruined, by
> your focus on a human wife or family. Didn’t you even once whisper to
> yourself: a writer married is a writer marred? Another idea you picked from
> those crazy associates of yours, those apostles of aloneness!
>
> And now you have discovered another opportunity for keeping her lonely (or
> another opportunity has discovered you the ready tool!): the Internet, with
> all those blogs you must update, those emails you must read and respond to,
> those chats (sometimes three or four going on simultaneously), those
> skirmishes on listservs you must engage in, those downloads and uploads that
> increase the weight of your mental luggage. So, has she not suddenly become
> a widow, an “Internet widow,” as Clifford Stoll calls it in Silicon Snake
> Oil?
>
> At the mention of the word “widow”, I wake up and I am right on my feet. My
> wife opens the door of my study and walks in, fear written on her face.
> “Why were you screaming?”
> “Screaming? Did I scream?”
> “Of course, you did! I came to find out what was wrong. And don’t you think
> it’s time for you to come to the bedroom and lie down?”
> And, suddenly, there’s an electricity outage. 4.00 am. Indeed, it is time
> to go to bed.
>
>
>
> --
> Obododimma Oha
> http://udude.wordpress.com/
>
> Dept. of English
> University of Ibadan
> Nigeria
>
> &
>
> Fellow, Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies
> University of Ibadan
>
> Phone: +234 803 333 1330;
>            +234 805 350 6604;
>            +234 808 264 8060.
>
>
>
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>
>

-- 
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.lulu.com/content/5806078
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
star!
Friedrich Nietzsche
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