Date a girl who Reads...or better yet, date a girl who Writes

DATE A GIRL WHO READS

A Girl Who Reads

You should date a girl who reads.

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who 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 has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

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 if she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and 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 read understand that all things must come to end, but 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. ~R. Urquico

DATE A GIRL WHO WRITES

A Girl Who Writes

Date a girl who writes. She’s hard to find because she’s the one who stands in the corner of the room watching other people from a distance. She’s the one who searches their faces and watches their body language. She stands close enough that she can hear but far enough away so that she won’t be seen. She’s a master at invisibility, and all the smart girls know she’s the best at eavesdropping. They go to her for the gossip. She knows who is in love with whom just by watching them.
You’ll be a lucky man if you find her. She’s the one with a journal in her hand, a notebook in her purse, scrap paper in her car, and pencils in her back pocket. She’s always scribbling something, praying it won’t evaporate before she gets it down onto paper. And because she’s always scribbling, she’s always looking down, and that’s why you never noticed her before.

If you’re lucky, you’ll find her at a library or in a park or at a coffee shop or in an airport, drinking coffee and watching people or typing furiously at her computer. If you see her looking at you, look back and wait.

If she looks away she doesn’t want to be interrupted and she doesn’t want you to notice her, so pretend you don’t. But if you can get her to look at you and not look away, she wants to talk to you. She’s targeted you, pursuing you, inviting you. Once she catches your eye, once she hears your voice that first time, she begins her profile. She’s the one who will have your character in 10 seconds and have you completely profiled in 10 minutes.

After two weeks she’ll know you better than you know yourself.

If you catch her muttering to herself, don’t feel awkward, she’s talking with the characters in her story, probably arguing about what happens next.

Don’t lie to her because she knows. She can see it in your eyes, hear it in your voice, sense it in your energy field. She pays attention to every detail of your every word and if you’re not careful, she’ll ask the question that strips your lie away and you’ll be humiliated.

So tell the damn truth.

If something is wrong, you may as well tell her because she’ll figure it out. When something is wrong, you may as well tell her because otherwise she’ll jump to the most absurd, most outlandish, most creative but ridiculous possibilities anyone could ever come up with, and when the truth comes out and she tells you what she thought, you’ll remind her she’s crazy, and she’ll remind you that she knows this because of the voices, and you’ll both laugh and hug and go on with life.

It’s easy to shop for a girl who writes: office supplies like sticky notes and pencils, calendars, and especially beautiful journals will bring her immense joy because she knows that blank paper is the beginning of a new person, a new life, a new world. And holding that blank notebook in her hands lets her feel the power she knows exists inside her soul.

If you find out she’s upset, don’t ask her why, just let her cry until she hands you her journal and goes to stand by the window until you finish reading her most recent entry. She could never tell you what was wrong with her mouth because her soul is in her hands. Once you read that entry, skip back in her journal and read the parts about you, because if she handed you her journal and walked away, it means she wants you to read it. She wants you to know that she dreams about becoming your only love every night, and that she has the whole thing planned out.

Then once you know the plan, carry it out. She’ll play along.

She’ll write the wedding invitations, and the baby announcements, and stories for your children. She’ll write you letters in your lunch every day and put sweet sensual notes on your pillow in the evenings. she’ll ramble on and on as you take long walks along the beach and tell you all about a world that doesn’t exist, and people who were never born and will never die and whom she loves as much as she loves your children, because her characters are just more of her children.

Don’t feel like you didn’t help create them because chances are, if you love a girl who writes, there’s a piece of you embedded in every hero, and a piece of herself in every heroine. you can sleep at night knowing that even after you both die, you’ll both continue to live together in everyone else’s minds through her books and stories, and you can live a thousand nights in stories that never end.

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Date a girl who may never wear completely clean clothes, because of coffee stains and ink spills. She’ll have many problems with her closet space, and her laptop is never boring because there are so many words, so many worlds that she’s cluttered amidst the space. Tabs open filled with obscure and popular music. Interesting factoids about Catherine the Great, and the immortality of jellyfish. Laugh it off when she tells you that she forgot to clean her room, that her clothes are lost among the binders so it’ll take her longer to get ready, that her shoes hidden under the mountain of broken Bic pens and the refurbished laptop that she’s saved for ever since she was twelve.

Kiss her under the lamppost, when it’s raining. Tell her your definition of love.

Find a girl who writes. You’ll know that she has a sense of humor, a sense of empathy and kindness, and that she will dream up worlds, universes for you. She’s the one with the faintest of shadows underneath her eyelids, the one who smells of coffee and Coca-cola and jasmine green tea. You see that girl hunched over a notebook. That’s the writer. With her fingers occasionally smudged with charcoal, with ink that will travel onto your hands when you interlock your fingers with her’s. She will never stop, churning out adventures, of traitors and heroes. Darkness and light. Fear and love. That’s the writer. She can never resist filling a blank page with words, whatever the color of the page is.

She’s the girl reading while waiting for her coffee and tea. She’s the quiet girl with her music turned up loud (or impossibly quiet), separating the two of you by an ocean of crescendos and decrescendos as she’s thinking of the perfect words. If you take a peek at her cup, the tea or coffee’s already cold. She’s already forgotten it.

Use a pick-up line with her if she doesn’t look to busy.

If she raises her head, offer to buy her another cup of coffee. Or of tea. She’ll repay you with stories. If she closes her laptop, give her your critique of Tolstoy, and your best theories of Hannibal and the Crossing. Tell her your characters, your dreams, and ask if she gotten through her first novel.

It is hard to date a girl who writes. But be patient with her. Give her books for her birthday, pretty notebooks for Christmas and for anniversaries, moleskins and bookmarks and many, many books. Give her the gift of words, for writers are talkative people, and they are verbose in their thanks. Let her know that you’re behind her every step of the way, for the lines between fiction and reality are fluid.

She’ll give you a chance.

Don’t lie to her. She’ll understand the syntax behind your words. She’ll be disappointed by your lies, but a girl who writes will understand. She’ll understand that sometimes even the greatest heroes fail, and that happy endings take time, both in fiction and reality. She’s realistic. A girl who writes isn’t impatient; she will understand your flaws. She will cherish them, because a girl who writes will understand plot. She’ll understand that endings happen for better or for worst.

A girl who writes will not expect perfection from you. Her narratives are rich, her characters are multifaceted because of interesting flaws. She’ll understand that a good book does not have perfect characters; villains and tragic flaws are the salt of books. She’ll understand trouble, because it spices up her story. No author wants an invincible hero; the girl who writes will understand that you are only human.

Be her compatriot, be her darling, her love, her dream, her world.

If you find a girl who writes, keep her close. If you find her at two AM, typing furiously, the neon gaze of the light illuminating her furrowed forehead, place a blanket gently on her so that she does not catch a chill. Make her a pot of tea, and sit with her. You may lose her to her world for a few moments, but she will come back to you, brimming with treasure. You will believe in her every single time, the two of you illuminated only by the computer screen, but invincible in the darkness.

She is your Shahrazad. When you are afraid of the dark, she will guide you, her words turning into lanterns, turning into lights and stars and candles that will guide you through your darkest times. She’ll be the one to save you.

She’ll whisk you away on a hot air balloon, and you will be smitten with her. She’s mischievous, frisky, yet she’s quiet and when she has to kill off a lovely character, when she cries, hold her and tell her that it will be alright.

You will propose to her. Maybe on a boat in the ocean, maybe in a little cottage in the Appalachian Mountains. Maybe in New York City. Maybe Chicago. Baltimore. Maybe outside her publisher’s office. Because she’s radiant, wherever she goes. Maybe even outside of a cinema where the two of you kiss in the rain. She’ll say that it is overused and clichéd, but the glint in her eyes will tell you that she appreciates it all the same.

You will smile hard as she talks a mile a second, and your heart will skip a beat when she holds your hand and she will write stories of your lives together. She’ll hold you close and whisper secrets into your ears. She’s lovely, remember that. She’s self made and she’s brilliant. Her names for the children might be terrible, but you’ll be okay with that. A girl who writes will tell your children fantastical stories.

Because that is the best part about a girl who writes. She has imagination and she has courage, and it will be enough. She’ll save you in the oceans of her dreams, and she’ll be your catharsis and your 11:11. She’ll be your firebird and she’ll be your knight, and she’ll become your world, in the curve of her smile, in the hazel of her eye the half-dimple on her face, the words that are pouring out of her, a torrent, a wave, a crescendo – so many sensations that you will be left breathless by a girl who writes.

Maybe she’s not the best at grammar, but that is okay.

Date a girl who writes because you deserve it. She’s witty, she’s empathetic, enigmatic at times and she’s lovely. She’s got the most colorful life. She may be living in NYC or she may be living in a small cottage. Date a girl who writes because a girl who writes reads.

A girl who writes will understand reality. She’ll be infuriating at times, and maybe sometimes you will hate her. Sometimes she will hate you too. But a girl who writes understands human nature, and she will understand that you are weak. She will not leave on the Midnight Train the first moment that things go sour. She will understand that real life isn’t like a story, because while she works in stories, she lives in reality.

Date a girl who writes.

Because there is nothing better then a girl who writes.

 

 

 

credit/s to : watchamacallit-claa and korafull