I just finished Reading Lolita in Tehran for my World Lit. class. It was a very encouraging read. I've even posted Facebook statuses quoting it.
The book is about Azar Nafisi, an Iranian English professor, who battles her own feelings of being "dispensable" when she leaves her university after refusing to wear the veil. To continue to be relevant in her crumpling world, she begins a literature class in her own home with handpicked students from former Lit. classes.
Through out this time, she is in close contact with a man she refers to as "my magician". He is a sort of mentor who lends her his ear so that she can ramble on while he makes sense of it all for her. He is an odd man, someone who has withdrawn from Iranian society all together, in a sort of rebellion against the new regime. Anyway, that is not important. The important thing is that he made me think of a "magician" in my own life. ( Really, Nafisi's "magician" did make me think of other spanko type things. Listen to this excerpt from the book on p. 311: "If you promise you'll behave, my magician said on the phone, I have a nice surprise for you." Now the surprise turns out to be a special edition of A Thousand and One Nights, but what is with the "behave" part?)
I have a kind of magician too. I still don't know what to call him on here. I don't think "magician" quite cuts it, although I'm trying it on for size right now. He's like Nafisi's magician in that I can ramble to him, and he'll listen and give me good feedback. But more than this, he is the picture of what I've wanted when it comes to spanking. Ever since I was a little girl (6 years old in fact) I fantasized about a man who would spank me when I was bad and genuinely care about me the whole time. It was not a romantic or sexual fantasy (or very rarely so). It was more a psychological one. I guess when it comes to spanking, I turn into that little girl. And this man has made that possible for me. This is true magic, and he is my magician.
Ahhaa!! Sorry, I forgot to explain the "It's ok" part of heading. In the book, there's a part where the Nafisi describes how when visiting her magician, he would always sit on his couch, right smack dab in the middle, back straight, not touching the back of the couch. (with Nafisi in a chair facing the couch, but this doesn't matter). Anyway, I wanted to share how silly I am. When I read this, I thought "See, it's ok to sit extremely straight. It's ok. It's ok to take up all the room or sit in the middle. It's ok." And then I started tearing up. Yeah, pathetic. I do believe it is going to be "that time" of the month. Ex-blues and crying over the fact that I can sit however I want in a chair, just like Nafisi's magician. Now it's just funny!!
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