I wrote a blog entry about food probably over a month ago now and abandoned it as too long and too candid even while I wrote it on the kitchen floor, waiting for my crêpe batter to chill, drinking a glass of Bordeaux that I had resting on my mom's step ladder. It's not that I haven't felt like writing - I suppose it's just the "sharing" part of this process that's inhibited me. I'm a moody bastard on my best days, and an uncommunicative one on my worst. I can't say that I've had a lot of "worsts," but I have had the frequent and overwhelming urge to shut myself in my closet or hide under my bed until life seems a little safer and my future has been sorted out by some other fool. Cowardice? Check!
Today should feel much more important than it does - and I know I'm choosing to ignore the staggering timeline in which I'm currently stuck. One week until I leave for Bordeaux. Again. Seven days until I begin the long and arduous journey back to France and my relationship with its culture and its natives.
I ate a fortune cookie this afternoon from last night's leftovers, and arched my eyebrow when I read : "You will find luck when you go home." Is that a joke? It seems a little too serendipitous - in a gross, New Age eye-rolling way, to be meaningful. Something my mom would chuckle over, which would then create an awkward silence between us while I sighed and looked at my toes, stifling my rational cynicism. Or as I like to call it, my strong sense of reality. My mom, brother, and I had a pretty memorable conversation on my birthday about how I don't fit in with the two of them precisely because of this tendency to eye-roll and stifle. How my inability to accept the spiritual world was shocking, dismaying, and a sign that I'd been spoiled by my fear (says mom) and by my over-education (says hermano.) I'd be astonished by the weirdness of this, but it's a little too average in terms of family talks for us. I don't acknowledge my former lives or God = I am ignorant and/or arrogant.
Pessimism? Check!
In other more newsworthy and less self-indulgent news, (ha! right!) I've decided on the books I'll be bringing with me to France. Surprise city!
1. The Sound and the Fury
2. The Satanic Epic
3. Paradise Lost
4. Frankenstein
I've never read the first, and only ever bits of the second. For those who haven't heard of "The Satanic Epic," which should be ALL of you since, as far as I know, none of you are sufficiently dweeby or obsessive to research the origins of literary Lucifer, this is a really excellent book on the Satan of Milton's Paradise Lost. Neil Forsyth also wrote "The Old Enemy" which is more of a chronicle of Satan's literary characterizations and reception over the years. If I can swing it, I'll sneak that one into my luggage as well. I've read PL so many times that I feel I can be douchey enough to refer to it as PL. I've read Frankenstein once and loved it. I'm bringing it with me because I met someone in San Francisco who told me they couldn't bear the boredom of it, and I not only automatically decided I didn't like this person, but I somehow managed to take that as a personal insult. Ummm, what? I'm not Mary Shelley.
Some of you might note the manic thread of this booklist. Some of you may guess my intentions. And some of you may be right. I'm determined to apply to grad school this Fall. (Autumn - excuse me, Oli.) I think I want to do myself a solid and NOT go into Milton scholarship, especially since I don't anticipate applying to any PhD programs, and since I truly believe that most things worth saying about PL have already been said, BUT I do believe this rehashing of my thesis will only do me good. I can say with sincerity that I've never felt as alive or as interested in anything as I did when writing my thesis. I really fell in love with my work and the little garden paths Philip Pullman revealed to me; I feel like there are many new threads to be discovered and pursued. And I'm secretly thinking about working on children's literature. Not because a lot of it interests me academically, but because I'm really fascinated by the assumptions adults make about childhood.
(Something I've also been thinking about for a long time: books that are written to include their authors as characters. E.g. "The Razor's Edge" in which Maugham is the narrator. "Everything Is Illuminated" in which Jonathan Safran Foer is one of the protagonists. Weird shit. Very manipulative.)
I miss Lyra. I wish I could summon her ferocity and her brilliance. And her polar bear pal, of course, but that's a given.
I'm boring myself with my foul mood, so I'll depart with a few pictures of Jones, my summer fling. (Not to be confused with the barista at Jones.) The first three were not drawn by my hand. Do not give me credit. (I drew the words "Sweets for Jesus" on my water cup yesterday but my mom threw it away before I could put it somewhere prominent.)
UN
DEUX
TROIS
and... beans, with the red roaster smiling shyly in the background.
No comments:
Post a Comment