Que c'est difficile de choisir une seule chose française! Si je ne peux pas choisir la Révolution Française, probablement c'est Voltaire:



Il n'est pas un Saint-Just, mais j'aime son petit sourire satisfait, comme, "Je suis plus intelligent de la reste de l'Europe!" Vive la philosophie et vive la raison! Aussi, dans la "Washington Post" (est que c'est féminine?) il y a des photos d'un race de... euh, il n'ya pas vraiment un équivalent en française, a "French Maid Race". Trop des contestants sont des hommes. Je ne vous donne une photo.

A. S. Byatt's Possession is utterly amazing. It's like a literary thriller and makes psycho-analytic examination of Victorian poets look like a sort of James Bond-sque quest, full of unsolved mystery, duels to the death of schools of literary analysis, and feats of incredible derring-do about the acquisition of primary source documents. Rawr, show me the synecdoche, baby. It's all a clue to a grand literary mystery!

The film doesn't really do the book justice, though omg Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle! They were far more appealing than the modern day Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart and daaaaaaaang, do Northam and Ehle know how to do smoldering, half-concealed passion. I loved Jeremy Northam's performance. He got so geekily excited by rocks and geodes and had such a charming mix of poetic sensibility and that (to my mind) Victorian sense of division and moral struggle between desire and duty. He rocks period costume, by the by. I'm also such a sucker for intellectual romances, where people fall in love through conversation and letters, and physical attraction, though part of the romance, is almost subordiated to intellectual or spiritual attraction. One loves the body of one's lover because it is the container for or the reflection of one's soul (and generally, I think it's more the former than the latter).

I think part of what I liked so much about the book is how well A. S. Byatt understands and guides the imagination. Coleridge came up with the idea that the imagination alone can hold two contraries in the mind at once and still have a coherent picture (ex. Kubla Khan's sunlit pleasure dome and caves of ice). A.S. Byatt does this too; her modern-day protagonists, Maude and Roland, are oddly drawn together due to a shared love/ secret desire for solitude. In their minds, they have a vision of a white room with a white bed, undisturbed by anyone else. This desire to be alone and similarity of vision paradoxically draws them together which, to me at least, seems part and parcel of the human character. We're gloriously absurd beings. There must be contradictions in each character (as Blake says, "Without contraries, there is no progression.").

I am also in total awe of Byatt's ability to master so many different writing styles. A French character speaks and even writes differently than an American one, and an American one speaks and writes differently from a British character, and so on. Byatt writes blank verse Victorian poems by a man, long diary entries in Stendhal-ian syntax by a young Frenchwoman, dashed, oddly fragmented letters and creepy little rhyming poems by a Victorian poetess with the same ease and dexterity with which she handles the modern-day characters and their academic papers.

It's difficult to describe how oddly fulfilling it was to read the book. It's different from Wodehouse, whose eloquent frivoloties make you cheerful, but it was equally satisfying. It was a bit like reading The Red and the Black. I felt mesmerized while immersed, and still half inside my head for the rest of the day, turning over all the ideas presented, puzzling out the truths reflected in the prose, in a state of dream-like contentment where's one's interior world had just gained equal or superior relevance to the outside world.

Er, also, because I made the mistake of picking up Possession on Thursday, I have spent the past three days reading it, mucking about on the internet and sleeping instead of writing my Amherst paper. >.<

Must get on that. Particularly since it's worth 50% of my grade. Argh.
 

Item 1: PG Wodehouse is a genius. I can never pick up one of his books and stop. I have to read it the whole way through and I always feel so much better afterwards, because I've read a book that improves my vocabulary while cheering me up and reminding me of the glorious absurdities of existence.

Item 2: It has become unseasonably warm. On the one hand, life on the fourth floor has never been more aggrivating (heat rises!). On the other hand, I can start wearing sun-dresses again. Yay!

Item 3: Monday starts the last week of classes. I am slightly terrified of my final essays and exams.

Item 4: To ameloriate the long hours spent in front of my computer, I bought myself a bouquet of tulips. I usually just have daffodils, since they're cheap ($2.99 a bunch!) and I can occasionally steal them from where they grow wild and free around Smith campus. However, I quite like tulips and, as much as I love daffodils, I was beginning to grow a smidge tired of them.

Item 5: Though I still don't have really set summer plans, I think I will be staying at home and doing un-paid research for my STRIDE professor. That's something to put on the resume at least.

Item 6: It seems to me to be incredibly sweet to love and be loved in return. Though I know it's not everything, I really wish I was in love right now with something physical. Love ya Jesus, but you're not really tangible and, unlike certain medeval nuns, I don't love you like that. It would be nice, though, to be that open with another person and to have them be that open with me. It hasn't morphed into what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-me-yet, but I feel a sort of wistfulness, like the kind I feel when I see a daffodil unfurl its petals one day and then wither to death in the next day's heat. It's times like this that I half-regret coming to Smith. I've learned so much and I'm reasonably content with the person it's made me, and the confidence it's given me, but I'm... well, I have now realized t fluidity of female sexuality and I am reasonably sure I can accept and love (in the friendship way of the word) anyone, but it's also... kind of difficult to meet guys. I wish I was bolder or braver or, I don't know, prettier or better natured but I do wish I had at least been flirted with, by anyone, in the past year. I vaguely feel that there is something wrong or otherwise just... lacking in me. I'm embarassed at my innosence and almost actually ashamed of it. I wish I know what I had to change, what it is that's keeping me from... I dunno, being a desirable human being. Half the problem is the uncertainty. If I can't pinpoint what is lacking, or what is repellent, how can I fix it? Grr.

I really like Christianity, which makes my inability to live it rather more painful than otherwise. However it's really nice, every once in a while, to remember that I am thoroughly forgiven. What really bothers me though, is how often being forgiven seems to divide people into a horrible us-versus-them mentality that I find extremely bizarre. Christians are not intrinsically better because they are forgiven. In fact, they are supposed to be the least of all. Being a Christian is not about flaunting one's sinless state, it is about constantly acknowledging it and continuously asking for outside help to change it.

I don't know how, but the ultimate act of love has somehow been turned into a weapon. Today is Maundy Thursday, when, according to church doctrine, Jesus held a Passover meal with his disciples and washed their feet. He went into it knowing he was going to die, knowing that one of his dearest friends would betray him, that another would deny knowing him, that nearly all of them would abandon him-- and yet, he went. And yet, he ate with them. I wouldn't want to eat with anyone who was going to turn me into people who wanted to kill me.

However, Jesus washed their feet. It's a disgusting and humiliating concept. Jesus washed the feet of these dudes (who probably had the sense of hygiene most guys do) living in a desert, with dust and animal dung and God knows what else lining the streets, who wore sandals all the time. I wouldn't do it. I certainly wouldn't do it for a group of people who would deny knowing me when I really needed them.

But Jesus did. According to the Gospel of John, after Jesus washed their feet, he gave Judas permission, and almost implicit forgiveness for betraying him, Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him." 

That glory came from a love of others that surpasses my own understanding. The glory of God and, in my opinion, the glory of anyone comes from that love which allows you to still love others when they do horrible things. It is the love God, I believe, has for us. It is a source of forgiveness, a source of acceptance, a source of peace, and a source of glory.

There is no glory in hating in the name of the Lord, only in loving like Him.

It's an incredibly hard thing to ask of us, but I think that's what it means to be a Christian, and the thought that someone loves me enough to humiliate himself and to undergo every kind of torture for my sake, that someone loves me no matter what I am and what I've done, fills me with an indescribable peace. At the end of each service at the church I go to, the pastor says, "My peace I leave you, my peace I give you."

I wish you all peace, wherever you may find it. It's not worth much, but no matter who you are, I love you.

Don't want to go to Glee Club, but I can't think of an excuse. D: I still go mad listening to the crappy first-years singing the wrong notes in my ears. That or have a nervous breakdown. Three rehearsals of this kind of crap are far too many.

... and to think I used to love Glee Club.

current mood: frustrated and sore