| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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I'm working my way through the penguin popular classics. last night I finished "the woodlanders" and started "tender is the night." how likely do you think it is that thomas hardy read andreas cappelanus' (sp?) "the art of courtly love"? one paragraph in "the woodlanders" seems to have been lifted directly from that text. it's about how love is always waxing or waning, it is never constant. |
i'm going to start a coalition to ban the use of OMatS in education. we are not ready for the backlash. |
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a loving spoonful. wink. |
now that I am so busy going to rock shows among people years my junior and wasting money at mediocre but pricy restaurants, it's hard for me to remember ever having been so bored I would read even the obscure works by 19th-century british writers. I think I must have read every jane austen novel before I ever even tasted prosciutto. now I feed on ahi but take months to plod through a short graphic novel. yesterday I got picked up in an import SUV and was driven by a book editor to the most traditional baby shower I have ever attended. on the way we talked not about thomas hardy or even ernest hemingway or don delillo or martin amis, but about stephen king and gwyneth paltrow. we also talked about a mutual acquaintance who had just started working for the new york review of books, but what we discussed was where her manhattan apartment was and how much she was paying for it. she, a lesbian, and I, someone who never wears jewelry, discussed another acquaintance's great big diamond engagement ring in warm tones of approval and understanding. and the baby shower. the baby shower. we played games and everyone acted normal. I wondered if I could pretend that I didn't win the first game. see, the hostess had passed out little toy diapers, which she had cut from felt, pinned up, and dipped in paraffin so they could act as solid little candy holders. she had filled them with pastel-colored mints, except at the bottom of one of the diapers there was "something that looks like what you would find in a baby's diaper!" at the bottom of mine was a chocolate-covered raisin. in this room full of females, I was sitting next to my boss, who I like and respect. this is probably just as excruciating for everyone else, I thought. but we all have to do it. ok. ok. "look!" I said. "a poopie!" everyone laughed, and I got to choose a wrapped gift. it was a box full of chocolate easter eggs from williams & sonoma or whatever that fancy place is called. they were good, of course. I ate those but not the chocolate-covered raisin. then we had to measure out how much toilet paper we thought it would take to wrap around my coworker's waist. I was glad I had long arms when I tried not to touch her much when stretching the paper around the huge belly of this nice woman who happens to sit in a cubicle near mine at the office. later on I wondered if I was obliged to actually make the sound "ooh" or "ahh" when she opened the gifts. I remember reading all the tags attached to the baby clothes, the explanations of how well the companies treat the egyptian workers who spin the organic cotton or whatever. the carrot cake was rich and beautiful. "the flowers are all edible," I'd been told, so I went ahead and ate the daisy on my slice. "it's bland," I said when asked. I almost kept pretense up the whole time, but at the end, when the poor mother-to-be thanked my for my gift, I told her, "oh, come on. you don't even remember what I gave you." then I hated myself. it wasn't just as excruciating for everyone else -- it was even worse for her. I had quickly followed with "oh, I'm just teasing you!" but she still had to think, what, what, and then she remembered -- the overalls. (from gymboree, along with a little zippered sweatshirt, and a onesie from old navy -- none of it organic but all cute, cute, cute!) I left with the book editor and I immediately reneged on my vow never to say another unnecessary phrase ever again, and we talked about saints, the spanish theresa and the french therese. theresa was the intellectual one, but therese was the precious one, the little flower who died of tuberculosis ("consumption," I thought, "she died of consumption") when she was just 25. the driver told me how therese's whole life had been a campaign for sainthood. her parents had raised her to be a beautiful little martyr, and, voila, she was. when she got sick, she started writing her own autobiography. she died in the early 1900s, then was soon beatified "through popular acclaim." I'm going to turn 30 and I'm not a mother. I'm not a book editor nor an SUV driver (not even a lesbian, not even a saint). sure, I eat cured european ham and organically raised flowers, but my credit card didn't work at the grocery store today. and I haven't read a thomas hardy novel (available in used bookstores everywhere for 99 cents a shot) in years. I don't read zines, and I don't read about how to make paraffin-covered, diaper-shaped candy holders in martha stewart's living. to tell you the truth, I'm not sure what it is that I do, what I've been up to. still, even now, 2001, I'm neither here nor there, and it's too late for me to die young. but I'll probably have morew of those bacardi gold daiquiris made with fresh mangos and key limes. |
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I switched schools a month into my senior year----read JUDE THE OBSCURE by Thomas Hardy in one school and I switched to the next in time to read TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES....I learned enough to appreciate Hardy's intent (indictment of Victorian hypocrisy) but I ended up so fucking depressed I missed school for like 2 weeks. I will never read anything by that fucker again....no way in hell. |
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A friend of mine has a relative buried at Westminster and when we went to find him, we discovered he had been buried with another man. It made us giggle for days. |
I don't dance very well....I just DRINK nekkid in the rain. |
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irish, tap, ballet, jazz, modern, interprative, ballroom? this is depressing. rain on the subject, rain outside my window. . . maybe that's good, considering the "drought". *sigh* still. . . who do you think you are, charlie brown? |
She wasn't groomed to be a saint. She chose to be. She chose to enter a Carmelite cloister at 15, giving up every comfort she had enjoyed with her family. Her sister was the mother superior, but she wasn't allowed to see her parents again. Even living in as strict a place as the cloister was, she would do little things to make sacrifices....little, unshowy things like never sweeten her tea or sit back in her chair. She was ordered to write her autobiography. Other sources describe her sacrifices; she didn't write about them herself. She called herself a little flower because she recognized how insignificant she was next to the "roses," like St. Theresa of Avila. She saw herself as a road-side weed. St. Theresa was also ordered to write her autobiography, by the Inquisition. They were suspicious of her ecstasies. She had been a very beautiful, very intelligent, and very charming lady with many suitors before she became a nun. She was still very beautiful, intelligent, and charming afterwards. Dirty Inquisitors. |
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I always confuse the Theresas. |
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St. Catherine of Siena was quite a woman. She used to get in arguments with the pope over theological doctrine all the time. And win. She tended to go a bit far when it came to mortification, though. St. Theresa of Avila was what's known today as a holy anorexic. She hardly ever ate. |
And which one is it that has the Basillica in France? Helluva place.... Thinking its the Little Flower---not sure, though. I was 13 at the time..... |
Christina the Astonishing lived a long long time ago She was stricken with a seizure at the age of twenty-two They took her body in a coffin to a tiny church in Liege Where she sprang up from the coffin just after the Agnus Dei. She soared up to the rafters, perched on a beam up there Cried "The stink of human sin is more than I can bear". Christina the Astonishing was the most astonishing of all She prayed balanced on a hurdle, or curled up in a ball She fled to remote places, climbed towers and trees and walls To escape the stench of human corruption into an oven she did crawl. Christina the Astonishing behaved in a terrifying way She would run wildly through the streets, jump in the Meusse and swim away Christina the Astonishing behaved in a terrifying manner She died at the age of seventy-four in the convent of St. Anna. *** No, I haven't heard of her before. There may very well have been a St. Christina like this, or Nick Cave could have just made it all up. He tells great stories. St. Joseph of Cupertino is said to have flown around like Christina in the song. He's also said to have eaten rotten vegetables in order to mortify his sense of taste. (Just because they're saints, doesn't mean they always had great ideas. And actually, he's supposed to have been rather slow-witted.) I'll have to check on the Basilica...though I'm sure St. Therese has some big thing dedicated to her, because she's a favorite of many. I wrote a paper on religious self-mutilation for a cultural anthropology course I took in my freshman year of college. Lots of saints did all kinds of strange things. That's one reason St. Therese is a favorite...she always said that God doesn't want you to kill yourself, and if you want to make sacrifices, make little ones with a lot of love. None of this flagellation business. |
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http://www.catholic.org/isidore/ |
St. Theresa of Avila St. Catherine of Siena |
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