Cripes, it's been a helluva couple weeks. It amazes me that Mercury only just this last weekend went retrograde - shit's been hitting fans all over my life for awhile now. At work, business is ramping up for the end of the year, and the usual insanity that invariably entails; the family is just being hit again and again with suck wrapped in bad luck dipped in bullshit; generally I've had bad luck with being klutzier than usual and not finding things I'm looking for and having enough miscommunication to piss off just about anybody; and for once I'm trying to get out ahead of the holiday craziness for presents and travel planning, and I'm not having much luck. Gah. Nothing could ever be easy.
I remain contemplative, and wearing escapism like the delicious blindfold it is.
"That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago was certainly not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion. With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; for these later-born Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul. Their ardour alternated between a vague ideal and the common yearning of womanhood; so that the one was disapproved as extravagance, and the other condemned as a lapse.
Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women; if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favourite love stories in prose and verse. Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centering in some long-recognizable deed."
- George Eliot
from the Prelude to Middlemarch
Yesterday was one of those days where I couldn't take two steps without being stopped by someone who wanted to ask me questions about being a musician. People on the train on the way into work, people at the office, people on the street - even a drunk dude at the Borders where I stopped to dig through the shelves and find something interesting and exciting to read. His opener? "Is that the big fiddle?" And then he started telling me what kind of music I must play, and asking me what I was reading, and pointedly not catching that my body language was saying, "Hey, Cap'n Hooch, I smelled you coming and am not interested. Please go away."
Anyway, it was interesting to get so much attention from people who hadn't even heard me play. Usually people have to actually at least hear me before they want to talk to me about it. Weird.
At Borders, though, I picked up another Thursday Next book, and was hoping to get something delightfully fluffy to go with it, continuing my current trend of eating nothing but literary twinkies that are quick, easy reads without any real depth or substance. A full scouring of the SF&F and Mystery sections gave me nothing, though, and so I decided to comb through literature. See if there was any Jane Austen spoof worth reading or something.
Middlemarch caught my eye for some reason. I think I must've read Silas Marner or something - I know I've read some George Eliot, but never this one. I picked it up and flipped it over and read the bio and decided that for $7, I could afford some literature. Today at lunch, I opened it up and read the Prelude. It was three paragraphs long, two of which I've quoted above. It blew my mind and resonated so strongly, I'm not sure how I could possibly not like the rest of the book. I'm so stoked to dive into it.
I forget sometimes (though I'm not sure how, as much as I read!) what a total lit geek I am.
Today's Playlist:
"Perfect" - Alanis Morissette
"Say It To Me Now" - Glen Hansard
"On and On It Goes" - Mary Chapin Carpenter
"Mr. Curiosity" - Jason Mraz
"In Repair (Acoustic)" - John Mayer
"Dear Chicago" - Ryan Adams
"When Will I Be Content" - Dan Bern
"Rain" - Patty Griffin
"Blackbird" - Sarah McLachlan
"Chasing Cars" - Snow Patrol
Recent entries...
27 December 2007: 2007: Finis.
17 December 2007: A ruse, a rant, and a poem. It's short.
11 December 2007: Music & falling....story of my life.
08 December 2007: Briefly...ish.
29 November 2007: A poem, a rant, a lesson.