books and a dead poet
I was going to start an entry on why I'm unreasonably pissed with my mother, but I'm so irritated I want to think about something else. So I will think about books.
I've been re-reading a couple of books this week. It's a bad habit, re-reading, when you've got a mountain of unread books just dying for attention. I can't help it though. Sometimes old words are like good friends. You know them, they know you, and the conversation is familiar, unstilted, and easy-going.
The books I've been re-reading this week include: "Outlander" by Diana Gabaldon and "The Nine Tailors" by Dorothy Sayers. This does not count a bunch of Bleach chapters I also re-read aside from a self-help book called "Organise Yourself" which hasn't been helping because I'm too scatter-brained to follow its advice.
I've been unreasonably obsessed with John Donne right now. John Donne is Lord Peter's favorite poet, and I started reading him because I wanted to know where Dorothy Sayers ends and where John Donne begins. Lord Peter sprouts a lot of poetry while detecting murders. It's hard not to be attracted to an amateur detective like that. Reading "Nine Tailors" in conjuction with Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions -- especially Meditation XVII ("Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him...") -- brings out a whole new perspective to the image of the bells, and how the murder is committed in the book. Donne's essay made the Sayers more disturbing for me.
Right now John Donne is also serving as inspiration, too, for my unfinished fanfic entry to the IchiRuki contest. I hope it's not too much of a stretch that Ichigo would jump poets after a decade. I mean, tastes change, right? I'm worried that if I do a re-working of Shakespeare's The Tempest a dozen other entries would have the same angle. Besides, I haven't read the Tempest in full -- the last Shakespeare play I tried to tackle was Titus Andronicus -- and I gave up. Sorry, Ichigo. The Bard doesn't do for me.
Donne was fascinated with two themes: death and religion. His work just fits for the piece I'm working. If there's any recurring theme in Bleach, it's death and reincarnation.
Damn. I can't get it out of my head. I'm still pissed with my mom. She's a friggin' helpless senior citizen, I'm the adult responsible for her, and yet she still ticks me off. I should be used to her shit by now but she still manages to piss me off.
If you remember the first few seasons of The Sopranos, my sisters and I were laughing our heads off because Tony's mom is exactly like ours, with the slight exception that our mom doesn't try to have mafia hits on us. But she's that aggravating.
As my friends joke in my second language, "mahirap magpalaki ng magulang." It doesn't sound great in English, but the direct translation would be: "It's hard to bring up your parents."
She's one of the reasons why I don't want kids.
I've been re-reading a couple of books this week. It's a bad habit, re-reading, when you've got a mountain of unread books just dying for attention. I can't help it though. Sometimes old words are like good friends. You know them, they know you, and the conversation is familiar, unstilted, and easy-going.
The books I've been re-reading this week include: "Outlander" by Diana Gabaldon and "The Nine Tailors" by Dorothy Sayers. This does not count a bunch of Bleach chapters I also re-read aside from a self-help book called "Organise Yourself" which hasn't been helping because I'm too scatter-brained to follow its advice.
I've been unreasonably obsessed with John Donne right now. John Donne is Lord Peter's favorite poet, and I started reading him because I wanted to know where Dorothy Sayers ends and where John Donne begins. Lord Peter sprouts a lot of poetry while detecting murders. It's hard not to be attracted to an amateur detective like that. Reading "Nine Tailors" in conjuction with Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions -- especially Meditation XVII ("Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him...") -- brings out a whole new perspective to the image of the bells, and how the murder is committed in the book. Donne's essay made the Sayers more disturbing for me.
Right now John Donne is also serving as inspiration, too, for my unfinished fanfic entry to the IchiRuki contest. I hope it's not too much of a stretch that Ichigo would jump poets after a decade. I mean, tastes change, right? I'm worried that if I do a re-working of Shakespeare's The Tempest a dozen other entries would have the same angle. Besides, I haven't read the Tempest in full -- the last Shakespeare play I tried to tackle was Titus Andronicus -- and I gave up. Sorry, Ichigo. The Bard doesn't do for me.
Donne was fascinated with two themes: death and religion. His work just fits for the piece I'm working. If there's any recurring theme in Bleach, it's death and reincarnation.
Damn. I can't get it out of my head. I'm still pissed with my mom. She's a friggin' helpless senior citizen, I'm the adult responsible for her, and yet she still ticks me off. I should be used to her shit by now but she still manages to piss me off.
If you remember the first few seasons of The Sopranos, my sisters and I were laughing our heads off because Tony's mom is exactly like ours, with the slight exception that our mom doesn't try to have mafia hits on us. But she's that aggravating.
As my friends joke in my second language, "mahirap magpalaki ng magulang." It doesn't sound great in English, but the direct translation would be: "It's hard to bring up your parents."
She's one of the reasons why I don't want kids.