the story of my life
Earlier today I realized I had received a poke from mesembria (yo, mesembria), so here is my update.
I am liking my life: busy, exhausted, but psyched am I. Today was my first real day of school in a long, long time. I am reading Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae with Dr. Suksi, the Apology with Dr. Brown and the Aeneid with our new guy, Matthew Carter. I have all of those classes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. It's like being in highschool, really. Oh yes and I am T.A. for Bonnie (the Women class) on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I am working at P.T. Campbell (used bookstore) on Saturdays.
I am feeling very sad right now, because I've just been thinking about today's anniversary, and how insensitive I have been. It just hit me how much suffering. How much death. How much sorrow. It's taken me five years to actually feel it! I was even in New York a couple of years ago and I walked around "Ground Zero" and everything. What a miserable little bitch I've been for most of my life. On the morning of September 11, 2001, I remember getting up and getting ready for school, and lop_lop was watching television when the planes started hitting the buildings, and I went into the living room and what I saw made my jaw slacken, and I tried to take it in for a few minutes, but I don't think I was able to begin to understand the significance, so I went off blithely to Matthew Clark's first epic class of the year. When we were all assembled in class, MC asked us if we wanted to take a few minutes to discuss the morning's events. We did, but we didn't say much, because no-one knew a whole hell of a lot about it at that time and besides, what were we supposed to say?! Please can we just talk about the Iliad now.
The other night I began (again. I keep beginning and putting away and forgetting what I read and then picking it up again, it's the story of my life) reading the Qur'an before bed and I love this: the angel told Mohammed "read!" and he said "but I'm illiterate" and the angel insisted on his reading, and he read. That's why it's called Al-Qur'an, "The Reading".
Anyway, I've just been crying over the 9/11 dead, and over the disgusting mess that is U.S. foreign policy too. I guess it's kind of harsh to say I've been a miserable little bitch all my life, but I have certainly been self-centred. I have done a lot of crying for my own sake. In 2000 or 2001, Anne Carson came to speak at York, and talked about Sappho, Marguerite Porete and Simone Weil, and all their philosophical/spiritual pain. I went to the bathroom and cried for ten minutes or so and then I cried some more when I got home, you know, basically because of the emptiness of everything. And those things continued to eat at me, and I just couldn't get myself out of my abyss of self-pity for-seemingly-fucking-ever.
These days, since about April, really, when I started on Zoloft, I am a much less miserable person. I don't know about less self-centred but at least I am talking to people and loving them, honestly, and not making such STUPID decisions. I don't care that life is absurd anymore.
Best summer ever. I saw lots of live music and discovered some new music to like. Bluesfest was miraculously awesome. At Rock the Park I saw Alice Cooper, and the crowd's energy leading up to his appearance caused me make up my eyes a la Cooper in a Port-o-let (quickly. I must say I don't recommend performing complicated makeup tasks in one of those stinky things). I acquired a couple of beautiful cats: the mother is tabby and she is called Nebris and the baby is black and she is called Kitto (tabby = dapply = nebris = fawnskin and kittos/kissos = ivy. Fawnskin and ivy are, of course, associated with the worship of Dionysos. However I have been thinking of renaming Nebris after Mrs. Gummage from David Copperfield because she keeps CRYING all the time, and I fancy she is saying "I am a lone, lorn creatur'"...) I played baseball all summer long -- I know, WHAT? -- co-ed team, and though I started out as backcatcher, I ended up on third. I spent about 70 hours at the Mission in total and I baked a hell of a lot of cornflake and coconut cookies and mixed up a hell of a lot of tartar sauce (Fridays). I helped four different friends to move house -- and that's counting lop_lop and bobula as one person. I broke a few hearts over the course of the summer. You think I jest, but it's true. I went to Thunder Bay and my boyfriend met me there and we went to the fair. He has a car and a kingsnake now. He is also sitting in on my drama class. Also now my office is in the basement of University College, as is his. So we will probably get sick of each other over the next year, which is good, because we'll also most likely neither of us be hanging around London next year, and he wants to live somewhere warm and dry, like New Mexico or Greece, whereas I want to live somewhere cool and damp, like Ireland or a swamp.
But what am I doing still writing this bloody thing? I should be reading Greek or sleeping or something.
I am liking my life: busy, exhausted, but psyched am I. Today was my first real day of school in a long, long time. I am reading Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae with Dr. Suksi, the Apology with Dr. Brown and the Aeneid with our new guy, Matthew Carter. I have all of those classes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. It's like being in highschool, really. Oh yes and I am T.A. for Bonnie (the Women class) on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I am working at P.T. Campbell (used bookstore) on Saturdays.
I am feeling very sad right now, because I've just been thinking about today's anniversary, and how insensitive I have been. It just hit me how much suffering. How much death. How much sorrow. It's taken me five years to actually feel it! I was even in New York a couple of years ago and I walked around "Ground Zero" and everything. What a miserable little bitch I've been for most of my life. On the morning of September 11, 2001, I remember getting up and getting ready for school, and lop_lop was watching television when the planes started hitting the buildings, and I went into the living room and what I saw made my jaw slacken, and I tried to take it in for a few minutes, but I don't think I was able to begin to understand the significance, so I went off blithely to Matthew Clark's first epic class of the year. When we were all assembled in class, MC asked us if we wanted to take a few minutes to discuss the morning's events. We did, but we didn't say much, because no-one knew a whole hell of a lot about it at that time and besides, what were we supposed to say?! Please can we just talk about the Iliad now.
The other night I began (again. I keep beginning and putting away and forgetting what I read and then picking it up again, it's the story of my life) reading the Qur'an before bed and I love this: the angel told Mohammed "read!" and he said "but I'm illiterate" and the angel insisted on his reading, and he read. That's why it's called Al-Qur'an, "The Reading".
Anyway, I've just been crying over the 9/11 dead, and over the disgusting mess that is U.S. foreign policy too. I guess it's kind of harsh to say I've been a miserable little bitch all my life, but I have certainly been self-centred. I have done a lot of crying for my own sake. In 2000 or 2001, Anne Carson came to speak at York, and talked about Sappho, Marguerite Porete and Simone Weil, and all their philosophical/spiritual pain. I went to the bathroom and cried for ten minutes or so and then I cried some more when I got home, you know, basically because of the emptiness of everything. And those things continued to eat at me, and I just couldn't get myself out of my abyss of self-pity for-seemingly-fucking-ever.
These days, since about April, really, when I started on Zoloft, I am a much less miserable person. I don't know about less self-centred but at least I am talking to people and loving them, honestly, and not making such STUPID decisions. I don't care that life is absurd anymore.
Best summer ever. I saw lots of live music and discovered some new music to like. Bluesfest was miraculously awesome. At Rock the Park I saw Alice Cooper, and the crowd's energy leading up to his appearance caused me make up my eyes a la Cooper in a Port-o-let (quickly. I must say I don't recommend performing complicated makeup tasks in one of those stinky things). I acquired a couple of beautiful cats: the mother is tabby and she is called Nebris and the baby is black and she is called Kitto (tabby = dapply = nebris = fawnskin and kittos/kissos = ivy. Fawnskin and ivy are, of course, associated with the worship of Dionysos. However I have been thinking of renaming Nebris after Mrs. Gummage from David Copperfield because she keeps CRYING all the time, and I fancy she is saying "I am a lone, lorn creatur'"...) I played baseball all summer long -- I know, WHAT? -- co-ed team, and though I started out as backcatcher, I ended up on third. I spent about 70 hours at the Mission in total and I baked a hell of a lot of cornflake and coconut cookies and mixed up a hell of a lot of tartar sauce (Fridays). I helped four different friends to move house -- and that's counting lop_lop and bobula as one person. I broke a few hearts over the course of the summer. You think I jest, but it's true. I went to Thunder Bay and my boyfriend met me there and we went to the fair. He has a car and a kingsnake now. He is also sitting in on my drama class. Also now my office is in the basement of University College, as is his. So we will probably get sick of each other over the next year, which is good, because we'll also most likely neither of us be hanging around London next year, and he wants to live somewhere warm and dry, like New Mexico or Greece, whereas I want to live somewhere cool and damp, like Ireland or a swamp.
But what am I doing still writing this bloody thing? I should be reading Greek or sleeping or something.