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I Will Tell About It
Apr. 22nd, 2009 10:18 pmSo, I think the highlight of my day today was getting chocolate at work - which isn't too bad for a Wednesday? And it was really good chocolate - my boss had leftover Easter candy, and everyone who was on goal by 8.00 got some. I got a marshmallow filled chocolate egg. Would have been better with dark chocolate, but still so, so good. And then after work I called my dad so I'd have something to do on the walk home and we got into an argument about whether the country should go back on the gold standard. Um. He's very, very libertarian? But I think a lot of the positions he espouses (like the violent overthrow of the Establishment into anarchy) in debate he doesn't actually believe in in anything other than a rhetorical sense. And he can't vote, anyway, so. But it was a pretty interesting conversation.
Milestone: the longest parts of my hair are (finally) tailbone length, when they are sopping wet. Of course, I'm still not-quite hip length when it's dry, thank you curly hair, but still, I'm making progress! I am trying to decide if I want to get to tailbone length and maintain for awhile, to get less taper/healthier ends before I try to make it to classical length, or just do it all in one go and let my hemline catch up in a year or so. Decisions, decisions...
Poetry: our lecture today on modernism, leading into The Wasteland for next week, was absolutely fascinating. I love my professor so much. And I learned some really neat things about the development in the 20th century of the interaction between poet and reader, and how writers write for a popular audience vs writing for the initiate, the people who already get poetry. At the very end of the class my prof mentioned this poet, and I think she's pretty neat.
I Go Back To May 1937 by Sharon Olds
I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,
the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips aglow in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.
Milestone: the longest parts of my hair are (finally) tailbone length, when they are sopping wet. Of course, I'm still not-quite hip length when it's dry, thank you curly hair, but still, I'm making progress! I am trying to decide if I want to get to tailbone length and maintain for awhile, to get less taper/healthier ends before I try to make it to classical length, or just do it all in one go and let my hemline catch up in a year or so. Decisions, decisions...
Poetry: our lecture today on modernism, leading into The Wasteland for next week, was absolutely fascinating. I love my professor so much. And I learned some really neat things about the development in the 20th century of the interaction between poet and reader, and how writers write for a popular audience vs writing for the initiate, the people who already get poetry. At the very end of the class my prof mentioned this poet, and I think she's pretty neat.
I Go Back To May 1937 by Sharon Olds
I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,
the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips aglow in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.