Gerard Manley Hopkins -- The Candle Indoors

SOME candle clear burns somewhere I come by.
I muse at how its being puts blissful back
With yellowy moisture mild night’s blear-all black,
Or to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye.
By that window what task what fingers ply,
I plod wondering, a-wanting, just for lack
Of answer the eagerer a-wanting Jessy or Jack
There God to aggrándise, God to glorify.—
Come you indoors, come home; your fading fire
Mend first and vital candle in close heart’s vault:
You there are master, do your own desire;
What hinders? Are you beam-blind, yet to a fault
In a neighbour deft-handed? Are you that liar
And, cast by conscience out, spendsavour salt?

Woot. Woot.

I did something today that I've been meaning to do for some time.

I put my Westmont alum license plate frame on my car.

Bought a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies after work.
I also did my laundry (incl. bed sheets!)
Ran errands for two hours
Rented two movies
Spent at least an hour browsing CalArts' theatre website
Bought lots of fruit and veggies for a yummy dinner
Sang along to a lovely jazz playlist I put together about a year and a half ago but rarely listen to

And I felt happy...

It seems to be a rarer emotion for me nowadays. I did things today. I didn't just sit around staring at the air (or random fb pages).

Did I mention that I have the house to myself this weekend? My mom and sister went to Colorado for the weekend (they are thinking about moving to Colorado -- crazy!), where they were promptly met by a blizzard. I think I feel happier because as much as I love my mom, I don't like living here. Because she still likes me to check in with her when it comes to my whereabouts. And in general I feel guilty for forgetting to take out the trash. I just need a little independence.

I like this song. It makes me want to fall in love. Or go to Paris. However, considering past experiences -- it's probably better that I go to Paris.

I'm tired. Goodnight.

hmmmm

Now that we have a president in office who is more technologically literate there are interesting things happening, like a blog, YouTube vids, etc. One that has recently captured my attention is this Open For Questions business. My first reaction is that this is a really cool idea! You can ask the President questions and also vote on which questions you want to hear answers about and he'll actually answer them. Wow. Impressive, right?

Except for one thing. You have to create an account (as if I wasn't already signed up for a hundred other things that I didn't really want). Call me paranoid, but I feel like this is one more way that the government is able to keep tabs on us. A username, password, email address, zip code and IP address. Hmmm. Standard for pretty much every site.

I understand that signing up for an account with Open For Questions helps moderate the site and keeps spammers away. That's a very legit reason. And why is it that I feel a little uncertain about signing up with just my zip code and email when a couple handfuls of websites have my home address and PayPal, Amazon, eBay, Kiva and a number of other sites all have my credit card numbers? Do I even need to go into the whole debacle of the ridiculous copyright rules of posting photos on facebook or the fact that almost every college student in America probably lists their cell phone number too?

We, Americans, protect our privacy almost religiously, yet we give our information quite freely to the internet. Compare us to other countries, say the UK, where billions of pounds are spent every year on CCTV, and it doesn't seem quite as odd. The average person in the UK may be caught on camera 300 times a day.

And then we blog. Letting some of the most private thoughts out in the open, hoping that one person will comment and say "I agree with you!" as if that really justifies our existence in the world.

Strange we become when given this medium of global communication.

a multiple choice final exam

A Westmont Liberal Arts education is good for:

a) Getting a job.
b) Finding a husband and/or wife.
c) Conversation at a cocktail party.
d) Going into debt.
e) Boxing with kangaroos in the Outback.

Let's hear it for the boys!

Here is a lovely article from the New York Times about the gender politics of Jane Austen fans:

...it’s useful to ponder the way our ideas of the masculinity or femininity of works of fiction can change over time. For example, I was surprised to learn a few weeks ago, while researching a story on Jane Austen monster mashups, that until fairly recently the Bardess of Basingstoke was regarded as pretty much for the boys.

“There is a pattern throughout the Victorian period and into the modern era that sees the great English statesmen and literati and gentlemen scholars manifesting their devotion to Austen by reading her novels over and over,” Deidre Lynch, a professor at the University of Toronto who has written extensively on Austen devotees, told me in an e-mail message.

Benjamin Disraeli read “Pride and Prejudice” 17 times, and Matthew Arnold and John Henry Newman read “Mansfield Park” every year. The historian Thomas Babbington Macaulay read Austen obsessively and, as a colonial administrator in India, wrote letters home comparing various colleagues to characters in “Emma” and “Pride and Prejudice.” None of them are known to have covered the books in plain brown paper.

In fact, Lynch points out, the term “Janeite” — today used somewhat derisively to refer to Austen’s besotted female fans — came into usage in the 1890s thanks to men who wore it like a badge of honor. Kipling’s 1923 story “The Janeites” was about a platoon of British soldiers who use Austen talk to distract themselves from the horror of the trenches. And here’s E. M. Forster, coming out as a “Jane Austenite” in 1924:

I am a Jane Austenite, and therefore slightly imbecile about Jane Austen. My fatuous expression, and airs of personal immunity — how ill they sit on the face, say, of a Stevensonian! But Jane Austen is so different. She is my favorite author! I read and reread, the mouth open and the mind closed. Shut up in measureless content, I greet her by the name of most kind hostess, while criticism slumbers.

On the distaff side of the library, women readers were often much less enthusiastic. Charlotte Brönte, Lynch says, bridled when George Henry Lewes (George Eliot’s paramour) kept pushing the novels on her. “Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on this point.”

The heroine of “Troy Chimneys,” Margaret Kennedy’s 1953 historical novel set in the Regency, offered one possible explanation. When the male hero keeps pressing “Mansfield Park” and “Emma” on a lady he knows, she pushes back, arguing that the books, however entertaining, ended up keeping her, well, in the house. Austen’s “greatest admirers,” she says, “will always be men, I believe. For, when they have had enough of the parlor, they may walk out, you know, and we cannot.”

But by the mid-20th century, Austen had become identified as a women’s author. Lynch points to a 1947 usage cited in the O.E.D. that suggests that the question of the Janeite’s gender was starting to make people nervous:

Men as masculine as Scott and Kipling have been Janeites and have been enthralled by her sly humor and fidelity to reality.

As opposed to the awesome clothes and swoony subplots? Next time I go whaling, I’m taking Jane.

Two sizes too small

I wonder...what hurts more?

Having your heart broken.

Or

Having someone who you'd trust with your life tell you that you really aren't "the closest" of friends.


Both are shocking, both hurt.
And then your heart shrinks just a little bit more.
Like the Grinch.

i heart John Galliano