Green-Eyed Mystic

astounding and beautiful

2011-01-29T22:05:00.001-05:00

The Nutcracker -- pas de deux

2010-12-16T18:29:00.001-05:00

The best Pas de Deux from the Nutcracker that I have ever seen. San Francisco Ballet -- 2007. It's worth to watch just for the lift a little after 3:00. How she lands on his shoulder like that I will never know.

Baryshnikov -- Sinatra

2010-12-15T21:57:00.001-05:00

Baryshnikov at his best. So glad someone finally uploaded this on Youtube.

Jane Eyre 2011 trailer

2010-11-10T20:34:00.003-05:00

Yup, they've made another adaptation of Jane Eyre. Why, I'm not sure. But I'm excited.

Jane Eyre 2011

Charlotte Bronte letters (1853 - 55): "Dangerous as lucifer matches"

2010-09-25T15:48:00.050-04:00

A. B. NICHOLLS, PART 2. See previous blog for Part 1.

ENGAGEMENT AND MARRIAGE

Charlotte Bronte wrote to and received letters from A. B. Nicholls upon his exit from Haworth for a new parish. None of these letters exist. She also visited him amongst mixed company. Charlotte finally accepted his proposal of marriage, against the initial wishes of her father and her best friend Ellen Nussey.

The REVD. PATRICK BRONTE to CHARLOTTE BRONTE, January 1853, fragment

I wish him [Nicholls] no ill -- but rather good, and wish that every woman may avoid him, forever, unless she should be determined on her own misery -- All the produce of the Australian ?Diggins would 'not' make him and any wife he might have, happy. (106)

MARY TAYLOR to ELLEN NUSSEY, 24 February to 3 March 1854

You talk wonderful nonsense abt C. Bronte in yr letter. What do you mean about "bearing her position so long, & enduring to the end"? & still better -- "bearing our lot whatever it is". If it's C's lot to be married shd n't she bear that too? or does your strange morality mean that she shd refuse to ameliorate her lot when it lies in her power. how wd. she be inconsistent with herself in marrying? Because she considers her own pleasure? If this is so new for her to do, it is high time she began to make it more common. It is an outrageous exaction to expect her to give up her choice in a manner so important, & I think her to blame in having been hitherto so yielding that her friends can think of making such an impudent demand. (228)

Charlotte was not in love with Nicholls when she accepted his proposal. It seems likely that her acceptance was merely to ensure security for her father. Nicholls promised Charlotte that he would take care of her father if she died before her father.

to ELLEN NUSSEY, 11 April 1854

For Myself -- dear Ellen -- while thankful to One who seems to have guided me through much difficulty, much and deep distress and perplexity of mind -- I am still very calm -- very -- inexpectant. What I taste of happiness is of the soberest order. I trust to love my husband -- I am grateful for his tender love to me -- I believe him to be an affectionate -- a conscientious -- a high-principled man -- and if with all this, I should yield to regrets -- that fine talents, congenial 'tastes' and thoughts are not added -- it seems to me I should be most presumptuous and thankless.

Providence offers me this destiny. Doubtless then it is best for me -- Nor do I shrink from wishing those dear to me one not less happy. (240)

This sober view of her coming marriage is not what one would expect from the author of such passionate and willful characters.

to MRS. GASKELL, 26 April 1854

I know that when once married I shall often have to hold my tongue on topics which heretofore have rarely failed to set that unruly member in tolerably facile motion. (252)

to MRS. ANN CLAPHAM, {?28 December 1854]

...there are some cases, as I need not remind you, where wives have just to put their own judgment on the shelf and do as they are bid. (313)

to MRS. GASKELL, 18 April 1854

My destiny will not be brilliant, certainly, but Mr Nicholls is conscientious, affectionate, pure in heart and life. He offers a most constant and tried attachment -- I am very grateful to him. (247)

CATHERINE WINKWORTH to EMMA SHAEN, 8 May 1854

If only he is not altogether far too narrow for her, one can fancy her much more really happy with such a man than with one who might have made her more in love, and I am sure she will be really good to him. But I guess the true love was Paul Emanuel [Charlotte's character in VILLETTE based off M. Heger] after all, and is dead; but I don't know, and don't think that Lily [Mrs. Gaskell] knows... (258)

Her father, Patrick Bronte, did not attend the wedding, although he was much more relaxed about his daughter marrying; her former teacher and friend Margaret Wooler gave her away.

to CATHERINE WOOLER [Margaret's sister], 18 July 1854

I believe my dear husband to be a good man, and trust I have done right in marrying him. I hope too I shall be enabled always to feel grateful for the kindness and affection he shews me. (278)

to ELLEN NUSSEY, 9 August [1854]

Dear Nell -- during the last 6 weeks -- the colour of my thoughts is a good deal changed: I know more of the realities of life than I once did. I think many false ideas are propagated -- perhaps unintentionally. I think those married women who indiscriminately urge their acquaintance to marry -- much to blame. For my part -- I can only say with deeper sincerity and fuller significance -- what I always said in theory -- Wait God's will. Indeed -- indeed Nell -- it is a solemn and strange and perilous thing for a woman to become a wife. (284)

to MARGARET WOOLER, 22 August 1854

I feel comforted to think that this marriage has secured Papa good aid in his old age. (287)

One of the villagers in proposing my husband's health described him as "a consistent Christian and a kind gentleman." I am disposed to echo that high but simple eulogium now. If I can do so with sincerity and conviction seven years -- or even a year hence -- I shall esteem myself a happy woman. Faultless my husband is not -- faultless no human being is; but as you well know -- I did not expect perfection. (286)

Marriage certainly makes a difference in some things and amongst others the disposition and consumption of time. I really seem to have had scarcely a spare moment since that dim quiet June Morning when you, E. Nussey and myself all walked down to Haworth church --. Not that I have been hurried or oppressed -- but the fact is my time is not my own now; Somebody else wants a good portion of it -- and says we must do so and so. We do "so and so" accordingly, and it generally seems the right thing -- only I sometimes wish that I could have written the letter as well as taken the walk. (286)

CENSORSHIP

Gaskell's religion did not coincide with A. B. Nicholls'

MRS. GASKELL to JOHN FORSTER, [23 April 1854] Extract

I mean that she [CB] would never have been happy but with an exacting, rigid, law-giving, passionate man -- only you see, I'm afraid one of his laws will be to shut us out, & so I am making a sort of selfish moan over it & have got out of temper I suppose with the very thing I have been wanting for her this six months past... (248)

to ELLEN NUSSEY, [?20 October 1854]

Arthur has just been glancing over this note -- He thinks I have written too freely about *Amelia &c. Men don't seem to understand making letters a vehicle of communication -- they always seem to think us incautious. I'm sure I don't think I have said anything rash -- however you must burn[three underlines] it when read. Arthur says such letters as mine never ought to be kept -- they are dangerous as lucifer matches -- so be sure to follow a recommendation he has just given "fire them" -= or "there will be no more." Such is his resolve. I can't help laughing -- this seems to me so funny, Arthur however says he is quite "serious and looks it, I assure you -- he is bending over the desk with his eyes full of concern. I am now desired "to have done with it--" so with his kind regards and mine -- Good-bye dear Ellen

Yours affectionately
CB: Nicholls (295)

to ELLEN NUSSEY, 31 October 1854

Dear Ellen -- Arthur complains that you do not distinctly promise to burn my letters as you receive them. He says you must give him a plain pledge to that effect -- or he will read every line I write and elect himself censor of our correspondence. (296)

He says women are more rash in letter-writing -- they think only of the trustworthiness of their immediate friend -- and do not look to contingencies -- a letter may fall into any hand. You must give the promise -- I believe -- at least he says so, with his best regards -- or else you will get such notes as he writes to Mr. *Sowden - plain, brief statements of facts without the adornment of a single flourish. (296-97)

ELLEN NUSSEY to A. B. NICHOLLS, [November 1854]

My dear Mr Nicholls

As you seem to hold in great horror the ardentia verba [burning words] of feminine epistles, I pledge myself to the destruction of Charlotte's 'epistles' henceforth, if You, pledge yourself to no censorship in the matter communicated

Yours very truly
E. Nussey (297)

to ELLEN NUSSEY, 7 November 1854

Arthur thanks you for the promise He was out when I commenced this letter, but he is just come in -- on my asking him whether he would give the pledge required in return -- he says "yes we may now write any dangerous stuff we please to each other -- it is not "old friends" he mistrusts, but the chances of war -- the accidental passing of letters into hands and under eyes for which they were never written." (298)

Obviously, Ellen did not burn Charlotte's letters. Ellen was a pious lady and it is terribly surprising that she would lie in this instance, but we are eternally grateful that she did as we would know very little about Charlotte and her sisters if not for these letters. Over 300 exist. Ellen maintained that despite her avowal that she would burn the letters, Nicholls continued to censor Charlotte's letters for the short time she lived subsequent to this date.

DEATH

to ELLEN NUSSEY, 7 December 1854

If it just depended on me -- I should come -- but these matters are not quite in my power now -- another must be consulted - and where his wish and judgment have a decided bias to a particular course -- I make no stir, but just adopt it. Arthur is sorry to disappoint both you and me, but it is his fixed wish that a few weeks should be allowed yet to elapse before we meet -- Probably he is confirmed in this desire by my having a cold at present -- I did not achieve the walk to the waterfall with impunity -- yet I felt a chill afterwards, and the same night had sore throat and cold -- however I am better now -- but not 'quite' well. (306)

Many biographers believe that Charlotte died as a result of a complication from recent pregnancy. There is no scientific evidence to support that Charlotte was pregnant. Besides, one must keep in mind that Charlotte was very little at 4' 9" in height and skinny to the point that some have speculated that she was an anorexic, a view I do not hold. It was also only 8 months since her marriage and for a woman of her physique and age (39) it seems unlikely that she would have become pregnant so quickly. Instead, her death could have been a result of Tuberculosis (a common 19th century disease known at this time as Phthisis or Consumption, one that her sisters Emily and Anne succumbed to) for which it seems there is greater evidence. In the following letter Charlotte does not allow Ellen to suppose it is pregnancy that is causing her sickness:

to ELLEN NUSSEY, 19 February 1855

My health has been really very good ever since my return from Ireland till about ten days ago, when the stomach seemed quite suddenly to lose its tone -- indigestion and continual faint sickness have been my portion ever since. Don't conjecture -- dear Nell -- for it is too soon yet -- though I certainly never before felt as I have done lately. (319)

Below, Nicholls marks Charlotte's condition as an "illness". However, the doctor also states it will be of some duration but not dangerous which could suggest that he believes Charlotte may be pregnant.

A. B. NICHOLLS to ELLEN NUSSEY, 1 February 1855

Dr. Macturk saw Charlotte on Tuesday. His opinion was that her illness would be of some duration, -- but that there was no immediate danger -- I trust therefore that in a few weeks she will be well again -- (323)

A month and a half before her death, Nicholls maintains that the source for Charlotte's illness is still unknown.

A. B. NUSSEY to ELLEN NUSSEY, 14 February 1855

It is difficult to write to friends about my wife's illness, as its cause is yet uncertain -- at present she is completely prostrated with weakness & sickness & frequent fever -- All may turn out well in the end, & I hope it will; if you saw [her] you would perceive that she can maintain no correspondence at present -- (324-5)

At this time, Charlotte, perhaps fearing death, re-wrote her will allotting her husband full rights over her property. It is generally assumed that this was a result of Charlotte's growing love for Nicholls. I do wonder -- as no other biographer has speculated -- if in this instance Nicholls used his potent persuasive skills.

to AMELIA TAYLOR, nee RINGROSE [?late February 1855]

Let me speak the plain truth -- my sufferings are very great -- my nights indescribable -- sickness with scarce a reprieve -- I strain until what I vomit is mixed with blood. (327)

Vomiting or coughing up blood is a symptom of Consumption (Tuberculosis)

The day before Charlotte's death, her father writes to Ellen Nussey:

THE REVD PATRICK BRONTE to ELLEN NUSSEY, 30 March 1855

My dear Madam,

We are all in great trouble, and Mr. Nicholls so much so, that he is not so sufficiently strong, and composed as to be able to write --

I therefore devote a few moments, to tell you, that my Dear Daughter is very ill, and apparently on the verge of the grave --

If she could speak, she would no doubt dictate to us whilst answering your kind letter, but we are left to ourselves, to give what answer we can -- The Doctors have no hope of her case, and fondly as we a long time, cherished hope, that hope is now gone, and we [have] only to look forward to the solemn event, with prayer to God, that he will give us grace and Strength sufficient unto our day --

Will you be so kind as to write to Miss Wooler, and Mrs. Joe Taylor, and inform them that we requested you to do so -- telling them of our present condition

Ever truly and
respectfully Yours,

P. Bronte (329-330)

Ellen left that day to arrive at Haworth on 31 March after Charlotte's passing that morning. Charlotte's alleged last moments and words, as related by Mrs. Gaskell -- who was not present -- is: "Wakening for an instant from this stupor of intelligence, she saw her husband's woe-worn face, and caught the sound of some murmured words of prayer that God would spare her. "Oh!" she whispered forth, "I am not going to die, am I? He will not separate us, we have been so happy."

-----
All grammatical errors are those of the authors' and not mine. All italicized words are mine.

The Letters of Charlotte Bronte, Volume III, Margaret Smith editor

Herzog down with psychoanalysis

2010-09-09T18:43:00.003-04:00

You tell 'em, Herzog!

Charlotte Bronte -- personality

2010-09-07T18:29:00.008-04:00

to F. BENNOCH, 29 September 1853

I could not help smiling at what you say respecting your preconceived expectations of Currer Bell [Charlotte Bronte], anticipating in him or her a somewhat positive and overbearing personage. I am afraid my books must be at fault in a way of which I am totally unconscious, for you are by no means singular in your idea; on the contrary I find it shared by almost all strangers. However I cannot help it, and if others consent to look upon the defect as kindly as you do -- I fear I shall scarce trouble myself to regret it. (195)

Elizabeth Gaskell visited Charlotte at the home she shared with her last remaining relative, her father, in Haworth in 1853 and wrote about her visit to John Forster who was a good friend of Charles Dickens.

Mrs. Gaskell to John Forster, 1853

There are some people, whose stock of facts & anecdotes are soon exhausted; but Miss B. is none of these. She has the wild strange facts of her own & her sister's life, -- and beyond & above these she has more original & suggestive thoughts of her own; so that, like the moors, I felt on the last day as if our talk might be extended in any direction without getting to the end of any subject. (199)

Mrs. Gaskell to John Forster, 1853

Here & there from the high moorland summit we saw newly built Churches, -- which her Irish curates see after -- everyone of ?those being literal copies of different curates in the neighbourhood, whose amusement has been ever since to call each other by the names she gave them in Shirley. (198)

----
Margaret Smith ed. The Letters of Charlotte Bronte vol III

picture: bronte-country.com

not about Charlotte Bronte

2010-09-04T20:57:00.003-04:00

If you had asked me four years if I could ever imagine leaving London willingly I would have vehemently denied it. This is why I no longer trust my decisions -- why I do not hope but with caution.

It will be a week tomorrow that I have not been on my anti-anxiety pills. Doc seems to think that as my life has improved -- I have a job now -- and I am happier and more content than I have been since before I moved to London and came back to my parental habitat after failing grad school -- that I no longer need them. I quietly assented. I have been very dizzy all week. Doc says that I should feel physically different as I go off them. I hope I do not revert back to my former state of anger, unhappiness, and, worse than all, physical sickness.

I haven't written on here about myself in a long while. Have felt no desire to do so. My mental/physical condition improved while on the pills but they did rather sap my energy and emotions to the point where I didn't feel like doing much. I have been much more energetic since going off them.

However, I have been feeling a bit more disgruntled by certain situations than I feel like I would have had I been on the pills -- like the situation with the young woman who tried to convince me to take a 90 cent fine off her library card because she had returned the item on time, although her account said that she returned it three days later. I told her I wouldn't do that, but that she could use her card so long as she had less than $10.00 on her account. One of these days I am going to pull 90 cents out of my pocket and tell these people that I will pay the measly fine for them since they are disinclined to do so themselves.

Summer is practically over. Today it is 50 degrees, although the temperature will go up again this week, but it won't be long before it remains 50 degrees, and then for several weeks or months plummet to the 20's. I have ensured against depression at this sad fact by buying an expensive Calvin Klein coat.

I have this really nice guy in my life right now. I work with him. He makes me laugh and he is very kind to me. I have never known anyone so genuinely kind. I wish I had met someone like that in London. Maybe I would have worked harder on my graduate studies and not had such a manic desire to leave; and then maybe I would still be living there, and not in my parents house, and not taking the same bus I have taken since I first started working at a theatre downtown when I was 12; and maybe then I would know what I am doing with my life and feel like there was some sort of purpose for my existence.

Charlotte Bronte Letters -- Misc.

2010-08-31T22:37:00.006-04:00

to W. S. WILLIAMS, 23 March 1853

I had a letter the other day announcing that a lady of some note who had always determined that whenever she married, her elect should be the counterpart of Mr. Knightley in Miss Austen's "Emma" -- had now changed her mind and vowed that she would either find the duplicate of Professor Emanuel or remain forever single!!! (138)

CATHERINE WINKWORTH to EMILY SHAEN, 25 March [1853]

That's one thing I like in Miss Bronte, that her men are so much better than most women's men. (141)

to GEORGE SMITH, 26 March 1853

With regards to that momentous point -- M. Paul's fate -- in case any one in future should request to be enlightened thereon -- they may be told that it was designed that every reader should settle the catastrophe for himself, according to the quality of his disposition, the tender or remorseless impulse of his nature. 'drowning and Matrimony are the fearful alternatives' The Merciful...will of course choose the former and milder doom -- drown him to put him out of pain. The cruel-hearted will on the contrary pitilessly impale him on the second horn of the dilemma -- marrying him without ruth or compunction to that -- person -- that -- that -- individual -- "Lucy Snowe." (142)

to GEORGE SMITH, 26 March 1853

I deny, and must deny that Mr. Thackeray is very good or very amiable, but the Man is great. (143)

ELIZABETH GASKELL to LADY KAY-SHUTTLEWORTH, 7 April [1853]

The difference between Miss Bronte and me is that she puts all her naughtiness into her books, and I put all my goodness. I am sure she works off a great deal that is morbid into her writing, and out of her life; and my books are so far better than I am that I often feel ashamed of having written them and as if I were a hypocrite. (150)

ELIZABETH GASKELL to JOHN FORSTER, 3 May 1853

I like her more & (b) more. She is so true, she wins respect, deep respect, from the very first, -- and then comes hearty liking, -- and last of all comes love. I throughly loved her before she left, -- and I was so sorry for her! She has had so little kindness & affection shown to her. She said that she was afraid of loving me as much as she could, because she had never been able to inspire the kind of love she felt. (159).

----

The Letters of Charlotte Bronte, ed. Margaret Smith, Volume III

Charlotte Bronte letters -- A.B. NICHOLLS

2010-08-31T22:30:00.007-04:00

A.B. NICHOLLS -- the man charlotte bronte would eventually marry.

to ELLEN NUSSEY about A.B. NICHOLLS, 4 March 1853

The fact is I shall be most thankful when he is well away -- I pity him -- but I don't like that dark gloom of his -- He dogged me up the lane after the evening service in no pleasant manner -- he stopped also in the passage after the Bishop and the other clergy were gone into the room -- and it was because I drew away and went upstairs that he gave that look which filled Martha's soul with horror She -- it seems -- meantime, was making it her business to watch him from the kitchen door -- If Mr. N----- be a good man at bottom -- it is a sad thing that Nature has not given him the faculty to put goodness into a more attractive form -- Into the bargain of all the rest he managed to get up a most pertinacious and needless dispute with the Inspector -- in listening to which all my old unfavourable impression revived so strongly -- I fear my countenance could not but shew them. (130)

to ELLEN NUSSEY, 27 May 1853

He left Haworth this morning at 6 o'clock. Yesterday evening he called to render into papa's hands the deeds of the National School -- and to say good-bye. They were busy cleaning -- washing the paint &c. in the dining-room so he did not find me there. I would not go into the parlour to speak to him in Papa's last moment -- I thought it best not -- But perceiving that he stayed long before going out at the gate -- and remembering his long grief I took courage and went out trembling and miserable. I found him leaning again[st] the garden-door in a paroxysm of anguish -- sobbing as women never sob. Of course I went straight to him. Very few words were interchanged -- those few barely articulate: several things I should have liked to ask him were swept entirely from my memory. Poor fellow! but he wanted such hope and such encouragement as I could not give him. Still I trust he must know now tha[t] I am not cruelly blind and indifferent to his constancy and grief. For a few weeks he goes to the south of England -- afterwards he takes a curacy somewhere in Yorkshire but I don't know where. (168-9)

...to be continued...

-----

The Letters of Charlotte Bronte, edited by Margaret Smith, volume III

Helen

2010-08-22T20:16:00.000-04:00

‎'The defect of your character, Helen, remember I tell you, is this -- inordinate desire to be loved, this impatience of not being loved...' -- HELEN, Maria Edgeworth

frustration

2010-08-08T23:06:00.001-04:00

I am feeling particularly anti-social right now. Sometimes I just really dislike people. Dislike consumes me: people's inane thoughts and words and lifestyles. There has to be better, doesn't there?

charlotte -- george smith

2010-08-03T21:32:00.002-04:00

page 74-5
To George Smith, 30 October 1852

My dear Sir
You must notify honestly what you think of "Villette" when you have read it. I can hardly tell you how much I hunger to have some opinion besides my own, and how I have sometimes desponded and almost despaired because there was no one to whom to read a line -- or of whom to ask a counsel. "Jane Eyre" was not written under such circumstances, nor were two-thirds of "Shirley". I got so miserable about it, I could bear no allusion to the book -- it is not finished yet, but now -- I hope.

As to the anonymous publication -- I have this to say. If the withholding of the author's name should tend materially to injure the publisher's interest -- to interfere with booksellers' orders &c. I would not press the point; but if no such detriment is contingent -- I should be most thankful for the sheltering shadow of an incognito. I seem to dread the advertisements -- the large lettered "Currer Bell's New Novel" or "New Work by the Author of 'Jane Eyre' ". These, however, I feel well enough are the transcendentalisms of a retired wretch -- and must not be intruded in the way of solid considerations; so you must speak frankly.

...

You will see that "Villette" touches on no matter of public interest. I cannot write books handling the topics of the day -- it is of no use trying. Nor can I write a book for its moral -- Nor can I take up a philanthropic scheme though I honour Philanthropy -- And voluntarily and sincerely veil my face before such a might subject as that handled in Mrs. beecher Stowe's work -- "Uncle Tom's Cabin".

To manage these great matters rightly they must be long and practically studied -- their bearings known intimately and their evils felt genuinely -- they must not be taken up as a business-matter and a trading-speculation. I doubt not Mrs. Stowe had felt the iron of slavery enter into her heart from childhood upwards long before she ever thought of writing books. The feeling rthroughout her work is sincere and not got up.

Remember to be an honest critic of "Villette" and tell Mr. Williams to be unsparing -- not that I am likely to alter anything -- but I want to know his impression and yours.

Believe me
Yours sincerely
C. Bronte

beginning sentence of a novel

2010-08-01T23:33:00.002-04:00

Years ago I fell in love with someone who was not in love with me, and I haven't been able to feel since.

2010-07-26T00:31:00.004-04:00

letters of charlotte bronte, volume three

31: You say, dear Nell -- that you often wish I would chat on paper as you do. How can I--? Where are my materials? -- is my life fertile in subjects of chat--? What callers do I see -- what visits do I pay? No -- you must chat and I must listen and say yes and no and thank you for five minutes recreation.

31 (to Ellen Nussey): I am amused at the interest you take in politics -- don't expect to rouse me -- to me all ministries and all oppositions seem to be pretty much alike. D'Israeli was factious as Leader of the Opposition -- Lord J[ohn] Russel[l] is going to be factious now that he has stepped into D'I's shoes -- Confound them all.

47 (to Elizabeth Gaskell): I read "Visiting at Cranford" with that sort of pleasure which seems always too brief in its duration: I wished the paper had been twice as long. Mr. Thackeray ought to take a series of articles such as these -- retire with them to his chamber, put himself to bed, and lie there -- till he had learnt by diligent study how to be satirical without being exquisitely bitter.

63 (to Ellen Nussey): Perhaps you think that I generally write with some reserve -- you ought to do the same. My reserve, however, has its foundation not in design; but in necessity -- I am silent because I have literally nothing to say. I might indeed repeat over and over again that my life is a pale blank and often a very weary 'burden' -- and that the Future sometimes appals me -- but what end could be answered by such repetition except to weary you and enervate myself?

in truth

2010-06-27T17:11:00.004-04:00

Sometimes the quiet, unassuming, tortured and intelligent young woman doesn't triumph.

behind-the-scenes at the theatre

2010-06-26T18:45:00.005-04:00

I don't think I've heard so many curse words (mostly beginning with "mother" and ending with....well, you can guess) as I did today at the theatre while sitting, solitary, inside the theatre, reading a book about the Brontes before patrons were due to arrive. The conversation was between a stage hand and the sound guy. They were commiserating about a particular member of their staff -- a musician -- who does not appreciate how loud one of the actors sings as it interferes with the sound of his particular instrument. The stage hand did not appreciate this and I was privy to a 20 minute berating of the guy while pretending to read my book. It is unnecessary for me to relate the exact words that were spoken as so many of them were of a coarse variety that there is not much substance to share. All in all, I was greatly amused by it.

2010-06-25T20:59:00.003-04:00

I dream about people who aren't the ones who are surrounding me, and who are infinitely better than I am.

I think I want people who have qualities that are like my own but also have qualities that are ones that I feel I don't have and wish I could attain.

Not someone who is superior, but unique.

ever-present London

2010-06-19T19:52:00.003-04:00

It is odd to think that someone is walking along the Strand in London while I am in [an american city], in the room I've occupied (off and on) for 14 years. It is difficult to acknowledge that London is still alive and active as ever, without me. Less a narcissistic thought than mere wonder that a place I love and no longer occupy still exists if I am not there to witness it take place. It gives me some comfort to think that London is still there, that people are now going to the theatres in the West End, sitting in concerts, enjoying dinner on the South Bank in the cafe where I once had dinner at least once a week, and walking the darkened streets only illuminated by the lights from buildings, cars and street lamps, while I watch the sun decline in my home across the ocean. Everything that is happening now in my foreign home I will witness again one day. When I do I will not be thinking about my native town.

what you learn when you work in a library

2010-06-13T18:31:00.005-04:00

Apparently filling out library card applications is a very strenuous activity.

People are very possessive of their library card so when you renew their card they will attack you if you even suggest getting a new one. However, when they are picking up a hold they are surprised when you ask them for their library card.

People think they can pick up their holds whenever they want and are justified in having a hissy-fit when you tell them that their hold is not here because they "only" have 9 days to pick it up.

People believe that:

You can use the library's computers even if you don't have a library card.

Plastic library bags are free.

They don't have to return items they borrowed and should not have to pay replacement fees on them when they don't.

Library clerks are librarians.

Library clerks can leave the desk where there is a long line of people waiting to be helped in order to teach you how to print something on the computer.

If you don't like something you have printed you don't have to pay the 25 cents per paper.

We have in stock and will willingly give away free to patrons: folders, paper clips, pencils/pens, paper, computer discs, books (doh!), and magnifying glasses.

We are a postal service.

You can come in and drop off items to return two minutes after we close.

Library clerks actually believe you when you tell them that you have never taken out the five DVD'S that you are being billed for on your card.

We actually care whether or not you want to pay a 15 cent fine.

Books, book everywhere, and not enough time to read

2010-06-05T22:53:00.005-04:00

One of the hazards of working in a library is that one finds entirely too many interesting books to read.

There are an assortment of books I am reading at the moment, most which I have picked up on seats, in drop boxes, and on the many shelves that hold these now nefarious books that have begun to clutter my own room -- as my room is already bombarded with a large amount of my own purchased collection of books.

Briefly [edit: not so briefly], this is what I am reading now:

Starting with the traditional bodice ripper HIS AT NIGHT by Sherry Thomas. Sherry, I believe, was not born in America (I know that her parents are of Asian descent) and her writing is as immaculate as a person who learned English second hand, i.e. the correct way. Her stories veer from the traditional -- simple -- romance books written today and set in 19th century England. Her previous book NOT QUITE A HUSBAND moves out of the drawing room to India. Exotic.

Next. THE INIMITABLE JEEVES by the legendary P.G. WODEHOUSE. Light-hearted literature written in the early Twentieth Century with main character Bertie Wooster as a carefree, elitist dandy with nothing better to do than get himself into hilarious scrapes which then his snobby intelligent butler Jeeves must get him out of. And, yes, this Jeeves is the origin of the now deceased search engine.

I just picked up ANIL'S GHOST (from a drop box) on Friday and have only read the first, very short, chapter. But I'm sure it will be good. It is from Michael Ondaatje, the writer of THE ENGLISH PATIENT.

Have only one chapter to go on ON LOVE by the philosopher Alain de Botton. This book is half novel half philosophy. I haven't been able to finish it because, like most philosophical texts, the subject which it treats has a tendency to leave one sad rather than uplifted. However, it is more entertaining than condescending.

I started DEAD END GENE POOL by Wendy Burden a week ago and got fairly far before becoming engrossed in HIS AT NIGHT. When there is a bodice ripper to read it never fails that all other books fall to the wayside, and this literally as they end up scattered at the side of my bed so that when I wake in the middle of night for a tinkle I walk over and, usually, fall over them. There aren't many books written today that I consider good writing. Wendy Burden's memoir is an exception. Burden is a descendent of the Vanderbilt dynasty and uses this memoir as a cathartic (the latter is a personal assumption) release for pent up frustration over her rich but loveless childhood. Despite the doom and gloom -- of which there is much -- the pages are mixed with uniquely funny personal accounts of her crazy relatives, as well as a succinct and wholly interesting history of her family from when they first built up their dynasty in the 1700's.

Lastly, and briefly, Jasper Fforde's SHADES OF GREY. Jasper FForde is a former employee of the film industry who left it at no early age to write what could loosely be called sci-fi novels. His writing has improved and is no where better apparent than in his latest novel. He is best known for the "Thursday Next series" about a detective who can enter and travel through classic literature. His first book was THE EYRE AFFAIR.

library job

2010-06-04T16:05:00.000-04:00

Only 2 weeks into the job and already a customer has given me his phone number. Of course he's weird and not going to receive a call from me.

You know you are poor...

2010-05-25T16:18:00.001-04:00

when you have to spend 30 minutes wondering if you really need that diet pepsi you want to buy on your break.

Oxford Street

2010-05-20T18:52:00.002-04:00

Alain de Botton's latest tweet: It takes a resilient spirit to keep faith with humanity after a walk down Oxford Street.

The uber busy Oxford Street in London

new job, but life is still the same

2010-05-14T23:36:00.006-04:00

I figure it is about time I wrote about something other than Thoreau. Not so much b/c no one cares about him or what he has written -- except me -- but because I had to return his journals today as they are on hold for someone else.

Talking about books, I got a job at my local library. I worked there before. This will be over a year and a half since I have worked: 6 months I spent in London where I wasn't allowed to work, and it took me a year once I returned home to the States until I could get a job. That was due in small part to the current economy, but (I will admit) mostly because I had great trouble not playing the early 20's slacker still living at home.

Some thoughts:

David Cameron is a Tory and the new prime minister of Britain. He is the youngest at 44 to hold this role. I believe he is naive, elitist, and despite his somewhat good looking appearance and eloquent speeches entirely wrong for the office. God (if you exist) save Britain!

I want the temperatures to remain in the 50's. I like it now, cool at night, warm during the day.

A british friend sent me a link to an online video service whereby I can watch any British show that is currently playing in Britain for a small fee of about 10 dollars a month. This excites me. I can watch EastEnders again.

I can't pay my loans. I have so many of them. Even with a job, I can't pay them all. And I can't figure out how to lower them because no one service will consolidate all the loans.

I will be in debt for the rest of my life.

I'm looking forward to working in the library again, but I hope it doesn't become too much of my life. I don't want to be consumed with whether all the books have been shelved or patrons complaining about 15 cent fines.

Life is like a mini (or, if you will, a macro) version of hell.

I don't trust doctors. I really like the one I have now but he told me during one appointment that he was going to give me three shots but only told the nurse that I was to get one, which resulted in the nurse not believing me when I related to her that he told me three and her then having to confirm with the doctor before administering the three shots which, in doctor world, meant that I had to wait another 20 minutes in a cold, overly-light, sterile white room staring at fat-intake charts on the wall. He is also my mom and dad's doctor. He tried to convince my mom that she has diabetes, until he realized that he was actually looking at my dad's medical folder. He is young -- about 30 -- doing his rotations and despite the possibility that he could kill me through inattention he is a nice and sympathetic doctor.

I really like tea. Drinking it makes me feel safe, like being covered with a large duvet.

I would like to date a guy who is not married or over the age of 32. British accent is not mandatory but it would certainly add to the illusion.

the 'trick of science'

2010-05-09T23:09:00.003-04:00

I witness a beauty in the form or coloring of the clouds which addresses itself to my imagination, for which you account scientifically to my understanding, but do not so account to my imagination. It is what it suggests and is the symbol of that I care for, and if, by any trick of science, you rob it of its symbolicalness, you do me no service and explain nothing...If there is not something mystical in your explanation, something unexplainable to the understanding, some elements of mystery, it is quite insufficient...Just as inadequate to a pure mechanic would be a poet's account of a steam-engine. If we knew all things thus mechanically merely, should we know anything really?
...

We seek too soon to ally the perceptions of the mind to the experience of the hand, to prove our gossamer truths practical, to show their connection with our every-day life (better show their distance from our every-day life), to relate them to the cider-mill and the banking institution. Ah, give me pure mind, pure thought! Let me not be in haste to detect the universal law; let me see more clearly a particular instance of it! Much finer themes I aspire to, which will yield no satisfaction to the vulgar mind, not one sentence for them. Perchance it may convince such that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in their philosophy. Dissolve one nebula, and so destroy the nebular system and hypothesis. Do not seek expressions, seek thoughts to be expressed.

By perseverance you get two views of the same truth.

Thoreau's simple grave in Concord, Mass.

---
pg 101 - 102, The journal Henry David Thoreau, introduction by John R. Stilgoe

thoreau -- leaves

2010-05-04T20:03:00.002-04:00

Even the dry leaves are gregarious, and they collect in little heaps in the hollows in the snow, or even on the plane surfaces, driven in flocks by the wind. How like shrinking maidens wrapping their scarfs about them they flutter along!
pg.107, journals

boring life

2010-05-02T14:08:00.006-04:00

it's curious how being away from your usual routine and existence for a day and one night makes you, when you get back home, despise everything that you've always known -- like reading inane facebook messages, or looking at the houses and trees that you've seen outside your window since you were 10. I felt this on an even greatest level after coming home from London in '06 and '08. But then you manage to slip back into your same routine and you don't despise the usual but rather become inured to it or even like it again. I think that people who commit the same routine or live in the same place all their lives must not realize their own potential. And I also think that, when looked at your life objectively by being away from it for some time, everything becomes that's you've known becomes deplorable, because you have been "in it" for so long.

moods

2010-04-26T13:22:00.004-04:00

Thoreau's cove at Walden Pond

The mind is subject to moods, as the shadows of clouds pass over the earth. Pay not too much heed to them. Let not the traveller stop for them. They consist with the fairest weather. By the mood of my mind, I suddenly felt dissuaded from continuing my walk, but I observed at the same instant that the shadow of a cloud was passing over the spot on which I stood, though it was of small extent, which, if it had no connection with my mood, at any rate suggested how transient and little to be regarded that mood was. I kept on, and in a moment the sun shone on my walk within and without.
age 34, July 1851, pg. 63

"A traveller!"

2010-04-25T23:21:00.006-04:00

from the journals of Thoreau

A traveller! I love his title. A traveller is to be reverenced as such. His profession is the best symbol of our life. Going from ----- to -----; it is the history of every one of us.
age 33, June 1851, pg. 58

-----

Why should pensiveness be a kin to sadness? There is a certain fertile sadness which I would not avoid, but rather earnestly seek. It is positively joyful to me. It saves my life from being trivial.
age 34, August 1851, pg. 66

----

And why should I speak to my friends? for how rarely is it that I am I; and are they, then, they?
age 34, August 1851, pg. 67

Henry David Thoreau central

2010-04-24T12:47:00.007-04:00

This blog is probably going to become Henry David Thoreau central for the time being. I am reading his newly published -- abridged -- journals. Although they are abridged, they are the greatest compilation of his journals to date. And he has so many nuggets of interesting thoughts and observations that I feel I have to write them down somewhere.

In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is only another name for tameness. It is the untamed, uncivilized, free, and wild thinking in Hamlet, in the Iliad, and in all the scriptures and mythologies that delights us...A truly good book is something as wildly natural and primitive, mysterious and marvellous[sic], ambrosial and fertile, as a fungus or a lichen...The fault of our books and other deeds is that they are too humane, I want something speaking in some measure to the condition of muskrats and skunk-cabbage as well as of men, -- not merely to a pining and complaining coterie of philanthropists.
pg. 43, November 1850, age 33

---

What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.
pg. 42, November 1850, age 33

a separation from life

2010-04-22T22:17:00.003-04:00

I'm starting to think that people who kill themselves are courageous.

To say, FUCK OFF, this world sucks and I don't want anything more to do with it.

It's a good thing I have an avid interest in theatre and books and people (usually ones I don't know -- people are always better when you are far away from them). Otherwise, I may consider off-ing myself. However, I wish I had more REAL things in my life, that made me happy.

Or, I think as Henry David Thoreau does when he wrote in his journal that The most positive life that history notices has been a constant retiring out of life, a wiping one's hands of it, seeing how mean it is, and having nothing to do with it. A bleak but sometimes comforting thought.

SWAN LAKE

2010-04-16T21:30:00.007-04:00

Ushered at the Benedum today for SWAN LAKE, my favorite (really, only) ballet that I like. I had about 6 hours of sleep which for many would suffice but I can't function on less than 8. Got up at 7:00, just as it was getting light. But I was excited to see this ballet again, after having seen it at the Royal Opera House in London.

It was a student matinee so there were lots of kids. It's always great having school children. They are always better behaved than you might think they would be, and seem genuinely thrilled by everything they see. We get both private and inner city schools. The ballet mistress and master were there, and the artistic director, sitting in my section. They come to every ballet performance.

This is a clip from the American Ballet Theatre production of SWAN LAKE, a production that I hold dear. I've watched many ballet performances on tape before, but none that lives up to this.

At one point the woman who plays Odette/Odile has to do 32 fouettes, which are essentially 32 turns. It is very difficult and not every ballerina can do it. Not only does Gillian Murphy do it in this production but she is the only one who has ever added extra turns to the combination. This starts just at 3:00 on this video.

for every good there is a bad

2010-04-13T23:43:00.002-04:00

I feel myself get weaker and sadder. I try to move on, I try to find a job, I try to hope that something better will come along. I haven't felt the need to write like this in some time. Though I've felt sad for what feels like forever. Every time I write something or feel like this I remember a former friend of mine telling me -- when I would write him these things -- that I should see a therapist. That cold, decisive, practical advice would hit me like a fist. I lack emotional fulfillment; I look for it ever where.

I just move on. I go to cafe's and drink tea. I scour job advertisements. I read literature. I watch British comedy shows and old American shows like Buffy that I never watched when they were on.

I have some sort of juvenile wish to be in a safe place where I cannot be harmed and where people are happy. And I HATE this, because it makes me weak, this wish. I will be in a therapist office one day and he (I dislike women, so it will be a he) will say that I did not have a safe place growing up and that now I am unable to function in this normal unsafe world because I want only good things. And then I will feel even more that I will always feel unsafe and will always wish for something that I do not have.

People are mean to me. They talk about me behind their backs. I wouldn't believe this if a good friend or two didn't tell me. I don't understand why people would say things, mean things, about me, especially when I have not wronged them. Probably they do it because they lack self-esteem or something, they are threatened by me, but I cannot relate how sad this makes me, that I am surrounded by people like this. I may be too sensitive but that is because I am an emotional person. I think it would be very difficult to be an emotional person and not be sensitive. The two seem inextricably linked. For every good there is a bad.

"Who besides me will ever read these letters?"

2010-04-13T23:39:00.003-04:00

Sometimes I believe that God wants to try me, both now and later on. I must become good through my own efforts, without examples and without good advice. Then later on I shall be all the stronger. Who besides me will ever read these letters? From whom but myself shall I get comfort? As I need comforting often, I frequently feel weak, and dissatisfied with myself; my shortcomings are too great. I know this, and every day I try to improve myself, again and again.
Anne Frank, pg.41

real life

2010-04-10T13:30:00.001-04:00

Me: Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a warped Jane Austen novel.

Mike: Very warped

a snapshot

2010-04-09T22:34:00.006-04:00

10:30 at night. Lights off. The window behind my futon open, a cool breeze drifting in. I'm laying on my futon, four large pillows behind me, a huge comforter wrapped around me, Cadbury milk chocolate opened beside me, a diet pepsi in my hand, and the second season of the British comedy The Vicar of Dibley on the telly in front of me.

PhotoVoyage

2010-04-08T22:21:00.008-04:00

There is a therapy called PhotoVoyage that helps people come to terms with their self-image by changing views you may have about yourself by viewing pictures of yourself. I think I look totally different in real life than I do in any of my photos. Either I look uglier or more depressed in my photos than I think I am in real life, or I look more interesting or pretty than I fancy myself. I can't figure out if I have a good or bad opinion of myself.

hockey

2010-04-06T23:14:00.005-04:00

Went to my first hockey game tonight. It is a good way to let out both anger and joy by shouting, screaming, clapping your hands to music vigorously, and jumping up and down without the drawback of being sent to a psych ward.

Quotable quotes, from David Tennant

2010-03-29T18:25:00.016-04:00

David Tennant, British actor and lover of the 1980's version of the very popular British sci-fi show Doctor Who, was asked to play the twenty-first century version of the main character in 2005. His reaction, as told by Russell T. Davies, the head writer, was -- "He laughed, and then he swore, and the third thing he did was say, 'I want a very long coat!'"

[Okay, so I started with one quote, and then it just progressed.....]

Billie Piper (co-star): Chris [Eccleston, previous Doctor] would go away in between breaks and save his energy for the performance -- whereas, with David, we'll kind of chat, we'll have a laugh, but then, as soon as he needs to focus, he'll find his own way of doing that. David dances with it more. He's a bit more like a -- I don't know -- a baby deer. He's my little Bambi!"

"You have to have a certain amount of faith in the CGI boys not to stitch you up. You could do all this terrified acting, and this pink, fluffy thing appears."

"It's lovely to be recognised and appreciated for a show that you're proud of and people love, but I don't like the scrutiny on those close to me. Not that anyone close to me complains about it, but it's difficult not to feel that you're inflicting it on people who didn't ask for it. People can say what they like about me, but I don't like it when they feel that they can comment on my loved ones, just because of their association with me. I find that pretty disgusting."

The wonderfully gay and always up for a "larf" John Barrowman on discovering a secret about his character on Doctor Who:
"David and I were on set, filming Utopia, and we had the script to the final episode, but I hadn't read it, because I don't like to read scripts until we go into the read through. David kept coming to my trailer in the lunch break and saying, 'Have you read it?' I'd keep saying, 'No.' He'd ask the same the next day. He said, 'There's something so amazing in it. You're going to wet yourself when you see what's coming.' I thought, right, I'm going to put the boy out of his misery. I read it the following day. Halfway through my lunch break, I ran to David's trailer, banged on his door. 'OH! MY! GOD!!!' And David screamed back, 'ISN'T IT AMAZING!!!!' We just jumped around like idiots. And then I rang Russell and said, 'Were you high?' What a great idea!" [there you go reader, an incentive to watch the show!]

[Yup, that's them kissing, off set. DT's not gay, but he is British].

"With someone like Kylie [Minogue], you're battling your own expectations of what you know them for -- but look, at the end of the day, they still go to the loo! They're just people."

The fans' response when my mother died [of cancer]....well, it puts it all into perspective, really...People on the internet started raising money for the hospice that she died in, without any prompting, without me saying anything, just because of a job that I do...[I gave money]. The fact that it obviously means so much to people, and that they want to do something like that for somebody that they've never met, is very humbling and terribly, terribly moving. It meant such a lot, and was quite sort of breathtaking for myself and the whole family. It was done so selflessly, so spontaneously, and without any fanfare. I can't tell you what it meant."

The only place that it's weird is in the gym...If you're in the changing rooms, and you're all pink, and naked, and bedraggled, after an hour on a running machine or whatever, an hour trying to lift some weights that are far too heavy for you, and you're standing there, and somebody comes up and asks for an autography....You're standing there literally bollock naked and sweaty, and that's the only time that I think, this is inappropriate. Or worse -- if they're all pink and puffy and naked! But I just go, 'yes, of course, who's it to?' -- like an eejit! I don't know what's the appropriate response. Is it appropriate to go, 'This is weird, I don't want to look at your genitals while I sign an autography....?"

[And, yes, there is a picture of DT naked online, from a play he did years ago, but I'll be sensible enough not to post it. However, I will tell you that Billie Piper's nickname for him is David Ten inch.....].

---

All quotes from Doctor Who Magazine

"solitary rooms"

2010-03-27T13:21:00.003-04:00

"...The stories of the city [London], throughout the centuries, have been filled with lonely and isolated people who feel their solitude more intensely within the busy life of the streets. They are what George Gissing called the anchorites of daily life, who return unhappy to their solitary rooms. The early city hermits may therefore be regarded as an apt symbol for the way of life of many Londoners."

It was for me during my time in London. There is something so paradoxical about a big city. It is filled with people, and manifold buildings, and amusements, but because of this it can (and often is) the most lonely place to inhabit. One can feel like a stranger among so many people.

---

Ackroyd, Peter. London The Biography. pg 41.

rain, London, a remembrance

2010-03-25T22:54:00.004-04:00

As my parents fight downstairs, and the rain falls outside on this cold night, I remember the serenity of walking through the streets of London on a cool, rainy night like this. Over Westminster Bridge. Lights everywhere. Big Ben striking the hour. The people, mostly tourists, walking about, defiant against the rain,, needing to get their photos before leaving the next morning, the people who work in London gone home by train, only those wealthy enough live in London -- or, like me, use loan money to pay for a 1,000 a month squat of a room in a dormitory.

I walked down the street in my neighborhood in Pittsburgh tonight while it rained and remembered a time when I walked, foolishly, through the strand next to the river while it was pouring. There were many other people there, and one couple holding hands. No one uses umbrellas in London. It is useless; the wind is too fierce. Water doesn't bother Londoners. They go home and make tea to warm themselves. Tonight, I could almost feel the same I did when walking through the rain in London, could almost smell the same smell of cold, and rain, but it wasn't the same.

quotable quotes, from Tina Fey

2010-03-23T21:46:00.009-04:00

Found a copy of ESQUIRE at the library with Tina Fey on the front. Tina Fey has to be one of (if not the most) funny lady of our time. She's definitely an idol of mine.

Here are some quotes I particularly liked from her interview:

Twitter seems like a busman's holiday: just more writing. I have no plans to do it. I'll just stick with my 24/7 webcam. I'm old-fashioned that way.

My daughter wants to be Belle from Beauty and the Beast. She's a pretty violent Belle. She'll come in and say, "Gaston is hurt. I've killed him with a sword."

If we get to the hundredth episode [of 30 Rock] next season, we'll definitely get cake. In the shape of Trace Morgan's face. But a vanilla cake. Just to be unexpected.

I've got four moves as an actress: eye rolling, listening, trying to cry, and running away from the camera.

I benefit from lack of curiosity in many areas. I'm like, "Nah, I'm good." I don't need to make out with ten people. I get it. I don't need to smoke that. I get it.

Actually, the recurring dream of my childhood is to be in a room up to my neck in McDonald's french fries and I've got to eat my way out. It's great.

Advice to married men? Keep on your wedding ring and shut your mouth.

glad I'm not the only one

2010-03-21T11:53:00.001-04:00

Abby sent me this, a recent posting from Post-secret

wise words

2010-03-19T22:06:00.004-04:00

Surely it is not a matter of what we feel we can give; it is what is needed of us.
from Lark Rise to Candleford

job news, not good, as usual

2010-03-19T17:12:00.003-04:00

I can't even get an interview for a mail room position. A mail room position! Granted, the hr woman I talked to said that I was over qualified for it, but I don't fucking care. It is full time. Benefits. I need a job. But they don't want to hire someone who they think will leave them for a better job shortly after. Well, I can't get a better job now. I can't get any job. With this and the crap I've gone through with my career "counselor", I'm quite despondent. But, thankfully for anxiety medication, not quite defeated or terribly worried.

Went to doctors this week. He says he wants to take me off these meds in 6 months. That scares me. I don't want to feel like I did before I started taking these meds. Neither do I want to stay on these meds for the rest of my life. But I do know I have to get a good job and (hopefully) move out of my parents house before I stop taking these meds b/c I simply do not have the strength to prop myself up. I just don't.

EDIT: A friend just informed me that hr people always say that you are over qualified for a position they don't want to interview you for in order to, in a sense, lessen the blow. Sometimes I would just like to remain ignorant.

members of BNP should not teach our youth?

2010-03-13T17:35:00.005-05:00

Yes, I am aware that no one reading my blog -- those scant few unfortunates -- care about a British political party in Britain called the BNP. But I do and this is my blog and I will continue to write about it.

This is a nice summation of my own stance about this fascist party, however I do differ from this author's main point. The author is a British instructor in Britain who has written on his blog in an article titled "No ifs, no buts, no nazis" about Labour School's Secretary Ed Balls's decision to not refuse BNP members from teaching positions. Mr. Teacher here replies:

I am very much in favour of free speech and I believe that every member of a democratic society has the initial right to openly voice his/her beliefs without fear of persecution. However, if these beliefs advocate or encourage the persecution of other members of the same democratic society then that individual or group of individuals should forfeit their right to promote and practice these beliefs. In short, it is abhorrent that the odious Nick Griffin is at the helm of a legal, officially recognised political party and not, as should be the case, the gagged boss of a shunned, powerless mob. If banning current BNP members from teaching, or banning current teachers from joining the BNP, would currently lead to legal proceedings then there is clearly a systemic problem. The law needs to be changed in order to protect students and school staff from being subjected to the racist propaganda of a mindless minority. To suggest otherwise is to destroy the sense of community cohesion, the gel that holds many schools together.

I myself have written that I believe the BNP should be "put down" as it were, that their free speech should not perhaps be taken away entirely but hugely ridiculed because they themselves do not follow the principles of free speech. However, I do not think it would be correct to refuse BNP members teaching positions for fear that they will unwittingly or intentionally influence their students beliefs. Unlike Mr. Teacher and those who follow him I do not believe that it is impossible for instructors to leave their beliefs outside the classroom door. If, however, any teacher is unable to treat his/her students as equals because of issues of race then there would be a reason for that teacher to be dismissed. If the instructor does not teach what is required of him, then he can be dismissed. But refusing a qualified teacher a position before he has been given it is in itself a breech of a fundamental democratic principle.

writing in the cafe

2010-03-12T16:37:00.013-05:00

Find me a man who's interesting enough to have dinner with, and I'll be happy.
Lauren Bacall

I am sitting in the cafe in the William Penn, my high heeled black pumps propped on the March issue of Vanity Fair that is resting on the wood table in front of me. I spent the last hour and a half reading specifically two articles in Vanity Fair, one on how technology (Twitter, Facebook, and Goggle) are changing the basis of human behaviour and a charming portrayal of the late screenwriting genius John Hughes's life and works, the latter which included The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Sixteen Candles. My IPod is on shuffle and currently blaring the Scottish rock bank Franz Ferdinand. A cold sip or two of tea remains in the large white cup placed next to me on the black side table to my left.

There is a very tall young man with black hair styled just a little too long for my taste that must come to this cafe every day at nearly the same time as whenever I am here on either day during the week he comes in. I remember him because he looks like the British actor Richard Armitage. Par example:

In short, he is very good looking. I see him looking at me when he comes in. Maybe he remembers me.

I've never been in love. Romantic love. I am nearly 24 -- in a month I will turn 24. I feel like 24 is the end of youth. Not many aged 24 or over are considered naive youths; the heroines of 19th century British literature are never over the age of 23 -- excepting only Jane Austen's near-spinster Anne Elliot, given another chance with the man she fell in love with as a naive youth after she meets him again many years after refusing an offer of marriage with him that her family did not then approve. The actresses who play these characters are invariably the same age of their characters, ingenue's of 19 - 23 starting off their career with a lead role that can make or break their subsequent acting reputation. The new JANE EYRE production that begins shooting at the end of this month stars Mia Wasikowska, Tim Burton's Alice of Alice in Wonderland who has been named in the current issue of Vanity Fair as one of the break-out young actresses to watch. She is only 19. I want to remain like these girls. Naive forever. Every week starting over anew, with a chance of failing or succeeding, and the exhilaration this brings. I feel, in a paranoid vein no doubt, that once you fall in love, or start a job that you decide to dedicate yourself to for a long time, when you "settle down" and have children, that not much new, inspiring, energizing can occur to you that you did not expect. This conjecture is no double perpetuated by the perspective of life presented to us in movies and T.V.

I would like to live my youth over again in order to relish the unexpected rather than fear it as I feel I did the first time. I certainly fear I will not make enough of my post-23 years, as I fear I did not embrace my adolescence.

But -- I was writing about love. To put it plainly I am really not attracted to most men. I do not find most people interesting to begin with; even the tall drink of water that is sitting on the farther side of the cafe from me is not entirely immune from my critical eye. I have never really liked any guy I've gone out with. I've never been so much as sexually attracted to them. Naturally I fear there is something wrong with me. Are my expectations too high? Yes. Is that enough to hinder finding ANYONE who can charm me? I think not. Maybe I have been interested here or there with someone -- usually unattainable -- but I soon grow tired of the illusion. Futhermore, I have no patience with what I perceive to be people's faults. Perhaps I am incapable of "falling in love".

After I wrote this I went to the library to pick up my items. One of the books on hold for me was: "Marry Him: The Case For Settling for Mr. Good Enough."

"We err, we fall, we are humbled"

2010-03-11T16:38:00.003-05:00

I believe -- I daily find it proved -- that we can get nothing in this world worth keeping, not so much as a principle or a conviction, except out of purifying flame or through strengthening peril. We err, we fall, we are humbled; then we walk more carefully. We greedily eat and drink poison out of the gilded cup of vice or from the beggar's wallet of avarice. We are sickened, degraded; everything good in us rebels against us; our souls rise bitterly indignant against our bodies; there is a period of civil war; if the soul has strength, it conquers and rules thereafter.

Charlotte Bronte, SHIRLEY, 402

my book from the 1830's

2010-03-09T14:58:00.006-05:00

I have a book sitting on my desk entitled "Goldsmith's Poems" that was published in the 1830's. I bought it at the South Bank Book Stall in London that is situated next to the river Thames. From my research the publisher only produced books in the early 1830's. I cannot located the specific date of this one I have in my possession. I cannot find this book on any of the antique book sites I have used in the past to locate every other book I have bought published in the 19th century.

I don't know why I have not thought of this before. I held the book in my hand today -- a very small book, covered in what is now a slightly faded green hard back with gold lettering for the title on the spine, no picture or words on the front -- and the thought suddenly occurred that some man or woman from the 19th century bought this book and held it in their hand. Possibly read it, although it does not open very easily, the spine very stiff, which seems to suggest it has not be read often. This book has been in many hands and many places since it first came to life in the early 19th century. How extraordinary that it should survive two centuries later and that I should now hold it.

next to my Harrods tea emphasizing how small it is.

things that piss me off

2010-03-08T17:58:00.003-05:00

Little things bother me. A lady from a job I sent my resume to called today. She called on Thursday, I called back all day Friday. She never called back on Friday. She called again at 9:00 am today. I called her back at 10:30 when I received her message -- she wasn't in; I left a message when I called back at 3:00. She called about 4:30 when I had given up waiting for her call and took to a walk. Got message when I returned, her saying if I can't get a hold of her next time I call (chances are high, I'm guessing) I should tell her on machine when it is best for her to get a hold of me. She said it in just a slightly nasty tone which put the blame on me, I felt. At least that's what I heard. Anyway, this situation pisses me off. And my too sensitive self wonders if it is my fault. Although I rather wonder at her never being around when I call in the early and late afternoon.

Besides this, Etrade closed my savings account with them and sent my money (all 126.00 of it -- all I have in the world) to Discover bank. I had a panicky three minutes before calling Etrade and learning that indeed I still technically had this money, they had just neglected to inform me that they were moving it. Now I can't access this money, transfer it from Discover to Citizens Bank account when I can then withdrawal it without waiting 2-3 days for Discover to verify my account. Reason I put money in Etrade was because they have a higher interest rate than Citizens so that I can make more money on my money. This was when I had 5,000 to put in there.

With Spring-like weather melting the snow I begin to feel restless, as though I should be doing more, FEELING more than I can. Even in London I never felt....I always wanted to be a part of something more, as though this ache I feel will go away if there is something or someone to consume it. I know I require something better than what i have, whether a person or a situation, and don't know if I'll find it -- if it even exists.

I write

2010-03-07T17:05:00.002-05:00

Because nobody can give the high price you require for your confidence. Nobody is rich enough to purchase it. Nobody has the honour, the intellect, the power you demand in your adviser. There is not a shoulder in England on which you would rest your hand for support, far less a bosom which you would permit to pillow your head. Of course you must live alone.
SHIRLEY, Charlotte Bronte, 380

I write in the pink notebook I bought in London at WH Smith. In London I wrote notes in here for class. In America I fill the rest of the empty pages with quotes from the books I read and thoughts I have that I have to write in here first (in my inscrutable handwriting) before typing on the computer. Because, if I try writing these thoughts on the computer first, my repressed self won't let it come out. I suppose the relative privacy of a notebook shelters my tortured unconscious. I sound like a therapist.

I have been thinking about seeing a therapist. But I cannot imagine finding someone to talk to that would be good enough for me -- meaning someone I can depend on, who will want me to talk to them, who has my best interest at heart. I imagine (rather -- fear) that even therapists have their own agendas. Would, for instance, not think me clever enough or interesting enough to deal with me and will subtly express this. This paranoia stems from my parents, both of whom were not a good support for me and still are not, who have such problems of their own that they are incapable of dealing with mine, who I cannot explain my feelings to because they are either not sympathetic (primarily my mother) or not -- well -- knowledgeable enough about life (dad). I often blame others who are not able to be as dependable and interested as I would like them to be, but I know that this is not something realistic. People can only give as much they can. My parents should have been more reliable; I can get away with blaming them a little. And I do.

ache

2010-03-04T23:02:00.004-05:00

Before I took anxiety pills I would become very overwhelmed by my sadness. Of being alone. Of dealing with my parents, while there was no one to take care of me. Now I feel calm, even when things get bad. But it doesn't take away the situation, how bad it can be, and how sad I am, even though I do not feel depressed and no longer feel that ache in the pit of my stomach -- really, in my heart.

But I wonder what is worse, feeling the pain -- having a physical reaction to my sadness -- or not feeling anything, but knowing that I am still sad.

more job drama, and another tale from the theatre

2010-02-28T20:52:00.009-05:00

My career counselor wrote to me, "30,000". It was in response to the e-mail I wrote her saying that I had spoken to the boss of the job she had foisted upon me. I told her that when I asked him how much he would be willing to pay me that he said he did not know and would have to consult someone about it. And then proceeded to ask me what an entry level person would receive, his justification being that I had just come out of college and so would know. I said that I would imagine it depends on what the position is, the requirements of that position, and the qualifications of the applicant. This, however, was not specific enough for him and he asked me to tell him what exactly an entry level person would receive a year. 40,000 dollars, he asked. I told him, quite frankly, that I hadn't a clue but that 40,000 did seem a little high. Perhaps 25,000 to start? And I reiterated that it depends on the position and qualifications of the applicant. It was not as though he was trying to figure out how much I wanted to be paid, but how much he should pay me! I am constantly surprised by people.

But, anyway, yes, my career counselor wrote me back nothing more than the figure 30,000. No: thanks for telling Bob that it was not at all my fault for Helen's inability to fill the position -- as I had tried to stress to Bob and told her so in my explanatory e-mail; no: so should we get together to help you with finding another position? Nothing. Just the figure 30,000, as if to say: there, you bitch, that is how much you would have been paid. Don't you feel sorry now?

But I don't at all. East Pittsburgh. There's no way in hell I am working in East Pittsburgh. I may have less than 150 dollars in my bank account, but I'm still too proud to take 6 buses a day, over 3 hours, to get paid what will not even amount to 30,000 dollars after paying transportation fees and taxes.

I just realized that in my last blog I said that I would only take the position if I were paid 30,000 dollars -- and then wrote: who would pay me 30,000 dollars? ........... Well, I still have made the right decision. Not just because it is so far away, but because the job -- research and writing -- sounds very boring.

Oh, am I messing with Fate or what? Well, She deserves a bit of a shake-up given the things she has (and hasn't) brought to my life.

But in better news, I worked at the theatre yesterday. There is a couple who work on my team. They are in their early 80's. They met roller skating and married when he was 21 and she 18. I talked to the woman yesterday as we filled programs with cast changes. She told me she has been married to John for 61 years. 61 years! I told her they should receive some sort of medal for that. After the show they were going dancing. They do it every Saturday night. She is very energetic and funny. The life of the party, you would say. But not at all annoying as some people who are full of a lot of verve can be. Just a right laugh to have around, and acts and moves a lot younger than she is. Her husband is tall and, I must admit, a pretty good looking chap. Also looks younger than he is, and is rather charismatic, but a lot more quiet, down to earth, and withdrawn than his wife. He tells jokes and talks to their friends but in a much more understated, lethargic manner. She works downstairs and he on the balcony. She says -- people always ask us why we do not work together, but I tell them: we live together, eat together, sleep together and have done for 61 years. We need some time a part.

exasperatedds

2010-02-25T23:10:00.006-05:00

MAN! MAN! MAN

C'MON!!!!!

So I visit my career counselor last week -- after not having seen her for about a month because she couldn't fit me in. This is after our last meeting when we had looked at a job and I was to send her a completed resume for it and she would send it out and talk to a contact at this place that she knew. I did so the following day. Didn't receive word back from her until weeks later.

I go into the office ready to forgive. She has a job for me, a place very far away from where I live, -- but no mind she tells me, it is a good position. I'm not very enthusiastic. She calls up the guy to talk to him about me. She's very pushy. He calls back while I'm still there. He starts talking like I've already got the job.

Well, long and short is that I can't get to this place and back without spending 90 bucks a month on transportation, taking three buses to get there, and it taking 3 hours a day to and from on buses, and now I have to call back this guy and tell him this. Unless he's willing to pay me 30,000 a year (which, really, who would pay me 30,000 a year) it ain't going to be happening.

I don't want someone to be disappointed in me. Again.

Well, I think I'm done with career counselor. I would never have gone if my brother hadn't been insistent about it. I didn't want to. Don't believe in that.

I've been better about sending out resumes to places, and may get a call back at one of the local libraries, alas only for a weekend position, but it's something -- and it's not working at McDonalds.

Although if I worked at McDonalds I could probably get free double cheese-burgers.

No, that's not enough of an incentive.

EDIT: APPARENTLY I'M SO "EXASPERATEDDS" THAT I CAN'T EVEN SPELL EXASPERATED CORRECTLY.

vigils

2010-02-24T17:10:00.005-05:00

Life wastes fast in such vigils as Caroline had of late but too often kept -- vigils during which the mind, having no pleasant food to nourish it, no manna of hope, no hived-honey of joyous memories, tries to live on the meagre diet of wishes, and failing to derive thence either delight or support, and feeling itself ready to perish with craving want, turns to philosophy, to resolution, to resignation; calls on all these gods for aid, calls vainly -- is unheard, unhelped, and languishes.

The always cheery Charlotte Bronte. From her novel Shirley
262

an unexpected chat

2010-02-19T19:03:00.008-05:00

I love impromptu conversations. I was sitting in the cafe at the William Penn, a biography of Jane Austen by Claire Tomalin resting open face down on my chest as I rested slouched back into a white-covered plumpy chair when a man came over with tea and asked if he could sit near me, there being five other chairs similar to mine empty within my vicinity. I of course said yes, with a smile. I was in a good mood, having just had lunch with a good friend, and just that afternoon started a new book at my favourite cafe. And, I must say, hopped up on a grande size tea very aptly named "Awake."

He started talking to me. I feigned reading my book for a few seconds, disinclined to talk with him, fearful he would be boring or weird and I'd be stuck in a 45 minute conversation thinking of an excuse to exit the building. But I was interested the minute he said he was from Rochester, New York and staying at the William Penn for a wedding (not, as I presumed and later discovered, his own).

So we talked for an hour and a half. He's an economist. Owns his own business, the money from which he makes he gives to various charities he supports. He got into economics as a young wanna-be activist.

I could write more about our conversation but I don't want to, and it was not especially note-worthy. It was the sort of conversation you would have just meeting someone. What movies and books do you like, politics, where you've traveled... Except what made it very nice was that, unlike most first time conversations with someone, we weren't being set up on a blind date, or have met online in some I'mdesperatesoImgoingtofindadateonline sort of thing. But an unexpected chat with someone who I was interested in, no small feat truth be told.

I like the unexpected. Any day of the week I will take that over the boring yet safe existence of a repetitious life.

By the way, he's like 45 and lives in another state, so there will be nothing romantic going on. Although he did give me his e-mail address and phone number.

imagination

2010-02-18T23:11:00.004-05:00

william godwin: Imagination is the ground-plot upon which the edifice of a sound morality must be erected. Without imagination we may have a certain cold and arid circle of principles, but we cannot have sentiments: we may learn by rote a catalogue of rules...but we can neither ourselves love, nor be fitted to excite the love of others.
396

the BNP strike again, literally

2010-02-15T10:49:00.008-05:00

I never thought I would actually get my nose bloodied trying to cover a press conference for a British political party — but that is the true face of Nick Griffin and his BNP.

I have been following the developing story of the BNP, the British National Party who is steadily gaining support in Britain for their neo-nazi sentiments. I cannot believe this! For a press conference about the BNP's forced acceptance of whites and other nationality groups in their party as a result of the equality legislation which is soon to pass through Parliament, a reporter from The Times was bullied and forcibly removed from the conference merely because he had previously published some true yet negative remarks about one particular member of the party.

Here is the link if you want to read the complete story of what happened, written by the journalist himself. BNP attack journalist

Previous posts by me about the BNP:
an overview of the BNP and their offenses

British Fascism: a snippet of an article written in The Spectator about how strong the BNP have become and how ignoring them will only make them stronger.

to love another

2010-02-14T16:01:00.005-05:00

'Be sure I feel it,' he declared to a friend. 'Be sure I am not the fool to look for that happiness in any future vicissitude of life, that I was beginning to enjoy, when I was thus dreadfully deprived of it. My understanding was enlarged, my heart was improved, as well as the most invaluable sensations of admiration & delight produced in me by her society.'
William Godwin on recent death of wife Mary Wollstonecraft as a result of giving birth to their child, the future Mary Shelley

--

Godwin did eventually re-marry, not that long after Wollstonecraft's death, a lady pretty insipid and who it seems evident he may have married only to have someone to help him with Mary Godwin (later Shelley, upon her marriage to the noted poet Percy Bysshe Shelley) and Wollstonecraft's child Fanny from a previous liaison.

When Godwin died many years later (in 1836) at the age of 80 he requested he be buried with Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary Shelley would be buried between them.

Love, like life, is fleeting.

"sooner or later in life the things you love you lose." -- Florence and the Machine, "You've got the Love"

a spot of tea...(EDIT)

2010-02-07T22:08:00.009-05:00

Instead of watching the Superbowl, I watched an adaptation of Jane Austen's EMMA on PBS. What a surprise there. If the Steelers had been playing, I would of course have watched the game, but only because I'd already seen EMMA when it broadcast in Britain.

The adaptation is brill, as BBC costume dramas go, but man am I really disappointed with how much was cut out of it in America due to time constraints. PBS has sent out official word saying that they have to delete scenes because they do not have enough time to present long-running shows in their entirety, but this, I know, is a fallacy. They would have enough time if they did not advertise their other shows so heavily before and after their programs. I thought they were a non-profit organization? It is just not right, and I do not understand why the BBC would let them get away with it.

Oh, yeah, money.

But hey, I've seen the original, and while watching the degrading cut version tonight I enjoyed a cup of tea. And that is good enough for me.

EDIT: I just found out that the REGION 1 version of EMMA will include all the scenes snipped out of the Masterpiece presentation....for which I am heartily grateful! Long live the Americans right to see BBC productions in their entirety.

my theater

2010-01-30T18:25:00.011-05:00

Benedum Center, Pittsburgh
As I sit in one of the many empty seats in the theater where I usher I hear a mans voice jovially boom over all the stage hands walkie-talkie's -- "Hey, we're going to be in Cincinnati next Sunday. Anyone want to play whirlyball?"

I smile and lounge back further into the plush maroon chair, placing my black slipper shoes on the top of the chair in front of me. Yes, I am happy, I am in my theater watching the stage hands set the stage for the production of CATS that will be playing in a little over an hour, and I am happy.

This is my theater, where I have been ushering for six years. There is no greater peace in my life than when I am in my theater. There is no greater production for me than the one that plays before a show begins. The stage hands joking with one another onstage as they set the props and check and re-check the mechanical devices while the sound techs blast pop songs over the speakers. Sometimes people dressed all in black rush up and down the aisles to converse directly to the sound techs, usually about some problem that leave both people with furrowed brows.

I sometimes wonder if life can get any better than this, sitting in my theatre seat, watching all this transpire. But then the audience come in and my languid voyeuristic attitude changes to one of engaged activity. I love rushing up and down the aisles as I seat people. This is perhaps the only customer service job where it is as fun for the person doing as for the people who are being served because the latter are all so happy. They know they are about to be entertained. Sometimes we have regulars, usually people past the age of naivety who consequently no longer get much enjoyment from going to the theater. Also, they are often rich, another impediment to experiencing joy. And they ignore you when you ask if they need assistance or say brusquely, "No, I know where I am going." But that is really the worst I have to contend with and that, I know from my past experience in customer service, is hardly something to worry over.

During intermission today an older gentlemen of about 70 in a mechanical wheelchair was coming toward the door to enter into the theater with two open-drinks in his hands. Drinks are not allowed in the theater, so I had to reluctantly tell him that he could not come in until he finished the drinks, but one of them was for his wife, a woman also nearing -- if I may be so blunt -- death's door, and who I knew was mostly deaf and almost completely blind and whose cane did little to help her walk. I told the man I would get her so they could consume their drinks in the lobby. I felt bad that I could not let him go to his seat, as I knew his wife had trouble walking and that, frankly, it would be a bit of a hassle for me to worry about getting these two in before the show started again momentarily. But I went to the lady's seat and moved in very close to her and told her, in a raised voice, that her husband had a drink for her and that she would have to drink it in the lobby as no drinks were allowed inside the theater. She said, "Oh, dear, I told him not to get me anything," and I smiled and helped her get up. I offered to help her walk up the aisle, which at this moment was quite a hazard area with people walking down it to return to their seats. She took my arm and I walked slowly with her up the walk-way, trying to help her avert people, as she had just told me that she couldn't see the people in front of her very well. Eventually we made it and her husband gave her the drink. I continued a watch out for other people whose hands may be full of those dangerous liquids known as coke, diet coke, and sprite. Just before the curtain was to rise again (proverbially, as in this case there was no curtain, the stage being kept visible while a man dressed in a large fur outfit was, during the whole of the intermission, perched on the stage to amuse the audience), the lady had finished her drink and automatically took my arm for me to lead her down the aisle. I asked her if she was enjoying the show and she very jovially said that she was. She had never seen CATS before. I marveled over this, that at her age she had never seen it, and almost said to her -- "Well, it is certainly something to see before you die." Luckily today I was less featherbrained that I normally am and had the foresight to keep this thought to myself. Her husband soon followed on his electric scooter of sorts which he was able to park next to her in the chair-less space -- another task I am privy to before a show begins is the unscrewing of bolts to take away seats for wheel-chairs.

My third favourite part of the day is the applause which comes at the end of a show as the actors take their bows. Never fails to produce a feeling of euphoria in me. The theater is a place where people who don't know one another come together for a few hours to enjoy a communal experience. Although this sounds pedantic, I think it is true of theater: in a world that is full of so much that is fearful and soul-crushing, the theater is one place where one can go to escape "real life" for the (usually) more happy and fulfilling existence of a fictional world.

I believe

2010-01-25T15:47:00.000-05:00

I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep.
~ Villette (ch. XXXI) by Charlotte Brontë

cynicism

2010-01-24T01:06:00.007-05:00

I was thinking: there is not one person in my life that is happy most of the time. I am literally surrounded by people whose life makes them miserable. I do not think it is their fault that they are unhappy – most people have bad situations that are difficult to get out of. [like me]. But it has to be said that sometimes people make their life so by cherishing a negative outlook on life.

Conan O'brien in his goodbye speech on his late night show on Friday said that young people should not be cynical, that is will never lead you anywhere pleasant.

“I hate cynicism. It’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”

I think I have forgotten how to be happy and, more so, how not to be cynical. I thank him for saying that because it reminded me that I used to not be as cynical as I’ve become.

So many people in my life make me sad because they are. Truth be told. It is hard to stay positive when there are others who, by example or even word, are telling you that it is fruitless to do so. I really wish I were being overly dramatic. After listening to Conan’s speech I tried to think of one person in my life who is happy, genuinely happy with their career, family, themselves, and could not think of one. Is this reality? Not being happy. Or is it just the reality I happen to be stuck in?

Yesterday I was dreading working on my resume. I have had people prodding me to send out resumes and became very agitated and upset at them and, more so, myself for procrastinating, for fearing to do anything, to even think about this horrible situation I am in: jobless for almost a year, having no clue what “I want to do with the rest of my life.” But after a good 12 hour sleep, I sat down at my computer and decided it was going to have to happen, but instead roamed about the Internet for a while, until I came across an interview David Tennant was giving on Scottish radio and listening to him and his always fun, simple positive attitude I began working on my resume and sending it out without really realizing what I was doing.

I do simply adore DT. Those unfortunates who read my blog know this. Hopefully less so for any psychological problem – although I’m sure it is connected somehow. Seriously, I just like him because he is (or, rather, I should write, seems to be) a genuinely happy bloke. He is the biggest star in Britain at the moment (although hardly known in the States – which may change if he gets the NBC show he shot a pilot for) so I’ve seen a lot of interviews and behind the scenes material with him. There was one article I ran across about him titled something like, “Is there anything wrong with David Tennant?” He’s known to be a very professional actor. Everyone loves him; it is very odd how well he is loved. He can be serious, he can be funny, he can make a complete fool out of himself (check out videos of him dressed up in drag for a comedy sketch show; the Brits love them some drag), and he works both low and high art (Doctor Who and Hamlet, for instance), something for which British actors are not known for. In Britain, you have stage actors, and you have comic actors, and never the twain shall meet.

Anyway, the point is, that he has the sort of joie de vivre that I aspire toward, and when things are difficult for me, I think of what he has accomplished and all with a nice attitude and a smile. Then life suddenly doesn’t seem so difficult. I would very much like a real live person in my life of his ilk.

(For the record, I am sure DT’s not perfect, and probably sustains a cocaine habit that allows him to be so happy, as well as I’m sure he is not happy all the time. Have I covered my bases?)

perfections of Jane Austen

2010-01-20T23:02:00.007-05:00

"Sense and Sensibility" 2008 (BBC)

There are those that argue that literature exceeds reality, making real life something that it is not, usually something nicer than it really is. Eva Brann argues that Jane Austen is able to transcend this issue. In her novels she is able to present real life in a fictional landscape:

In the Republic, Socrates speaks of "a certain ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry," in which philosophy can be said to charge fiction makers with a double crime: first the shameless fabrication of images which insidiously obstruct the search for being, and then the reckless vivification of these shades by means of a lurid singularity -- so that the more brilliant the fiction, the greater the blame. Jane Austen sidesteps the first charge by being so candidly imitative and yet so careful to refrain from touching the last things as to offer not the least impediment to philosophy, while she meets the second by conforming all her fictions to a serenely normal pattern - she never even invents an authoress. The wonder is that figures so carefully middling in stature are nonetheless so absorbing: Sir Walter Scott caught the essence of her excellence when he observed that she "renders ordinary, commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment."

But if Jane Austen's prosaic poetry is neither false nor egregious and her six novels give delight and hurt not, then that "ancient quarrel" is here for once composed, and these fictions, at least, can be loved rationally.

----
Brann, Eva. "The Perfections of Jane Austen." 1979

confused

2010-01-20T00:24:00.002-05:00

I'm pretty upset with my career counselor. She hasn't gotten in touch with me and her secretary called saying that she has been busy. So here I am, with an unfinished resume, and no prospects of a job, the one that we were looking at for which she was going to supposedly call someone to find out about has probably been filled. I was actually interested in that one too.

I don't understand how people we are suppose to be able to depend on are actually the ones who are the least dependable.

a modern heroine, Austen's Emma

2010-01-18T19:08:00.018-05:00

While twelve readings of Pride and Prejudice give you twelve periods of pleasure repeated, as many readings of Emma give you that pleasure, not repeated only, but square and square again with each perusal, till at every fresh reading you feel anew that you never understood anything like the widening sum of its delights. Reginald Farrer

A BBC production of EMMA starts next week, on Sunday, on PBS, at 9:00. EMMA is considered Jane Austen's greatest novel, for its complexity of character and plot. Emma is in every sense an anti-heroine heroine, the first of her kind, a character who the reader at first finds difficult to love, and may never do, even once she repents of her "sins" toward the end of the novel.

She is given over to what Lionel Trilling considers "self-love". A narcissistic quality that is at once detestable and necessary. Emma depends on it more for self-preservation than a need to over-reach her boundaries. Although, as Trilling points out, self-love is a quality that allows Emma to become an almost revolutionary female character in 19th century literature:

We understand self-love to be part of the moral life of all men; in men of genius we expect it to appear in unusual intensity and we take it to be an essential element of their power. The extraordinary thing about Emma is that she has a moral life as a man has a moral life...And perhaps that is what Jane Austen meant when she said that no one would like her heroine -- and what Newman meant when he said that he felt kind to Emma whenever he thought of her. She needs kindness if she is to be accepted in all her exceptional actuality...It is the presumption of our society that women's moral life is not as men's. No change in the modern theory of the sexes, no advance in status that women have made, has yet contradicted this. The self-love that we do countenance in women is of a limited and passive kind, and we are troubled if it is as assertive as the self-love of men is permitted, and expected, to be. Not men alone, but women as well, insist on this limitation, imposing the requirement the more effectually because they are not conscious of it.

But there is Emma, given over to self-love, wholly aware of it and quite cherishing it. Mr. Knightley rebukes her for heedless conduct and says, "I leave you to your own reflections." And Emma wonderfully replies: "Can you trust me with such flatterers? Does my vain spirit ever tell me I am wrong?" She is "Emma, never loth to be first," loving preeminence and praise, loving power and frank to say so.

Inevitably we are drawn to Emma. But inevitably we hold her to be deeply at fault. Her self-love leads her to be a self-deceiver. She can be unkind. She is a dreadful snob.

...

When we have said that her fault is hubris or self-love, we must make an immediate modification, for her self-love, though it involves her in self-deception, does not lead her to the ultimate self-deception -- she believes she is clever, she insists she is right, but she never says she is good. A consciousness is always at work in her, a sense of what she ought to be and do. It is not an infallible sense, anything but that, yet she does not need us, or the author, or Mr. Knightley, to tell her, for example, that she is jealous of Jane Fairfax and acts badly to her; indeed, "she never saw [Jane Fairfax] without feeling that she had injured her." She is never offended -- she never takes the high self-defensive line -- when once her bad conduct is made apparent to her...There is, then, sufficient reason to be kind to Emma, and perhaps for nothing so much as the hope she expresses when she begins to understand her mistakes, that she will become "more acquainted with herself." And, indeed, all through the novel she has sought better acquaintance with herself, not wisely, not adequately, but assiduously. How modern a quest it is, and how thoroughly it confirms Dr. Leavis's judgment that Jane Austen is the first truly modern novelist of England...There is no reality about which the modern person is more uncertain and more anxious than the reality of himself.

---
Trilling, Lionel. "Emma and the Legend of Jane Austen", 1957

"Hypocrisy", again

2010-01-16T13:25:00.005-05:00

True humility, a virtue so unfashionable nowadays that we scarcely believe it exists and use it as a synonym for "hypocrisy".

other posts on hypocrisy:

Hypocrisy is good, m'kay
Well, sometimes hypocrisy is not good

---
quote: 33 Great Writers On Why We Read Jane Austen, Edited by Susannah Carson, quote by Susanna Clarke

"a wounded heart"

2010-01-15T13:23:00.004-05:00

I found a wounded heart, &, as that heart cast itself upon me, it was my ambition to heal it. -- William Godwin about Mary Wollstonecraft

a need for dramatic love stories (on EastEnders and Austen)

2010-01-14T16:43:00.009-05:00

Is it sad that I get upset when the BBC takes down the episodes of EASTENDERS (the famous British soap opera) from Youtube that people illegally upload? Yeah, it probably is. But I really like that show. Got hooked on it when I lived in London, and it is so much better than American soaps, mostly because it deals with real people and real situations, although of course rather heightened as is the need for soap operas. But it makes me happy to watch the thirty minute episodes that air Mon, Tuesday, Thurs, and Friday. I don't have much to look forward to right now. I like knowing that I will have a cup of tea and my soap opera to watch. I think even if I had "a life" -- that is a job, even a boyfriend -- I would still very much desire this. Maybe not as much as I do now, as I wake from another day without a job, what money I do have quickly dwindling away, and worry about my ever-sickening parents on my mind. On the show a character the same age as me named Stacey Branning indirectly encouraged me to seek help about my anxiety and depression. Her story line was one of abuse and eventual downward spiral to anxiety and depression and she was as reluctant to seek pills to help her as I have been. But on the show she did and seeing how she dealt with her situation inclined me to do the same. I don't know why I should rely on fictional characters more than I do real people who have gone through these situations. I suppose because real people usually feel the need to tell you what is best, rather than discreetly showing you through support.

But I meant to post this. A short excerpt from Harold Bloom's forward in the book A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers On Why We Read Jane Austen. (It is rather annoying how EVERY book about Jane Austen has to start with A truth universally acknowledged... the famous opening line from Austen's most famous, although perhaps not best written, book Pride and Prejudice. [Emma is considered by many to be her greatest].)

There is a tendency to over evaluate novels in academic circles and I think out of any writer it is a misfortune to do this to Austen. Bloom brilliantly elaborates:

Austen has no more a political or social agenda than she has a religious one. To read the heroines' stories well, you need to acquire a touch of Austen's own wisdom, because she was a wise as Dr. Samuel Johnson. Like Johnson, though far more implicitly, Austen urges us to clear our mind of "cant." "Cant," in the Johnsonian sense, means platitudes, pious expressions, groupthink. Austen has no use for it, and neither should we. Those who now read Austen "politically" are not reading her at all...We read Austen because she seems to know us better than we know ourselves, and she seems to know us so intimately for the simple reason that she helped determine who we are both as readers and as human beings.

Megan Fox

2010-01-09T16:16:00.000-05:00

"I'm really insecure about everything. I see what I look like, but there are things that I like and things that I dislike. My hair is good. The color of my eyes is good, obviously. I'm too short. But overall, I'm not super excited about the whole thing. I never think I'm worthy of anything...I have a sick feeling of being mocked all the time. I have a lot of self-loathing. Self-loathing doesn't keep me from being happy. But that doesn't mean I don't struggle. I am very vulnerable."

a 'justifiable' war

2010-01-09T00:20:00.005-05:00

William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecrafts husband, on the French Revolution, as written by Lyndall Gordon:

"War was justifiable only to repel invasion, not to prevent it, and he believed there would be less talk about a 'justifiable' cause for war if we trained our imaginations to call up the unfeeling carnage which 'justifiable' intended. It's a fallacy, he warned, that our war may be ended by making it more and more terrible: 'a most mistaken way of teaching men to feel that they are brothers by imbuing their minds with perpetual hatred.'"

This written in the late 1700's. You would think by the 21st century we would have changed our feelings at least slightly about war given the results of such wars as the French Revolution and those that followed.

--
Gordon, Lyndall. Vindication A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft 2005, page 298.

British Fascism

2010-01-07T17:00:00.009-05:00

Well, I am not alone. A few weeks after I wrote about the potential harmful effects the fascist political group the BNP may wreak in Britain, an anonymous writer in the leading British political magazine THE SPECTATOR concurs:

"Islamofascism and immigration have combined to make a perfect campaign issue for the BNP — and they are being handed this territory on a plate by political parties who only intend to speak to swing voters. As a result, we have — appallingly — entered a golden era for British fascism. The BNP now has more supporters than Mosley’s Blackshirts could ever have dreamed of. And the more Westminster ignores the problem, the stronger the BNP will become."

Full article -- "A Golden Age for Fascism"

the female narrative

2010-01-06T22:52:00.013-05:00

from Vindication A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft Lyndall Gordon

Misogynist Writers

A telling exchange between Dr. Johnson and Boswell in 1779

Johnson: 'A husband's infidelity is nothing.' [A couple is connected by children and fortune.] 'Wise married women don't trouble themselves about infidelity.'

Boswell: 'To be sure there is a great difference between the offence of infidelity in a man and that of his wife.'

Johnson: 'The difference is boundless. The man imposes no bastards upon his wife.'
246

----

"sex-starved dupe"

[my words] One need only understand Wollstonecraft's voyage up to this point by pointing out the three stages through which most women travel:

"First scene: ambitious female shows true colours as sex-starved dupe. Second scene: fallen woman gives birth. Third scene: abandoned mother becomes clinging bore, to be shaken off with repeated excuses."
243

well, sometimes hypocrisy is not good...

2010-01-05T23:21:00.006-05:00

I am at Starbucks, drinking tea, reading, when two middle-aged men greet one another and immediately begin talking about the hit SCI-FI show LOST. They spend forty-five minutes talking in-depth about the twists and turns of the plot, character analysis, and predicting how the show will end. The one is evidently more intelligent about the show than the other as he spends his time gesticulating wildly and providing evidence for his theories about clues the writers have written into the show to explain whatever is happening (I've never watched LOST) while the other barely says more than "aha" and "oh yeah." Nevertheless, they are so much into their conversation that during this time they are standing and have not yet ordered beverages. I am astonished, and think about how stupid the one man is for being so excited about a fantasy T.V. show. Just as I think this I look down and finish the sentence from the magazine I am reading, only to a second later sigh loudly and make a nasty expression on my face as it dons on me the hypocrisy of what I just thought. I was reading DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE.

a publication, of sorts

2010-01-04T20:58:00.005-05:00

A good friend of mine posted one of my blog postings on his award winning online literary/visual arts magazine. It was something I wrote here that he particularly enjoyed. That's pretty cool. And he even provided a link for my blog, which now makes me think that I have to post more than snippets of other people's words. (But, really, their words are so much better than mine). Check out my post "I wish my life were a jane austen novel, but I live in a Dickens world" here, and please check out the rest of his very interesting and unique magazine.

Subtletea.com

The Volunteer

2010-01-02T00:42:00.002-05:00

pub I frequented in London, on Baker Street

"my panting soul"

2009-12-30T18:23:00.001-05:00

Still does my panting soul push forward, and live in futurity, in the deep shades o'er which darkness hangs. -- I try to pierce the gloom, and find a resting-place, where my thirst of knowledge will be gratified, and my ardent affections find an object to fix them."

Mary Wollstonecraft, 120

things don't change: on Wollstonecraft and Tina Fey

2009-12-22T16:45:00.036-05:00

"Two feelings remained acute: irritation with her own sex -- the boisterous, unmeaning laughter and bickerings of 'silly females' -- and persistent alienation: 'I am an exile -- and in a new world.'" Vindication A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft 86

I kind of hate women of today. There, I said it. I liked them better in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth century when they had to fight for their individual freedom. Even though there were plenty of women then who were, by Wollstonecraft's account, "silly females' -- caring only for show in order to acquire husbands, focused only on begetting babies, not caring for others feelings save their own -- there were also those who were upset with their inferiority in society and strove, as Mary Wollstonecraft did, to change that.

Now women have been given lawful rights and education they seem not to know how to use it. They still parade in showy dress (or no dress) excentuating their physical body, neglecting their mind. We praise and veritably stalk female celebrities (twitter, anyone?), but not one among us can name a famous female scientist. I feel like women today have given up, retreated into their silicone bodies, and so have become the new creator of their own inferiority: Doctor Frankenstein and the monster in one.

There are a scant number of women today who, wittingly or no, provide a model of the true liberated female. The big one in my book is Tina Fey* and her character (that she created and embodies) on 30 ROCK. Liz Lemon (and by extension, Tina Fey) is pretty, in a non-model nerdy and quirky sort of way. And she is an in-charge woman, the boss of her employees, script writers and actors who are composed of dorky men and Liz's best friend Jenna, a platinum blonde, attention-seeking narcissist who was the lead actress of Liz's "The Girlie Show", now renamed for the incoming of a more popular (african american male) actor. Her boss Jack Donaghy is played by Alec Baldwin, a controversial figure in his own life and in the show no less. He is at once the model of the patriarchal gentleman, wielding his power over all, ruthless, exacting -- and Republican. He owns Lemon's show, like a 19th century land-owner. A corporate big-wig -- but one with a heart, who desires to take Lemon under his wing, be her mentor, improve her life. He criticizes her and uses his power to improve her. Which is a bit Pygmalion-esque mixed in with a little Emma of the Jane Austen variety. And this probably proves more than anything that things don't change. Men still have a desire to shape women to their ideal, and because of long-held social mores or gender DNA, this will probably, in my life-time at least, always be so. What makes Tina Fey's character so inspiring for me is that no matter how much Baldwin's character tries to improve her, she is, and will always be, (mostly, granted, as a vehicle for comedy) a scatter-brained, cute but never beautiful, faulty, smart, witty woman who embraces her independence. And for those of us who live in the real world, this is a relief.

An addendum -- couldn't fit this in above, but a counter-argument could be that such female models like Tina Fey's character have been around for a while: Murphy Brown, for instance. But what I see in Tina Fey is a 21st century model of an independent woman, for obviously she exists in this time period, but also she comes at a critical time, when our desire to control technology supplements our socially unacceptable desire to control others, and women, subjugating themselves on television in reality T.V. shows and home-made movies, need some models other than the Kardashians and the Girls Next Door of this world.

An addendum to this addendum: I watch, and even enjoy, both of the latter programs.

*another favorite of mine is Chelsea Handler.
----
Gordon, Lyndall. Vindication A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft 2005

Emily Bronte died on this date 161 years ago

2009-12-20T00:15:00.002-05:00

I am the only being whose doom
No tongue would ask, no eye would mourn;
I never caused a thought of gloom,
A smile of joy, since I was born.

In secret pleasure, secret tears,
This changeful life has slipped away,
As friendless after eighteen years,
As lone as on my natal day.

There have been times I cannot hide,
There have been times when this was drear,
When my sad soul forgot its pride
And longed for one to love me here.

But those were in the early glow
Of feelings since subdued by care;
And they have died so long ago,
I hardly now believe they were.

First melted off the hope of youth,
Then Fancy's rainbow fast withdrew;
And then experience told me truth
In mortal bosoms never grew.

'Twas grief enough to think mankind
All hollow, servile, insincere;
But worse to trust to my own mind
And find the same corruption there.
~ Emily Brontë, 17 May 1837

arguments against and for women's colleges...

2009-12-15T23:48:00.008-05:00

...in the 19th century.

"Nothing would induce me to be associated with such a project. A college [for women] would mean the loss of tender home bloom of womanliness which is a more precious thing than any proficiency in knowledge." Charlotte Yonge

"It is a rare thing to meet with a lady who does not suffer from headaches, langour [sic], hysteria or some illness showing a want of stamina. Dullness is not healthy, and the lives of ladies, it must be confessed, are exceedingly dull." Emily Davies

-----

quotes: Brandon, Ruth. Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres. Waller & Company, New York: 2008.

portrait: an idyllic Victorian couple

letters between literary lovers

2009-12-10T16:03:00.018-05:00

84, Charing Cross Road is a non-fiction book of a series of letters written by a New Yorker Helene Hanff and a famous book sellers in London on Charing Cross Road (a street infamous for its many bookstores) called Marks & Company. Letters between the shop and Helene span for 20 years. Frank Doel, one of the clerks of the London store, quickly became her sole correspondent, and although they never met, their relationship through letters developed into very much a tender, perhaps even romantic nature. Reading these letters written before the time of text messages, e-mail, even Internet, is truly refreshing; when letters took days, even weeks to arrive, and the anticipatory touch of the envelope of a letter brought a sensation more wonderful than even the words within. Let the following letters -- originally written on typewriter -- speak for themselves. Here are my favourites, beginning with Helene's first letter to the now famous (although now extinct) bookstore:

[All double spaces in the letters written below are, in the book, only one space and a tab over]

14 East 95th St.
New York City
October 5, 1949

Marks & Co.
84, Charing Cross Road
London, W.C. 2
England

Gentlemen:
Your ad in the Saturday Review of Literature says that you specialize in out-of-print books. The phrase "Antiquarian booksellers" scares me somewhat, as I equate "antique" with expensive. I am a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books and all the things I want are impossible to get over here except in very expensive rare edition, or in Barnes & Nobles grimy, marked-up schoolboy copies.

I enclose a list of my most pressing problems. If you have clean second hand copies of any of the books on the list, for no more than $5.00 each, will you consider this a purchase order and send them to me?

Very truly yours,

Helene Hanff
(Miss) Helene Hanff
---

Two months later, after a series of correspondence between Helene and the shop, including a transaction of books, Helene writes:

14 East 95th St.
New York City
December 8, 1949

Sir [Frank Doel]:

(It feels witless to keep writing "Gentlemen" when the same solitary soul is obviously taking care of everything for me.)

Savage Landor arrived safely...I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest. The day Hazlitt came he opened to "I hate to read new books," and I hollered "Comrade!" to whoever owned it before me.

I enclose a dollar which Brian (British boy friend of Kay upstairs) says will cover the /8/ I owe you, you forgot to translate.

Now then. Brian told me you are all rationed to 2 ounces of meat per family per week and one egg per person per month and I am simply appalled. He has a catalogue from a British firm here which flies food from Denmark to his mother, so I am sending a small Christmas present to Marks & Co. I hope there will be enough to go round, he says the Charing Cross Road bookshops are "all quite small."

I'm sending it c/o you, FPD, whoever you are.

Noel.

Helene Hanff
----

Reply letter from Frank to Helene:

20th December, 1949

Miss Helene Hanff
14 East 95th Street
New York 28, New York
U.S.A

Dear Miss Hanff,

Just a note to let you know that your gift parcel arrived safely today and the contents have been shared out between the staff. Mr. Marks and and Mr. Cohen insisted that we divide it up among ourselves and not include "the bosses." I should just like to add that everything in the parcel was something that we either never see or can only be had through black market. It was extremely kind and generous of you to think of us in this way and we are all extremely grateful.

We all wish to express our thanks and send our greetings and best wishes for 1950.

Yours faithfully,

Frank Doel
For MARKS & CO.
------

It seems three months passes before the next letter, sent by Helene. I love this letter for Helene's brazen outspokenness and flirty wit:

14th East 95th St.

March 25, 1950

Frank Doel, what are you DOING over there, you are not doing ANYthing, you are just sitting AROUND.

Where is Leigh Hunt? Where is the Oxford Verse? Where is the Vulgate and dear goofy John Henry, I thought they'd be such nice uplifting reading for Lent and NOTHING do you send me.

you[sic] leave me sitting here writing long margin notes in library books that don't belong to me, some day they'll find out I did it and take my library card away.

I have made arrangements with the Easter bunny to bring you an Egg, he will get over there and find you have died of Inertia.

I require a book of love poems with spring coming on. No Keats or Shelley, send me poets who can make love without slobbering -- Wyatt or Jonson or somebody, use your own judgement. Just a nice book preferably small enough to stick in a slacks pocket and take to Central Park.

Well, don't just sit there! Go find it! I swear I don't know how that shop keeps going.
---

These two letters (the last I will post) are from and to Cecily Farr, a female shop assistant of Marks & Co. I find them charming, and a bit heartbreaking really:

MARKS & CO., BOOKSELLERS
84, Charing Cross Road
London, W.C. 2

7th April, 1950

Dear Miss Hanff,

Please don't let Frank know I'm writing this but every time I send you a bill I've been dying to slip in a little note and he might not think it quite proper of me. That sounds stuffy and he's not, he's quite nice really, very nice in fact, it's just that he does rather look on you as his private correspondent as all your letters and parcels are addressed to him. But I just thought I would write to you on my own.

We all love your letters and try to imagine what you must look like. I've decided you're young and very sophisticated and smart-looking. Old Mr. Martin thinks you must be quite studious-looking in spite of your wonderful sense of humor. Why don't you send us a snapshot? We should love to have it.

If you're curious about Frank, he's in his late thirties, quite nice-looking, married to a very sweet Irish girl, I believe she's his second wife.

Everyone was so grateful for the parcel. My little ones (girl 5, boy 4) were in Heaven -- with the raisins and egg I was actually able to make them a cake!

I do hope you don't mind my writing. Please don't mention it when you write to Frank.

With best wishes,

Cecily Farr

P.S. I shall put my home address on the back of this in case you should ever want anything sent you from London.

C.F.
---

14 East 95th St.

April 10, 1950

Dear Cecily --

And a very bad cess to Old Mr. Martin, tell him I'm so unstudious I never even went to college. I just happen to have peculiar taste in books, thanks to a Cambridge professor named Quiller-Couch, known as Q, whom I fell over in a library when I was 17. And I'm about as smart-looking as a Broadway panhandler. I live in moth-eaten sweaters and wool slacks, they don't give us any heat here in the daytime. It's a 5-story brownstone and all the other tenants go out to work at 9 A.M. and don't come home till 6 -- and why should the landlord heat the building for one small script-reader/writer working at home on the ground floor?

Poor frank, I give him such a hard time. I'm always bawling him out for something. I'm only teasing, but I know he'll take me seriously. I keep trying to puncture that proper British reserve, if he gets ulcers I did it.

Please write and tell me about London, I live for the day when I step off the boat-train and feel its dirty sidewalks under my feet. I want to walk up Berkeley Square and down Wimpole Street and stand in St. Paul's where John Donne preached and sit on the step Elizabeth sat on when she refused to enter the Tower, and like that. A newspaper man I know, who was stationed in London during the war, says tourists go to England with preconceived notions, so they always find exactly what they go looking for. I told him I'd go looking for the England of English literature, and he said:

"Then it's there."

Regards --

Helene Hanff
---

Helene's aspiration to visit London came true over 20 years after this last letter -- finally able to make enough money to pay for the journey -- but by then Frank had died of appendicitis and the shop as it was during her years of correspondence was abandoned.

There is a movie version of 84, Charing Cross Road, starring Anthony Hopkins as Frank, Anne Bancroff as Helene, and Judi Dench -- in her first film -- as Frank's wife.

--------

Hanff, Helene. 84, Charing Cross Road. Grossman Publishers, New York: 1970.

hypocrisy is good, m'kay

2009-12-02T13:23:00.014-05:00

Freedom is a solid good, that requires to be treated with reverence and respect. -- Mary Wollstonecraft

The British National Party (BNP) are known for their fascist principles, the prominent being that they don't believe anyone but full blooded English people should live in Britain. They were founded in 1982 and have since refused any applicant in their party that were non-white until this year when finally their party was seen by the law as discriminatory. Now they are allowing their first non-white member, a Sikh who, however, does not believe in racial integration in Britain, and believes that Islam (a religion not his own) is based solely on "deception, fraud, and surprise attack." Non-white by look, yes, but not exactly uniquely ethnically-minded to those already in the party. The BNP were recently featured on a show called Question Time, where audience members ask political leaders questions which they then obliquely answer in a manner that positively benefits their public appearance.

The BNP have never been asked to feature on this show because of their ideals. But in the name of "democracy" they were allowed to guest for the first time since the show's first broadcast in 1979. Although Nick Griffin, the leader of the BNP (who has on numerous occasions stated that he does not believe the Holocaust occurred), was soundly ridiculed by most of the public and other representative parties on the show, it is thought that after he appeared, some people who were not aware of the BNP before now look favourably on them.

I'm going to be frank. I don't think the BNP should have been allowed to feature on this show. Some say that it would have been non-democratic to NOT allow them on this show. I can't see any good reason for letting them on now when they never have been before. They have the rudimentary features of modern day Hitler and Stalin. Whatever issues they may promote that are not anti-humanity -- whatever they may be, I haven't yet heard -- I still do not think the BNP should be given a voice. I think it is right -- even democratic -- to stifle their voices.

Democracy dictates that everyone should be given free say, but how is it correct to allow a repressive faction to participate in our democratic society when their actions nullify the purpose of democracy? This is what is wrong with our world, among many other things: we are afraid of being hypocrites. We are afraid of looking bad. In order to save face, we refuse to take a stand on something most of us believe is wrong.

There are no definitives in this world, although we like to pretend they exist, in order to make us feel safe, in order to not have to think too strongly about a complex, contradictory issue. Democracy is roughly translated as allowing others to say what they wish and believe what they will. This definition is too simple by far, but if we are to believe that it's foundation is such, then why can't we also believe that in a democracy that allows such free-will, we should also be given the right to denounce and even lawfully chastise those who use their rights in an unnatural manner? Even if that means we are seen as hypocrites? For even though a law was passed this year prohibiting racial segregation within the BNP, so far the only non-white member to be admitted to the party still shares the parties racial principles. In this case, both literally and morally, looks differ from actual intent.

Humans are gullible by nature, and what happened in the time of Hitler's reign was our gullibility used to its full advantage. We don't have to be taken advantage again. And if we are hypocrites for saying that the BNP should not be allowed to spew its propaganda on live television, or be given a prominent voice in Parliament, then maybe we will share the brunt of public denunciation, but then maybe we stop something that has the potential to become destructive against that democracy that we promote with such steadfast pride.

today, and yesteryear

2009-12-01T21:29:00.007-05:00

I wake at 10:00, and listen to BBC radio (Coldplay comes on), and play poker online before I get dressed in my black pants, white collared shirt, black vest, pin-on bow-tie. I read Lauren Bacall's autobiography on the bus. Once off, I get a snack at Rite Aid, drop off some books at the library across the street, and walk furiously to the theatre to get there the hour and half before the performance begins.

Once there, I sign in with the manager, put my coat in the coat room, sign up for two performances of A Musical Christmas Carol, sit in the meeting, get assigned upstairs, disregard the woman whose pissed because I've been assigned the left Mezzanine level, even though "she always works that section."

I stand outside the theatre door for 30 minutes, make sure no patrons come in before we open the theatre doors. I direct people to their seats. I tell a patron that she can't bring in an open drink in the nicest tone I can, but she still tells me that I'm stupid.

I watch the beginning of the Rockettes performance, waiting for an applause section to take late comers to their seats. I run downstairs and get my snack out of my purse that I have stashed in one of the fancy closed cupboards of which on top there are some lamps to light the foyer.

I rush downstairs to eat near the coat room where I am allowed to eat. I rush back upstairs and watch the rest of the show. During intermission I make sure no one brings in open drinks. Watch second half of show....

Well, all the while I'm doing these things that I've been doing since I was in high school, I think -- what am I doing here? I like the theatre, I even still get something out of it, but all the same, I wonder how it is I am in the same place I was five years ago.

-----

01 dec 08

woke at 9:40

40's, sunny

bought stamps, picked up reading from school

watched Top Gear while eating meatball sub from Pret A Manger [I really miss those]

Read Hardy along South Bank

The Eye and Big Ben from Waterloo Bridge

-----
Top: Edward Hopper "New York Movie"

tea for 2

2009-11-28T21:33:00.006-05:00

28 nov 08

woke at 3:00 [pm]

early 50's

watched Doctor Who

read Hardy [for which I had to give a presentation, urrrrghhhh Hardy!]

where Stacey and I had lunch outside of Cambridge

the last supper

2009-11-27T17:39:00.006-05:00

27 nov 08

50's

woke at 12:00

went to Oedipus starring Ralph Fiennes

Chips at local fish and chips shop

Thanksgiving

Friends and I reenacting The Last Supper, during our last supper together in '06

25 nov 08

2009-11-25T19:47:00.002-05:00

25 nov 08

woke at 1:00 [pm]

cool, early 40's, cloudy

laundry

tea at caffe nero

night class -- movie, Festival of Britain

School building in '06, view from my dorm bedroom

24 nov 08, London

2009-11-25T01:07:00.004-05:00

24 nov 08

lower 40's, cloudy/rainy

woke at 12:00

opened bank account

went to class -- Bleak House discussed

Autumn at Cambridge University (where I traveled with Stacey and a former professor, the latter of whom was teaching a class there).

reflections

2009-11-23T22:09:00.017-05:00

23-11-08

woke at 8:00

Stacey left for America at 9:00

Sunny/rainy, cold, 40's

watched LITTLE DORRIT and EINSTEIN AND EDDINGTON

----

Once Stacey leaves, my time in London becomes a bit depressing. Fail a paper and return home to America.

It is hard to explain how a time can be so bad, and yet so great at the same time. That's what it was like in London. My first time there, in '06, when I was a study abroad student for 3 1/2 months was nothing but a pleasant experience. It is where I met Stacey and our mutual friend -- my roommate -- Kristen. My time in grad school was pretty bad, but I loved walking around London. That was the greatest part. Waking at 6:00 in the morning and walking across Waterloo Bridge before the sun came up; walking across the Thames Embankment while the sun rose. I miss it so much, that even now I'm welling up just thinking about it.

The theatre. I loved seeing shows. I saw some of the greatest performers of my time. Derek Jacobi, Alan Cumming, Tim Curry, Dame Judi Dench, Rosamund Pike, Patrick Stewart, Anna Maxwell Martin, Kenneth Branagh, Ralph Fiennes, Dame Eileen Atkins, Sophie Thompson, Gina McKee. Saw productions like HAMLET and TWELFTH NIGHT, plays that are no where better made than in the soil from which they sprang.

I think back and I wonder if I didn't enjoy it enough. I knew when I was there that I should grab every moment, that one day I would be stuck in a bad situation and have something good to look back on.

I think I did make the most of it, the most of what was given to me; at least I took what I could from it.

And I know some day I will return to London, not feeling the visitor, but as though I've never left. I know a little of myself will always belong in London.

Trafalgar Square

St. Paul's from Millennium Bridge

Typically foggy London morning on Westminster Bridge

dad; a year ago, in London (22 Nov 08)

2009-11-22T12:36:00.005-05:00

My father is 75% hard of hearing, so when his alarm goes off in the morning to wake him up, even though it wakes me up all the way upstairs, he often sleeps right through it, and I have to go downstairs and wake him up.

-----

22-11-08

cold

woke at 9:00

saw jazz trio at Natural History Museum*

Lunch at V&A [Victoria and Albert Museum]

Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park at night

* Here is a video that Stacey took of the performance we saw of The Neil Cowley Trio (and that's my big head in front of her).

a year ago, in London (21 nov 08)

2009-11-21T18:56:00.005-05:00

21 - 11 - 08

woke at 10:30

cold, windy 40's

Wallace Collection [saw Madame de Pompadour portrait and The Swing]*

Infiltrated Regent's College [former college I attended] with Stacey for dinner

Festival on South Bank

Jazz at South Bank Festival Hall

nutella crepes, Mmmmmm

*

a year ago, in London

2009-11-20T09:59:00.004-05:00

20 - 11 - 08

woke at 9:00

50's [degrees]

went to Harrods for tea and scones with Stacey

Apsley House near Hyde Park [museum, if I remember correctly]

Bond Street Christmas lighting -- real reindeer, fake snow blown out of the windows above the shops, entertainers

stopped at cafe in Leicester Square 4 dinner

a year ago today, in London

2009-11-19T11:49:00.002-05:00

19-11-08

woke at 9:00

early 50's, cool, sunny

class & Phd mtg

----
I really could have been a bit more descriptive, huh?

a year ago

2009-11-18T16:25:00.007-05:00

I'm scrap-booking my time in London last year, and came across my bulletined diary (that Abby gave me) from that time. Each day I wrote the basics of what I did that day.

Here's from a year ago.

18-11-08

cool, cloudy, sunny

woke at 2:00 [P.M.]

went to dinner with Stacey & watched Top Gear

I wish my life were an Austen novel, but I'm living in a Dickens world

2009-11-18T13:58:00.009-05:00

I knew getting up this morning that my day was not going to be pleasant, because I need to consolidate my loans, and of course this can't be easy.

In order to fill out the forms online to consolidate I have to know what my educational pin is, something of four numbers that is apparently more important than my social number. I go on the department of education Web site to retrieve this omniscient number, but (of course) since I've already tried to do this years ago, I'm not allowed to do it again. So I call them up and they tell me to do something which I don't really understand as the lady on the line was talking fast and obviously didn't want to talk to me. So I try to do it on the Web site, but then a security question comes up -- what is your mother's maiden name? I put in Nichols. Nope, wrong. I put in Nicholls. Nope, wrong. I'm starting to believe that I don't know what my mother's maiden name is. I try it again. Oh, three times is not the charm, and now my pin is disabled.

I refrain from calling the Department of Education again, for fear of getting that lady who, through her tone of voice, will only verify how much of a moron I already know I am.

So I'll call back tomorrow. And go through the torturous process of getting my pin un-disabled, and then trying again to find out what the elusive four numbers are, just so I can put it in a little square box on my loan page, so they will let me consolidate my loans, so I don't have to pay the 600 dollars they want me to pay every month.

Life is like the Circumlocution Office in Charles Dickens's "Little Dorrit", a place where one goes to find information, but instead one is continually placed in circles, where "forms need to be filled in to request permission to fill in more forms" and in the end no information is attained, but only a sort of soul crushing defeat is felt.

I think we all wish our lives were like an Austen novel, where the rules of love are the only complex ingredients in life. I know I do. Especially since I don't really believe in love, and so, by process of elimination, I would have nothing to worry about at all.

dude, I swear.

2009-11-16T22:39:00.003-05:00

Remember that time people said that if George Bush, Jr. became president again, they were going to move to Canada? I thought they were being a tad bit overly dramatic. But now I understand them. Because I swear if Sarah Palin is ever the president of my country I am going to leave the U.S. so fast, you won't even know I've left.

differences

2009-11-09T21:57:00.009-05:00

I'm reading a rather fat book about the rise and fall of the British Empire. I am at the beginning, so I am just at the part where Britain is infiltrating what would become America and the American's fight for independence against the British in the late 1700's. And just now I think that what happened three hundred+ years ago is still happening today in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Fort Hood.

On a happier note, I have watched the first half of the football game with my father. Me, reclining on the arm of his recliner, sharing a snuggly blanket, my father saying that we will pretend that we are at the game and it is 10 below.

My father turns on Fox News during the commercials. I listen to the ignorance of the people on that channel, and I know what it is to love, because I do not hate or even in any way dislike my father for his republican beliefs. There will always be differences between people and wars will only exist so long as people allow their opinions to supersede their love.

EDIT: Finishing this post I went downstairs to watch the second half of the game -- "All you need is love..." from the Beatles ringing through my head as a consequence of the post I just wrote-- picking up a fortune cookie left over from the chinese takeaway ordered earlier this evening, and I smiled as I read One who is too insistent on his own views, finds few to agree with him. How very apt.

coming home from work

2009-11-07T19:39:00.007-05:00

after working 10 hours at the deli, my father tells me, in a jovial tone,

"I told your mother this morning, that Monday, my only day off, I don't want to hear anything from anyone. I'm going to wake up, have a nice breakfast, and sit in my chair and watch the game. And that is it. Nothing else. I don't care if the President calls. Obama-head will have to call back tomorrow, because I'm watching the Monday night game!"

And then, in his characteristic, after work, slightly demented mood, he moves his right hand up into the air, in an aristocratic french manner, and say's,

"'Avant. Be out of my sight.' That's from Shakespeare. And it's the only thing I know of Shakespeare."

To which I retort, "What about 'To be or not to be? That is the question?'"

We then spend the next minute trying to think up the next line, with my father, befuddled, muttering,

"nobler in the mind..."

"yes! 'Tis nobler in the mind..."

"Yeah...."

My father sits down. "Oh, who cares about Shakespeare, dopey Shakespeare." And then, "My legs are swollen tonight." Which of course must naturally transition into my father singing, a la West Side Story, "Tonight, tonight, my legs are swollen like a dyke."

"What?" I exclaim, laughing uproariously.

"Oh, I'm tired, and crazy tonight," my father exclaims matter-of-factly.

"No, really?" I'm still laughing as I leave the kitchen.

separation

2009-11-07T12:02:00.003-05:00

Like many people who come to New York to live and then have to leave before they really want to, I spent the next three or four years with the vague feeling that there was a great party going on somewhere and I was not at it.

to live in the 1800's

2009-11-03T13:03:00.003-05:00

Along with the many interesting, innocuous things one can do on Facebook, there is an application called socialinterview, where you can answer questions about your friends.

Here's one that one of my Facebook friends wrote about me:

"What would Helen Walko be like if he/she lived in the 1800s?"

'Almost exactly as she is now, except she'd fit in better, and spend her days wishing she lived in the 1600's.when men and literature were so much better......''