Sunday at home, reading the newspaper

Sundays are usually not good days for me. Usually lethargic am I on this day, and depressed.

Today wasn't so bad. Woke at 12:00, got out of bed at 1:00, took a walk immediately after.

Sunny today, with a few clouds, not very humid. Mom came out on the porch. I went up to Rite Aid to buy a Sunday paper, ostensibly to read the classified page for a job. Ended up spending more time on the "funnies." We read the paper together, commenting on what we were reading. Did this until 5:00.

We grilled out hot dogs for dinner once dad came home with the baked beans, a very necessary side dish to hot dogs.

Have just spent the last two hours on the Internet while lounging (as literally as that word is meant) doing absolutely nothing important. Watching the sun go down outside my three windows while laying on my futon. Replying to comments on myspace, people whom I don't know in real life but have met through our common interests -- mostly doing with ninteenth century literature and modern day British shows like Doctor Who and Robin Hood, the latter two of which obtain the highest ratings on British telly. Check out my page if you want. Although everyone who reads this -- the some two people who do -- are already my friends on that site.

I reserve my facebook site for people I know, mostly college/work friends. I like myspace more. Facebook is a sort of dumbing down of myspace, as twitter is of facebook. On Myspace you have to create something like a Web page.

Where am I go with this? No where. Hence the title of my blog: Ramblings

I'll leave you with some wise words, from some very wise women:

day at the theatre

Today:

Woke at 9:50.

Ate cheerios and went online: myspace, facebook, yahoo mail, twitter, The Times (London), davidtennant.com

Hurriedly dressed into usher outfit -- white collared shit got in mens department, black socks, black pants, black vest, clip-on black bow tie, black flats -- a little eye makeup and walked the some 8 blocks or so to Stanton and Negley to catch a bus into town.

It is sunny today, mildly warm. The walk is refreshing and I get to town in time to read a few pages of "I Capture the Castle" that Abby suggested I read. The sisters in the story travel to London to bring home clothes that their now dead Aunt Millicent left behind.

Walk to the theatre to usher for "Legally Blonde, the Musical." Sign in with the lady just as I walk into the only door of the six that is open to admit ushers, walk down the stairs to the usher room, take my card with my name on it out of the filing cabinet, and walk back upstairs. Wait in the lobby for the meeting to begin.

Manager goes over how long the show is, any seating holds (for this show there is one long one at the beginning -- 12 minutes): this is when we can't seat any late comers. How much of the house we have, which I can't relate here. For some reason it is a big deal for us to tell others.

I rush in the line that indicates that I want the 2nd door downstairs to usher at. I am assigned to the door by giving my downstairs boss my card which she will take down to stamp with the date so they know I was here today. You have to do 22 shows a year or (supposedly) you are fired. I have never done that many shows and haven't yet been fired.

We wait until 12:30 to see if there are any cast changes to stuff into the programs. There are. Two. Plus we have two other papers to stuff, one encouraging (upon penalty of death) for patrons to subscribe to the rest of the series and the other one to advertise a show currently playing at another theatre that is also a part of the cultural trust.

Takes a good 30 minutes to stuff all the programs. The theatre can be fined a hefty amount of money if someone (a journalist especially) does not find papers announcing a casting change in their program, as then if they were to write in their paper that a certain person was good and it was not that person, well then apparently the world would fall a part. It is over a 1,000 dollar fine and so we have to make sure every program has an announcement in it.

I was assigned Penn Avenue door, which means that before, during intermission, and after the show I have to stand in front of these doors that lead out into Penn Avenue so that people will not go out them at any time. A lot of people like to go out these doors, as the car park that many people use when going to see a show at our theatre is right outside the door. Despite the warning -- do not use this door, alarm will be sounded -- in bold letters, and me standing there (waif-like) with my hands on my hips, they still try to get past me. Today however, for one of the only times (since The Lion King some years ago) we opened these doors after the show because we had such a large house.

People are allowed into the theatre foyer at 1:00 and by 1:30 we open the doors to the inside of the theatre. At this point, I go to my door and seat people. A lot of the people who come here regularly (and are older and look like they're rich) become rather upset if you ask them if they need help finding their seat, and will brush past you, or say, sternly, "I just need a program." They are funny.

Had a lot of pre-adolescent and teenage girls in short skirts for the show today, with very high heels, both of which were mainly pink. The lead character's "signature colour" is pink.

The show begins 5 minutes after it is scheduled. Regardless, we still got late seaters. We had about five. They had to wait 12 minutes until they could be taken in. We were told a particular phrase the actor would say that would indicate when we could. Took them in. Dark theatre. We have little flashlights (mine is jewel encrusted pink -- fake, of course, but pretty) to help us find the row.

Most shows I stand up in the back of the theatre, mostly because there aren't any seats. Even when there are open seats, there are rules about those you can sit in. They have to be at the back. You can't sit in front of a patron, or next to them. Result: no seats to sit in.

20 minute intermission. Back at Penn Avenue Door, next to the bartender. Ask for a diet coke just before the show starts. Ushers get free drinks. Go downstairs to eat peanut butter ritz crackers. Not allowed to eat upstairs. Go back into the theatre. Watch the end of the show.

Favourite moment of any show: when the show is over and the actors come out for applause.

Always hate the people who leave just when the show ends. They may have good reason, but I still dislike them.

Back to Penn Avenue door at end to let people know there is a step so they don't fall down and sue the theatre. They're obsessed with being sued. We're not even allowed to help people on walkers or otherwise handicapped for fear that something will go wrong and we will be sued. I still help people walk to their seats who need it.

Grab purse. Happen to catch a bus back to Negley and Stanton just in time. Walk home the 20 minutes it takes.

Home at 5:30-ish.

Madwoman in the third storey; P&P no sell

From Curiosities of Literature by John Sutherland

"In the Attic" -- a Vulgar Error

Flowers in the Attic, like the influential feminist literary-critical treatise, The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gilbert draw, in their separate ways, on the supposed incarceration of Bertha Mason (the first Mrs. Rochester) in the attic of Thornfield. The image has become emblematic of the historical oppression of woman. In fact, as Michael Mason points out in his 1996 edition of Jane Eyre, "This is, strictly speaking, an error, since Bertha Rochester is locked up on the third storey of Thornfield Hall, and there is a "garrett" or "attic" floor above.' Long live strictness.

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A few months later, David Lassman, mischievous director of the Bath Jane Austen festival, sent out the opening chapters of P&P for eighteen leading publishers. Austen's golden prose was barely veiled under the novel's family title, 'First Impressions', as by 'Alison Laydee' (i.e., "A Lady"), with minimal name changes and the famous 'truth universally acknowledged' opening sentence resoundingly intact.

It resounded not at all. Seventeen of the recipients did not recognize the most essential book in the history of the world. One, Boomsbury (Harry Potter's publisher), wrote back with the sage consolation that the sample had been read 'with interest' but 'was not suited to our list'. They could clearly live without Pride and Prejudice, thank you very much.

Why not, if they've got Harry Potter on the Bloomsbury list?

10 June 2009

Watching "Buffy", season two, when it begins pouring, torrential rain, outside. Pause the television, rush downstairs to the porch. It is 11:00 PM and my father should be driving up any minute from work. I love heavy rain storms, I love thunder. I love things that are chaotic, from a distance.

My brother Tom passes in his white car. He too is coming home from work. He lives across the street. He parks in the back alley, although technically he's not allowed. My father is the next car to pass, some minute or so after Tom. There is a space for him in front of our apartment, but he has to park on the right side of the road because of street cleaning,so he parks a block away from our apartment in the only spot left open. I am in my silk robe. Mom is with me on the porch. I tell her I should take the huge umbrella we have to the car.

Dad is still in the car five minutes later. Still torrential rain. I walk upstairs, change into jeans, put on sneakers, and a hoody and take the big umbrella to the car, where he is inside, the car not running, so that it is dark. The rain is coming down so hard that it must in some way obscure the street lights, I can't very well see anything. I knock on the window. He comes out, with his Giant Eagle bag, he puts his arm around my shoulder, and sings "singing in the rain" while we walk, slowly -- on account of him -- to our front steps. Seeing my mother, he sings even louder, until, upon coming up the stairs -- me holding the umbrella over him as he painstakingly, and slowly, walks up them -- I see that my brother has crossed the street, without an umbrella, and is sitting soaking wet in a chair on our porch.

08 June 2009, Monday

Writing to one of my professors from my undergraduate college is something that I have avoided, and now, having written them, I know why. Agonizing. I suppose because these professors believe so much in me and I feel like I have let them down somehow. Although I'm sure they do not think that. They are smart (as they should be if they are teaching impressionable minds) and know that life is unpredictable.

I cleaned my room today. Dust vanquished from the walls entirely. Usually I just ignore the dust-- where I cannot reach it. Yes -- out of side, out of mind. No more of that for me. I need to start seeing things, even if they are a bit far away.

I'm a bit of an existentialist, so I don't believe in the pre-ordained. Although I am susceptible to stories that feature "soul mates" and destiny. "Jane Eyre"'s my favourite novel. But as for my personal life -- if I do tease myself with it, it always ends with mine thinking that it is not true. This leaves me, trying to figure out what my "destiny" -- "purpose" -- of my life is, in not a great mental place. We create our own destiny, the existentialist states, but this destiny is dependent on external circumstances that create barriers.

Like ones family.

My father watched "Casino Royale' for the first time last night. It was on USA. He doesn't own a DVD player; we don't have one in the living room. The idea of either of my parents buying/renting a DVD and watching it is absurd. My brother put my DVD player in my mum's room while I was in London. She watched one film on it. / My father loves James Bond films. Every Thanksgiving as a child we watched the marathon. I came home from the store, having gone to Giant Eagle with mother, with him bounding through the hall having just watched the long chase sequence that begins the film, beaming and yelling (mostly because he's 75% deaf) that -- "Daniel Craig is the best James Bond yet. I can't believe the beginning; they're just running everywhere. I can't believe this. I can't wait to see the rest," to which I, just as emphatically, jump up and down to tell him that I am so excited he has finally been able to see it. To which he goes to the toilet to emerge 20 minutes later, and I have to explain why Daniel Craig is on a caribbean island in shorty-shorts with a lady clothed in a bikini riding bareback on a horse, while some guy with blood coming out of his left eye wants to beat him at poker.

My father has never seen the train explode in "Lawrence of Arabia"; he's watched the film a dozen times. It's his wiring that he cannot sit through a movie -- and even when there are commercials, he must get up and do something while the film is progressing. Maybe somehow connected to his never eating food while it is hot -- making it, and then leaving it to sit out -- while reading the mail in the morning for instance -- consuming it only at room temperature.

06 June 2009, Saturday

In London, during my stay there from 2008-09, I lived in the completely opposite side of town from where I lived in the three months I spent in the city in 2006. If a person wants to know where in London is the complete opposite of Regents Park, where I lived in 2006, they would say Waterloo.

In '06 I lived inside Regents Park. Yes, quite literally inside a park. My school building and residence were next to Queen Mary's Garden, a famous rose garden, and the very large lake and park mentioned often in Virginia Woolf's novels. Transportation into the park was forbidden at sun-down by very large gates that blocked the entrance, closed by park officers. All I heard at night were sounds from the water birds of the park and occasionally, if the wind were right and it was just quiet enough, the bell from the St. Marylebone Church tolling the hour a block or so away, the same church in which Elizabeth and Robert Browning were married.

In Waterloo, the church 10 feet away from my apartment tolled its bells on Sunday every 10 minutes -- from 9:00 - 12:00. My surroundings here were not black swans, but The National Theatre, an embankment to the river Thames filled with restaurants and shoppes, Big Ben and Parliament, and The Eye. In other words, a tourist trap. Here I was stopped at least once a day by some person with a map of London in their hand, asking directions. Here at 6:00 a.m. I woke to Londoners driving to work, and the many people who walked the sidewalk under my second story flat.

Each place offered a different perspective of the same city, and similarly I experienced a different side to human life. In Regents Park, among the ideality of a park in the fall, the leaves of the trees outside my window changing into beautiful golden browns, living with a young woman whom I spent most days with, and travelled to Vienna and Paris with. We had an unseasonably warm fall in '06; even in December I wasn't wearing a heavy coat. In Waterloo, during the unseasonably cold fall and winter, I was stuck by myself in a one room flat, surrounded by flat-mates who I only saw when they were in the kitchen or either one of us were returning or leaving our rooms. At Regents College I woke at 8:00, walked to the refectory in the same building, and walked to class just the same, Williams poised at his desk, relieving the nighttime residence guard, his jubilance making anyone sour instantly glad. Waterloo Bridge -- famous for its view of the City on one side and Parliament on the other -- had to be traversed every day in order to reach Kings College for class and Tesco's for food. Once in a while I passed someone I knew from a class and said "hi." About as much as I would ever say to them. Even the picturesqueness of the river Thames below and the buildings on either side was not quite enough of an "upper" with the bitter winter wind hitting one the ten minutes it takes to walk the bridge.

In short, it was not so great in Waterloo as it was in Regents Park. But I think I gained from both an equal -- how ever opposite -- view of life. My experience at Regents Park was imbued with warmth (even literally) that Waterloo (again, literally) was not. The ideality of the one, and the -- what one may deem -- normal reality of the other, were both true. I like to think of my time in London in '06 as an experience that taught me the potentials life have to offer -- in short, a life that one is proud to live, with people you get along with (and, even, love) and one that, when you look around, is beautiful and perfect like well tended roses. My time in Waterloo was scattered with only handfuls of moments where I was happy, usually in a theatre seeing a well-known and acclaimed actor, and productions that have never been produced so well and never will quite reach that potential again. This was what my experience in London this last time was about. Seeing, for the first time, the dark side of a life that is not beautiful or well-loved, and learning -- whether when in a theatre or walking the streets of London, or visiting Cambridge University -- that although life cannot always provide the ideal, it is important to grab the moments when it does.

05 June 2009, Friday

Today I woke at 12:30, my cat Tigger curled next to me.

I ate a muffin and did things on the Internet. Myspace, Facebook, wrote some people, read about the disintegration of the labour party in Britain on timesonline.co.uk as many of its front-bench MP's have resigned as a result of the expenses row; watched David Cameron, the leader of the opposition, argue with the labour prime minister Gordon Brown on Prime Minister's Questions.



Argued on the Jane Eyre forum of which I am a member (surprising, yeah?) that Charlotte Bronte, though probably, may not have been pregnant when she died. Cited Juliet Barker's monumental (900 page) biography on the Bronte's as a source as well as Lucasta Millers revelatory "The Bronte Myth", which de-constructs many of the myths about the Bronte's and shows the probably truth, such as the false-hood to Gaskell's portrait of Charlotte in her Life of Charlotte Bronte as an innocent creature whose stories were merely a creation of her environment and not of herself. Fascinating read, and one that I hope the writers of the not-yet produced biopic of the Bronte's (called -- ingeniously -- "Bronte") decide to consider.

Bought a ticket to "What The Butler Saw", the play the Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre has currently put on.

I watched one episode of "Buffy, The Vampire Slayer", then took a walk around the neighbourhood while listening to Franz Ferdinand and Ashlee Simpson.

Watched another episode of Buffy.

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from the political section of The Times Online

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I want to like certain people. I think I will like them, get along with them. But it is as though I don't know myself, so that when I get close to people whom I think I will get along fabulously with -- people who I admire and think quite fun -- I then find out that I find them quite boring, or just don't like their company. It is as though the closer I get to someone, the less I find appealing. Most of the time it is probably because what I thought they were, they were not; or I thought I would find a certain characteristic of theirs appealing, but then find out that I do not. But mostly I think I just do not know myself.

04 June 2009, Thursday

Had a good day at the library. Was a little boring/punishing (some of the people I work with are beyond neurotic, which I would explain further if I were a proper writer, but really -- I don't care to), but had a nice lunch with Tom, one of my co-workers, and finally mailed out the letter to my English bank to have my money transferred into my American one.

I am listening to Franz Ferdinand. Their newest album "Tonight" is unbelievably good. Scottish rock group. If anyone is reading this, check this out:



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I'm reading "Being Elizabeth" by Barbara Taylor Bradford.



A young woman who becomes the head of a business empire. The usual for Barbara. Her "Woman of Substance" was the first novel I read that sparked my love for literature. That novel was so well written, so long and beautifully written. Ever since then her novels have been close-clipped and rather simple, as most writers who are popular but not necessarily award winning. Seems to me as though once she became popular she just decided to take it easy, make money by producing one best-selling book a year. Whateva, I still read them, although I'm disappointed in her all the same. Disappointment; I'm good at that.

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Advantage of working at a library is all the stuff you take home. Movies/t.v. shows I currently have.

Several series of French & Saunders
Jesus Camp (an apparently horrific real life documentary)
The Love Guru
The Wedding Date
As Time Goes By (the British t.v. show with Judi Dench)
Quantum of Solace
Bob Le Flambeaur
Arrested Development, season one and two
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 2
The Avengers (with Diana Rigg)
Wall*e
State of Play (British mini-series)

03 June 2009, Wednesday

I've never felt so alone. I live with my parents who can't provide for me, who have no money. We will be kicked out of our apartment soon.

I need to find a job, but am so depressed, that I can't even figure out what I want to do.

I've never been so negative in my life. I literally cannot write anything on here that is positive. Every time I sit and think -- what is good in my life -- what comes out is this.

Even the good doesn't seem that great anymore.

I've always been unhappy but figured if I worked hard that someday I would be happy. Going back to London would make me happy. I would finally meet people I like. I would finally establish a fulfilling life for myself. I think this life isn't good enough for me; I think I should have never been born; I look at the people I know who I love (but who I also wish were so much better) and I hate myself for it, hate myself so greatly that I just want to run away again, somewhere where no one knows me.

I am back home. The same place I ran away from. I am working at the library again. I work at the theatre. I love my theatre. That is good. But I am reminded of the aspirations I had when I worked there, of the things I thought I would one day be doing, and the music from the orchestra, and the people dancing/singing on stage, and the beauty of the old victorian theatre somehow seems less beautiful.

02 June 2009, Tuesday

Trying to be happy is not easy. I wonder if I should see a therapist, but I don't believe in them. I think they're a bit rubbish. Was watching "The Wedding Date." Love this movie. Debra Messing hires a man, an escort, to go with her to her sister's wedding in London so that she looks like she's not single. She tells everyone that he's a therapist. One of the British blokes say's to him -- "You yankees and your need to tell everyone else your problems." I thought I would like the English because they don't express themselves as we do. And I do. But it does become boring after a while. Conversation is rather lacking. But all this needing to psychoanalyse one another becomes rather redundant after a while. Every one of us comes to the point in our lives where we say -- enough is enough! Get over yourself! Just live.

01 June 09, Monday

I worked at the library today. This is what I did:

Checked in books returned to the library.

Put up holds for people to pick up.

Went to the cafe run by the Asian guy that is a block away. Bought white popcorn and half an italian hoagie, everything on it. And of course a diet pop.

Ate at the library.

Put dvd's in sleeves, and the cases on the security guards cart so she can shelve them.

Organized books in the bins for shipping to take out tomorrow.

Sensitized a load of books and put them on the shelf in the back so they can be shelved.

Left. Took the bus home, while reading a manga book set in the late 19th century, about a servant who falls in love with a boy who is in the upper-class.

31 May 2009, Sunday

I can't fucking write. That's what I think when I sit here trying to find something "interesting" to write for this blog. Not that anyone reads this anymore, but in the respects of therapy I feel like I should keep it up.

I used to write a lot. Like not just non-fiction. A lot of fiction stories. They weren't too bad, for my age. No juvenilia of Louisa May Alcott or the Bronte's, but not too bad. Can't even start a sentence for a story these days. Totally beyond me; no longer inclined toward my spontaneous, imaginative self. I don't let myself go really, I think. That's a shame.

Craig Ferguson being funny! So great!

You have to watch this! Do you hear me. Have to! I am making you. You cannot NOT watch it. So, watch it.

you tell 'em Char

I am neither a man nor a woman but an author.
Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855

stream of consciousness

I need to write on here -- even though I don't know what to write -- and everything I do is so grammatically incorrect and boring.

I want to write that it is weird being back home. I don't even feel like I lived in London most of the time. I feel different at home, like I'm a different person, a better person, a more mature person, but also I'm upset that I'm in the same place again. I feel safer at home. It is difficult to be in a place that you feel safe, but also feel is not a place that you would ideally like to be. London was ideal. Illusionary really. Really, it was. It seems wrong that I am here, but I was not right in London.

Now I've decided to just write whatever comes in my head.

I don't like it here. I don't like necessarily the people around me, while at the same time I love them and often have fun with them, but I also wish there was more, some sort of ideal person -- ideals for me -- an ideal friend, an ideal lover. I'm so alone I feel. Even surrounded by people I feel alone. That sounds cliche. But it is true for me. I am in my room and the wind is blowing outside and I have decorated my room differently than it looked before, but still essentially the same -- with the same books, paintings -- the wind is blowing very hard and sounds like what it does when you live on the remote moors of yorkshire -- I spent one weekend in yorkshire and heard the wind blowing and knew that was what is sounded like when the Bronte's heard it.

Fuck, I loved Yorkshire. I loved London. It was so good -- but so bad at the same time. It was good b/c I was somewhere else than where I grew up -- and I loved the foreigness of it and the people to an extent. But my classes were horrible, and, really, I think I just didn't want to do that -- grad school, no it was just the next step.

I'm watching the jane austen book club. Modern day people relate their own life situations to what happens in jane austen stories. But I don't believe -- and have never -- that what happens in her stories happen in real life. I always wished they would -- to a certain extent -- the bare outline of it -- meet a darcy (although I always preferred knightley, despite his brusqueness and lackaisadasical manner) well just meet one of these guys. You don't just meet them though. I don't at least.

I'm pretty negative all the time now. I can't write something here without it being negative. I hope this is just a phase, transition from naive young girl to wiser older woman, which transition I hope does not also include the dashing of all my hopes and dreams.

I just want to be happy.