1. I think it really hit home when we bought a freaking house last year. It was becoming increasingly clear with the recession, because one of us has a steady job, but we'd always been discussing the capability he had to take a career break for up to five years and still come back to the job if things didn't work out for my career in the US. But of course, you can never step in the same river twice, etc. I'm still really ambivalent, but you can't go home again so I need to just suck it up or something.
2. Oh gosh, it's such a blur . . . here's one:
"In its artfully arranged arabesque of unnaturalness, the court is itself grotesque. Exemplary in its decadence, its celebration of the exotic and the grotesque, it is most captivated by the grotesquery of one who does not realize his monstrosity but believes all respond to his sincerity. The Dwarf, presented as a grotesque figure of amusement, is actually closer to nature and in fact presented as a child of nature — a child of the forest who only knows nature."
I particularly like the phrase "artfully arranged arabesque of unnaturalness" to describe the Spanish court in "The Birthday of the Infanta", because I'd just spent several pages going over the history of the word "grotesque" and the various meanings that word had, and in that phrase I feel like I summed up several hundred years of art history while showing exactly why Wilde would be interested in using it. :)
That chapter was such a pisser, but I'm proud of it. And my supervisor and examiners all seemed to agree that it was some of my strongest work. (And it's a Thesis on this side of the pond.)
3. Very likely Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from Peer Gynt. Or possibly the final piece in Stravinsky's Firebird. Fast forward a couple years, and I would probably say two paired song from Cat Stevens' concept album Numbers, "Majik of Magiks" and "Drywood", but I don't think I started playing those obsessively before I was fifteen or so.
4. I actually "lost" a library book. It was a copy of The Robe. Um, I actually really and truly did lose it. And then I found it again. But by the time I found it, the "late" fee was bigger than the "lost book" fine, and it was out of print and I really wanted my own copy so I paid the "lost" fine and kept it.
5. Possibly worst and best at the same time: The smug ignorant asshole head of "Grace Christian Schools" (basically the umbrella my parents homeschooled me under during High School that provided me with an official transcript and made applying for colleges a bit more simple) told me (and my mom) it would be a horrible idea to go to college out of state, because when I met my husband, I'd probably need to settle down where he was from and then I'd be far away from my parents.
I know. The irony, right? Because if my parents had let me go to college in MA like I wanted, I wouldn't have had the money to study abroad and I probably wouldn't have taken the burning desire to experience living somewhere farther away than seven miles from where I was born to living in another country. And then I wouldn't have met Beloved. Or ended up an expat.
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sarken
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-17 11:40 pm (UTC)2. Oh gosh, it's such a blur . . . here's one:
"In its artfully arranged arabesque of unnaturalness, the court is itself grotesque. Exemplary in its decadence, its celebration of the exotic and the grotesque, it is most captivated by the grotesquery of one who does not realize his monstrosity but believes all respond to his sincerity. The Dwarf, presented as a grotesque figure of amusement, is
actually closer to nature and in fact presented as a child of nature — a child of the forest who only knows nature."
I particularly like the phrase "artfully arranged arabesque of unnaturalness" to describe the Spanish court in "The Birthday of the Infanta", because I'd just spent several pages going over the history of the word "grotesque" and the various meanings that word had, and in that phrase I feel like I summed up several hundred years of art history while showing exactly why Wilde would be interested in using it. :)
That chapter was such a pisser, but I'm proud of it. And my supervisor and examiners all seemed to agree that it was some of my strongest work. (And it's a Thesis on this side of the pond.)
3. Very likely Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from Peer Gynt. Or possibly the final piece in Stravinsky's Firebird. Fast forward a couple years, and I would probably say two paired song from Cat Stevens' concept album Numbers, "Majik of Magiks" and "Drywood", but I don't think I started playing those obsessively before I was fifteen or so.
4. I actually "lost" a library book. It was a copy of The Robe. Um, I actually really and truly did lose it. And then I found it again. But by the time I found it, the "late" fee was bigger than the "lost book" fine, and it was out of print and I really wanted my own copy so I paid the "lost" fine and kept it.
5. Possibly worst and best at the same time: The smug ignorant asshole head of "Grace Christian Schools" (basically the umbrella my parents homeschooled me under during High School that provided me with an official transcript and made applying for colleges a bit more simple) told me (and my mom) it would be a horrible idea to go to college out of state, because when I met my husband, I'd probably need to settle down where he was from and then I'd be far away from my parents.
I know. The irony, right? Because if my parents had let me go to college in MA like I wanted, I wouldn't have had the money to study abroad and I probably wouldn't have taken the burning desire to experience living somewhere farther away than seven miles from where I was born to living in another country. And then I wouldn't have met Beloved. Or ended up an expat.