I think it's weird when someone says the don't know how many people they've slept with. How can you not know that? I can't imagine not knowing something like that. I suppose I just cherish sex more than many people--even though it is true that I have had some fairly meaningless sex, it has never been as impersonal as a handshake. I've even gone through phases of having multiple lovers and so on, but after last night's conversation I feel like a virginal prude. The numbers quoted--I...I can't even see how it can be done. It would have to be as casual as a handshake, sex with nearly everyone you know, or you'd have to be living a life in pursuit of it.

I feel like I've had a fine sex life though. There's quality vs. quantity and all that--screwing more people doesn't make you more sexual, I don't think.

What do you think? Is 30 a lot? How about 50? 100?

All unhappy families are alike. Happy families are happy in their own way.

I just finished Atonement. There's a lot of interesting philosophy stuff in here. Like this:

"She raised one hand and flexed its fingers and wondered, as she had sometimes before, how this thing, this machine for gripping, this fleshy spider on the end of her arm, came to be hers, entirely at her command. Or did it have some little life of its own? She bent her finger and straightened it. The mystery was in the instant before it moved, the dividing moment between not moving and moving, when her intention took effect. It was like a wave breaking. If she could only find herself at the crest, she thought, she might find the secret of herself, that part of her that was really in charge. She brought her forefinger closer to her face and stared at it, urging it to move. It remained still because she was pretending, she was not entirely serious, and because willing it to move, or being about to move it, was not the same as actually moving it."

OH shit, realisation that would go in journal but here now b/c i want to write it down v. quickly. About holding things in, emotions and whatnot. I enjoy this. I do it so that I can watch the emotion or sentiment, watch it grow, nourish it, give it a fuller life, and it will grow large and I will step in and envelop myself in it. I do this with both positive and negative emotions...thus I love more fully and I my hatred becomes a all-destroying force as well. I turn my passions inward and grow cold and stony in the face of my beloved whilst a spark, a kindle grows up in stages to a raging inferno and I experience intense desire. While the other has no idea because I only compliment them in my head.

this is cool and all, but what I need to do is say it after i think it rather than merely think everything. I do do this, but it takes an extra step and I have to consciously think about it and tell myself to say it. I think this is what introversion really is, at its core. My thought processes are going on in a different center of the brain. I'm on an inward process and the speech doesn't go straight to voice. I have to shift it over, and this requires some processing power, which is why social interactions are tiring rather than stimulating. I'd say that nearly every word I say is pre-rehearsed in my brain before I speak. Writing, however, is different--it goes straight. That's interesting. especially typing--i can type straight thought pretty much. i can type at the rate of thought i should say, and it goes straight from brain to keyboard.

Other problem is that what's going on in my head isn't conversation starter material. I've always got some pretty esoteric stuff going on. I need to be in a PhD program where the grad students talk shop all the time. ALL THE TIME. I mean I'm reading the Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature and Wilfred Owen's Voices: Language and Community and Milton's early Latin poems for fun.

jeez, this makes me sound like an extremely inept human being.

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Being INTP is hard sometimes.

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is my favourite poet right now. He's so...punk rock!

At what point is one no longer an amateur at something?

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The offices through which our friends passed should have been described but for the fact that our author finds himself completely overawed in government offices. Even if he has happened to pass through them when they were at their most brilliant and dignified, with polished floors and tables, he has tried to run through them as quickly as possible with eyes humbly fixed on the floor, and because of this he has no idea whatever how flourishing and prosperous things they are.

Tags: gogol

I'm reading Dead Souls right now...the narrative structure! Oh! Gogol is with us throughout, I'm conscious of his physical proximity to the novel at all times. I am there with him, as if together we are watching a drama unfold. Yet he controls the camera, he forces my gaze on a scene, and afterwards, or at any moment, he tears the world away from me and I am in a dark room with no one but Gogol as he looks me dead in the face and tells me what I've just seen, what it means, or he may poke fun at the characters, all of them, ridicule them. But his monologue occurs in real time with the narrative; he takes opportunities wherein nothing important happens to tell me something. I know this because he says so:

Since the conversation which our travellers conducted with one another is of no great interest to the reader, we shall do better if we say a few words about Nozdryov himself, for he will perhaps play a not inconsiderable part in our poem. The reader is probably to some extent familar with Nozdryov's personality...

and on he goes for a few pages until they arrive at Nozdryov's house. The novel is surreal, grotesque, a dream. "They had all sorts of names and most of them in the imperative mood..." Consider this remarkable scene built out of dialogue. They are sitting at the dinner table, but where do they go? Where is time? When do they move?

"I won't hear of it," said Nozdryov. "I won't let you go."

"Please don't make it difficult for me, my dear fellow," the brother-in-law said. "I must go. Really I must. You will make a lot of trouble for me, you know."

"Nonsense, nonsense, we'll have a game of cards."

"Please have one yourself, my dear fellow. I can't. My wife will be vary angry with me. Really, she will. I must tell her all about the fair. You see, my dear fello, I simply must do something to please her. No, please don't keep me."

"Oh, to hell with your wife! As if you had anything important to do with her."

"Oh no, no, my dear fellow. She's a very good and faithful wife. Does so many things for me. Believe me, it makes me cry. No, please don't keep me. I'm an honest man and I must go. Honestly I must. I assure you."

"Let him go," Chichikov said softly to Nozdryov. "What's the use of keeping him?"

"You're quite right," said Nozdryov. "I can't stand these namby-pamby sentimentalists." And he added in a loud voice: "Oh, to hell with you! Go and make love to your wife, you fetyuk!"

"No, my dear fellow, don't call me a fetyuk. I owe my life to her. She's such a nice, sweet woman. She's so sweet to me. she makes me cry. I'm sure she'll ask me what I saw at the fair and I must tell her all about it. You see, she really is a darling."

"Oh, go. Tell her a pack of lies. Here's your cap."

"No, you oughtn't talk like that about her, my dear fellow. You see, you really are insulting me by such talk. She is such a darling."

"Well, then, get out and go to her quickly!"

"Yes my dear fellow, I'm going. I'm sorry I can't stay. I'd be glad to, but I can't."

The brother-in-law went on repeating his apologies without noticing that he had been sitting in his carriage for a long time and had been driven out of the gates hours ago and that for hours there was nothing before him but open fields. It is to be assumed that his wife did not hear a lot about the fair.

"What a rubbishy fellow!" said Nozdryov, standing before the window and watching the carriage as it drove away. "Look at him rolling along! His trace horse isn't bad: I'd long wanted to snaffle it, but you see, you can never agree about the price with him. He is just a fetyuk, simply a fetyuk!"

They then went back to the room. Porfiry brought candles and Chichikov noticed in his host's hands a pack of cards which seemed to have materialized out of nowhere.

Out of nowhere, yes! the whole book is like this, sudden shifts, time flying forward and backward, characters fading in and out of being, like Gogol is himself a magician conjuring all of this up as we watch. Which is unlike other novelists who do their conjuring behind our backs, as it were. No, Gogol enthralls us with constant motion, now showing us something, now smacking our head, now he's somewhere else. An amazing book!

Tags: gogol, reading, russian literature

It took me a few days to settle down with it but I finally read the introduction and the first two selections: Caedmon's Hymn and The Dream of the Rood. I don't have anything interesting to say about the former--Uh, it would be cooler if I knew OE. Otherwise, the selection boils down to the story of a man becoming divinely inspired to utter poetry. The Dream, on the other hand, was neat. First crazay thing about it is that it was discovered in a single manuscript, a collection of OE poems, in ITALY, from the 10th century. So, wow, I wonder where the thing was copied. It's also a cool read, a first-person monologue from the perspective of the tree which was cut down and made into the cross upon which some "young Hero" was crucified.

Beowulf is next, which I've read, but it was long enough ago that a re-reading is ok.

I want to start with OE soon; anyone know a good textbook? I have Peter S. Baker's Introduction to Old English; how is it? I don't like how it doesn't have vocabulary lists for each chapter. I need vocab lists--which words are high-frequency, which words are important to know...that sort of thing.

Tags: norton, oe
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