a nice weekend

yesterday i went down to London for the afternoon to see high school friends. Sh was on the train coming from edinburgh, and because of the "inclement weather" (read: FREEZING temperatures - it is SO COLD HERE), was unfortunately delayed a good 3 hours. so actually Kt and i went ahead with tea and glove-hunting (for me) in covent garden, then back to Kings Cross to finally meet the very delayed edinburgh train. it was great catching up with them; i've always kept in touch with Sh because of frequent Yale/Brown visits, but Kt i hadn't seen in at least a year and a half, so i had a lot to ask and tell her about over a cup of tea and a modest ham and cheese panini. :) oh and covent garden was very festive. there was a huge, towering reindeer bedecked in small white lights by the market square and all around you could hear the excited chatter of the christmas-shopping crowd. 'tis the holiday season! now if only britain could be less cold. (i'm sitting in my furry snowflake jumper, head hooded, and i'm still cold...! and usually i'm just in a tee shirt!)

i never thought that the day would come when i would want to surrender to academics.

sometimes i wonder if i am just an impostor because i certainly feel like one here, sometimes. deep down i know that i could do it if i tried really really hard, but... maybe i don't want to? maybe i haven't found the reasons to justify that kind of effort. it is so hard to go from big fish in small pond to small fish in HUGE sea of towering, crashing black waves. since high school, i have slowly been carried off by currents from the pond to the lake to the sea, but it was always okay, i just kept on swimming and somehow managed to stay afloat. i told myself that i was still good even if i didn't have a 4.0 GPA, even if i did not write an honours thesis. i had the praise of all my English professors who expected great things and perhaps that just kept me going... the Idea. the idea that i was blessed with the unification of passion and ability. now i'm not so sure. this essay is driving me nuts... i know what it should be, but i can't quite get there. i don't know how long it will take me. (i only have 'til 15 December though.) but i know that if i don't do this properly, i will never be able to think of myself in the same way again...

some people are able to accept mediocrity, but i just can't accept that i cannot do this.

A Game of Hide and Seek - Elizabeth Taylor

I want to start writing about books... since each week throws me two to four great novels of the twentieth century, might as well right? This will get me talking about stuff I'm reading in a 'fun', no pressure, non-literary way. (And I think it might be good for me to rediscover the joys of reading if I want to go into publishing...)

Ttoday I have been squirrelly trying to get through Elizabeth Taylor's A Game of Hide and Seek, which is a bit of a shame because her writing is to be savoured with a cup of tea. A Game of Hide and Seek is a deceptively simple book in terms of plot and themes; childhood friends Vesey and Harriet go through life, tiptoeing around their half-formed love, Harriet marries a boring but devoted husband a good deal older than her, the War happens, they are still in love. Harriet is a frustrating character in terms of her childlike passivity. I like her ideals of love and soulmates, but one wonders if she would ever have the courage to act upon her ideals. So okay you get a 'conventional' love story but Taylor writes with great subtlety and originality:

"Harriet tried to put on a polite and considerate look. She loved music, but could not allow herself to enjoy it among strangers. Sunk too far back in her too large chair she felt helpless, like a beetle turned on its back; and as if she could never rise again, nor find the right phrases of appreciation" (51)

I've often felt the same way about listening to music around other people.. it seems to be such an intensely private experience. when i know that someone is listening attentively beside me, i sort of don't know what to do with my hands and feet, whether or not to sit up in the chair. maybe others feel the same way too?

but the passage that really got me sitting upright, was one between Harriet and her good friend Kitty, who is advising Harriet on forgetting Vesey for the sake of her husband and family life.

' "Those magazines in hairdressers," she went on, "Those letters readers write in about their problems. 'Is this love? Am I in love?' As if love were a special kind of fish one catches in one's net... sorting through a handful of weeds, wondering, 'Is this the right thing? Is this what I am after?' But how can you catch what is only a mood, or a reflection of yourself? Forbidden fruit would be just as boring as the other kind if we ate it all the time."

"Fruit! Fish! Reflections!" Harriet said restlessly, turning to face the fire, her hands on the chimney-piece.

"Then let us come to Vesey. Let us call everything by its proper name. I shall be very harsh, I warn you. I shall use words like 'infatuation'."

[...]

"What does 'infatuation' mean? Or any words like it? I loved him when I was a child, I know..."

"And the idea of him ever since. ... Our feelings about people change as we grow up: but if we are left with an idea instead of a person, perhaps that never changes. After every mistake Charles made, I expect you thought: 'Vesey wouldn't have done that.' But an idea can't ever make mistakes. He led a perfect life in your brain. When he turned up again, the climate was right for him, tempered by your imagination. But his climate isn't right for you." ' (176-177)


The ideas are nothing new, but I love the way she expresses them...

booku booku

my malay is very limited :P. but similarly with french and japanese, one probably knows more than one realises. anyway, books! i came back with TEN books this afternoon. i wanted to get everything i needed before the weekend, so after doing some reference reading at the Bodleian (the best collection of libraries in the world, i think!), i proceeded to hunt down some 3 for 2 book deals at Blackwell's (i needed the Oxford World Classics editions of some books because apparently, Penguin is looked down upon in scholarly works...), and then went to the english faculty library to gather mostly Conrad stuff for the essay. i'm rather tired from just trudging around in the rain carrying what must be 1/10th of my body weight in paper and bindings. you will probably say, eat more sheila, and yes i will, i do eat more when i'm abroad. (probably because of the cold and all that energy that's zapped from studying.) i was VERY skinny over the summer but i've put back the weight i lost. just that it doesn't go where i want it to. i've always wanted to ask my cells what purpose does more fat on the face and butt serve. it just doesn't make biological sense! those places don't need more insulation or cushioning!

if people want to read a funny book, by the way, try John Cheever's Bullet Park, about American suburban life. it is the funniest thing i've read in a long time.

i've also settled my options for next term. pulled out of the Henry James class last minute to do late modernist poetry!! very excited. i have been doing novels all term and the thought of doing another term of James novels makes me feel faint. (my dissertation's going to be on him anyway.) i have really really missed poetry... and guess what? Geoffrey Hill is giving his inaugural lecture as Professor of Poetry at the end of this month. i can't believe i'm going to hear one of the greatest living poets speak.

i realize this entry sounds very erratically written. i will try to blog more coherently next time haha.

bridge to terabithia

this is the kind of film worth watching: it's imaginative, it proposes moral imperatives and moral uncertainties at the same time. it shows us the uglier sides to human nature but also redeems it for us though not in a fairytale ending kind of way. the book i've been meaning to read since i was 11 years old, but i never got around to it. has anyone read the book? anyway it's been a few days since i saw bridge to terabithia with WS, but i can't get it out of my mind. it's one of those stories in which the characters continue living beyond the last page/last shot. very few books and movies portray characters that powerfully. either you get a comfortable resolution, or you get the ending has you wondering, "so what really happened?" but with such movies, what really happened doesn't mean that much to you personally, it's just an exercise in superficial intellect/processes of decoding. but with Bridge to Terabithia, you are left still feeling for and wondering about the characters... they exist as real people - the fact of which is both reassuring and terrifying.

watch the movie!! you can stream it from tudou :P. good quality too!

P.S. have a tissue box nearby, though. we both had to reach for it, which is always such an embarrassing moment in movie-watching.