Pilfered this from Nita.

Stunning Movies (no order)
1. Chicago
2. Moulin Rouge
3. Pride and Prejudice
4. Sense and Sensibility
5. Bridget Jones' Diary
6. Cabaret
7. Pretty Woman
8. Breakfast at Tiffany's
9. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

8 Great Actresses (no order)
1. Kate Winslet
2. Renee Zellweger
3. Nicole Kidman
4. Catherine Zeta-Jones
5. Audrey Hepburn
6. Marilyn Monore
7. Cate Blanchett
8. Gwenyth Paltrow


7 Lovely Actors (no order)
1. Alan Rickman
2. Richard Gere
3. Ewan McGregor
4. Ralph Fiennes
5. Hugh Jackman
6. Colin Firth
7. Hayden Christensen


5 Delicious TV Series (no order)
1. I Dream of Jeannie
2. Sex and the City
3. Friends
4. Six Feet Under
5. . . . ? I really don't watch TV reguarly.


4 Amazing Bands/Singers (no order)
1. Norah Jones
2. John Mayer
3. Bruce Springsteen
4. Tori Amos


3 Breathtaking Songs (no order)
1. "Come Away With Me," Norah Jones
2. "Nowadays," from Chicago.
3. "Your Body is a Wonderland," John Mayer


2 Loveable Characters
1. Gilbert Blythe from Anne of Green Gables
2. Mark Darcy from Bridget Jones's Diary


1 Unforgettable Line
"You know those days when you get the mean reds? Well, I just hop in a cab and go right down to Tiffany's." ~Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany's

I really am going to finish my research paper-- it's only been a peculiar combination of involuntary sleep, compulsive procrastination, and furious chugging of Dasani water that has prevented me thus far. But I must say, I'm a little worried about turning it in. Especially when last class period, I lamblasted a fellow (idiot, really-- women working outside the home was non-traditional in the fifties, not 2003) student for being horribly afraid of ending his sentences. What will he say when I turn up with my paragraph-long thesis? And let's be honest. . . you know me. There's fairly liberal use of dashes in my poor, scatterbrained paper. I must subconciously think I'm the intellectual heir to Miss Dickinson. I don't think I even want to imagine this dialogue. . .

Him: Your sentences are too long.

And what, I ask you, can I say? "My long sentences are more coherant then your long sentences?"

Honestly.

There are few pleasures more instinctive than good books-- I can't help but feel terribly mournful on behalf of those who don't know what it's like to have the love of type in your blood. I read, my neck bent so that it cramps, the sun hot on my skin, the muscles in my shoulders tight and cramped, and think that there's nothing more beautiful than stories, than words. I hate to assign politics to books, really, so even as I thrill to literary interpretations like feminist criticism, part of me (the sentimental, out at elbows young girl who stubbornly reads the unabridged version of Les Miserables) folds her arms and stares stubbornly at Virgina Woolf. She says why do you bother, twisting and unfurling her words? It's (just) Mrs. Dalloway, and you know that it doesn't matter how you apply Marxism to William Wordsworth, he's still golden-yellow and dark woods in an old-fashioned parlor, and there's no better way to spend a March afternoon than reading his verse.

Then I read Alice Munro's Love of a Good Woman during my lunch break, as the clouded light falls across the narrow benches and people talk noisely on cell phones, filling up silences I didn't know were there, I catch my breath. There can't be anything in the world more perfect than this: Because of the pill his thoughts stretch out long and gauzy and lit up like vapor trails. He travels a thought that has to do with staying here, with listening to Sonje talk about Jakarta while the wind blows sand off the dunes. . .a thought that has to do with not having to go on, to go home.

It's coming home, these narrow lines of prose. And it's me, tucked within a story, my veins slipping loose as the phrases trail to an incomplete end. I want to say it's completely universal, that everyone feels the same way. But I want to hide it too, hoard it away like a box of chocolates, and pluck just one out. Let it melt sinfully in my mouth, sink into my teeth and tongue. Know that it's mine, that I own the words, that I alone understand how to feel as I read, but I know it's not true.

I think, after all, that I am O.K. with that, in a childhood sort of way.

Took (stole) a leaf from Lady C's book and gave audblog a shot. Now you can hear my lovely voice read you a poem!


audblog audio post

Cordelia is one of the sweetest people I know. Love her. I demand it of you.

That is all.

P.S. Have added Crystal to my links, who is otherwise known as Finding Beauty, who inspired a not inconsiderable amount of my Moulin Rouge stories. I realize this postcript makes me rather verbose, but I trust this is not wholly unexpected.

Sometimes, in between the quiet moments of sitting alone and drawing faint lines on paper with watercolour crayons, I look up at the sky. Pale grey, pale blue, and I think that heaven's been washed out with someone else's brush. I feel wrung out and dead-tired of everything, and I want to rest. To be reassured that yes, I am important to somebody else, enough to ask how I am today.

Ask me what the story is, and I'lll want to tell you that I feel restless and alone. I'll want to remind myself that it's okay for me to be a little sad and confused and lost too, that everybody gets down once in a while. I'll want to say something about how I could use some flowers wrapped in cellophane or a bottle of sparkling water to share outside my window, but of course I'll just say: I'm fine, and leave it at that.