Wednesday, November 22, 2006

22: my mind is molasses

First: my dysentery has eased away and my CAT scan was clear. Thank you to everyone who left best wishes, etc. I still feel ill, but it's manageable, and I came to work anyway. I can only hope that this is an end to my health-woe blogging.

Um. Um. Ummm. This is the sound of me having nothing to say. Is anyone else getting sick of me talking about books or school? 'Cause I'm quite bored with the subjects myself. I think I talk and think more about school when I am not in it than when I am, and I have obsessed about it this month because I had to decide whether or not I was going to go back. Last Friday I finally decided to return. It seems like an obvious decision now that I have made it, but for many months I have been working under the assumption that I will live the rest of my life as a college drop out. I think I'm happy with my decision, although I am dissatisfied with some of the conditions for my return that my parents have set out.

On Mrs. Chili's suggestion, I made a trip to STAPLES!* to get dry-erase markers. They write very nicely on my mirror! I have put up Percy Shelley's** "Ode to the West Wind." I spent a while this afternoon trying to take a picture with vague ideas of posting it -- to, I don't know, show off my handwriting? -- but I discovered that I couldn't get a picture of my bedroom mirror without showing my bed, which currently has thirty four books piled upon one side, or myself. It does look very nice, though, and I am incredibly pleased with the outcome!

*I call it "STAPLES!" and not "Staples" to emphasize how much I love it! It recently opened in my home town and it is easily the best of the numerous new businesses that we've been getting. I have to leave my cards at home and only bring limited amounts of money, though, because in addition to my book buying problem I find it difficult to resist the seductive call of pens and paper.

**It breaks my heart how overlooked Percy Shelley is. Maybe this is just a symptom of my women's college, where female authors are venerated and held above their male contemporaries and family members? Because at school it's all, "Mary, Mary, Mary!" Dear Percy gets no love! And he should! Some of his poetry is sappy and awful, and "Ozymandias" is as overrated as Frankenstein, but I firmly believe that "Ode to the West Wind" contends with "Ode to a Nightingale" for the title of the best poem to come out of the Romantic movement. And it's probably on my list of "Best Poems in the English Language." Plus, Shelley's death is even more tragic and romantic than Keats' was. What's not to love?

1 comment:

Nora said...

I dunno, Keats' 'Bright Star' sonnet's pretty darn good, too. And I'm not sure I can rank deaths in order of tragedy, but hey, at least Shelley had a wife to mourn him and keep his dessicated heart at her desk, whereas Keats just had poor Fanny, and all she got were ardent letters and her suitor dead too soon.

Oh. Now it's three AM and I'm all sad thinking about dead Romantics.