The week passes by so quickly. A feast, the lighthouse, a movie, Pride and Prejudice, Iman, cakes, car boot sales, coffee, lectures, Joyce, meteor shower, the sea, ice cream, the airport, late night conversations, the scene, crying, convergence, thesis, dinners, invitations, more coffee and teh tarik.
The Mrs Dalloway tutorial seemed, trite. The tutor is perhaps absent in her teaching. S sat beside me and she too, seemed bored, and did her Kanji instead. I mentioned The Hours. The guy in front of me seemed to want to bring something, saying that Richard and Septimus was the embodiment of pre-modernists, unable to convey their emotions, repress their thoughts, masculinity, that do not burst in every direction. (That is why he can only internalize, handing her a bunch of flowers, holding Clarissa’s hands, “This is happiness.” He cannot say ‘I love you’). But of course, any single serious attempt for a serious discussion was discarded by a remark or two about Aspie’s or reading off the traits of what makes a Modernist text Modernist – anxiety, chaos, thoughts, disarray. Such a text book, superficial, approach rather than to shoot off in different directions to form the whole to me is a waste of time. One must be given time to fool around with ideas and possibilities and express it. But we brave through.
The lecturer was fun. She mentioned a lot from A Room of One’s Own, perhaps Woolf’s most famous essay. I read it about a year ago, liked it immensely. For there she was, Woolf, explaining how women in the old days did not even have access to the library, or that Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre isn’t really womanly in her “rage”, or how even if the women of her day wrote more and had access to more thing, how poorly do they write (“!”). A woman must have, to write creatively – she lists this out – economic independence, a room of one’s own (mental and physical), education, a press, freedom of mind, experience of the world, a support group (resource), and finally she musn’t be conscious of being a woman. That is, to me, one musn’t cry out that one is a woman, and her condition unjust, but one must simply be (think Pride and Prejudice‘s versus Jane Eyre).
You see, perhaps I have nothing better to do than to read novels and poetry concerning the loss of innocence or inexplicable sadness or the anxiety of love. I feel as I am, unfeeling. Perhaps the way that I maintain my sanity is to read and permeate into the insanity and absurdity of others. Perhaps in reading do I draw my enjoyment in understanding of people, ideas, and the world. Of life itself.
Last night I watched Despicable Me 2, courtesy of Kak Z.. It is one of those movies that one doesn’t have to think too much (or at all). One wonders at the function of this particular scene (and soon, countless others), except to induce laughter. A formulaic plot; Save the world. One wonder at the particulars the adults are concerned about; dating someone, finding love, becoming a good father. Children; fairies, mother, headbands, ‘boyfriends’, dancing. All trivial. It is interesting to note, at her birthday, although Agnes realized Grew (Groo?) was pretending to be a fairy, she lets him be. The maintenance of fantasy – we let ourselves be lulled by unrealistic scenes and monsters for we take comfort in the little moments of fleeting happiness it gives us.
Perhaps I am just more amused by words and sentences.
perkaraperkara 