Explanations

Question:

"4.) Consider how physical and spiritual devotion are represented in two of Donne's poems. What does Donne's treatment of secular and sacred love suggest about the nature of early modern faith?"

Answer:

You, madam, are trying to trap me into specious generalizations. Just sayin. So, in short form: Protestant Reformation.

The End. Paper complete.

Bribery

I sent the Boy back to DC a week ago with my handsome Oxford Classics Donne omnibus. This is perhaps too obvious a bribe to even count as such.

I got gin to share with ADiz so I wouldn't have to drink alone.

I waited to tell my parents that I was dropping half my degree (perhaps to be followed by more) as I was fluish and sobbing-- my health for their approval. Not as solid as the rest, but it still felt it.

I went to N.'s party as a reminder that I can be an ok friend. And subtle as a sockful of nickles. But it was nice to see people. Why are his parties so much more civilized than everyone elses'?

I found a Replacements album I haven't listened to since high school to make myself write a couple seriously overdue papers.

I will send you a postcard, good and faithful reader, to let you know again you that I love you. And perhaps by the true ugliness of my postcard win your heart.

And I think to myself: 2 more years of this and you can go. Anywhere. But bribery is harder long distance.

Immune system!

For the record, I now have the flu. I think. Less than 4 days after being done with my sinus infection antibiotics. Is that even medically possible?

I need to be conscious and nonvomiting for long enough to get papers written, please.

We don't need no

M'kay, talked to the parents about dropping Early Modern Studies and maybe transferring after this year for the English degree. I need to go talk to program heads here, look at other schools, and perhaps get a writing portfolio together so I have something to show besides my underwhelming grades.

I wonder how many of my problems with school are caused by my own shiftlessness and lack of attention span.

Schedule for 10:50- whenever

The Boy is gone. Went with him to catch the shuttle to the airport. Now in the kitchen, drinking gin, listening to Blonde on Blonde, trying not to cry.

Good thing though.

Fact of the day

Best Boy ever. That is all. Post ended.





(Next will be about Milton and how I hate my English tutorial. Just as soon as I find some spare time.)

Timing

So I've been feeling kind of off it. Headaches, exhaustion, vertigo.

Turns out I have a sinus infection.

And late papers because I fall asleep while writing.

And it's period time.

And my room's a mess.

And the Boy comes tomorrow. Damn hell ass damn.


Maybe he will make me tea and snuggle me and watch movies on the couch. If I were him, I'd feel cheated though. I miss him but I don't want him right now. I was feeling ok week before last. He could've come then. Just not now. Ack! He's going to hate me because I'm sick and gross and messy and bad at school. Everyone does. I need more painkillers.

Noir

"You and me- let's run away to New York. Please?" he says. He sounds like a huckster or a hopeful child- voice pleading, softer even than his normal mumble and somehow too full of desire to be real. "A friend can get me a job at a paper. It's not a big paper and I'd be making less money but..." This matters to him. Not the running away with me (whatever hopes I may deny having) but getting back to New York. He wants to be a reporter, a real journalist, in New York with his typewriter and whisky and cigarettes.

He already has all three, a Smith and Corona sitting in a smudge of ash near the empty bottle like My Girl Friday gone sour at the end. Nobody owns typewriters anymore except kids who know that they may someday have to write a screenplay or a reply to a blackmailer and between us we cover both of these types. I have two, neither functioning, and he uses his to write what I'd call love letters coming from anyone else. But I don't like to have love and him in the same mental zip code, especially if it is just going to be a few city blocks, an easy 10 minute train ride out to the next. That seems like a lack of prudence, foresight, common sense even to me.

Which one of us is the worse romantic?

I think it may be me. It was days ago he said this but I still wonder if he might almost be serious. I'd run away with him, but what girl can compete with a city and a dream?

Education, again

School is distracting me from my academic interests.

I think I will quit EMSP as next year the program shall be lectured by a professor who has a bad habit of ignoring matters of substance for cheap jokes and take the last 2 core classes for English instead. I will then take my science credit and do my thesis that summer. I want to talk this over with my parents at Christmas. And with you, Becca.

Mostly I want to write about the women in Tom Jones right now. Maybe also a class on Hobbes. Or Spinoza. I miss philosophy since I am not getting any this year. Instead I am getting lecture after lecture about "hey, science happened. That's cool. Let's fail to examine why". And I want to find someone in the eng. dept. to talk to me about English literary smut and its influences. There was a period in the 1700s when native English smut was always advertised as translated from the French or Italian. Then came Fanny Hill and things changed.

Also, I wish I were going to an American school so I could take a class on Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty, those nice southern girls who write. (On a side note, I had a lit grad student try to convince me that O'Connor was male. How odd.)

I worry, looking over this, that my Literary Landmarks course has twisted me into seeing gender as the primary defining trait of literature. Boo. Soon, back to your normally scheduled program of lowbrow bitchin'n'whinin.