Happiness and Wine

I was once compared to a bottle of wine; I came to realize that the kind of wine itself wasn't revealed, just the price of that wine.  A shameful comparison, mon frere; je suis une bouteille de champagne extrêmement rare.  I have been thinking of what it is that life is, and how strange and awful it can seem, and how wonderful and delicate, and so hard to hold onto in the end. 

Three days ago I came home to find a new statue of Ganesh upon my desk, on top of the copy of the Brother's Karamazov that my husband bought me, accompanied by a love letter written to remind me that Diwali was less than two months away.  My husband adores Diwali-- I was absolutely touched by this gesture.  Today he bought me a Brahma head to put on the mantle above our fireplace, which we filled with books yesterday (we needed the extra storage space).  He has given me a number of loving gifts; a record player, a kalimba, Santeria candles, postcards from the Musee Orsay in Paris, knitting needles from Provence, a phrenology head as a wedding gift.  In all the time that I have known him, he has never compared me to anything; he refuses to venerate me on a conceptual level, and loves me for all the things which make me human-- runny noses, headaches, bad moods, dreams that are totally flippant, irresponsible behavior.  I love him so much that, much like what Holly Golightly said she would do, I gave up smoking for him.

I have begun taking weaving classes, learning how to weave on these big, beautiful, amazing looms-- my hands are clumsy and I kind of totally suck at it, but I am completely in love.  I love the difficulty that surrounds weaving; the attention to detail.  I have to pay extreme attention to every move that I make on the loom, and the loom takes no prisoners.  No comfort is given to the weaver.  All in all, the work is hella backbreaking.

So, back to what I was saying about the bottle of wine.  I was juxtaposed against the value of another girl, and was told that I was like a thousand dollar bottle of champagne, when all he could handle was a fifty dollar bottle, or something to that effect.  I find this funny, because I have dirt beneath my finger nails and am chewing on the ends of my hair.  While I see myself as a rare bottle of champagne, it doesn't really matter, because love is a strange equalizer.  My husband has never put me in a competition with another soul; bless him, I know that there have been many times that I have not been so generous with him.  I've come to comprehend exactly how happy I am with him; how thoroughly fulfilled. 

Love, for it to be fully realized, must be so consuming that it becomes business as usual.  There are fifty dollar bottles of wine that suffice, and then there are those whose extraordinary price is no longer important, because it withstands time and it surpasses place and reason.  There are girls with shiny engagement rings on their fingers who have not been thoroughly honored, and kept out of convenience.  What a pity, what a shame.  I should perhaps be tipped over and spilt out of my contents, but will remain remarkable for simple being. 

Isn't that what the price tag was all about?

Anna Karenina/ The Devil and the White City/ Russian Winter/ The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist

Dearest gentle reader,

Since we last spoke I have finished three books and have gotten myself lost in nearly two hundred pages of Anna Karenina, supposedly the most important novel.  Ever.  This is according to multiple sources, including but not limited to Vladmir Nabokov and Orham Pamuk.  With names like that, what isn't to trust?  Reading is one of the only meaningful actions in my life; that, and the recent omnnipresence of weaving and giving French lessons.  I am sitting at my desk at the moment, this most locus that has become sacred, like a holy place.  Sitting at a desk makes me want to sigh in the way I imagine Proust did, and it makes me want to drink too much coffee, and live a life, whatever that means.

I have a test over genetics tomorrow, to which I stick out my tongue and roll my eyes.  I made a mistake with this semester, a grave and deep mistake that I am paying for now in my apathy.  Perhaps if I put in the slightest effort I can pull B's in my science classes.  For the love of all that is good in this world, what on Earth was I thinking?  Anthopology et moi, je n'aime pas.  Merde.

What I am thinking about Orham Pamuk, Jorge Luis Borges, J.M. Coetzee, Madame Bovary, Anna and Count Vronsky. 

Adieu, Bon Nuit, Manger mon merde, etc.

Hailey

On Cleopatra, and, you know, other things.

Three days ago I finished the extensive reading on Cleopatra that I wrote about a few posts ago.  I am so glad that I decided to read it-- beautifull written, wonderfully delivered, fully realized.  It was a fantastic merging of historical fact, archaeological sentiment, literary theory, gender studies, and social commentary. 

I say that I am glad that I read this book, because I am often nervous about reading a book on Cleopatra.  So much of Cleopatra's historic legacy is lost in a fog of personification, lust, obsession, and a desire for a greatness that was and absolutley wasn't there to begin with. 

I find reading to be a terribly rewarding aspect of my own life, something that adds beauty and charm to my day-to-day existence.  I cannot help but feel that reading is important, life affirming, essential, something tremendous and meaningful, and something sometimes difficult to attain.  Books aren't cheap, and time isn't cheap either.  I am feeling bummed out over my semester, because there isn't a whole lot of literature involved in it, and I feel mired in a pit of archaeological doom and gloom.  One of my professors is a former forensic anthropologist that delights in the relating of stories about headless torsos, skin sloughage, serial killers, and pirates.  I don't know what I was thinking what I signed up for a bunch of technical classes...

I suppose I actually do know what I was thinking, and I can relate the kind of doom and gloom that I felt in the days that led up to the first week of school.  I was feeling a real doubt in myself, as well as in the point of reading books.  I suppose I felt that my desires and dreams were of little tangible value, and were therefore of no use and should be abandoned.  This attitude is one that I often take, and I cannot wait until, like the skin on a corpse 3-7 days into decomposition, can be sloughed off and removed for good.  (Isn't that just disgusting??!)

Until next time.

Last thoughts of the day

So, it appears that I am going to re-try writing in this blog (again)-- and I just ran across my favorite video (you know, like, ever):

If this video doesn't make you shed at least one tear, there is an issue of perspective that needs to be addressed.  The first time I watched this, I was crying uncontrollably.  I couldn't understand why I was sobbing with this great urgency, until I was aware of how unbelievablely amazing the human mind and spirit can be.  The ability to create, the ability to express, this beauty is almost too much for the human heart to bear. 

I just thought it needed sharing.

I found the "Happy New Year!" post that I forgot to put online. Here it is:

Happy New (September?)

I might have lost my leg in the war...

What war?
The War of Love.
--The Felice Brothers

The above lyrics have absolutely nothing to do with this really, really past-due post, other than being a song that I adore.  Now that I am positive that any readership that I might have formerly enjoyed in completely gone, I can finally do something about my blog.  I don't know why I suddenly quit writing, but I do know that I have reached an impasse on my reading.  My book purchasing has overshadowed my ability to read, and thereby has become a chaotic mess.  I can't figure out a good system of organization for my reading list.  My husband, bless him, has the ability to make a Queue and stick to it, where I stack books and re-stack them to infinity, making no progress whatsoever.  My books and I enjoy a complicated relationship; I cannot do without stacks of books-- but lately, I have been having a hard time remembering what it is that I am reading and what it is that the pages are communicating.  My background in neuroscience is nil, so I am only assuming that the difficulty that I am experiencing has something to do with my lack of writing information down.

--Reading and diary keeping must go hand and hand, methinks.  I simply do not have the ability to remember all of the books that I have ingested without some sort of tangible form of record keeping.--

I have two stacks of books before me, one a foot high and the other three feet tall.  While I feel that the books take a divergent course, there is a sort of blending in regards to subject matter.  To decide which volume to begin with is confusing and a careful choice must be made.  I am debating between "The Invisible Mountain" by Carolina de Robertis, "Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions" by Lucy Hughes-Hallet.