an exercise in satire? included with tangent about Napoleon, &c.

I thought of doing my IB French take home exam. But the thought of it made my mind go numb so I stopped. -_- Now I am delaying working on The Research Paper and feeling rather disinclined to remember that school exists at all. The only thing that can make The Research Paper bearable is hot chocolate and background music, but even with these welcome additions, the Thing looms like some sort of warring beast (weapon of choice, the papercut). Oh, blast, I just made it look even more disagreeable. I could also think about how free it will feel to have it done, but then when it is done I never feel accomplished for having done it, just glad that I don't have to do it anymore. I guess I don't like it because doing it doesn't make me feel like I've done anything. How much longer do you think I can rant before I'll have to open up a new document in MS Word and come up with a thesis statement? Not much longer? Oh, you doubt my abilities to conjure tangents from midair. Here's one that has nothing at all to do with the topic at hand:

For example, a while ago, I read Napoleon's loveletters to Josephine, and there was this one that I liked best, when the couple was having a fight. Apparently Josephine had in her last letter called Napoleon "vous", which is the French formal form of "you", used to be polite to strangers etc. Such an intimate relation as husband and wife would usually call for an informal "tu". And Napoleon went into a rage about it, exclaiming things like, "Vous! You call me vous!!!!!" which it was very interesting to read because, while lovers do not enjoy their quarrels, such disputes usually do look quite amusing to speculators.

Now that I've got that down, back to It. (The Research P.) Oh what a beautiful sunset outside - seriously. But I had to keep my topic, Religion and Science, because I did not and do not feel up to doing a whole new outline for a new topic, and finding sources from square one. But I'm still tired of the topic because it is so tiring all these people arguing about what God looks like and whether evolution is the end of us and such foolish things. Hum. If I could find a new "angle" on it then it might be bearable, but what could that angle be? I'm definitely not going to talk about Evolution versus Creationism and whatnot because it is so overexposed that hearing about it is like being whacked over the head repeatedly with a soup-tureen. But I really am glad that I've got to such a point that hearing about Evolution no longer worries me. It used to be that it would send me into a tailspin of doubts but now things are dandy and I just know a secret that makes the doubts I used to have look even funny.

Maybe the only way I can plod through this paper is by laughing at it. Maybe I will contrive to write it in such a way that it seems like one big private joke (but of course the teacher cannot know this). Maybe I can even turn it into a literary experiment or pretend that writing it I am some eccentric professor living in a tower writing a glimmeringly funny discourse on... What?! I think this is the only way. I must turn it into a creative exercise in gentle satire. Not the biting kind because that is not friendly and I cannot write something so unfriendly - but the funny, gently chiding kind that I like quite a bit. Ha! What a funny way to write a research paper. But the only way that will do to make it anything other than a mild form of mental torture. Suggestions very welcome on such an unusual enterprise. ;)

Plan B

, then maybe she would be a black-habit sister, with light glint glasses and sepia string rosary beads
smiling. With birds' hands. But when I look at her, some
rainy sunshine she is my heart a stranger
I do not know. everyone

My prayerful heart tells me: it's that a child's shoe is too sacred and it makes my heart go thrill that longing-thing, because I love

everyone

Sometimes I want, only want: step into the daguerrotype, to kiss an author's tophat.

Red boots, small names and cartography. It's the old sway of
Unicycle dancing (frame-stop whirl!) and
moving sunlight - winter slow!
How fortunate that we find ourselves together now.

They say it is like a big textbook. If't falls it will pin you under it.
Take care, but I kindly disagree. I say my magic comes from the stars.
And someone cares about
someone else.
(Sepia-string rosary beads,
tophats throwing
Frame-stop whirl.)
oh, always.

Some days I feel
such a part of the weather that I am
such a devout Christian, such a gentle pagan.
Oh, I can't decide, I never can in the rainy sunshine.
But how fortunate,
oh how (providential!)
to be here
in the rain with you.

favorite author

As I mentioned an entry ago, I've been in an especially fangirlish mode lately about my favorite author. Known to reference him in various matters and go glossy-eyed at the mention of him, I have in past possibly annoyed various friends and relations with The Thoreau Obsession. But he remains my favorite author and most fascinating of historical figures to me.

When I was... maybe twelve, or thirteen... and from then on - I came up with some philosophical mishmash that I held as basic beliefs for the next few years. I thought my ideas were terribly original and that it had been great fun to think them all up. But when I was fifteen, I discovered that in fact there had been a whole group over a century and a half before me who had come up with some of the same things and called it Transcendentalism. When I first found out about this word in tenth grade American Literature class, I was in rapture. I stared at the blackboard on which the ideas were written. I read the section in our book eagerly. I waited to pounce on the answers to the questions posed in class about Emerson's Nature. In short I looked at all the things these transcendentalist guys had come up with and said, "Yes! Yes I know, EXACTLY!!! I know!" etc.

I don't remember the exact reason at first, but it was Thoreau I liked best. Emerson and company seemed all very good, but Thoreau seemed positively exuberant. And as I found more out I discovered that indeed, Thoreau had been the one to really do what a great deal of others had only thought about doing but never actually tried.

The first wave of the Thoreau obsession was then, spring and summer 2004, and I must admit, it was rather embarassing, myself having been a rather embarassing fifteen-year-old. But, um, I digress.

But when I came out of being an embarassing fifteen-year-old all was well and good and I managed to be more sensible and more idealistic at the same time. Anyway, that's not the point. The point IS, The Thoreau Obsession continued. I read him, I read biographies about him, when I found first-hand accounts of his person (like Edward Emerson's "Henry Thoreau as Remembered by a Young Friend" and small glimpses of Concordians' knowledge of Thoreau and others) I eagerly read - no, devoured - them in a flurry of wanting to know.

The Thoreau Obsession has not only to do with his writings - which are excellent of course - but with his character. He's terribly fascinating. From his lone walks round the woods in hours normal and decidedly abnormal for walkers - to his reported tendency to be quiet and formal in company, until someone set him off talking about nature or his doings in it - to his enthusiasm and exuberance and positive liveliness (he is reported to have set off dancing once - to have played the flute beautifully - and to have talked to a great many people about a great many fascinating things) - to his earnest love of things, how he would stand for hours watching animals going about, how he would go off into the woods in any manner of weather to observe trees. In short The Thoreau Obsession has to do with that great longing which everyone feels for his or her favorite author - just to meet him once - just to see him going down the street - just to have one word. And with those like me who fall often - in fact at every opportunity given - into the past, it is more tugging and more fascinating to know just what it would be like to meet a favorite author.

And so I read most everything I find about Thoreau. When the seasons change I read the part of Walden corresponding to the coming time of year. I go to Walden Pond and walk all the way about it and my friends and I impart our own memories to it - when we had the Birthday Cookie on a little hill by the pond - and swam in a more remote cove in an emerald current - and oh, everything. I want to go so much now, in winter, because I have not seen the pond frozen before. And so I have seen the original manuscript of Walden, kept cased in the Thoreau Society back in the woods, scanned over the nearly illegible long handwriting, and wanted to fall briefly into the words. And now I have discovered that the Thoreau Society opens its library weekdays - it has most everything written about Thoreau - original manuscripts by him and those close to him - information - so many things one would want to know, seemingly endless volumes. And one needs advance permission to enter, and there is a list of most descriptive rules by which one must abide for going in, but I must go.

the good bit of academia, and more importantly the peace of the season

I have been quite good lately, writing on my novelthing often, and in the process moving the plot forward and finally making things happen to the already-developed characters. I love how much I love my main character, Eliza. I think it is a good sign that she seems so real - I wonder if anyone else who read it would think so too, or do I just think she is real because she is in many ways like me (only more exaggeratedly worrisome)? I hope it is the former.

Also I have made some developments in the story which I did not intend to be there at all. But which I am very excited about. Writing is so much more exciting when one knows where one is going with a story. I don't at all know the particulars, but I know what will happen ultimately, and what little things will provide the turning points and balancing points of the story. And it is so much more lovely when one knows one's characters so much that returning to writing about them is rather a delight because it allows the author to rendezvous in imagination with someone beautiful (even if the character in question does not realize it).

And I am enveloped in books. Stories are always going about. I am rereading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and am once more in the clutches of doing voracious research on my favorite author (Thoreau ♥), seized by a frenzy to find out as much as I can about his ambiguous relationship with a certain purportedly lovely Ellen Sewall. I'm also going to have to *sigh* write The Long Research Paper of the school year, which has made its debut terribly early this time because seniors have not yet gotten lazy like they surely will. But I think the timing of the paper around Christmas is not to be celebrated. Anyway, I'm going at Science and Religion. Exploring how they unite and whatnot and such. Hum.

But more important is the snow on the branches. Oh my gosh, it is so beautiful. I can't stop staring at the snow whenever I pass a window, and when outside it is like being in fairyland. Winter is my favorite season. I am surrounded by such beauty that stepping out is a religious experience.

heavy snow

"After a still winter night I awoke with the impression that some question had been put to me, which I had been endeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep, as what - how - when - where? But there was dawning Nature, in whom all creatures live, looking in at my broad windows with serene and satisfied face, and no question on her lips. I awoke to an answered question, to Nature and daylight. The snow lying deep on the earth dotted with young pines, and the very slope of the hill on which my house is placed, seemed to say, Forward! Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution."
Thoreau, from "The Pond in Winter" chapter of Walden


I love that ^^^^^^ description of waking up to snow. The night before one has gone to bed with the forecast of snow wandering about, wondering if it will really happen, picturing the magic if it does happen. Then one sleeps and wakes up and quick! - looks out the window!, and there it is, snow falling thickly among the pine-trees whose branches are already holding white, and there is the roof outside covered with a thick layer of white.

AHHH!!!

Oh snow. Needless to say it is happening right now. A lot of it. A really lot of it. The sky is snow-colored, the color of smooth creamy pages, and the stone walls around are topped in white, the roads are not ploughed or sanded, the bare tree-branches are topped with a perfect contrast of snow white, and the snow is falling in perfect peace.

I feel quite inspired. The thing is, I feel inspired to do so many things at once. I want to continue rereading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell at the same time as all the winter chapters of Walden and then read Little Women again because it starts in Christmas and I watched the movie again yesterday which is lovely, and write my novelthing Waverly, and dance about listening to Christmas music!