I've resigned!

Reprinted from Facebook: Terror

What is one supposed to do when one's life begins the stately swirl into a Forster novel? When all the aching introspection and mistrust come into your sunny suburban life, without even being good enough to bring some of the servants and culture along with them? When one begins (fairly or not) to identify with those cool, genteel people and project some of those Edwardian malaises of Empire in decline onto one's friends and situation, can one do what the heroines would? Can one muster either the conviction of one or the courage of the other? Tentative answer: No.

The nature of surety

I wonder. I wonder if I’ve chosen well. I wonder if I’ve even chosen. I avoid choices, so often. Make my life into a series of events which happen to me, calamities and blessings which rain down like a shower of golden coins, falling heads up or tails, weal or woe.

I know things. I know things about myself. Are they good things? Mostly not. I am sure of my pettiness, my judgmentalism, and my selfishness. Maybe no more than the next person, but I know them. They are like old childhood friends, the memories of which may embarrass or hurt, but whom can no more be exorcised from memory than the smell of bread, or the feel of cold water. Knowing these things, can I then filter my thoughts and feelings, before deciding? Before making the choice to accept a choice?

What else? Is it worse to go on with doubts or to not go on with doubts? I’m unsure.
Is what I hope for impossible? I’m unsure.
Am I sure of anything?

Wharton Update

Having listened to Ethan Frome (via librivox.org, to which I advise all of you to hasten), I am thinking back to high school, wondering what all the kvetching was about. Admittedly, it was depressing. Admittedly, if it had a moral, it was ambigious at best. Admittedly, either Edith Wharton invented a good chunk of the clichés used in modern Anglophone literature, or she couldn't be bothered to develop a metaphor of her own. Sure, it seemed a transparent attempt to ease her own guilt at her infidelities to her husband.

But hey, at least it was short!

This technology is mad, I tell you!

Responsibility

If I'm to return to school, I may as well get ready for it now. Mostly, I'm all too happy - mending my sweaters, polishing my boots, knitting new warm-keepers, etc. However, as an English Education major, I really should reread all the required High School books. Which is again, fine. Anything had to read then tended to be short.

But.

I managed to escape from my primary education without having read one book. I switched from regular to AP English just in time, and side-stepped it. The infamous. Ethan Frome.

I've read Wharton. I actually kind of liked Summer, though I need to read it again and see if it's as creepy as I remember it. But Ethan Frome, man! I thought I'd never have to suffer it. Ah well. I suppose I'll have to in order to inflict it on my future pupils, as I can't imagine going all Ursula Brangwen on the little monsters and whipping them.