*Tangent* One of these days I'm going to write a long blog (possibly a book. Yes, I think it will be a book!) about the friendships(/rivalries/mutual hatreds/mentorships, etc) of all my belovedest writers - and particularly C.S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. They taught at Oxford (yes, Oxford! Squee!) together; Tolkien was 'Professor of Anglo-Saxon' with the Language Faculty and C. S. Lewis was 'Fellow and Tutor in English Literature'. There was a notorious rivalry between the two branches (Language and Literature) of English (they each made the other study obscure philological stuff and Milton) and the power of Tolkien's awesomeness and the friendship of the two great fantasy writers helped sort out all the differences and create a lovely solution to the happiness of all.
Tolkien, to add to his already substantial claim for most awesome man, formed a club in which the solely male members sat around drinking beer and, wait for it,reading old myths in the original Icelandic! Words fail me. My own claim to philological fame of reading (most of) Gawain and the Green Knight in Anglo-Saxon seems somewhat cheap and silly. Considering I've never even studied Anglo-Saxon and had to keep consulting a translation every time I lost track of what was going on.
I forget where I was going with this. Anyways... language is incredibly fun, children - where are your Latin textbooks?
All you sweet little pieces of sunshine - meant in an entirely non-ironical fashion.
I did some (fiction) writing yesterday, for the first time in ages. It was a good feeling. A very very good feeling, like happiness. :)
I wish my life had a soundtrack, written by Henry Mancini, Murray Gold or Alan Menken.
I haven't uploaded any phone photos for ages - coz I lost the little cord thingy that attaches said phone to the computer. But I found another cord... so here's my recent life in pictures...
Nice things of late: Warm pajamas & dressing gown Hot chocolate Having Tay & Jay sleep over Disney films Yet another velveteen jacket - this one has ribbons and lace! Making soup Pregant bellies everywhere - particularly the one on my mother Having the use of a car - heavenly!
I feel we're about due for a new adventure... I wonder what it'll be...
"Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde."
- G. K. Chesterton
Been reading a lot of Oscar Wilde lately. I completely and utterly don't understand him. In the slightest bit. He's sort of one of those writers whose sincerity is buried beneath a gazillion layers of wit and sarcasm and cleverness. If you sit down and read his plays and his fairytales and his poetry and his love letters all in one go like I did the other day you'll be completely bewildered and dismayed by the shallowness and depth alternating in such quick, clever beats. I know I'm rather homophobic (and freely admit it: if I'm going to be a coward, at least I'll be an honest one) because I just don't know how to deal with the issue of homosexuality. I (don't want to offend anyone! At all! Sorry!) don't know anybody who openly struggles with it, and don't know what I'd do if I did. My motto is 'love everyone because God does', but I don't know (probably because I've only ever dealt with this issue theoretically and not practically) how to specifically do that, coz I don't believe in pretending everything's OK when it isn't. If homosexuality is condemned by the Bible and biology I'm not going to sit by and say it's an acceptable lifestyle to offer to our children, but I really don't want to hurt more people's feelings than I have to. One of the guys from my church is a male nurse whose colleagues are mainly 'on the other bus': he says that all of them have at least attempted suicide. That's a demographic I don't want to go about hurting with my insensitivity. Wow, cleaning out the dark corners of my mind in public here. I hope I haven't engendered the hatred of any of my beloved readers.
All the same, I wish Oscar Wilde would explain himself. His stuff was so darn good. And so darn contradictory. And so bizarre. What was going on there?
