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tarigwaemirAd Mundo Exteriore,
1. It's not too much for me to claim, I don't think, that I do not care for or insist upon chivalry. I find it irritating when boys jump to open doors or rise to their feet simply because I'm female--the elaborate courtesy implies that they assume a certain helplessness on my part. However. When I'm right behind someone, with both my hands full, obviously about to follow him through the door, I should think it's not a matter of chivalry but of the most basic etiquette to hold the door open instead of letting it nearly bang back into my face. In fact, he did it twice in a row--Greenough has two doors, you know, when you enter--and he can't even claim that he didn't know I lived here because we're in the same entryway. Moreover, even if I didn't live here, even if I weren't a girl, even if I were a three-headed alien from Europa, it's still polite to open the door for someone coming in three steps behind you, particularly when their hands are clearly full.
2. Am reading Oscar Wilde via the e-texts databases available through Harvard subscriptions. His poetry really is very good--I've only read his prose before, but I've randomly browsed through a couple he wrote while traveling in Italy, apparently around Easter time, and enjoyed them immensely. I'm not someone who naturally takes to poetry, in much the same way that I don't really take to music, but I think the years of psychosis-inducing efforts at "cultivation" on the part of our school's English and Art/Music department have had their effect. Wilde has this way of both subtly and not-so-subtly inserting Classical imagery into Catholic symbols--there's one called "The New Helen" that is unsettlingly beautiful because it subverts and melds the Virgin Mary with Helen/Aphrodite. He ends it in praise of a goddess he has named, well, the new Helen, but uses Marian descriptions, like "Tower of ivory! red rose of fire!"--there's something almost profane about it, but it's also profoundly reverential too. His image of Mary is somehow revitalized by its blending with the pagan goddesses and heroines because it restores power to her, who is usually seen as a flat paragon of silent obedience. He transforms the Virgin and weeping Mother, into the Queen of Heaven. I'm not expressing it very well, I don't think--what I've written sounds more like how modern-day feminists and neo-pagans try to reinterpret the Marian cult as another aspect of the "Mother Goddess" myth and sets her up in opposition to the original patriarchal God...but what Wilde achieves is nothing so vulgar and political. It's like...hm...seeing marble Greek sculpture in their original painted forms, the restoration of color to a pale and faded image. His Mary/Helen/Aphrodite is bright and vivid, she belongs to a hot and even exotic Eastern land, she is distinctly unsettling to the Puritan mind, but she is intensely human, not just symbolic.
Why on earth am I doing textual analysis outside of expos? HPTF English has brainwashed me, I swear.
3.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pornkings has been posting frequently about the live action Sailor Moon series lately, and with some trepidation, I've been looking at the screencap archives, mostly in a state of total confusion. I've never seen the anime or the manga, and only the first episode of the live action, so I have only the vaguest ideas of what the plot is about. Still, I've managed to pick up the names of the characters at least from her journal, and I was charmed to learn that Sailor Moon's romantic interest was named King Endymion in a former life. (At least I think it's a former life.) For those of you who are rusty with your mythology, Endymion is the moon goddess' famed boy toy, who "now sleeps eternally in a cave on Mt. Latmus in Caria, where his lover visits him periodically--no doubt during the dark phase of the lunar month" (quote courtesy of the Oxford Classical Dictionary).
To tell the truth, I only really processed the reference just now, when I came across a Wilde poem titled, appropriately enough, "Endymion". I don't quite like it (the poem, that is) all that much, but it clearly has slashy undertones that I'm sure many of you will appreciate. Oh, and Keats wrote an epic by that name as well, 1012 lines long and a little too dense for my tastes. I'm pretty sure there must be more "Endymion" poetry out there--wouldn't it be nice if someone compiled them all together and created a massive fic project out of it? I'm not sure exactly what you would do...but perhaps each paragraph could begin with an appropriate line from a different "Endymion" poem--not as a separate centered and indented quote, but as a line continuous with the rest of the narration. It would be a useless exercise, but I think it would give an interesting tangential characterization. Unfortunately, I really know next to nothing about Sailor Moon, so I can't say how feasible this would be or not.
I think I should go do homework now. >_<
4. But one thing more: my relationship with chemistry seems to swing between a dark, bitter love-hate and a depressed, angsty unrequited infatuation. I mean, at times, when I don't despise and curse its existence from the wounded depths of my soul, I think, "That reaction is beautiful," only to realize that I don't really understand it and that "chemistry" at the moment doesn't seem to like me at all. I should write bad fics about it to let the world feel my pain.
...Tari
Post-script: Psst...look at my new icon! ^_^
1. It's not too much for me to claim, I don't think, that I do not care for or insist upon chivalry. I find it irritating when boys jump to open doors or rise to their feet simply because I'm female--the elaborate courtesy implies that they assume a certain helplessness on my part. However. When I'm right behind someone, with both my hands full, obviously about to follow him through the door, I should think it's not a matter of chivalry but of the most basic etiquette to hold the door open instead of letting it nearly bang back into my face. In fact, he did it twice in a row--Greenough has two doors, you know, when you enter--and he can't even claim that he didn't know I lived here because we're in the same entryway. Moreover, even if I didn't live here, even if I weren't a girl, even if I were a three-headed alien from Europa, it's still polite to open the door for someone coming in three steps behind you, particularly when their hands are clearly full.
2. Am reading Oscar Wilde via the e-texts databases available through Harvard subscriptions. His poetry really is very good--I've only read his prose before, but I've randomly browsed through a couple he wrote while traveling in Italy, apparently around Easter time, and enjoyed them immensely. I'm not someone who naturally takes to poetry, in much the same way that I don't really take to music, but I think the years of psychosis-inducing efforts at "cultivation" on the part of our school's English and Art/Music department have had their effect. Wilde has this way of both subtly and not-so-subtly inserting Classical imagery into Catholic symbols--there's one called "The New Helen" that is unsettlingly beautiful because it subverts and melds the Virgin Mary with Helen/Aphrodite. He ends it in praise of a goddess he has named, well, the new Helen, but uses Marian descriptions, like "Tower of ivory! red rose of fire!"--there's something almost profane about it, but it's also profoundly reverential too. His image of Mary is somehow revitalized by its blending with the pagan goddesses and heroines because it restores power to her, who is usually seen as a flat paragon of silent obedience. He transforms the Virgin and weeping Mother, into the Queen of Heaven. I'm not expressing it very well, I don't think--what I've written sounds more like how modern-day feminists and neo-pagans try to reinterpret the Marian cult as another aspect of the "Mother Goddess" myth and sets her up in opposition to the original patriarchal God...but what Wilde achieves is nothing so vulgar and political. It's like...hm...seeing marble Greek sculpture in their original painted forms, the restoration of color to a pale and faded image. His Mary/Helen/Aphrodite is bright and vivid, she belongs to a hot and even exotic Eastern land, she is distinctly unsettling to the Puritan mind, but she is intensely human, not just symbolic.
Why on earth am I doing textual analysis outside of expos? HPTF English has brainwashed me, I swear.
3.
pornkings has been posting frequently about the live action Sailor Moon series lately, and with some trepidation, I've been looking at the screencap archives, mostly in a state of total confusion. I've never seen the anime or the manga, and only the first episode of the live action, so I have only the vaguest ideas of what the plot is about. Still, I've managed to pick up the names of the characters at least from her journal, and I was charmed to learn that Sailor Moon's romantic interest was named King Endymion in a former life. (At least I think it's a former life.) For those of you who are rusty with your mythology, Endymion is the moon goddess' famed boy toy, who "now sleeps eternally in a cave on Mt. Latmus in Caria, where his lover visits him periodically--no doubt during the dark phase of the lunar month" (quote courtesy of the Oxford Classical Dictionary). To tell the truth, I only really processed the reference just now, when I came across a Wilde poem titled, appropriately enough, "Endymion". I don't quite like it (the poem, that is) all that much, but it clearly has slashy undertones that I'm sure many of you will appreciate. Oh, and Keats wrote an epic by that name as well, 1012 lines long and a little too dense for my tastes. I'm pretty sure there must be more "Endymion" poetry out there--wouldn't it be nice if someone compiled them all together and created a massive fic project out of it? I'm not sure exactly what you would do...but perhaps each paragraph could begin with an appropriate line from a different "Endymion" poem--not as a separate centered and indented quote, but as a line continuous with the rest of the narration. It would be a useless exercise, but I think it would give an interesting tangential characterization. Unfortunately, I really know next to nothing about Sailor Moon, so I can't say how feasible this would be or not.
I think I should go do homework now. >_<
4. But one thing more: my relationship with chemistry seems to swing between a dark, bitter love-hate and a depressed, angsty unrequited infatuation. I mean, at times, when I don't despise and curse its existence from the wounded depths of my soul, I think, "That reaction is beautiful," only to realize that I don't really understand it and that "chemistry" at the moment doesn't seem to like me at all. I should write bad fics about it to let the world feel my pain.
...Tari
Post-script: Psst...look at my new icon! ^_^
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-12 07:24 pm (UTC)And yeah! People should keep doors open! Luckily most people do, or if they don't at least they say sorry.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-12 09:01 pm (UTC)Oh and the icon is this fad going around LJ--they're all making little pictures to represent themselves on this site and using it for LJ icons.
...Tari
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-12 07:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-12 09:11 pm (UTC)...Tari
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-12 09:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-12 09:34 pm (UTC)Chemistry = Bane of
IsildurTryogeru.O.o
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-12 09:37 pm (UTC)Just wanted to add that as for the second equation, that's because at first I thought it was shiny and cool, then it betrayed me and I fell into a river and I died.
O.o
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-13 10:22 am (UTC)I'm going to start referring to chemistry as the One Ring from now on. ^_^
...Tari
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-13 02:14 pm (UTC)Yes. Chem = The One Right, except instead of making you invisible, it makes you smelly. I have what is probably a lot of 1-heptanol on my fingers, and I am kind of...whooeee~~ @_@
O.o
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-13 02:19 pm (UTC)O.o
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-13 05:18 pm (UTC)There you go!
...Tari