Looking for the Past

I just spent about thirty minutes looking for various and sundry people I knew from the past on Facebook. I have had a page for a long time now, but I seldom do anything with it. I wouldn't have gone there tonight had somebody from high school not sent me a message.

I think I found somebody I've been curious about since I graduated high school, but I can't be sure yet. If so, it will be the single-most useful moment of my entire association with either Facebook or MySpace. I am so hoping that the person I wrote to is the person I think I wrote to.

There's not much else to say. I'm still grading research papers. I don't think it is ever going to end. I only have one class left, though, so perhaps the faintest of glimmers is visible at the end of the tunnel.

Well, it's late, and I'm worn out from yarding today. Maybe the person will be who I thought they were so I'll have something interesting to write about later this week.

Busyness

This weekend, I caught up on some housework chores that I've been meaning to take care of for awhile. I redid my guest room so it now can function as a guest room rather than a depot for linens not in use. I took the bedroom set I had in my room before I got my peacock bedspread and moved a lot of my stuff from Japan in there as well. It's amazing how much difference it made. Of course, I now have to find things to go on my bedroom walls, but that too will be enjoyable.

Today, I did intensive cleaning. I think I folded every piece of clothing I own and put it away. It's amazing how easy it is to do laundry and how hard it is to find the time to fold it and properly put it away during the school year. I vacuumed up about three cats-worth of critter fur from all the carpets in the house, most of it from my long-haired grayish-white cat, Pearl. I still have a couple of things I need to do, but I am largely caught up. Since this week promises to be complicated, I think this is a good thing.

I also got a lot of sleep this weekend. That more than any other thing is going to help me. I feel as if I'm starting to fight a sinus thing, and maybe I slept enough to give my body a fighting chance. Almost every teacher I know has been struck down with the end-of-the-year crap, and I really can't afford to join those ranks.

I'm ending my weekend by mixing up my weekly batch of sourdough and watching the beautiful Mr. D'Onofrio. Tomorrow, I'll have to go back to the world outside my door, but at least when I get to come back home for five minutes, it will be a clean haven.

Making Peace with Hemingway

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
- Ernest Hemingway

I'm nearing the end of what has turned out to be a surprisingly enjoyable course covering almost everything Hemingway wrote. I didn't expect to find any of the works that I could have more than a passing technical appreciation for, and I wasn't overly optimistic that I would feel any real affection for the author himself, either.

For the first few meetings, those prophecies were fulfilled. The female characters were laughable or downright unrealistic. Scenes of brutality were displayed that I could not abide. Everybody died. I got mad frequently.

Somewhere along the way, though, an overwhelming wave of pity filled me. I think it was about the time we read Green Hills of Africa and during the presentation, we did some online research and discovered that Hemingway sent for the gun his father had used to kill himself. There was never a happy ending possible for Hemingway, either in his fiction or in his real life.

To my surprise, I found a lot to enjoy. My book to present was For Whom the Bell Tolls, and in it and in The Sun Also Rises, I found a Hemingway I could appreciate. Even in Death in the Afternoon, I found treasure. Despite the fact that I can never condone bullfighting, I was moved by his obvious passion for it and all other things Spanish. The writing in the Nick Adams short story cycle was wonderful.

I have finally decided to just overlook the women. Clearly, based upon what happened to him in his real life, he had no idea about what a real woman was, wanted, or how one would behave. I don't blame him for the cardboard cut-outs; instead, I find it a source of profound pity for him.

As we had the last of the novel presentations last Wednesday for A Moveable Feast, the pseudo-legitimate memoir posthumously published by his last wife, the presenter mentioned the continual presence of the term "emptiness" throughout the book. It struck me as I sat there that this was the key, the final illumination needed to understand this complex man and his writing. He was consumed by the emptiness withing. He sought ever-increasingly more complex experiences, ever more alcohol, ever more dangerous sports, ever greater challenges, ever more admiring women in an effort to fill that void, and ultimately, when the emptiness could no longer be filled, it swallowed him whole. The progression, the foreshadowing, is very clear when you read all his works back-to-back. The darkness always lingers in his defiant, deprecatory comments about suicide as a coward's way and also in the constant lack of a happy ending for any of his characters.

I keep wondering what would have happened to him if he had found the thing he needed to fill that void. Would his voice have been stilled? Would the despair have turned to transcendent hope? I like to think that if he had found the thing that fills those dark shadows of the soul that instead of a legacy of tragedy, he might have left a legacy of triumph instead.

Ultimately, I have made my peace with Hemingway. There are several pieces that I would read again and several that I will shelve indefinitely. I no longer see him as a misogynistic anachronism. Instead, I see a troubled man who loved writing almost more than any other thing, and I feel a great compassion and honor for the struggle.

A Nice Break

Today is the last day of my Easter break. It has been a nice four days. I needed a rest terribly. Of course, all my good intentions for getting school work done went down the tubes, but I feel much more rested.

Right now, I'm stuck in the class from perdition. I have, so far, done research for the paper I'll write for my other class, checked on my eBay auctions, read and responded to my school mail, and I'm about to write up the mini-report needed for my Wed. night class. It's amazing what can be done in 2.5 hours.

I think my class is the only class still here. Almost everybody else cancelled class tonight like sane, humane people. Only my professor raves (literally) on.

In other news, I'm reading a really good book right now. It's called Gentlemen and Players and it's by Joanne Harris, the author of Chocolat. I stayed up later than I had intended reading it last night, and I'm probably going to hide it behind my laptop screen and read some more in just a minute. (Shameful behavior!!)

Well, I need to finish up some work for Wednesday night. I might come back and do another post as we grind toward the finish line for this week's edition of Purgatory.

Where Is Wonder Woman?

When I was little, my favorite superhero was Wonder Woman. I religiously watched the Lynda Carter show, owned at least one doll, and of course, had the Underoos. (I don't even know if they still make Underoos, but if they don't, today's kids are really missing a joy.) Whenever we were picking imaginary people to be in kindergarten or on the playground, Wonder Woman always came up as one of the most hotly contested choices. All of us girls wanted to be her. She was pretty, she was classy, she could kick butt, and at least on the show, she was the only person with brains in the whole outfit.

When my Mom was on one of her "clean out the kid's old room" kicks, she unearthed an old Avon hand mirror with Wonder Woman on it and sent it to me. That in conjunction with my current lifestyle of non-stop activity made me start thinking about Wonder Woman again. I found and downloaded the old theme song for the show and made it into a ringtone for my cellphone. I took a picture of the old mirror and made it into a wallpaper for the same phone. I guess it's sort of portable inspiration.

I was in a daze one day and cruising through Wal-Mart, and decided that it would be funny to find a little action figure of her to put on my desk for moral support. (When my blood sugar dips and I'm in Wal-Mart, all kinds of things seem funny that may or may not really be...) I rolled down the toy aisle, and lo and behold, no Wonder Woman. No female figures of any kind. I remember thinking, "What the...."
Spiderman was everywhere, X-Men were cluttering up the aisle, Superman was present, but there was not one female figure among them. What happened to Wonder Woman?

I have heard rumors that a movie is going to made about her. I hope so. I hate to think of all the little girls growing up without knowing about her. She taught us children of the 70s and 80s a lot. She taught us that it was okay to be strong, that it was right to be honest, and that ultimately one has to do the right thing. That may be a lot to draw from an admittedly cheesy TV half-hour show involving a woman in a star spangled shorts, a bustier and pantyhose (definitely a man's idea for a crime fighting outfit), but I still miss her. The idea of what she was at the core was always more important to us that the TV representation. She was a strong woman filling her place in the world with passion and determination, even when that place was difficult or dangerous. I think the world couldn't help but be a better place if Wonder Woman came back.

Fatigue Poisoning

If you fell down yesterday, stand up today. -- H.G. Wells

I heard a new phrase today: "fatigue poisoning". I think I have it whether it's real or not. I am so tired, physically, mentally, and emotionally, that I feel like I could sleep for a million years.

School continues to grind me into dust. I found out that one of the very first people I knew at my school is leaving. I can't blame him. I'm happy for him. He deserves to go somewhere where he can be happy and not have so much placed upon him, but I can't help but feel that this makes our chances of doing something with our school less.

Such a small thing shouldn't make me feel so negative, but there are other factors that combine with this and make me need a break. Easter Break starts tomorrow afternoon, and I'm hoping that it will be enough of a holiday for me to limp to the end of the year. I am going to finish up a test I'm giving tomorrow, and then I'm going to sleep. Hopefully that will let me make it through tomorrow.

Purgatory

I'm sitting waiting for the worst class in the world to begin. I finally resorted to bringing in my laptop for a diversion so I don't smack the teacher and run out screaming. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is the post you've all been waiting for....live from Podunk U, it's Monday Niiiiiiight.....

I just got to fill out a professorial evaluation form, and while I usually try not to mark the "Strongly Disagree" boxes, this time, I was gleefully checking them off. I cannot ever remember a class that so frustrated me. Right now, I don't even care what grade I get; I just want out.

I think this class would be a good modern version of Purgatory: it goes on forever, there are no gains, and it's definitely painful enough to make one wish to repent of whatever wrong had been done to land one here. It's a real shame, too. The class had such potential to be interesting. That, however, was pretty much choked out of it within the first two class meetings.

Well, I think I'm about to have to pretend that I'm paying attention. In reality, I will be grading papers, planning lessons, updating class websites, and lots of other things that I know are rude. I'm past politesse, however. It's all about survival.