3 Things

1. False eyelashes, when applied correctly, look pretty damn sultry. Adding that to the "someday I'll care enough to do that regularly' routine. Downside, you can look like a trampy rag doll if you put them on wrong. It's like lip liner for your eyes. 

2. Post-Modernism- YES. I have been waiting so long, and I finally get to do something other than 19th century literature. I just think it's ten times better when you say really bizarre, fucked up shit, but in the most beautiful and lyrical way. Yes, please. Give me more psychopaths with a mastery of syntax.

3. Halloween costumes-- really struggling. How can I be ironic enough that English majors will find me clever and not basic, but still recognizable to the general public, and remain attractive without totally disregarding modesty. I'm just asking for smart, funny, sexy type ideas. Is that so much to ask? Oh, and also cheap and easy. 

Rough Day

In Fiction and Addiction, the professor has made it clear that it's going to get heavier in subject matter. We've discussed the cycles of addictions, and the way people can get trapped in all sorts of things in a pretty terrifying way. We started with laudanum dropping, and ended up at how Freud thinks our dreams are manifestations of our wishes, and how that translates in our reading (even in scientifically, he was never very accurate). We've gone into PTSD, trauma, depression, mourning, loss-- tough class, is what I'm getting at.

Right now we're reading To the Lighthouse, which I'm absolutely loving and it's playing with my brain in all sorts of ways. He doesn't always go into the biographical information, because he doesn't want it clouding our analysis, but in this case he made an exception.

According to professor soul-suck (I actually like him a lot, I've just never had a professor that made me so enthusiastically joyless before) To the Lighthouse is Woolf's way of trying to write herself out of the spiraling depression she was trapped in, which makes it seem way more intimate now.

Taking that one step further, he read us the suicide note she left for her husband before she loaded her pockets with rocks and waded into a river. It's haunting.

Dearest, 

I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. 

I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.
-V

It hits pretty close to home. Still trying to shake it off.

Call for Action.

I'm not going to do a long blog about this, or even discuss it.

But every time I read news about Rebecca Sedwick, I want to cry. I'm so frustrated with this system. I'm so tired of ugly people, and the people that become victims to that ugliness. I'm tired of parents that stand idly by, and allow their children to become monsters.

But mostly, I'm tired that we haven't actually found a way to solve this problem. 282,000 students a year are attacked in high school physically-- I don't trust that stats on how many are bullied, but this number speaks for itself. Suicide is still the leading cause of death in children under 14. In 2006, and I'm sure this number has risen, 216 children under 14 committed suicide. It's estimated that for every one, there are 10 attempted suicides.

We're working so hard to protect our children from gunmen, but their real risk is to each other.

Writing Motivation

So. Much. Writing.

Why can't there be a class on blogging? I could excel at that. Let me write creatively without the structure of an essay, and I could go for days. As it were, I'm starting to run out of ideas for short stories.

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."

-Scott Adams

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
-Sylvia Plath