My One True Love…

…really is academia.
That is so sad. So so so sad.

Unabashed Nerdiness.

It’s one of those, “How many of these Great Books of Literature have you read?” memes. And ignoring the unabashed, um, favoritism shown in this particular one, you know I can’t resist a nerdy task like this.

The bolded ones I have read.

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

2. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

6. Ulysses by James Joyce

7. Beloved by Toni Morrison

8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding

9. 1984 by George Orwell

10. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov

12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

13. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

17. Animal Farm by George Orwell

18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

22. Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne

23. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

26. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

27. Native Son by Richard Wright

28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

29. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

31. On the Road by Jack Kerouac

32. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

33. The Call of the Wild by Jack London

34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

35. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin

37. The World According to Garp by John Irving

38. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren

39. A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

40. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

41. Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally

42. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

43. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

44. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce

45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

46. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

48. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence

49. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

50. The Awakening by Kate Chopin

51. My Antonia by Willa Cather

52. Howard’s End by E.M. Forster

53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

56. Jazz by Toni Morrison

57. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron

58. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

59. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor

62. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf

64. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence

65. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

66. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles

68. Light in August by William Faulkner

69. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James

70. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

71. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

72. A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs

74. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

75. Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence

76. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe

77. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway

78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Tokias by Gertrude Stein

79. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer

81. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

82. White Noise by Don DeLillo

83. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

85. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

86. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

87. The Bostonians by Henry James

88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

89. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

90. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

91. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

92. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

93. The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles

94. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

95. Kim by Rudyard Kipling

96. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald

97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike

98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster

99. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

100. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

09 December 2005.

Will I ever dis-remember?

brief paragraphs that quicken my heartbeat — a slow dissolve into an ache that had only stopped during the writing of and reading of brief paragraphs. brief paragraphs that blur as i begin to cry, silently, because all they do is remind me of how far we have strayed, even as they remind me precisely of how bittersweet it is that we have not strayed that far at all. brief paragraphs that rose, unbidden, without reason or rationale — because i am selfish? because i am restless? brief paragraphs that resound with longing, a fervent echoing of saudade because as ive said, it cant be a return, so it must be a departure.

Sister asked in irritation, Why can’t you just get over it? It was such a long time ago.

I hope that she never has to get over “it.”

My Poor Neglected Journal.

I think that the death of online blogging (which, lets be honest, led to the [partial?] death of paper journal-ing) is due in part to the rise of Facebook and Twitter and the like. Who wants to slog through paragraphs and paragraphs of thoughts and problems and complexities when you can just read a two sentence blip about frivolous and trivial (trivolous?) fun?

I’m out of practice, for real reals.

I wrote relatively steadily throughout the summer. But being back in San Diego, back in the land of academia and stress has a way of sucking me dry of creativity and thoughtfulness, sometimes due to sheer exhaustion (teaching + grading + researching + writing = I love my bed), and sometimes due to crankiness. I forget how good it is for myself to actually write, how good it feels to get back into the swing of things, even if all I am writing about is a tube of lipgloss I really love or a perfect poached egg (I made one today! So proud of myself), and ranging all the way to, of course, the life of being a grad student, farmhand, QOC, and, most recently, in love (and terrified, don’t you know).

I need to get back into it.

So here is my resolution (how very Nick Lachey of me): I will post three times a week, minimum.

I know the world is supposed to end with a whimper, but hell if I’m going to let this journal die that way.

I am trying to figure out if this LiveJournal is dead or not.

I really have no answer at this point.

Precisely.

"…and yet, [Richard Wright] said, ‘My home is over there,’ tilting his head in the direction of the ocean he was about to cross. My anger, he meant, my struggle, my inspiration as an artist – ‘for writing it is great’ – are over there."

– Wright’s elaboration on the States while in Paris, and exactly how I felt while in Scotland.

Just a Thought.

When you make monumental life decisions that,
in some way or another, affect my life,
and I am unaware not only of the decision being made,
but that there was a decision being made at all,
that makes me freak the fuck out.

Also, it makes me want to exert control over my life
in any way I can.
Like going to see Frenchie.

Pictures of You.

Wow.
I gotsta get the hell out of here.
It’s not even that I need to get back to Scotland (which I do),
but more just that this whole situation is fucking lame.

Dear Scotland.

Can I come back now? xx.

Love,
- Y.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

– "i carry your heart with me," e.e. cummings.