This is the (slightly edited and refined) journal I kept on my trip to Ireland, Wales, and England. Ie: The Worst Trip Ever. Literary references will flow throughout...ish.
10pm, 3.16.07
After spending almost eight hours in the Birmingham Airport waiting for our delayed plane, we finally are in the air. I feel I've bonded with my fellow travelers in our treacherous journey thus far. I am exhausted and hungry and slightly ill, but we are on the way to Chicago now. From then, who knows? We may have to spend the night--whether in a hotel or airport is uncertain. Even though it isn't Europe, it's still further from home than I've ever been. I'm dreamy right now, from the whir of the plane and the popping of my ears. I want to rest, but know I'll be woken soon. How full life is of surprises. My horoscope today said that plans would unexpectedly change with spectacular results. I'm feeling optimistic.
12am. 3.17.07
The descent into Chicago was like falling into something unbelievable--one of Gatsby's wildly exploding parties. As the lights grew bigger, I wondered why there were spots that were light less--only to recognize them as grey clouds suspended in the air below us. It felt like a secret sight, like the chimney sweep scene in Mary Poppins--something mystic and serene and utterly surprising. Now we sit in a clump in the O'Hare baggage claim waiting for luggage that will never come.
It seems that we will be missing out in Ireland entirely. We will spend some time in Chicago. We've officially nicknamed the baggage claim conveyor belt the River Styx. The airport? The Waste Land. Ah, life. I feel like a Beat poet, a vagrant, lurking and jiving through America.
10am. 3.17.07
After sinking deeply into the throes of despair last night in baggage claim, we checked into a Motel 6 for the "night" at about four in the morning. At nine we got up, thinking that we had to go back to the airport--they told us if we weren't all there with our passports we couldn't even discuss moving up our flight. They lied, only our chaperon had to be present. Now we're sitting at Denny's eating breakfast and preparing to spend the day in Chicago, as well as most of tomorrow.
Another night in the smoky Motel 6, but what can you do? It's almost romantically seedy. Our flights are at six tomorrow--so they're telling us we'll have a full day in Dublin. Life looks up.
12pm. 3.17.07
We're about to go shopping and to the art institute. We're bundling up as best we can and feeling pretty happy. At least Chicago has a fairly big St. Patrick's Day celebration--they dye the river green!
1pm. 3.17.07
After walking a literal mile into the 30 degree wind, I am writing this on the El train as we head downtown.
9:40pm. 3.17.07
The Cezanne to Picasso, Vollard exhibit was incredible. I love the Institute of Art, I could have spent days there. Favorite hands down was Derain's Big Ben. Then shopping and back to our motel home. Tomorrow we will sleep in and then go to the airport for our 6 o'clock flight. Finally we'll leave the US!
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
A picture is worth 1,000 words
So, yesterday I started The Picture of Dorian Gray by the fab Oscar Wilde. I'm about halfway through, and wishing I was reading rather than blogging. This book is great stuff. The story is enthralling, twisty, etc, the wit is...witty. However, I don't really like any of the characters. I mean, the painter guy is probably the coolest, but he's a little drippy for my tastes--takes everything lying down. The author seems to want to portray this as him being deeply engrossed in his art. Maybe.
Lord Henry what's-his-name speaks entirely in aphorisms of his own slightly twisted creation. He wildly influences the title character, and not in a good way. I abhor cynicism and pessimism in both people and characters. He is the picture of decadant reclining ennui. While this is a picturesque thing in the short term, and he is certainly the soul of the style in which the book is written...it gets old.
As far as Dorian, I have to say I don't have a good feeling as to where this is going. Due entirely to Lord-freaking-Henry's influence, he is devolving from a magical child beauty to a cruel and hard young man astonishingly quickly.
Although I'm not really feeling the characters (except for the tragic and beautiful Sybil...oh how I love her) I have to applaud the artistry of Wilde--I still want to read about and know what is going to happen to them, even though I can easily predict it will only go downhill from here. I know that Dorian will make the choice for eternal youth...I mean, duh. And of course with that choice will come tragedy and downfall. But hey, I'm so in for the ride.
As the trip nears, and Dublin beckons-- I will not only see Oscar Wilde's birthplace, but also I will go on the BRAM STOKER DRACULA TOUR. Florence Balcombe would be having a field day. Plus a visit to their alma mater, Trinity College. I just love seats of knowledge and literature.
Maybe I'll see a fairy ring.
Molly
Lord Henry what's-his-name speaks entirely in aphorisms of his own slightly twisted creation. He wildly influences the title character, and not in a good way. I abhor cynicism and pessimism in both people and characters. He is the picture of decadant reclining ennui. While this is a picturesque thing in the short term, and he is certainly the soul of the style in which the book is written...it gets old.
As far as Dorian, I have to say I don't have a good feeling as to where this is going. Due entirely to Lord-freaking-Henry's influence, he is devolving from a magical child beauty to a cruel and hard young man astonishingly quickly.
Although I'm not really feeling the characters (except for the tragic and beautiful Sybil...oh how I love her) I have to applaud the artistry of Wilde--I still want to read about and know what is going to happen to them, even though I can easily predict it will only go downhill from here. I know that Dorian will make the choice for eternal youth...I mean, duh. And of course with that choice will come tragedy and downfall. But hey, I'm so in for the ride.
As the trip nears, and Dublin beckons-- I will not only see Oscar Wilde's birthplace, but also I will go on the BRAM STOKER DRACULA TOUR. Florence Balcombe would be having a field day. Plus a visit to their alma mater, Trinity College. I just love seats of knowledge and literature.
Maybe I'll see a fairy ring.
Molly
Monday, March 12, 2007
So close!
It is only four days now until the trip, and I don't think my mind has begun to realize how excited I am--it doesn't feel real, and I don't think it will until the plane lands. This update is not going to be about literature, I haven't had much time for reading lately, what with all of the intense homework and preparations for leaving the country (many more than I expected). I have never left the South East before, the furthest North I've been is Washington D.C. back in fifth grade.
I have heard all these wonderful thigns about travel, how it broadens the mind, etc, and I am ready, metaphorically, to be broadened. Apparently there's a great big world out there, with no fences around it, and I'm ready to seek it out.
I've also recently (the past few weeks really have been a whirlwind) been invited to participate in a summer study program at Oxford. We went through phases of seeking scholarships, and back and forth, yes nos and maybes, but it seems like now it is really going to happen. So, in addition to some Shakespeare, you can expect a few alums. That would include...everyone brilliant, ever?
It's all happening so suddenly--I have to just try and be ready.
Molly
I have heard all these wonderful thigns about travel, how it broadens the mind, etc, and I am ready, metaphorically, to be broadened. Apparently there's a great big world out there, with no fences around it, and I'm ready to seek it out.
I've also recently (the past few weeks really have been a whirlwind) been invited to participate in a summer study program at Oxford. We went through phases of seeking scholarships, and back and forth, yes nos and maybes, but it seems like now it is really going to happen. So, in addition to some Shakespeare, you can expect a few alums. That would include...everyone brilliant, ever?
It's all happening so suddenly--I have to just try and be ready.
Molly
Sunday, March 4, 2007
A mini post
I have yet to read Hamlet, but after going to this website, I am more than a little bit excited about it. Go check it out! http://www.jasperfforde.com/hamlet.html
Molly
Molly
Thursday, March 1, 2007
A New Love...
though I know there's no such thing as true love. Once, before it's time to bid adieu, love, one sweet chance to prove the cynics wrong!
Okay, the above quote from Jekyll and Hyde: The Musical, has next to nothing to do with Oscar Wilde, but get me started on a show tune, and I can do nothing but finish the phrase.
I am about halfway through Wilde's Complete Short Fiction (loaned by a friend who assured me that The Picture of Dorian Gray was one of the five books essential to life) and loving every minute of it. Its satirical didacticism reminds me strongly of my beloved Lewis Carroll, an association that may mean little to most folks, but to me is the highest recommendation.
There are, perhaps, five writers in this world who I can barely comment on except to say that I like them so much there is nothing else I can say. Lewis Carroll is among these ranks, along with Russell Edson and Virginia Woolf. Similarly, there are books about which I can do little more than ooze affection. Among these: I Capture the Castle, The Secret History, and The Once and Future King. For me, these books and authors are absolutely essential to life.
Oscar Wilde has yet to ascend the ranks of those I can't breathe without, but I have already accumulated a great affection for him, mostly based on his children's stories and his odd little piece, "A Portrait of Mr. W. H."
Of his stories, well, if I were a repressed Victorian child, constantly berated and punished, forced to read book after book with heavy-handed morals and characters of the most boring Aesop's Fables variety, I would long to read his witty stories. They tell of delusional fireworks, self sacrificing nightingales, poor overly generous Hans, and many more paradigms of virtue and sin. I can see how parents would mistake his stories for the typical morality tales widely published at the time--and how greedily the children would hoard them, keeping the secret of his sarcasm for themselves.
I went to learn more about Oscar Wilde, and I found a bewildering number of accounts. Something I find very interesting, in light of my soon-to-be trip to Dublin, is his loss of his first love, famed beauty Florence Balcombe, to the far more successful writer, Bram Stoker (author of Dracula, who attended Trinity College around the same time as Wilde)
Something else that (only in a purely Academic and Scholarly way, I assure you) interested me was Wilde's description of his sexual orientation as pederastic, a very interesting tradition, which I will have you research for yourself. I believe the term he personally used was Socratic--oh, those aesthetes.
But back, briefly, to Wilde's work. I loved "The Portrait of Mr. W. H.", a passionate portrayal of a scholar and his utter devotion to a literary theory, namely that Shakespeare's Sonnets were all addressed to a young boy in his theater company, for whom he wrote Juliet, Desdemona, Imogen, Ophelia, etc. He created this theory in a way that made it inscrutable, impossible to deny, except for one loophole--there was no such actor. It is a fascinating, darkly funny story, and I must only entreat that everyone read it.
Well, we've Wilde enough time away here... (I know, terrible.)
Molly
Okay, the above quote from Jekyll and Hyde: The Musical, has next to nothing to do with Oscar Wilde, but get me started on a show tune, and I can do nothing but finish the phrase.
I am about halfway through Wilde's Complete Short Fiction (loaned by a friend who assured me that The Picture of Dorian Gray was one of the five books essential to life) and loving every minute of it. Its satirical didacticism reminds me strongly of my beloved Lewis Carroll, an association that may mean little to most folks, but to me is the highest recommendation.
There are, perhaps, five writers in this world who I can barely comment on except to say that I like them so much there is nothing else I can say. Lewis Carroll is among these ranks, along with Russell Edson and Virginia Woolf. Similarly, there are books about which I can do little more than ooze affection. Among these: I Capture the Castle, The Secret History, and The Once and Future King. For me, these books and authors are absolutely essential to life.
Oscar Wilde has yet to ascend the ranks of those I can't breathe without, but I have already accumulated a great affection for him, mostly based on his children's stories and his odd little piece, "A Portrait of Mr. W. H."
Of his stories, well, if I were a repressed Victorian child, constantly berated and punished, forced to read book after book with heavy-handed morals and characters of the most boring Aesop's Fables variety, I would long to read his witty stories. They tell of delusional fireworks, self sacrificing nightingales, poor overly generous Hans, and many more paradigms of virtue and sin. I can see how parents would mistake his stories for the typical morality tales widely published at the time--and how greedily the children would hoard them, keeping the secret of his sarcasm for themselves.
I went to learn more about Oscar Wilde, and I found a bewildering number of accounts. Something I find very interesting, in light of my soon-to-be trip to Dublin, is his loss of his first love, famed beauty Florence Balcombe, to the far more successful writer, Bram Stoker (author of Dracula, who attended Trinity College around the same time as Wilde)
Something else that (only in a purely Academic and Scholarly way, I assure you) interested me was Wilde's description of his sexual orientation as pederastic, a very interesting tradition, which I will have you research for yourself. I believe the term he personally used was Socratic--oh, those aesthetes.
But back, briefly, to Wilde's work. I loved "The Portrait of Mr. W. H.", a passionate portrayal of a scholar and his utter devotion to a literary theory, namely that Shakespeare's Sonnets were all addressed to a young boy in his theater company, for whom he wrote Juliet, Desdemona, Imogen, Ophelia, etc. He created this theory in a way that made it inscrutable, impossible to deny, except for one loophole--there was no such actor. It is a fascinating, darkly funny story, and I must only entreat that everyone read it.
Well, we've Wilde enough time away here... (I know, terrible.)
Molly
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