Windchimes

mind ajumble

OK, so I'm procrastinating again. I need to type up and print out four different "logbuch" entries on four different German short stories before I go to bed tonight. It's not as bad as it sounds, I've already written out most of it, à la main, just need to type two and three quarters and write another one. I've already got the main idea for the one I need to completely write; something about the difference in two of the characters in the story, and what it might signify, or how to, maybe, interpret it. Some theorizing. Ouch. So, that's swirling around in my brain, along with some mental reactions to the Elizabeth Bishop villanelle "One Art" and all the critical essays and articles I've been reading about it. I think that's my favorite poem we've read in that class so far. It seems like the epitome of the understated, self-deprecating, yet reticent...yeah.

Along with three journal type stories read for a French class, mostly having to do with mother-daughter relationships.

Totally unrelated, or maybe not, I bought a new kind of conditioner for my hair today, and I think I may take a shower before I tackle the Deutsch.

I've been wondering about something, and don't really know how, when or if I can find out the answer, or possible answer. Bishop was described, and described herself, as a very private person. She didn't like "confessional poetry" very much. So what I'm wondering...Was there some defining event in her life that left her....oops, wait a minute, let me rephrase that. Was there a particular moment in her life that made her recoil into such a private shell? She seems, from reading about her life at Vassar, to have been a little more outgoing as a college student. Oh well, I guess there were so many circumstances that would have made her very much value her privacy. Thing is, it just seems a person can get burned so easily as a result of opening up their life to too many people. I guess I'm just wondering if something like that happened.

I've heard people say that one should live their life in a way so that it doesn't matter how closely other people inspect it. But you know, it seems to me that no matter how a person lives their life, there are going to be "inspectors" who find something wrong with it. Unless you're Mother Theresa, I suppose.

Which reminds me, I don't know how many times I've been bored...no, annoyed, by someone telling me about how they're in such good health, or they look so young for their age, because they've never done....blah, blah, blah, or because they eat such healthy foods, or because they only have one cup of coffee a day, or they've never smoked, or never drank, etc. Totally drowns a party, that kind of person. I prefer the old guy who's been at the same boring job for almost 40 years, looks pretty darned good for his age and tells me, that's because he has a shot glass full of Canadian Mist at 4:30 every afternoon. Seems to me there's just as much logic in that theory as in the theories of the "i'm so good" kinda people. I've seen people who could have gone on and on about their healthy lifestyles die relatively young, and there are quite a few famous examples of people who couldn't have gone on and on about their healthy lifestyles who live into their 90's.

I wonder if I should skip the shower for now and go on typing, while my fingers are warmed up. Would taking a shower interrupt my (dare I use the "f" word [flow] even here?)

Soooo, seems these entries are not only getting farther apart, timewise, as the semester rolls on. They're getting more...something else, too. Garbled? Babbly? Random? On the other hand, I just wrote three pages in my paper&ink journal. The art of putting things off...

But I'll go now, and take a shower or type in German. If none of the journals I like to read in here have been updated lately.


J.H. Larrew
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