Monday, December 06, 2004
 

Stuff and Nonsense

Alice was sleeping with her head against D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film earlier. She looked more peaceful than I do when I'm dealing with that book.

Or, these days, with any book, since this English PhD student has decided that she really doesn't want to read anything but true crime slasher stuff. My brain promptly turns off when I'm faced with anything I'm supposed to be doing, but I soak up the exploits of serial killers and such. At first I was reading mysteries, working my way through Patricia Cornwell; now I'm not even managing that. This ("this" being the reading of only slasher nonfiction) has been a problem for probably two months now; the inability to read scholarly material has been a problem since the beginning of the semester.

And here's an odd one: Since the past several nights have been Insomnia Central, I get bugged by those trying-to-remember-nagging-detail moments. You know what I mean-- what was that guy's name? Where did that happen? One of the things that was fluttering at the edges of my mind last night (in between crying jags) was a forgotten detail from The Bell Jar (man, that Perennial edition on Amazon is prettier than my Bantam), which I haven't read since my freshman year of college [another aside: it's on my comps list and would theoretically be part of a chapter in my dissertation, which will probably never be written-- so I should probably read the book one of these days]. In flipping through it (because entertainment options are limited in the wee AM hours), I came across this passage:

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I folded the paper and wedged it between the slats of the park bench. It was what my mother called a scandal sheet, full of the local murders and suicides and beatings and robbings, and just about every page had a half-naked lady on it with her breasts surging over the edge of her dress and her legs arranged so you could see to her stocking tops.

I didn't know why I had never bought any of these papers before. They were the only things I could read.

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Close to home? Admittedly, I've always been interested in true crime (early obsessions with Jack the Ripper and Lizzie Borden), but the current situation exceeds all previous interest by leaps and bounds. Also, those other obsessional times were interspersed with other fixations, like early British monarchy (in fact, I tried recently, with no success, to steer back on that track-- though, come to think of it, I suppose it's not much less bloody or conspiracy-ridden than serial killer-ology), and this time it's not.

I really thought I'd passed the stage of identifying explicitly with Plath, moving on to a more profound appreciation of her poetry. Of course, right now I can't profoundly appreciate the lint between my toes, so maybe I'm regressing. Or maybe it's just a weird coincidence. Or maybe depressed people just get friggin morbid. Whatever.

I should talk about something else. Let's see: Alice! She's currently curled up on the futon, having taken over my (probably warm) spot as soon as I vacated it to come over here and type. She looks especially cute because she's snuggled into the blanket I had over my shoulders.

Reading: Zodiac
Listening: rain, rain, rain
Current Obsession: I think that got covered pretty well above.
Alice: must suffer, living with a person like me. Poor kitty.

Elvisette philosophized at 10:58 PM