felis_ultharus

So I've mostly bounced back from Tuesday's news. Things are returning to quasi-normal.

In a crisis, I explode. Then I put the pieces back together very quickly. I've mentally reorganized the next half-year, and quietly gone back to writing and working, which seems to be my life.

I've gotten ten pages written on the not-novel, and thinking about how I'll revise novel #1 when the second copy returns my way.

Tonight, I'm happy. I read A Midsummer Night's Dream -- Shakespeare's most fun comedy. And the anime we're watching would probably make anyone feel better about their own life.

I got a lot of writing done. I'm feeling appreciated at work. And -- and this will only make sense to 7 people on my friends-list -- I've learned a trick to dodging lightning. Sadly, this trick requires me to have my eyes open, which is more than I can manage tonight, so I shall have to save it for tomorrow. I can't seem to get past 60 bolts in my sonambulant state.

There shall be no game this weekend because montrealais will be at an NDP conference helping to hammer out the gay socialist agenda ^_^

If my erstwhile players are interested, I could go for another round of that game we played last time.

I continue to be not dead, though I'm mostly only checking LJ once a week. Mostly it's just usual internet detox -- too much electronic communication has always had a bad effect on me, and I need to periodically unplug.

I've also been quiet on email, but for a more practical reason: my roommate's computer can no longer log onto secure sites of any kind, so I've lost all email access anywhere. I'm going once a week to an internet place to handle that stuff.

Things were very busy this week. I ran around at work and for school, and preparing for montrealais's birthday, and finally crashed on Sunday with a bad flu.

Writing is sporadic -- I've only finished one short story and one piece of poetry these last few weeks, as I don't really feel inspired. I'm still waiting for feedback on the two copies of my novel I printed up.

Other than that, I've just been reading a lot of Renaissance drama. Right now, it's Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

Reading Henry IV, part I by Shakespeare. I'm loving it. I'm surprised it's not more popular -- I think his use of language is at its height, there, and his characters are even more interesting and better developed than in most of the Shakespeare I've read.

Of course, I've read about that era before because the two greatest works of medieval literature in English -- The Canterbury Tales and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight -- also belong to the era of Richard II and Henry IV (the turn of the 15th century).

Richard II was a bad king -- so bad he inspired a peasant revolt and spent the treasury in a hopeless war with France. But Henry IV really takes a beating in Shakespeare, partly because he had Richard II murdered and his heir exiled.

If Richard II was the Dubya of his age, then John of Gaunt was his Dick Cheney. Gaunt was the power behind the throne, and legend had it was descended from the devil, and Gaunt's third wife, Katherine Swynforde, had been accused of witchcraft.

Interestingly, these old stories continue to inspire good writing. J.R.R. Tolkien was an expert in this era, and it shows in his work.

And J.K. Rowling throws a House of Gaunt into her last Harry Potter. And if there's any doubt that she's hinting at John of Gaunt, the House of Gaunt has "Peverell's Ring" -- Peverell being John of Gaunt's famous ancestor.

(Sometimes I feel like a literary degree is just a license to gather trivia. But it's really fun trivia!)

Okay, Shakespeare is really creepy. I can't believe it took me so long to notice.

I mean, it's not just the co-dependent 14-year-olds with their suicide pact (Romeo and Juliet).

I'm re-reading the sonnets right now, and about 126 of them are devoted to a young man who the poet is in love/in lust with. Shakespeare goes on and on about this guy's beauty, and about how he must reproduce to preserve that beauty in another generation. Shakespeare promises the young man immortality through his poetry, and the poet laments that he has a penis because the young man is heterosexual. Then he goes on some more about the guy's beauty.

I was trying to imagine how a straight man would react to 126 poems from another man obsessing over his beauty, and whether or not he reproduces and generates good-looking children. The words "restraining order" came to mind.

On a less ethereal plane, I seem to have developed a minor peanut allergy. So far, it's nothing dangerous, but I've heard these things can get worse with repeat exposure, so I'm going to have to be careful to avoid things with nuts in them :/