August 28, 2003
Matthew Arnold Forgives
I just can't keep my mouth shut. At least when it comes to literary interpretation, and, for current purposes, Matthew Arnold's 'Dover Beach'. It would have been beautiful and universal, as usual, had I not been myself, and had we not read Anthony Hecht's 'The Dover Bitch'.
Enter rage and cynicism and general ax-grindage. I couldn't help it. Everyone brings their own experiences and culture to poetry. So I may have made a few comments that inevitably steered the converstion to a more feminist reading, and, I may have engaged others. And we may have provoked idealistic responses from yet more others.
At any rate. I'm sure my entire English 298 class views me as the Chivalry-Is-Dead-I-Am-The-Mortal-Enemy-Of-Anything-With-A-Penis Bitch. Which is obviously not true.
Not entirely.
I'm thinking warm thoughts about Mike, and not just because it's hot. He visited last night, briefly, but the whole affair seemed strange and silly. I guess I feel grown-up, or somehow in the capacity to take my loneliness in hand and stuff it into the back of my head with the spiders and the bad memories. For some reason this school year seems more properly consuming, as though I really do have this solitary and separate life, and I can tell him about it, but his casual footsteps on my campus are no longer appropriate.
I love him to pieces. But how nice it is to have something to myself.
I suppose these are just odd and strange sensations, considering last year I spent most of my time trying to escape school. On one hand I'm sad that I can't share this with him, on the other I know it would be awkward if I could.
It isn't as though I can talk to him about raving in Women's Studies, and he can't talk to me about the new program he is writing. We can imagine eachother as dominant and radiant in our prospective fields, and never have to know the strange and clumsy failings within...
You know, though, we talk about those, too. And I love him for that honesty.
And for coming to campus in blue jeans and stubble. It's nice to see a real man around here.
astera at 2:26 p.m.