Scary mofos (or rather, scary mos)

              (Painted in 1610, six years before Shakespeare's death.)

I'm sitting here at my desk, a plate of pasta & basil now emptied, a glass of blackcurrant juice instead of port at my right.  Naya is sleeping at her friend Freya's and I've just returned from the theatre.  Tonight it was Medea:  like Beloved's mama (by T. Morrison) she is one of the scary mothers of literature.  Medea offs her children to show her cheating husband what she is made of, for revenge, to maintain control amid chaos, or any other speculation to her motivations.  & Yesterday I took a bus to Stratford-upon-Avon (birthplace & town of William) to visit The Shakespeare Institute as it is one of the places I've been accepted for grad school & thoughts of that swirl--namely that the lecture given was superb, the awareness that I could be there next September is a bit romantic, contrasted with when upon my return to Oxford it felt like home for all its rippling/brimming life and I felt like kissing the cobblestone and the prettily-scarved people jamming the "pavement" (ie sidewalk).  And I met with my tutor today and presented my paper on Marx and his theory of world history, and I knew what I was talking about though press me he did to find a weak seam, and as we walked down the street in the sun post-debate he said, "that was a good essay," & I get the feeling he doesn't really say things like that.  And an hour after that I leaned back on pillows and began Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man because I have two days to complete it & several books on Joyce.  And the entire universe seems to be mapped out in my head right now.  I have loads of theories, and four or five stories/novels demanding to be written before they flitter away.  I collapse at the end of each day in satisfaction for the endeavour to actually now be underway.  I'm in the middle of the current here & it's one of those times when the water moves as one mass like an object of water moving down the riverbed versus endless supplies of separate liquidness.  Just perspective, but nonetheless.

Here below is my favorite artistic (Delacroix/Louvre) depiction of Medea because of the soft, pretty flesh of her, including cherub-like coloring, yet note the knife.  It's much more menacing from one who looks sweet than from  one who looks nuts, because then we wonder something about humanity instead of just writing her off as nuts, then she becomes more like us.  Unfortunately the players didn't get that part right tonight, but I felt happy in row six as I'd just had this random conversation with an old man in the foyer who had two versions of Medea propped on his lap--one translated in 1859, the other translated within the last half decade--and he and I compared lines and concurred on which got to the depths and which skimmed across distractedly.  Plus, in row six, I worked out another possible dissertation topic--tracing these "scary" mother characters in literature and art and comparing intricately their varying motivations for undoing their children.  At this moment, Beloved (that is Beloved's mama), is my favorite...but I'd need a year or four in Oxford to sort out all the others I don't yet know about, and to have anything meaningful to say about it.

Long, warm hugs to Blase, Gerda, and Jen--my most dedicated penpals thus far.  Warmth to Melissa for the happy joy I had recently at my pigeonhole--I read your circular thoughts right there before dinner one night.  All the complexity of sweetness to the one who was my undoing yesterday in the Bodleian when your lines became more compelling than Marx's, because I don't know that a gentlemen will cut it--ask Melissa for my ten-line quote that ridiculously simplifies what will.  Pen-tip to pen-tip to Mary because, you know why.  Safe ocean flying to Duz, because he is aloft right now & headed my way by lunchtime tomorrow.  "You are completely unreplaceable" &"I feel like a happy ten year old with my best friend when I talk on Skype with you or send late night emails" to Kari who someday will perhaps wear a little red beret too in Paris, or if not, will certainly ski with me and two black fuzzies many more times before we toss in the towel!  Happy (or murderous, as the case may be, & maybe, unlike Medea, the two go hand in hand in this case) cheetah sightings to my mama who is right about now in Nairobi.  & to Scot, "Scotland is pulling me more and more because of the promise of mountains (albeit small ones) & the affinity I'm beginning to have for the Scottish accent via a stupid BBC show we've been watching"...so any further travel plans for you and Jack?  And, lastly, cheers, with my blackcurrant juice, to being affected by absolutely everything with utmost rapture.  I can't at all think of what else is the point.