A Reprise

I love Victoria Holt -- love her! I am reading Menfreya in the Morning now and for a lesser star I would feel ill of encroaching envy, but not for her, never her. She is the light to which I aspire -- hers is the perfect vehicle for fantasy, and I am not ashamed of my adoration. I was so, so right to bring this book to work. It has brightened my spirits considerably. Her style is neatly honed yet descriptive -- with a few words she captures a moment, and I am there -- yet does not dwell tiresomely on any one thing. And her writing, unusual for such an intellectual style, focuses almost entirely on atmosphere and emotions. It is all I could ask. It is hard to have courage to write A Raven for a Lark next month, but I must try, and it is better to have this idol to whom I may aspire, than not the slightest idea of greatness. -- Sent from my Treo

I have settled in and taken the first leisurely shower in ages and weirdly feel like writing not an angsty journal entry, but a genial daily report such as I was won't to do before college. I looked at the clock and it was eight. Then I looked at it again, expecting it to be eleven ... And it was nine, just nine. Time has slowed here -- everything is slower and somehow my evening feels more meaningful. I feel so focused. I wonder if this means I am one of those city people now, looking to the country for zen-like refreshment for a day or so and then scooting off back to my fast-paced life. But no -- it is too much for me to dismiss my feelings so casually. This is more than peace and quiet, this is my crucible and having been wrought into being here I fit back into my old shape naturally -- -- which isn't entirely a good thing. I've come too far to retreat and I fear I am too sharp when I feel threatened. But all of a sudden everything around me seems important. I have very...

I wonder why I saw the two most important movies in my life so close to each other, when I was sixteen or seventeen, and why I have never seen another movie so great as those, and likely never will. I saw "Immortal Beloved" first -- which I could appreciate all the more playing the piano, and I fell in love with every aspect of that movie: it will never fade from my mind. The other movie "La Belle et le Bete" came later, introducing a shadowy world that has affected me forever -- it is excruciating to watch the commentaries today and see the actors, and the sets, and to know that it was all real, just as it is excruciating to think that Mary and Percy Shelley existed somewhere, and John William Waterhouse existed somewhere -- somewhere I wasn't. The castle sequences were filmed in a dilapidated park in France that still seems obscure and un-noteworthy to anyone -- that it is festering in seclusion even now with those same lichen-covered statues is unthinkable to...

Reading this Women of Influence book is causing me to remember another of my great childhood loves -- "The Miracle Worker," the story of Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller. It was Anne Sullivan I really loved, and still love -- it always made me heartsick to think of her sacrifice, devoting every waking minute to another human being, with almost no life left to herself, until she died in old age, and Helen Keller required another translator. But God -- she must have known it -- that's the best way to live -- it is to have every moment of your life swallowed in supreme goodness and satisfaction. No wonder I loved her, and no longer do I feel sorry for her -- I envy her. I thought of her today perhaps because when I was around eight or nine I grew aware that she and I shared the same initials "AS." Today is the first day that I am Amanda Monteleone at work, and I have written my initials "AM" dozens of times already. It's strange, but the satisfaction of...

It's the culmination of everything wrong with me right now, a physical presentation of my self-perpetuating emotional mess. The more I scratch the worse it itches, and it even spreads. Just like everything I think is wrong -- I try to perfect it, and its flaws become even more apparent to me, and I notice even more that's wrong. When will this end? When will I find peace? I realized tonight what a coward I'm being. I must stop thinking, perfecting, scrutinizing -- and just do -- do things that really matter. This is just another trap, a false paradise, where many remain. But there is something more, and I will have it. -- Sent from my Treo

"...the goal of which is to seem richer than we are, and make "smartness" (American smartness) cover the want of capital. Having created false standards of respectability, we crowd insane asylums and cemeteries in trying to live up to them." from Marion Harland's Victorian housekeeping manual, taken from Gutenberg.org (I'm reading it on my Treo tonight)

I wonder if we all rebel when we know something we are doing is wrong -- and briefly it flares up before the flame goes out forever -- in defiance and remembrance and stubbornness. I was thinking of this on contemplation of Women's Dress Reform in the 1860's, followed two decades later with the most unnatural and terrifying corsetry that I know in fashion, with the additional use of ether, arnsenic and other poisons as beauty enhancements. Then almost immediately women stopped wearing corsets forever, and they show no sign of taking them up again. Fur and other animal corpse byproducts was loudly disclaimed in fashion two decades ago with periodic resurgence, but with the last two years it has become a staple not only in women's fashion but home decor, and it comes cheaply as any will testify who seek a substitute for fur or leather products. Last year in JC Penney I saw a sweater with a rabbit fur collar that was only $20: I can't believe how little it costs or how pr...