31 October, 2007 | 2 Comments

When I think about things I miss in American life, holidays are right at the top of my list. I know everyone says that American holidays are crass and commercial and perhaps they are. But you know what? They’re also fun.

American holidays come with lots of holiday-themed candy and decorations and greeting cards and television specials that are played each year. In comparison, most holidays here are kinda sad and boring; most of them are just generic “bank holidays” that mean nothing. I love having Halloween and Thanksgiving to look forward to in the autumn, with the miniature candy for sale in the stores, the pumpkins everywhere. It’s weird not to have that. I miss it.

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31 October, 2007 | Comments are off

Until the conference last week, I had never been to Oxford. I didn’t realize it was so close to London — the train from Paddington takes a little less than an hour. My schedule was pretty full, so there wasn’t much time for sightseeing. Still, I climbed Carfax Tower and the tower of University Church (that mostly involves a very narrow stone staircase, requiring one to hold onto ropes) to get a glimpse of the spires around the city. The colleges are beautiful and very Gothic-looking; I was lucky to be there at the peak of autumn, with the lovely golden trees and a light fog in the mist.

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29 October, 2007 | 4 Comments

Today one of my PhD supervisors pointed out that the character in my novel is never happy. She is always sad. So now I need to write a chapter in which she steps off the Misery Express for a moment or two to enjoy life. Except there’s not much to enjoy in her life, what with all the psychological torture, alienation, loneliness, religious fanaticism, sexism, divorce, depression, abortion, terrorism and ultimately the death of her one true friend and companion, her sister the stripper and high-priced whore.

Hmmm. I think this reflects poorly on me and my outlook on life. I’ve learned recently that happiness is necessary, that it’s possible, that it can be just as meaningful as angst or pain. I don’t know how to write about happiness in my fiction yet, but I need to try. I need to add a little joy to this narrator’s life, a little hope. I owe it to the poor ol’ girl..and to myself.

29 October, 2007 | 1 Comment

Yippee!

27 October, 2007 | 6 Comments

I just got back from Oxford, where I’ve been for the past few days attending The Sylvia Plath 75th Year Symposium. Today would have been Sylvia’s 75th birthday. The conference continues tomorrow and Monday, but three days in Oxford was all I could manage.

It was certainly an interesting experience. For those who don’t know, I’m a major Sylvia fan. I haven’t yet processed the past few days, but the conference has changed the way I think about Sylvia Plath and also the celebrity that surrounds her and other writers. I’ll write more on this soon, once I’ve had a chance to think about it. Today I met Sylvia Plath’s college roommate, who remained friends with her until she died. I also met another woman who was friends with Sylvia in the last months of her life and who was with her just hours before she killed herself. These women are both 75 years old, the age Sylvia would be today, yet Sylvia is frozen in time; she’ll be young forever. Meeting her contemporaries and friends, now women in their mid-seventies, suddenly made Sylvia Plath seem much more real to me. I still haven’t gotten over the feeling.

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24 October, 2007 | 6 Comments

Random movie line to describe my mood: Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue…

You know, there are days when I don’t think of myself as a teacher, but rather as a referee between dueling groups of Russians. The class I teach is divided between Russian and Chinese students mostly. The Chinese students do their work and don’t give me any guff. The Russians, meanwhile, are a handful. They talk continuously throughout class. They try to tell me how to do my job. Today I gave the class a vocabulary test and the Russian boys were betting one another money to see who’d get the highest score on the test. And they were totally trash talking each other before the test. In all my years as a student and a teacher, I’ve never seen anything like it.

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23 October, 2007 | 1 Comment

Some macarons I bought in Paris at Ladurée. I only had to wait in the queue for over half an hour (no joke). I prefer the pink rose-flavored ones. The black ones, called réglisse (a very mild licorice flavor) are also quite good. Hell, they’re all good. This was not my only Ladurée stop. I also went to the tearoom in the Madeleine shop and had a rose-flavored réligieuse with some orange-blossom tea. That, my friends, is the life.

23 October, 2007 | Comments are off

On Saturday I went to see The Enchantment at the Cottesloe Theatre (part of the National Theatre complex on the Southbank.) What a wonderful play! It ends its run next week, in case any of you in London can get a chance to see it.

The Enchantment was written in 1888 by Victoria Benedictsson, a very famous and celebrated Swedish author who seems to be virtually unknown in the English-speaking world. Apparently, she was the inspiration for Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and Strindberg’s Miss Julie. Benedictsson based The Enchantment on the scandalous and ultimately tragic affair she had with the literary critic Georg Brandes. Shortly after completing the play, Benedictsson committed suicide by slitting her throat.

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21 October, 2007 | 4 Comments

I had a fling with Paris last week, but now I’m back to loving London. It’s not that I stopped loving London, but when something is a part of your everyday life you have to work a bit harder to see what’s so wonderful about it. A walk across Waterloo Bridge always makes me swoon. I cross this bridge quite often and the view never ceases to give me goosebumps. On one side you’ve got St. Paul’s and the City, on the other side Big Ben, Parliament and the London Eye. Being on Waterloo Bridge is like finding yourself trapped inside a giant picture postcard. It’s one of my favorite places in London and it’s the perfect spot for watching the sunset. I love watching the sunset from Waterloo Bridge so much that a friend says whenever he thinks of me, that song Waterloo Sunset by the Kinks pops into his head. [I've never heard this song!]

All the photos in this post were taken from Waterloo Bridge last night. The photo above makes London look very Italian, doesn’t it? On Flickr I called it “London Italianate.”

In addition to the amazing sunset on Saturday night, I’ve had quite a lovely weekend. I went to the opera and the theatre (more on that soon!), I had a long lazy brunch with friends, took a walk along the South Bank (with a break at a riverside café for carrot cake) and attended a get-together to watch the Rugby World Cup, where not one person could explain any of the rules of rugby. A guy I know also proposed marriage, but that’s a long story.

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18 October, 2007 | 7 Comments

I wrote that I was going to do a long Paris travelogue, but it’s taking me too long to go through my photos. I’m moving in slow motion because I have a cold. So for now, let’s just write about the Louvre, shall we? One of my favorite things to do in Paris is to go to late-opening at the Louvre on Friday night. The price is reduced and the crowds are slim. It’s fabulous. And this time, I got the rare opportunity to take a few photos of the Mona Lisa/Monna Lisa/La Jaconde (she has so many names):

Le score!

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16 October, 2007 | 4 Comments

“Paris is a bitch, but I love her anyway.”

An Englishwoman who once lived in Paris shared this little saying with me the other day. We were chatting about how Paris is magical and wondrous, yet sometimes living there can be a complete nightmare. In her view, it’s a nightmare “at least 50 percent of the time.” But when you experience the fabulous parts of Paris, it’s like a dream. In Paris, all of your senses are aroused and you can walk the streets and feel as if your feet have never touched the ground. There’s no place like it in the world.

This feeling is so intoxicating that many foreigner visitors vow to move there permanently. This is an understandable but nevertheless misguided notion for the vast majority of Paris lovers. The spell that Paris casts is best experienced in small, dream-like doses. That is its power. Strolls along the Seine, reading in the gardens, the abundance of art and architecture, decadent treats in cozy cafés — this is the postcard Paris that bewitches so many of us, that draws us back again and again. But one cannot live in a postcard, so to settle in Paris over the long haul means experiencing a different side of it, one that is sometimes difficult for dreamers and romantics to handle. The real world will eventually intrude.

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15 October, 2007 | 2 Comments

14 October, 2007 | 9 Comments

spring in paris is nice, but i prefer autumn…

The rest of the photos I took in the Lux are here.

13 October, 2007 | 1 Comment

Please say goodbye to your money.

I know it’s not advisable to blog while in the midst of a blinding rage, but oh well. It’s too late for me to go outside and scream until I feel better.

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10 October, 2007 | 7 Comments

A few days ago, I was corresponding with a group of writer friends from back home via e-mail. When they asked how I was doing, I responded:

“…for the first time in years I don’t feel sadness or depression gnawing away at the corners of my life. I feel alive. I’m not used to feeling this way and I like it.”

When I wrote that I hadn’t felt free from a lingering sadness or depression in years, I didn’t just mean the last year or two — I meant the past decade or more. It’s not easy to own that truth, to publish it here for so many people to read, but there it is.

Tomorrow I’m planning to go to Paris. This has nothing to do with my court case, which I will not attend. Rather, six months after I left, I want to make peace with what happened to me there or try to, at least. Without my experiences in Paris, I wouldn’t have arrived at the place I’m at now. My time in Paris was, perhaps, the turning point of my life. I feel the need to go back, to walk those streets again, to visit those old ghosts.  I don’t like the way I left things.

I’m slightly worried about how I might react to being there again. When I bought the ticket back in August I was excited to go, but I’ve had to cancel this trip once before because I got sick right when I was supposed to leave. And now I feel as if I might be coming down with the flu. This can’t possibly be a coincidence; I know myself well enough to know that it’s not. I’ve considered canceling again (and thus automatically forfeiting my ticket), but I’ve decided to go unless I feel really sick when I wake up tomorrow. I’ve given myself an “out” just in case and if I end up staying home then I’ll know the timing wasn’t right.

9 October, 2007 | 8 Comments

Me: “Just because I am writing on the board does not mean I can’t hear you talking to your friends and laughing behind my back. Unlike most teachers you’ve known, I can still hear you when I turn around. I have magical superpowers.”

I wonder how you say bitch in Russian and Kazakh and Korean and Chinese? ‘Cuz I know they were all thinking it.

7 October, 2007 | 4 Comments

I saw Atonement yesterday. Finally, a major film that opens over here before it does in the States. I’ve never read the novel upon which this film is based, nor any novel by Ian McEwan, though I did rub shoulders with him once when he was awarded an honorary doctorate at one of my many college graduations.

As I watched the film, I was thoroughly engrossed by it. I’m not a fan of Keira Knightley, but she was *almost* tolerable in this. The male lead, James McAvoy, is someone I am not familiar with, but he reminds me of a young Russell Crowe. That, my friends, is a good thing.

The first hour of Atonement is exquisitely done. It’s absolutely fantastic to watch and it’s ingenious in the way scenes are played from one character’s perspective and then re-played from another point-of-view. This first part takes place on a lovely English country estate and besides admiring all aspects of the production, I experienced major home furnishings lust.

The next part of the film takes place during WWII on the battlefields of France and in the hospitals and air raid shelters of London. Like so many films and stories about the War, it descends into sappiness and melodrama, which was a disappointment after the outstanding first hour. I resent it when filmmakers try to capitalize on the audience’s strong emotions surrounding WWII. That’s lazy film-making.

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6 October, 2007 | 5 Comments

Today at the movies I saw a preview for Elizabeth: The Golden Age starring Cate Blanchett. Clive Owen plays Walter Raleigh. Behold:

He’s just too stunning for words.

[Hey, I haven't posted about my Clive lust for at least a year. Give me a break.]

6 October, 2007 | 4 Comments

I gave up drinking beverages with caffeine years ago. I can’t have caffeine because of my nerves. [God, that sentence makes me sound crazy. Oh well.] It’s been five or six years at least since I’ve consumed a caffeinated drink aside from a few sips here and there. Everyone always points out that chocolate has caffeine in it, but as far as I can tell, that’s a myth. And even if there is caffeine in chocolate, it’s only a tiny amount.

So anyway, tonight I accidentally drank a big bottle of Coca-Cola.  Oops.

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3 October, 2007 | 6 Comments

Ten long years later, the inquest into Princess Diana’s death has finally begun. Gee, what’s the rush? Let me bullet point what’s happened so far: Mohammed al-Fayed wants the Queen to testify. [Right on.] Diana was on the Pill. New CCTV footage released. Creepy police footage of Paris released.  Di unlawfully embalmed; M16 men in Paris.

I predict this whole thing will end with Prince Philip in handcuffs, just as it should.