Tuesday, May 17, 2005
The Long Goodbye
Yesterday, I said my first Goodbye Forever. It's going to be a long month.
Adieu. That's the best thing to say, I guess. Goodbye Forever is so morbid.
The studying has begun, too. In our small apartment we have little interaction with the outside would, save for the Val Kilmer movies we watch. Movie watched starring Val Kilmer this week: seven (The Doors (Sadie watched it twice), Spartan (thrice), Tombstone (twice), Red Planet, Blind Horizon, Hard Cash, Top Gun, The Salton Sea, Pollock--also this month: Wonderland, The Saint and True Romance). Movies not starring Val Kilmer: one (The Three Musketeers). We have officially exhausted our video stores' selection of Kilmerania, for neither, appallingly, has Batman Forever--truly they are become a Val of tears. Sadie's original fixation proved contagious. Val. Val! Too bad his taste in scripts sucks. It's because he's too involved with the characters. But anyone with the chutzpah to say, in the commentary to David Mamet's Spartan, "I don't know what's wrong with David. He needs help"--well, they can come to my parties anytime. What a cool guy. Did you know he was the youngest person ever admitted to Julliard?
But last night, with the end of Pollock, in which he played de Kooning, with crazy eyebrows, but only about a minute of screen time, the Valley ran dry. Sadie went into serious withdrawal and lay fetal, listless on the couch through the entire sixth movement of Mahler's third symphony.
This morning I awoke, Val-less, and decided the only way to take my mind off the hole in my heart was to fill the one developing in my head. Have been plugging away at Faulkner, as my first exam is on him, and the America and the US course. The latter I'm okay on, but Faulkner is especially difficult because this is the first time the course has ever been offered. Meaning there are no past exam questions on it to browse through. This is our primary means of studying, because our exams are nothing but one question per term. Each exam has three questions. The one-termers, like Faulkner and PoMoFo (also a first-time course) are paired with the two-termers, like America or 16th Century Identity. There will be ten or so questions to choose from, but the only book I can write on is The Sound and the Fury. Without past exams, we have no idea what the questions will be like. And with Faulkner, whose work addresses, very fully, an intimidatingly wide range of major themes, there's no way to anticipate. Studying for this is like firing wildly in the dark. No idea where the target is, but shut your eyes tight and squeeze that trigger and pray you hit anything but yourself. Same goes for PoMo, which I really need to nail, because it's paired with Realism, which I'm expecting to bomb.
So now I have to walk to Halls to watch Austen movies, because those suckers are not getting read.
Adieu. That's the best thing to say, I guess. Goodbye Forever is so morbid.
The studying has begun, too. In our small apartment we have little interaction with the outside would, save for the Val Kilmer movies we watch. Movie watched starring Val Kilmer this week: seven (The Doors (Sadie watched it twice), Spartan (thrice), Tombstone (twice), Red Planet, Blind Horizon, Hard Cash, Top Gun, The Salton Sea, Pollock--also this month: Wonderland, The Saint and True Romance). Movies not starring Val Kilmer: one (The Three Musketeers). We have officially exhausted our video stores' selection of Kilmerania, for neither, appallingly, has Batman Forever--truly they are become a Val of tears. Sadie's original fixation proved contagious. Val. Val! Too bad his taste in scripts sucks. It's because he's too involved with the characters. But anyone with the chutzpah to say, in the commentary to David Mamet's Spartan, "I don't know what's wrong with David. He needs help"--well, they can come to my parties anytime. What a cool guy. Did you know he was the youngest person ever admitted to Julliard?
But last night, with the end of Pollock, in which he played de Kooning, with crazy eyebrows, but only about a minute of screen time, the Valley ran dry. Sadie went into serious withdrawal and lay fetal, listless on the couch through the entire sixth movement of Mahler's third symphony.
This morning I awoke, Val-less, and decided the only way to take my mind off the hole in my heart was to fill the one developing in my head. Have been plugging away at Faulkner, as my first exam is on him, and the America and the US course. The latter I'm okay on, but Faulkner is especially difficult because this is the first time the course has ever been offered. Meaning there are no past exam questions on it to browse through. This is our primary means of studying, because our exams are nothing but one question per term. Each exam has three questions. The one-termers, like Faulkner and PoMoFo (also a first-time course) are paired with the two-termers, like America or 16th Century Identity. There will be ten or so questions to choose from, but the only book I can write on is The Sound and the Fury. Without past exams, we have no idea what the questions will be like. And with Faulkner, whose work addresses, very fully, an intimidatingly wide range of major themes, there's no way to anticipate. Studying for this is like firing wildly in the dark. No idea where the target is, but shut your eyes tight and squeeze that trigger and pray you hit anything but yourself. Same goes for PoMo, which I really need to nail, because it's paired with Realism, which I'm expecting to bomb.
So now I have to walk to Halls to watch Austen movies, because those suckers are not getting read.
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