how the power went out today at the clinic, all up & down the street actually. dr b____ was counting the fire engines that barrelled past his big upstairs window (seven). i sat under the back-up-battery-powered emergency light in the ultrasound room & read bits of
wuthering heights in between attempts to get a straight answer from american electric power.
(i was always one of those kids who liked it when the power went out, & now it is even better: to get paid to read emily bront� in the otherwise-still building, not even having to hold up a flashlight with one hand to do it.)
(but everyone else, oh everyone else: the complaints, the anger, the inconvenience of having to wait an hour & a half for everything to come back on. can't you just see them drawing bitterly on their cigarettes? can't you just see, they are sitting, leaning conspitorially over the large desk in the office that used to be my big office.)
:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:last night we met at the grand, i mean i stood in the lobby there for twenty+ minutes waiting for bean to struggle her way through traffic, & when she finally showed up we strode very coolly & cinematically & we-own-the-joint-ish-ly across the floor to the theatre. we saw about schmidt & then the hours.
it is no news to anyone that i cried & cried & cried.
(i just deleted a long section about my strong distaste for listening to other people in movie theatres. i especially dislike the way people breathe audibly [little "hmh" sounds way back near the throat] when they want to show their fellow spectators that they get it.) i sat in this tiny theatre with about a fifty-person capacity & cried.
we came home & i was so hyper from all the crying that i couldn't sleep until maybe 2.00 am.
:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:outside: has the rain turned into something else? how much has the temperature dropped? should i take emily (catherine, heathcliff, edgar) into a bath with me?
emily, i have decided, is my favorite bront�. i base this on an exceedingly thin knowledge of the bront�s' lives (culled from the biographical notes in the bantam paperback editions of wuthering heights & jane eyre i've had since i was twelve; they are both pink & have covers with reproductions of unfortunate paintings) & on an association i have formed, probably based only on their first names, between her (emily b) & the belle of amherst. (also i get the impression that charlotte b was something of a literary bully to emily & to anne, but again this is unfounded.)
i read wuthering heights when i was twelve, maybe thirteen, in the summer. i took it to the pool with me & read it in the sun, with all that noise around. i knew nothing about desire or class or sex or vast, bleak landscapes.
& by the way, i desperately want philip glass to win the oscar. i want to see him step up to make his speech. i want to see his hair.
