March’s poem

Kate Bush, “Wuthering Heights.”

Because it’s been a couple of years since I posted about this song.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Out on the wily, windy moors

We’d roll and fall in green

You had a temper

Like my jealousy

Too hot, too greedy

How could you leave me

When I needed to

Possess you?

I hated you

I loved you, too

Bad dreams in the night

They told me I was going to lose the fight

Leave behind my wuthering, wuthering

Wuthering Heights

Heathcliff, it’s me

I’m Cathy

I’ve come home, I’m so cold

Let me in your window

Heathcliff, it’s me

I’m Cathy

I’ve come home, I’m so cold

Let me in your window

Ooh, it gets dark, it gets lonely

On the other side from you

I pine a lot, I find the lot

Falls through

Without you

I’m coming back, Love

Cruel Heathcliff

My one dream

My only master

Too long I roam in the night

I’m coming back to his side to put it right

I’m coming home to wuthering, wuthering

Wuthering Heights

Heathcliff, it’s me

I’m Cathy

I’ve come home, I’m so cold

Let me in your window …

Ooh, let me have it

Let me grab your soul away

You know it’s me

Cathy

Heathcliff, it’s me

I’m Cathy

I’ve come home, I’m so cold

Let me in your window …

Heathcliff, it’s me

I’m Cathy

I’ve come home

I’m so cold

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

“The Radical Left is out of control”

… also, “They want to destroy America.”

Why have I been getting emails with these subject headings?

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I got this, too (click on it to enlarge):

It brought relief. (I’d worried that my thesis’s submission to ProQuest wouldn’t be approved in time for the August degree conferral.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Karin & I watched Paper Moon. It’s pretty thin, plot-wise, but I didn’t tire of admiring the black-and-white photography of Kansas and Missouri.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

More reading (continued from the previous entry):

(5) Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights – still not all read.

(6) Bill Hybels, Too Busy Not to Pray. This is our current Sunday school textbook.

(7), (8) Patrick White, The Aunt’s Story and Patrick White Speaks.

The Wuthering Heights book club

The brothers (John-Paul and Stephen) are reading Wuthering Heights, one chapter each day. … It’s my second attempt. The book is nowhere near as good as Jane Eyre. Charlotte wrote pleasing sentences; Emily didn’t.

I’m sticking with WH, though, so I can watch the movie by Andrea Arnold. Also, WH deserves credit for inspiring this music video …

… and this cartoon.

Armadale (finis)

I finished reading Armadale a little over a year after I began to read it. One reason why the novel took so long to read was that the tutee who got me interested in it spoiled the ending for me.

“The villainess gets hanged,” she let out after I’d asked her to say no more about the plot.

Happily, months later, I can report that my tutee got it wrong. The villainess doesn’t get hanged. I don’t know how my tutee got that idea.

You can all rest assured that that’s not how the book ends.

On the other hand, it was rather dreary for me, plowing ahead after the 600-page mark, expecting the villainess to get hanged but never reaching any such scene.

Armadale has its moments but is nowhere near as exciting as The Woman in White, which I read a decade ago, largely under the influence of jet lag. That book is still vivid in my memory, even chilling.

Armadale’s best characters are supporting ones: professionals such as lawyers, doctors, and private detectives who are called upon by the major characters to give expert advice, which they bestow elegantly and dramatically, with garnishes of delicious condescension. Oh, how they must suffer fools!

Among the major characters, the villainess, Lydia Gwilt, has the best literary reputation; but I prefer the anguished Ozias Midwinter. What a name! And what a backstory he has – as a child, he was a gypsy’s ward and had to sleep out on the open road, earning his livelihood by giving pathetic performances with dancing dogs. There is more than a little of the grotesque about Midwinter, and yet he behaves as quite the noblest person in the book.

Another of the book’s welcome qualities is its evocation of place. Key scenes occur in these locations: a sanitorium in Germany’s Black Forest; a ship, sinking in the Caribbean; a quiet village in Somerset; the Isle of Man, and a ship, sinking off its coast; the towns and wilds of Norfolk; crowded London; murderous Naples; a yacht, sinking in the Adriatic; and a mysterious medical house in Hampstead, worthy of being investigated by Sherlock Holmes. One comes away from the book having played the tourist.

I usually read only one old British novel at a time. I might try a short one next – Castle Rackrent or Vathek – and then another long one, such as Barchester Towers, Villette, or Wuthering Heights.

Suggestions?

Christmas 2012

Christmastime: family, family, and more family. It’s been kind of nice.

I hadn’t expected that Mary & Martin would be here in South Bend — they’d intended to go to Illinois — but on Christmas Eve, Mary got an infection and had to be admitted to Memorial Hospital. I visited her for several hours. It was kind of nice.

She’s out of the hospital now. She’s better.

I spent three consecutive days with my Uncle John, my Aunt Lorena, and their daughters, Annie & Vickie. Today I went to their house for Christmas dinner. At first they were surprised, but then they remembered they’d invited me. We ate spaghetti. It was good. … I convinced my aunt and cousins to read Wuthering Heights with me, one chapter each day. I’ve never read it. My aunt has, several times.

Annie was given a tree for Christmas — a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. Here it is:

:) :) :)

Tomorrow is Carlos Muñoz Day.