How Shakespearean

I like to fall in love with British thespians. It began in high school, when I was forced to read Shakespeare drama after Shakespeare drama. Romeo and Juliet was okay, but strangely easy to understand. That sounds really pretentious, but please remember that I was the snooty tenth grader who was easily bored in math class because the equations didn't look complicated. I'm a difficult person to please, apparently.

When I read Macbeth, I knew that there was something to be said about Shakespeare. That's probably the simplest way I can put it - we can attribute a lot of what literature became to what he did back in his time. After the Scottish play, I got to read Hamlet and King Lear. The latter is still one of the most poignantly tragic stories I have read. Seriously. A father goes mad and two of his daughters neglect and abuse him while one remains steadfast in her devotion to him? That was a terrible run-on sentence. Whatever. It's still just so goddamn sad.

So, yes, now I have this penchant to fall in love with British thespians - strangely, before I have seen them in Shakespeare. There's Patrick Stewart, of Star Trek and X-men fame. And then Ben Whishaw, whom I have loved since watching The Hour and Bright Star. Finally, there is Tom Hiddleston. Because of Avengers, Deep Blue Sea, and Midnight in Paris. Because duh.

Also, he can recite poetry.

Imagine my joy when I found out that these three actors are going to be featured in a series of BBC miniseries adaptations of Shakespearean dramas. Check out the video below.

I Want You To Read This

"We don't have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that's what I want in life."

Please read Marina Keegan's final piece in the Yale Daily News - her last published words before her graduation and before her death at age 22.

I have read this piece about five times since I heard about it seven hours ago. It's halting and beautiful and ultimately terrifying for this newfangled 20-something. Maybe there's something to learn here.

I look at my writing and I cringe at how behind I am, how people who remember the same Saturday morning cartoons as me are spewing their mind's clutter onto a page and actually making sense.

I want to be good. But don't we all?

Booksellers

Berry & Peterson books in Kingston, Ontario.

The first time I went to Berry & Peterson, I was skipping an English lecture. I was skipping an English lecture to browse used books. I have a funny life, I think.

It was within the first few weeks of school - too early for the rush of assignments to begin piling up, and too late for my friend and I to find any books we needed for our syllabi. According to the store owner (who routinely purchases books from antique markets and book sales), students pretty much flee to the store to save a few extra dollars.

It's cool though. After spending an hour to two sitting on the floor literally digging through piles of books (there are few things as enjoyable as that) I found a good handful of things to read.

I've been going back ever since. Perhaps I'll start posting hauls of books I purchase here?
One of my best purchases was a cloth cover collection of W. Somerset Maugham short stories. He's my housemate's favourite writer so the book was for her - and so I could buy in on the discount deal.

Maugham wrote the novel that was the inspiration for one of my favourite films The Painted Veil. I am forever searching for a used copy of this book since the one at Indigo costs about 20 dollars. It hasn't appeared yet, but maybe appear in a timely way. Just like the book I'm reading right now: Tender is the Night. I found it at B&P a month or so ago and added it to my growing collection of books that smell like they came from someone's dusty basement.

I am a huge F. Scott Fitzgerald fangirl. I think that was apparent when I wrote a huge post about Midnight in Paris, a film that I (yet again) stayed up til four in the morning to watch the other night. It's soothing, okay?

One of the best lines from Tender is the Night occurs when Dick Diver, one of the main characters, turns to the very young and naive Rosemary. He says, "You're the only girl I've seen for a very long time that actually did look like something blooming."
I wonder why people don't speak that way anymore.

Also, for the sake of everyone, I will leave my Gatsby movie trailer for another time. I hope I'll be okay with it, but it's always terrifying when someone touches a beautiful thing.

This Is My Life

Sorry for the super pretentious title. I volunteer for Toronto Cat Rescue, just in case you weren't sure about my "cat lady" status.

I do love the chance to hang out with some apathetic felines on a weekly basis though.

Summer To-Dos

In my mildest dreams, I have a window next to my desk. It would probably be overlooking something industrial but that doesn't really matter to me. I just miss UV rays - that's all.

In the meantime, I'm back in the nine to five grind. In between trying to make my cellphone work to its full potential (which it rarely does) and guzzling enough caffeine to kill a small child, I have a list of summer things to do. Now that the sun is out and I have no homework (other than one summer course about ethnobotany), I have to fill my time with something, right?

Also, I love making lists. It's a really sad compulsion of mine.

1. Bird watching. I went to Chapters last night in a fit of boredom, and because it was the only place open past 9 pm. There it was - the National Geographic Field Guide to Birds of North America. I've always loved birds (don't you find that an innumerable amount of people hate them?) but I particularly love being able to identify them. It's kind of disgusting, how much I pretend to be a biology nerd even though I don't know the first thing about an animal cell. I think I just really like sitting in my backyard and being the one to get really excited over seeing a Northern Cardinal.
2. Magazines. All of them. I once went to the bookstore to buy a magazine. I was preparing for an interview at a men's style publication, so I thought I should pick up some GQ and Esquire to get prepared. OhmygodIfellinlove. I know it's really suspicious for a girl to buy a magazine that has a scantily clad Sofia Vergara on the cover. It's okay. There were some pretty great articles in that issue (especially one about what it was like to be the "other woman" in a relationship of infidelity). A few issues back (I can't remember if it was in British GQ, American GQ or what) there was an article about the "hero" - why men and women fighting overseas shirked any accolades they were given. They just didn't feel like they deserved the same honour as war heroes and heroines of the past (namely, wars where there was the draft and battle was an obligation). I plan to devour as much of these articles as I can, which is the perfect preparation for my job this coming year.
3. Knitting. It's a little sad that this deserves its own place on the numbered list. Long story short: I screwed up the first scarf I tried to make. I'm doing it again, except with 99 cent yarn I found at Value Village. We're livin' large here people.
4. Macarons. In extending the homely theme of this list, I've decided to attempt macarons. I feel like they're insanely difficult, but all I can think about is sitting in the backyard eating, like, 20 of them. I am not ashamed.

I leave you with this picture - my new field guide! I bet you're all really jealous.

That Time I Was in a Field

I've come to realize that I don't fear animals.

I mean, there was that 24-hour period in my second-last year of high school... My father had successfully convinced me that I was going to die a slow, painful death because a dog (a tiny Shih Tzu) had bitten my finger, breaking the skin and causing some minor bleeding. I remember sitting on my bed when my dad entered the room.

"So you don't know if it had its rabies shot?"
"No, father, why ever would I inquire about such a thing?"
"Ah, well. If it has rabies ... you know, getting hit by a truck might be less painful."

I should have inquired about such a thing.

Anyways, the dog did have its rabies shot (this was discovered after painfully heckling the dog owner's friend for information) and I was left to live life normally.

However, I blame my father for my brief bout of canine phobia.

So, other than that, I don't usually fear animals. I pick up stray cats (cuddle with them too sometimes), pet strange dogs (only after letting them sniff my hand!), and have been known to touch a shark (a nurse shark at the Metro Toronto Zoo, but still).

But yeah, Dan and I went for a drive the other day. The initial plan was to go to Menchie's, but the weather was too perfect and my surrounding area too strangely rural to really resist exploring.

We went north of typical suburbia, speeding past nature conservation areas and the occasional cluster of one million dollar homes. Before we knew it, there was an eerie calmness to the landscape - we were surrounded by fields, with a glorious sunset in the distance partially obscured by a cellphone tower (we hadn't quite escaped civilization yet).

In that trip, I was tempted to do three things. Here they are, and why I did not do them:

1. Visit a strange graveyard. This was right before a steep hill that prevented us from properly pulling over. I would have gone, but I feel like the image of two twenty-somethings entering a graveyard at sunset is the go-to opener for Joss Whedon's next maybe-awful, surprisingly-awesome horror film.
   
2. Jump a strange fence. We were totally going to, and the grassy field filled with snakes and mice and maybe a skeleton or two did look awfully tempting, but in the end it was decided that this was private property. If we were to get shot... Well, in the rural fields north of the suburbs, no one can hear you scream.
   
3. Pet a strange horse. We had pulled over on a side road to look around. Lo and behold, there was a horse farm (a ranch? A dude ranch?) right next to us so I hopped over a sewage stream to get to these two horses that totally approached the fence. Kay, so I reeeeally wanted to pet one. Except, I did not know how to pet a horse. You know, there's an etiquette for any new animal you want to pet. Fun fact: you are supposed to let the horse sniff your hand, and then pat it firmly behind its wither (the base of its "neck"). So I was left to stand there and, like, look at this horse while meekly holding my hand out. I really wanted a friend I guess.

I made Dan take the picture featured below. I still count this as better than the time I ran into two feral cats in one day, but not as good as the time my friend was on something and was approached by a deer in a field in the middle of the night. The deer ran away, and then it was declared that it was his worst trip ever.

Look at my horse. My horse is amazing.