There's a new biography on author Rebecca West that a review in the Washington Post has inspired me to read. It mentions how good she was at keeping a mask on even as she worried terribly and had deep insecurities as her “worth as a sexual being.” I completely forgot I own two unread books by her, which I dug out out recently and gobbled up quickly.

Lorna Gibb tells us, in this sensible and readable biography of the great Rebecca West, that once at lunch with various luminaries including the Aga Khan, Odette Keun, H.G. Wells’s mistress of the moment, “turned to the Aga Khan, asking him to back up her opinion that the English were prudish in public but ‘lubricious in private.’ ” The remark seems to have embarrassed most (if not all) at the table, but surely truer words have rarely been spoken. If friendships and rivalries are dominant themes of British literary life, sex in all its various manifestations runs them a close second, and rarely more so than in the life of Cicely Isabel Fairfield, born in 1892, who changed her name to Rebecca West in 1911 and proceeded to cut an exceedingly strange swath through the bedrooms of the literati.

For me of this review read here:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-the-extraordinary-life-of-rebecca-west-b-y-lorna-gibb/2014/05/28/5f6c7c3c-df52-11e3-9743-bb9b59cde7b9_story.html

 

Even though I'd like to think I'm mostly a happy person, or at least more happy than sad, I've always been drawn to sad music more than upbeat. This old article from the New York Times is rather interesting:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/22/opinion/sunday/why-we-like-sad-music.html?_r=0

 

 

And if you love vinyl, you'll probably love this article from Slate: 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2014/06/18/eilon_paz_photographs_record_collectors_in_his_book_dust_grooves_adventures.html

This is for all the lonely people...

I've been listening to lots of music and most of it has been great for elevating my mood, but then my iTunes shuffle hit "Lonely People" by America, which is actually supposed to be uplifting, but sounds so damn sad you can fall into a funk if you're not careful.

"Lonely People"

This is for all the lonely people
Thinking that life has passed them by
Don't give up until you drink from the silver cup
And ride that highway in the sky

This is for all the single people
Thinking that love has left them dry
Don't give up until you drink from the silver cup
You never know until you try

Well, I'm on my way
Yes, I'm back to stay
Well, I'm on my way back home (Hit it)

This is for all the lonely people
Thinking that life has passed them by
Don't give up until you drink from the silver cup
And never take you down or never give you up
You never know until you try

My antidote for the bluesy blahs this inspired is to put on "A Horse With No Name;" it's so deceptively vague and lazy in description ("there were plants and birds and rocks and things," "the heat was hot" and "the ground was dry") it's almost funny, plus I just like the song a lot so I'm already feeling better with all those "la la la la la"s and "don't harsh my mellow" vibes.

I love to see people try and figure out what it's about:

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1310

And, of course, "Sister Golden Hair" is so pretty and nice to sing along to, that's another non-bummer.

Meanwhile, I'm still reading Married Love by Dr. Marie Stopes and her theory on how two people come together goes something like this:

To use a homely simile – one might compare two human beings to two wires through which pass electric currents. Isolated from each other the electric forces within them pass uninterrupted along their length, but if these wires come into the right juxtaposition, the force is transmuted, and a spark, a glow of burning light arises between them. Such is love.

I don't know that I necessarily believe it's true, but it kind of sounds scientifically romantic.

“The human heart: its expansions and contractions, its electrics and hydraulics, the warm tides that move and fill it. For years Art had studied it from a safe distance from many perspectives..."


I love Faith by Jennifer Haigh. It's beautifully written with a lot of things to say on everything from its title topic (faith) to what is true about someone versus how they are perceived by others to the difference between celibacy and chastity.

Maybe because I made a conscious decision (a promise, not a vow, as one of the characters in Faith would say) decades ago to be celibate my entire life (this is probably too much oversharing, I'm sorry!) I am fascinated with Haigh's examination of what it means to be both celibate and chaste.

The first is easy if you've always believed in waiting for marriage and love (and neither ever happened to you). Chastity (pure in mind _and_ body) is a little harder, especially if you're prone to daydreaming and wonder if you're missing out on something that everyone else on earth seems to have experienced.

It doesn't matter if a person's gay or straight, if he or she believes that sex is absolutely meaningless without love, commitment and (ideally) marriage, then hook-ups have no appeal whatsoever, not even for a nanosecond.

I think I've been in love before, though never with someone who loved me back. I felt strong romantic emotions, plus the kind that just made me want to know them more as a person and someone to go out and do things with while also having conversations that made us each think.

When you get older and then older you start to think it would have happened by now, somebody would have loved you at some point. And, instead of getting bitter about not finding your soul mate, you wonder if maybe that's just how it is and you look at your friends and all the things that interest you and get you excited about life and you realize...things are going to be okay...friends and good books and music and a job you truly enjoy are more than enough.

I still think about Fringe, probably my favorite sci fi show of all time, whose ending almost breaks the tv side of my heart. 

In the midst of re-watching season 5 I'm feeling the dystopian edge even more than I did when it first aired on Fox in early 2013. I like dystopian (and apocalyptic) fiction for the survival aspects and (quite selfishly, and even irrationally, I suppose) because bleakness in a made-up world is my mental comfort food.

I have re-watched Fringe more times than I should admit. The cast, especially John Noble as "Walter," was the draw for me, right from the beginning. How can you not love a man who loves cows?

Season 5 is so different than the previous four seasons that it almost feels like a reboot of the series if not for how carefully seemingly small things eventually tie in.


I'm not sure if it's neat or scary to discover there are over 3,400 stories on fanfiction.net's website:

https://www.fanfiction.net/tv/Fringe/