love me do
10.20.04 @ 9:36 p.m.
So! Who wants to hear how I'm such a girl? I'm really getting pathetic. Well, not really. Nothing changes. I'm probably just seriously bored with my American Lit class.
But let's not forget that the South African is ridiculously attractive AND has a not-quite-British accent.
So what set me off this time? Well, when we watched the Angel Island video last week, he was sitting next to me, but I was mortified because I hadn't showered that morning and I was basically looking like death warmed over. (This is really easy when you're pale and are tend to have dark circles under your eyes at all times like me.) Today, I was lookin' decently pretty AND I smelled nice! Also, he asked for paper (having forgotten his notebook) and was unceasingly polite. He asked in a charming manner, thanked me, and then thanked me again at the end of class, all soft-spoken and with his lovely accent.
Tee hee.
What gets me is that he's brilliant; clearly a very intelligent man. That might be the biggest selling point of all, because if I'm going to be completely honest, I'm a little conceited when it comes to my intelligence and... I've always thought that I would want to be with someone whose intelligence is equal to or greater than mine, which is probably why I'm so worshipful of professors who catch my attention. I get what I call "mind-crushes," not really a romantic kind of crush but a worshipful admiration of someone's personality. It's not "Ohmigod I love you," it's "damn, you are so fucking cool!" There are so many of these, it's a bit ridiculous. But it's wonderful to genuinely like and respect someone.
In this way I can see something of the whole Meher Baba deal. Love existing in the universe, radiating out.
Speaking of love: Today in my English class (okay, 3 out of my 4 classes are English classes, but for clarity, I will be calling them English, American Lit, Film, and Folklore) we started in on Courtly Love. The interesting thing is that... Love as we know it, romantic Love with a capital L, Love as we are obsessed with it in Western culture, maybe didn't exist until around the 12th century. Well, maybe not. I mean, I remember in Gender and Sex in Antiquity, we learned that heterosexuals were considered (haha, Gay Marriage opposers!) threats to the family structure as they were more prone to adulterous relationships than homosexuals... keeping in mind that the important thing was ensuring the paternity of a child. So clearly people lusted and were attracted to each other, but the real, important difference is the way those feelings were treated/viewed by society. Such things weren't relevant to marriages and relationships. You can still see this amongst the existing European aristocracy. Marriages are for alliances: social, political, financial. Love as we know it seems to have originated in the court of Marie de Champagne, where one of her court wrote down the rules of Courtly Love.
Think about this: Love, this thing that we anguish over, create art for, and generally obsess about might have started out as a game for the Middle Ages aristocracy. A game! Something to do at court! When did it start becoming serious to us? All the early romances are whimsical to the point of being almost ridiculous, if you read Lanval... well, I'll admit that I'm only halfway through Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, though it's clear that there is seducin' going on. Dang. Fancy ladies in medieval literature have no sense of fidelity!
We agonize over something that was a GAME. Is it hard for other people to get their heads around this idea? Love is a social construct, or at least the amount of reverence and attention that we give it is. It boggles the mind.
None of this, of course, is a certain thing. It's just a very persuasive opinion given by my professor, but clearly he supported his argument well if I'm repeating it here with dazed amazement.
Oh, the other part! There are some who think that we're witnessing the fall of the age of Romance, of Love. Changes in the structure of dating and serial monogamy and divorce, all of them indicate a cessation of belief in the idea of One True Love. People don't much believe in The One anymore. Love, the ideal that is held up by the Bohemians in Moulin Rouge, the central pillar of romantic comedies and romantic literature, is... fading.
Isn't that terrible? Isn't it sad?
Maybe it's just me, and maybe I'm focussing too much on all this, but it fascinates me. Unlike the dreary, boring lessons of American Lit (which drives my thoughts to Max and melodramatic exaggeration), my English professor manages to give me ideas that click together so wonderfully that my mind will happily explore the connections for hours.
That's enough for now, I'd say.
Previously
fuck it @ 08.01.05
fanciful imaginary sea voyages to come @ 07.20.05
*dies* @ 07.19.05
more ootp @ 07.17.05
harry potter: driving our children into devil worship @ 07.17.05
