![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
readingredheadI've got a lot of disjointed thoughts that I'm trying to manage in the hour before tutoring starts and I start earning money. In some kind of organization, then.
I heard back from the study abroad office, and I'm 99% guaranteed to be attending Queen Mary University of London. I'm incredibly looking forward to going abroad, and incredibly nervous, though not for the things that I should be nervous about -- mostly about how I'll deal with it snowing in the winter, and how my folks will handle an empty nest, and other unimportant details. Oh, and perhaps how I will eat. But that, too, is not such a big deal. All I know is, it's gonna be crazy and it's gonna be scary and it's gonna be good.
I don't have very much homework to do this weekend, which makes me feel very strange... There is nothing for me to be frantically working on, and that is not a common feeling! But I don't have any major due dates until after spring break, which is very nice and only slightly eerie.
In other news, we have yet another personal-soul-searching journal prompt from my creative writing professor: we're supposed to write about the one time we were totally and completely wrong. My response to this is summed up best by the response made by one of my classmates: "Professor Farber, anything I turn in will have to be fiction!" Not that I've never done anything wrong. But I can't believe I've ever been completely, one-hundred-percent, this-really-matters-and-you-screwed-up wrong. I take great pains not to be that kind of wrong. And if I had ever been that kind of wrong, I can promise you I wouldn't be telling Farber about it.
I'm really frustrated that we don't get to write about fictional characters in these journal entries; I kind of want to talk with him about it, but I don't think he likes me very much, and I think I've snarked my last snark (out loud, that is) about the journal topics.
If anyone knows of a time when I have been particularly wrong, please tell me. I am currently and honestly at a loss.
Also, I don't know what form he wants these "journals" to take. I write mine mostly as prose ramblings (much like this one) but all the other people I've seen write theirs as scenes in which they are characters. I don't know, that just doesn't do it for me. We're allowed to write about ourselves in the first person now, but even that doesn't alleviate my larger complain about these journals. This is a fiction class. Why aren't we allowed to write fiction??
In other news, we're starting to read Paradise Lost (Milton's epic poem about Genesis. Yes, you did just hear me right) in my Milton class and I'm pretty excited. It's part of what prompted me to write the story about the Satan that I'm still mulling over. Right now my problem is that I need to find the character that the Satan would not want to test -- the person who'd make the devil throw his hands up in the air and say, "Enough already! God, why do I have to keep testing this guy's faith? Isn't it pathetically obvious he believes?" I have this vague desire to set the story in New York City without ever having traveled there, and with very little knowledge about the place. Because I can see this Satan hanging out in NYC. Maybe the person that he's tempting is just a regular kid -- but in my head, when I picture that scenario the devil becomes the Lone Power and the kid becomes Kit Rodriguez from Diane Duane's Young Wizards books (which rock so many socks it's impossible to explain or describe).
(Over an hour later, after being distracted by a conversation and by having to go to work...)
So while walking to work I had this idea that chinchillas needed to end up in this story, but then I had this horrible idea that the boy that the Satan is trying to tempt has a chinchilla, and the Satan KILLS IT! And I almost have to die for thinking that. But now I have a strange image of the boy being a smaller boy (which I don't want to do, because not that I've read The Book of Joby, nor do I intend to before writing this story, but the kid in that story is younger I think) who looks like Kit but for some reason has Star Wars bedsheets and a pet chinchilla that gets killed by the Satan. GAH.
In other news, here are some pretty pictures of how I picture my Satan. Because he's a not-so-shameless rip-off of Diane Duane's Lone Power, except not really. I think my Satan looks kind of like if you could mix Satan from Paradise Lost and the Lone One from Young Wizards (come to think about it, on some days that's how I consider my ideal fictional religion -- a cross between Milton's and Duane's perceptions of their various fictional worlds...this does not make me more of a geek or anything, of course not).
I should probably go do my job now.
I heard back from the study abroad office, and I'm 99% guaranteed to be attending Queen Mary University of London. I'm incredibly looking forward to going abroad, and incredibly nervous, though not for the things that I should be nervous about -- mostly about how I'll deal with it snowing in the winter, and how my folks will handle an empty nest, and other unimportant details. Oh, and perhaps how I will eat. But that, too, is not such a big deal. All I know is, it's gonna be crazy and it's gonna be scary and it's gonna be good.
I don't have very much homework to do this weekend, which makes me feel very strange... There is nothing for me to be frantically working on, and that is not a common feeling! But I don't have any major due dates until after spring break, which is very nice and only slightly eerie.
In other news, we have yet another personal-soul-searching journal prompt from my creative writing professor: we're supposed to write about the one time we were totally and completely wrong. My response to this is summed up best by the response made by one of my classmates: "Professor Farber, anything I turn in will have to be fiction!" Not that I've never done anything wrong. But I can't believe I've ever been completely, one-hundred-percent, this-really-matters-and-you-screwed-up wrong. I take great pains not to be that kind of wrong. And if I had ever been that kind of wrong, I can promise you I wouldn't be telling Farber about it.
I'm really frustrated that we don't get to write about fictional characters in these journal entries; I kind of want to talk with him about it, but I don't think he likes me very much, and I think I've snarked my last snark (out loud, that is) about the journal topics.
If anyone knows of a time when I have been particularly wrong, please tell me. I am currently and honestly at a loss.
Also, I don't know what form he wants these "journals" to take. I write mine mostly as prose ramblings (much like this one) but all the other people I've seen write theirs as scenes in which they are characters. I don't know, that just doesn't do it for me. We're allowed to write about ourselves in the first person now, but even that doesn't alleviate my larger complain about these journals. This is a fiction class. Why aren't we allowed to write fiction??
In other news, we're starting to read Paradise Lost (Milton's epic poem about Genesis. Yes, you did just hear me right) in my Milton class and I'm pretty excited. It's part of what prompted me to write the story about the Satan that I'm still mulling over. Right now my problem is that I need to find the character that the Satan would not want to test -- the person who'd make the devil throw his hands up in the air and say, "Enough already! God, why do I have to keep testing this guy's faith? Isn't it pathetically obvious he believes?" I have this vague desire to set the story in New York City without ever having traveled there, and with very little knowledge about the place. Because I can see this Satan hanging out in NYC. Maybe the person that he's tempting is just a regular kid -- but in my head, when I picture that scenario the devil becomes the Lone Power and the kid becomes Kit Rodriguez from Diane Duane's Young Wizards books (which rock so many socks it's impossible to explain or describe).
(Over an hour later, after being distracted by a conversation and by having to go to work...)
So while walking to work I had this idea that chinchillas needed to end up in this story, but then I had this horrible idea that the boy that the Satan is trying to tempt has a chinchilla, and the Satan KILLS IT! And I almost have to die for thinking that. But now I have a strange image of the boy being a smaller boy (which I don't want to do, because not that I've read The Book of Joby, nor do I intend to before writing this story, but the kid in that story is younger I think) who looks like Kit but for some reason has Star Wars bedsheets and a pet chinchilla that gets killed by the Satan. GAH.
In other news, here are some pretty pictures of how I picture my Satan. Because he's a not-so-shameless rip-off of Diane Duane's Lone Power, except not really. I think my Satan looks kind of like if you could mix Satan from Paradise Lost and the Lone One from Young Wizards (come to think about it, on some days that's how I consider my ideal fictional religion -- a cross between Milton's and Duane's perceptions of their various fictional worlds...this does not make me more of a geek or anything, of course not).
I should probably go do my job now.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-06 05:51 am (UTC)ALSO weirdly enough, when you talked about someone Satan couldn't tempt I immediately thought "Huh, maybe Neil Gaiman." Although when I imagine cool-looking demons hanging out in New York...I also imagined Neil Gaiman. I don't knoooow. I like the idea of Lucifer being unbelievably, angelically handsome with the whole blue-eyes blonde hair thing going on--maybe like an Abercrombie model. Someone you can hands down acknowledge as beautiful but in a generic sort of way. I don't know if that would fit into your story though and there should be some sort of fit; I certainly don't imagine Satan in Milton to look like a model.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-06 07:05 am (UTC)I simply have never had a thing for blondes, so Satan can't be a blonde for me. He's gotta have dark hair, or perhaps dark red hair. I can definitely see Neil Gaiman both as the untempted and as the Satan. So crazy.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-06 06:49 am (UTC)And also-- taking your own approach to the journals is a good thing, I think. It doesn't sound like there's a ton to be said for formatting, anyway.
And YAY about London!
And (too many ands starting my sentences! Ah! Have you ever seen Finding Forrester?) "that forbidden fruit, whose mortal taste brought death into the... blammagam."
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-06 07:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-06 07:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-06 07:22 am (UTC)Being wrong could be misconception, too. There has to have been a time when you believed something was certain when, in fact, nothing lasts. Being 100% wrong would then become a time when the end of some time brought you to a halt for a while. This expands your prompt to encompass so much more than the normal definition of wrong, which would also lead me to conclude that I have never been wrong.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-06 04:49 pm (UTC)"maybe we live in a perfect world where "evil" is a deficiency in your perception and doing wrong is acting on misperception"
It makes me think a lot about William Blake's worldview. I think you would probably like him if you got to know him. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-06 07:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-06 08:14 am (UTC)I found a book recently that I should loan you; It's called When in London, produced by sparknotes. Basically a travel guide directed at people going for study abroads. Also, random tip, the currency exchange place at the South Coast plaza has a program where you can sign up for a kind of debit card, valid anywhere Mastercard is accepted, which is a lot of places in the UK. And money can be put on it any time, by either you or relatives at home. I've got the little booklet they gave me, I can give that to you at some point over spring break or when school's out. Eee, I'm so excited for you!! :D
Speaking of spring break, we should get together whenever you're home.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-06 04:51 pm (UTC)I'm home for spring break from March 20-28, and we should totally hang out and squee about London. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-06 06:39 pm (UTC)Kit is not that faithful...as a Young Wizard. But perhaps when he's younger...
...which means Satan did win at some point. Having such a strong image of these scenes is a good incentive to write, though! (It's the in-between parts that are hard.)
I had/have Star Wars bedsheets.
And finally, I agree with eristocracy. *grin*
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-06 06:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-07 01:05 am (UTC)And the visualization thing is so true. I just need to sit down and write it.