Irene, Maureen, and the future.

As the above image indicates, I have spent the past week or so gradually growing addicted to Sherlock, the fine and wonderful BBC series which should really have more than six episodes. My favorite episode, of course, is S02E01 - Scandal in Belgravia - which features the delightful and delicious Irene Adler, but I promise I like the series for more than just that, such as the otter/hedgehog bromance between Sherlock and John. At any rate, I enjoyed each episode far too much and the last one pretty near killed me. A clear sign of an excellent series.

Apart from that, I'm glad to say my future living situation in England has resolved itself in all the best possible ways. I'll be living in an adorable little house with a friend I met at PagSoc years ago (PagSoc is where you meet everyone, for the record - a Soc clearly more awesome than all other Socs), which has now finally officially been signed for, and I also got an email from my future adviser about a week ago in which she said that I'd be getting a teaching assistantship after all. This is a huge relief, since my previous scholarship included my tuition, but no stipend. I am excited to start my PhD, really - it's everything I've ever wanted to research, and though I've never met my adviser in person, she sounds so nice and helpful in her emails.

I have been going through a bit of a weird phase, though. For some reason, I am unable to read or watch anything that's serious and that requires my attention. I keep watching The Golden Girls and reading Jeeves and Wooster, neither of which are bad things per se, but I would still like to be able to watch a movie now and then. I suspect this is a mental reaction to the ridiculous stress I've gone through the past six months or so, because it truly has been ridiculous and thinking back on it now, I have no idea how I got through it as relatively well as I did. Nonetheless, I really need to get past this mental block. I did manage to watch The Black Swan yesterday, with Maureen O'Hara and Tyrone Power, which was the first new-to-me future-length film I'd managed to get through in months. I'm currently trying to write a review for my website and I hope this will kick-start me in the right direction. I hate this kind of undefined mental strain.

Home.

After about 19 hours on airplanes and airports, I arrived at home last week Wednesday. Thanks to a judicious dose of Tylenol-PM, I actually wasn't all that tired when I landed in Brussels, which was refreshing - I never usually sleep on planes and those couple hours really made a difference.

The past week has been spent figuring out what to do with all this sudden spare time I have. This sounds like a non-issue, but it isn't to me. I'm literally so anxious that being busy ALL THE TIME is the only thing that keeps me grounded, and after the craziest semester of my university career, the sudden sense of nothingness is very hard for me to handle. I do have some things planned - I'm going to visit a couple of my best British friends in June, then in July I'll be going to New York with my parents and to Denmark to visit my Vikingpixie, and in August I'll be volunteer teaching for two weeks. But especially the next month won't be easy. I've been looking around a little for jobs, but there's really not that much being offered at this time of year in terms of student/holiday jobs, and though I'll send my CV to a few places this week, I don't have much hope. So I fill my days organizing my books, working on my Hebrew, perhaps learning some more Russian, running, watching Designing Women and watching movies. This, obviously, isn't a bad existence, but it's strange.

I have a bad habit of second-guessing myself and my choices whenever my life reaches a temporary standstill, and I'm trying to get rid of that. Yeah, I've sort of taken an odd detour the past few years, but it hasn't been pointless - I've lived in another country, been in a relationship that though it ended also held a lot of good, made loads of awesome friends, become active in the Jewish community, figured out what exactly I wanted to do with my PhD, and gotten a MA in History thanks to my awesome adviser. Now I'm off to do a PhD in a country that I like, in a town that I know, in a subject that I truly love. Of course there are unknown factors, but it could, all in all, be a lot worse. I need to remember that. And I also need to stop mentally planning years ahead, because you just can't do that. And I need to stop comparing myself to others and imagine everyone has their shit together and I don't, because it's inaccurate.

Anyway, today I reviewed eight chapters of Hebrew vocabulary and grammar and got started on the ninth - prepositions, which is hellish - and ran almost 2 miles. I'm trying to build up my running, but it's really hard around here because there's so many random hills and it's exhausting running more than twenty minutes. I'll get there, though. Today I totally ran up our street alongside my grandma on her bike. Ha.

Well, see you later!

Lots of goodbyes.

Today was the last day of the spring semester and also my last official day at the University of Kentucky. It has been a confusing few weeks for me, and it's only now, now my papers are handed in and I only have grading to do, that I can sort of reflect on it.

I am headed home for four months, then, in September, I will be returning to Canterbury, in England, to pursue a PhD in Film Studies. This makes me very happy, because it is precisely what I want to do with my life.  I realize now, in retrospect, that everything I've done and read and watched and enjoyed up to this point has led up to it. In 2003 or so, the first book I bought with my own money was Mark Vieira's Sin in Soft Focus, which I mainly bought because of the nice picture on the cover, and which I didn't read for years afterward - but of course it turned out that it dealt with the Hays Code, which my PhD proposal is on, and that Mr. Vieira is the same author who would in 2010 write two wonderful books on Irving Thalberg. My random purchase of that book - second-hand and for pretty cheap! - has really been one of those odd, prophetic moments.

I will miss UK, though. Today, I went to say goodbye to someone who's really helped make my two years there a wonderful time. When I first came to UK, the DGS of the History Department told me to go talk to this art history professor if I wanted to take a class there. I went, and she turned out to be one of the most wonderful humans I have EVER met. I took a class with her and audited another one and have just generally semi-stalked her ever since. She's been really supportive of me academically and personally and even at one point pretty much offered me her spare room/apartment to live in. It was sad saying goodbye to her because I feel like I've come full circle - it feels like only yesterday, I sat in front of her office waiting for her to talk to me about the art history offerings for the semester.

Additionally, I just attended my very last Shabbat service at the the temple I've been going to for about a year and a half. Since this is the place where I became serious about my interest in Judaism, the place where I started learning Hebrew, the place where I've celebrated Shabbat and holidays and had a BUNCH of good food over the course of the last few years, this was really sad. I didn't cry, but I came pretty close, especially because Rabbi Kline has been so nice to me, too. He's really made me feel like I can be a Jew and like I belong, and he's been really supportive of my decision to move back to Europe, too. I love meeting quality people, and I've met many of those in this state and in this town.

Lots of goodbyes, though, and I don't like those.

24.

So, in a few hours, I will be turning 24 - or well, actually I was born around noon, so I guess I have about half a day left. I suppose that means that I am no longer in my early twenties now, or that at the very least I'm getting perilously close to being in my mid-twenties. This is a scary thing to me, though I'm not sure why. I had no real issues turning 18 or 21, like some people do. All in all, I loved being 18, and being 21 was fun, too, even though, of course, in my country, it does not really come with any particular benefits. But it was a fun age and I liked turning it, and the same goes for 22 and 23.


I think twenty-four is a little strange because it's an age at which people get married and have children. They also have jobs and do adult things. Yes, rationally I know that doesn't make any sense. On the one hand, I know people who were already married or had children by the time they were my age, and at the same time I also know many people my age who are still in school, who are not having babies just yet, who are unmarried. And both are fine things and neither is particularly connected with any particular age. And I also know, rationally, that 24 is really not very old, which I realized as I was talking to a good friend of mine who is in her late sixties (and awesome). So I am, all in all, pretty sure my hair won't turn white overnight. Though as I pointed out to Cammie, it would make dying my hair significantly easier...

I just feel like the adult switch has yet to flip for me, and I am starting to wonder if it really does for anyone. Maybe when it comes down to it, none of us really feel like adults from one moment to the next - I think I'm just at that stage, call it a quarter-life-crisis or something else, where I am starting to realize that that magical moment isn't coming. Maybe all these people I've looked up to as Having Their Shit Together really haven't been all that different from me, after all. Maybe we all kind of wander from childhood into adolescence into college age into semi-adulthood blindly and without ever knowing what the right thing to do was before we do it.

To the world, I probably look fairly grown-up. I have finished a BA and an MA. I'm in grad school. I teach sixty undergraduates. I earn money for doing so. And even though it isn't a particularly great salary, I do at least pay the greater part of my rent and expenses. I have lived in two foreign countries, away from my family and childhood friends. And although I've done many things wrong, I hope I've done a couple of things right.

But the future is still as scary as it is exciting, and maybe that won't ever change.

A Crime-Solving Trio

So, I have a tendency to pick a couple characters from books or tv shows or movies and point out they would make an AWESOME CRIME-SOLVING DUO. I'm not sure why that is, except I read far too much Agatha Christie as an impressionable teenager, and I seem to have taken most of my life lessons from there. I still kind of want to be Miss Emily Trefusis. Anyone remember Emily Trefusis? I'm the only one? Anne Beddingfield, maybe? I wouldn't mind being her, either? No-one? The Sittaford Mystery and The Man in the Brown Suit, guys. And though these two people only appeared in one book each, I remember them fondly and they rank up there with my favourite fictional characters ever.

Anyway, this may be why I refer to people as making good crime-solving duos. Now, however, thanks to my friend Faith who has excellent taste in all things such as movie stars, clothes and food, I have realized I had a fine crime-solving trio on my hands all these years and never realized it!

BARBARA STANWYCK, for the actual solving of the crimes. And also to wield the guns. And smoke the cigarettes in a sufficiently BAMFy fashion. And because she could dress up like anyone and be virtually unrecognizable. And she was Phyllis Dietrichson, which should be adequate qualifications for any job in the world.

NORMA SHEARER, because she has the contacts and the inside scoops and all the power. Also because she could go to all the necessary fancy dinners in style. Does crime-solving involve going to fancy dinners? In 1930s-40s Hollywood, it totally does. Also, this is clearly in an alternate universe where Irving does not die. And just to be mean, because of her lazy eye, you never know where exactly she's looking...

INGRID BERGMAN, who is a worthy addition in a number of ways. Rationally speaking, she understands half a billion languages, looks fifteen and is scarily tall. In more awesome terms, she is there to eat ALL the things and ALL the ice cream sundaes. While solving crimes. Also, she was in an actual Agatha Christie movie, so that uh... counts for something, even if she just played the crazy Swedish nanny.

I feel this must become a silly and completely unnecessary fiction piece.

Running, or: how me and my 17-year old self no longer see eye to eye.

All through high school, I kicked and screamed whenever I had to do sports. And you know what - I still totally support that. Sports classes sucked. I can't throw or catch a ball to save my life. I suck at tennis and badminton because my eyes are too bad to be any good. I like watching gymnastics but my body wasn't exactly made for it. Ew. Bad memories. Horrible time. Ick.

I also loathed running, and I still kind of support that, too, considering it really hurt me - I was slimmer than I am now (I was really bizarrely skinny when I was 17-18) but I was completely out of shape and running for two minutes inevitably had me wheezing and aching.

Of course, last summer, my parents lured me into going running with them, a minute at a time first, then more and more, every few days. I didn't like that, either, until the moment came where I realized I could run about twenty minutes comfortably, and not feel awful. And it actually felt kind of amazing. And it was actually kind of fun. And now I can probably run about 3-4 km without feeling bad, and I'd love to build that up to about 10 km, possibly more.

And this is why me and my 17-year old self currently have issues.

The Daily Photoplay #15

March 1935, p. 19

Oh, Jeanette. What a costume!