Emu

We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full

- Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

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From 19th century Russia (after 15 weeks, War and Peace is past at last), I now turn my attention to 19th century Mississippi with William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, a Southern Gothic novel I first encountered five years ago that I resignedly abandoned halfway. Its apparent impenetrability then temporarily turned me off from Faulkner (the greatest American novelist yet) until I fortunately stumbled upon, years later, his three best works of high modernism: The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying and Light in August. I have a feeling I’ll enjoy this second reading so much more.

I was also supposed to write an extensive discourse on memory, time, space, happiness, pain, desires, frustrations, closures, shoulder needs, Texas-sized egos, memory-induced involuntary shudders, and other ridiculous things but I realized that yeah, what’s the point? Why bother? And so I’ll provide instead an account of how I missed Ms. Gretchen Espina’s (who? google it!) debut album launching and lip-synching at SOP due to an inopportune power outage caused by the noontime thunderstorms. What I did catch, however, was a sophomoric performance of Heart and some girl dancing Jai Ho on a stage that had culturally-appropriate and intricately-designed paper Ionic columns for a background. I really should watch this circus of a show a little more often.