estrogen & epithets

Yes, this is a terrible little form poem, compliments of one of my English professors. (The Shakespeare professor, as a matter of fact. I'm still wondering why we couldn't have written a sonnet or something, you know, just a tad more Shakespearean.) But, it was fun to write anyway.

Kelsea--

Simple, robust, exquisite, and plain;
Sister of a girl who can make a meal of anything, a guy who is a preheating pro, and a man who knows his way around a wok;
Lover of saucy retorts, crusty bread, and a spicy bit of something;
Who feels fed up, chewed out, and hungry for more;
Who needs eight glasses of water, twelve hundred calories, and vitamin C;
Who gives good morning pancakes, late afternoon chapatti, and good-bye brownies;
Who fears poultry, peelers, and Cuisinart;
Who would like to see Julia Child’s kitchen, Adam with a sixty-four ounce steak, and Bourdain in her boudoir;
Who lives eight hundred miles from a Voodoo Donut;

--Jones.

Today's Top Three

1) The late night Olympic talking head sounds like Bob Costas, which would make her a man.
2) My friend experienced "rape and pillage" by a four-toed manila-taloned lady. I'm paying for therapy.
3) I socked "Bane" in the face. With my shoulder. BWAHA!

Today's Top Three

1) OMGosh, it's sunny outside!
2) Jackie Robinson + Barack Obama + Olympic Gold = Shauni Davis, the most patriotic man in America.
3) Buying Kylie a candy bar because I lost the bet on Lindsey Vonn's win.


It's gorgeous outside. And I got to sleep in this morning. But I feel a little sick, and I have Antigone rehearsal tonight until nine o'clock, which is never fun, especially when there is a sociology paper hanging over head, and Men's Figure Skating on NBC. (Enter Shamless Plug for Evan Lysacek.) Bright side, though, I have costume call, and I finally get to see my little old man get up! Mahatma Hamliton-Briers lives! I am crossing my fingers that seeing the costume will help me generate some great body language, because so far, I have been having a bit of trouble with the whole "old" thing. Springy, I can be. Elfish, I can be. Lecherous, I can be. (Winkie face, anyone?) But old has definitely been giving me problems. Hmm....hip problems.....that could be an idea....

To finish, some text from my favorite Antigone ode, the Paean:

God of many names

O Iacchus
son
of Kadmeian Semele
O born of the Thunder!
Guardian of the West
Regent
of Eleusis' plain
O Prince of meanad Thebes
and the Dragon Field by rippling Ismenos:

God of many names

the flame of torches
flares on our hills
the nymphs of Iacchos
dance at the vine-close mountain
come ah come in ivy:
Evohe evohe! sings through the streets of Thebes

God of many names

Iacchos of Thebes
heavenly Child
of Semele bride of the Thuderer!
The shadow if plague is upon us:
come
with clement feet
oh come from Parnasos
down the long slopes
across the lamenting water

Io Fire! Chorister of the throbbing stars!
O purest among the voices of the night!
Thou son of God, blaze for us!

Come with choric rapture of circling Maenads
Who cry Io Iacche!

God of many names!

Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind.
-A Midsummer Night’s Dream

The world must be peopled!
-Much Ado About Nothing

Is my affection for Shakespeare true love? Love at first sight? Nauseating “in love with love” love? I say all three.
I see an old couple sitting on a weathered bench on a porch, hand in hand, when I think of true love. The couple will go to bed at ten o’clock and wake up the next morning at eight, because that is what they have always done. There isn’t much conversation at the breakfast table, but affection can be seen in the way that the wife sets a plate of toast in front of the husband, and in the way that he refills her coffee cup to the halfway point, just the way she likes it. True love is comfortable. True love is what I feel for the plays that I have already read or seen or studied. I know that when I fall into them, there will be a clown to cheer me up, a woman tormented in love to save, and a hero that reforms in the end.
Love at first sight is the excitement of opening a play that I haven’t read before. The pages flutter quite like those clichéd butterflies in the stomach when one sees an attractive member of the opposite sex. The first lines can make or break the play, but more often than not it seems to me, one can’t know the true character of the play from the first date, as it were. The first attraction develops after each subsequent venture into the play, until the love at first site reaction is changed into the comfortable feeling of true love.
Finally, the “in love with love” love that I feel for Shakespeare is the feeling that I get when I read the plays out loud. There are times when I read them out loud to myself, for the pure pleasure of hearing the words spoken. There is a certain Narcissus-like quality to this. Narcissus was in love with his reflection, and I do not go so far as to say that I am in love with hearing myself read Shakespeare aloud, but reading out loud can feel like receiving a Valentine from myself.
Reading Shakespeare can be an awfully attractive thing to do. Really. If a man was inclined to woo himself a lady, Sonnet 18 would do it. It is a well used sonnet, a little tired, but the idea behind it of woman being more beautiful than the sun, and unable to be eclipsed by anything like clouds or winter is the definition of romantic.
Even passages that are not strictly about love can make the reader attractive. If you doubt it, men, find a copy of Othello, turn to Act I, scene iii, position yourself in front of a mirror, and read Iago’s speech at the end of the scene. Iago is the ultimate bad boy of Shakespeare, which, as evidenced in movies from the 1950s and the amount of tattooed and pierced men with dates, sounds with the ladies. Read it like you mean it, and try to tell me that it did not enhance your machismo.

Today's Top Three

1) "Dude, Kelsea, I was buying a pack of cigarettes..." Probably one of the weirdest sink conversations ever.
2) I share my one wit with my horse. Thanks, David.
3) One of my favorite pastimes: Playing Gay Hitler.