estrogen & epithets

Thou mayest.

We all have a choice in life.  I have a choice.

I.  Have.  A.  Choice.

From the story of Cain and Abel (Genesis 5, I believe), John Steinbeck created a monster of a fable in East of Eden.  I loved every word of every single one of those six hundred and five pages. 

But let's talk about God.  God and Steinbeck, and how I have one and not the other.  I feel Steinbeck, right here next to me, a separate character as I read through his works (I just devoured Of Mice and Men, waiting for Travels with Charly).  But God, really, has been reduced to a character in a cardboard kid's book.  But for one brief second, I got the old feeling back, the feeling I had last summer at church camp, that God is here.  It was while reading East of Eden, when Lee and Samuel and Adam are discussing the naming of Adam's twin sons.  They read Cain and Able aloud, and Lee brings up timshel.  Cain gets thrown into the wilderness, and told "Though mayest conquer over sin."  Not "You have to," or "You better," but, "You can, or you cannot.  Your choice." 

Rejuvenation, I suppose, is what I felt on reading Steinbeck's words.  Gone was the mold to fit, the omniscient road map.  For one moment I knew definitively that ultimately, I had control over my life, rather than it being predestined.  I am not saying that I believe in predestination, just that I didn't ever care to think about what was what in that area.

But still, I continue to be disturbed at the way that I see God and particularly Jesus as fictional.  As kiddie stuff.  The Gospel of John and Slaughterhouse-Five constitute my new reading material.  I can't help but ask myself if I am looking for God, or for humanity...

I confuse myself.  For now, I choose the NKJV, and I will leave it at that.

I am gearing up for a summer full of fantastic reading!  There is a list of books that I want to read that could possibly stretch to Montreal and back, but I've narrowed them down to a "short" list.

Bless Me, Ulitma,  Rudolpho Anaya
Go Down, Moses,  William Faulkner
For Whom the Bell Tolls,  Ernest Hemingway
The Dharma Bums,  Jack Kerouac
The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston
House Made of Dawn, N. Scott Momoday
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
East of Eden, John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men
Travels with Charly
The Joy Luck Club,  Amy Tan 
Slaughterhouse-Five,  Kurt Vonnegut
The Color Purple, Alice Walker

Having already read Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov) and The Joy Luck Club (Amy Tan), not to mention a bummer of a book club book, The Wives of Henry Oades (author to come later...I can't remember who she was for the life of me.  Any-who, terrible book.), I am off to a great start, reading Steinbeck as we speak.  My first experiences with Steinbeck were horrific, as I think that all high schoolers experiences are, but East of Eden has got me.  The first sentence, "The Salinas Valley is in Northern California." is so seductively simple.  I am at the point where all of the story lines converge---I can hardly wait to read again once I put it down.

Also on my mind are There Is a Bird On Your Head and Elephants Cannot Dance, by Mo Willems, and Skippy Jon Jones, by Judy Schachner.  Being extremely gifted children's writers, Willems and Schachner are my top picks of the summer, both for my library drama productions and for my niece and nephew.  : )

Finals week is coming up fast, and Memorial Weekend has given me a breath of that grass infused air of freedom.  I hardly feel like going to my third year.

Last night, I had a dream that I was sitting and laughing in my living room (all my furniture was exact) with my friend D and my sister.  The door bell rings.  I answer the door, wearing a blue terry cloth bathrobe.  There, bathed in porch light (not quite like Bathsheba), stands Mr. G and Mr. M, my English professors.  Mr. G smiles big, hands me two manila envelopes, and says, "Just thought we'd drop these by!!"  He turns and leaves, Mr. M giving me a half wave and a smirk as I stand nearly naked and nearly speechless in my bathrobe.  I turn back to D and K, and open my envelopes.  One holds a check from Mr. G for $9,000 to continue college.  The other envelope is marked from Mr. M.  (Thirty silver coins, perhaps?) The check inside is for $12.95.

Is this a sign that I should persevere?


PS
I love Miss Aimee Kapie, my beloved girly!!  I love being her "inspiration!"

I have been writing A LOT of poetry for my Creative Writing class.  What's the good of all of that work if I don't share it??

Here is some of my favorites (reproduced as close as possible):

The king he is hunting the deer; I am coursing myself: they have pitched a toil; I am toiling in a pitch,--pitch that defiles: defile! a foul word. Well, set thee down, sorrow! for so they say the fool said, and so say I, and I the fool: well proved, wit! By the Lord, this love is as mad as Ajax: it kills sheep; it kills me, I a sheep: well proved again o' my side! I will not love: if I do, hang me; i' faith, I will not. O, but her eye,--by this light, but for her eye, I would not love her; yes, for her two eyes. Well, I do nothing in the world but lie, and lie in my throat. By heaven, I do love: and it hath taught me to rhyme and to be melancholy; and here is part of my rhyme, and here my melancholy. Well, she hath one o' my sonnets already: the clown bore it, the fool sent it, and the lady hath it: sweet clown, sweeter fool, sweetest lady! By the world, I would not care a pin, if the other three were in. Here comes one with a paper: God give him grace to groan!

-Berowne, Love's Labours Lost

Act IV, iii