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grammargirlMy mind works in mysterious ways.
So I'm sitting here, pounding grimly away at my thesis while trying to convince myself not to delete the whole wretched thing and start over again, when out of my busily-typing fngers comes the phrase "memory and desire."
The first thing that pops into my mind is that this is a line from T.S. Eliot, so I google it. Yep, it's from the first few lines of The Wasteland:
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Okay, great, you may now revel in my extreme English major nerdiness. But something else has been nagging at the back of mind this whole time, so I do a little research and find out that I am, again, correct. See, I've been reading![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
discountsatori's online journals on and off in their various incarnations since I was a wee sophomore in high school and she was a Wise and Witty Senior. One of these incarnations, begun somewhere around the time she started college and I began trudging through the angst-ridden hell of 11th grade, was called Memory and Desire. Oh yeah, and let's not forget to mention that not only do I remember that T.S. Eliot was (and, for all I know, still is) her favorite poet, but I also very clearly remember an entry from back in the Zen and the Art of Psychoanalysis days, which involved the line "Til human voices wake us, and we drown*," and was my first-ever introduction to the wonderful "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
If I ever spent that much brainpower on, say, writing, I could have graduated by now.
See, this is why I have such a hard time in classes where I have to memorize stuff. All of my memory brain cells are tied up with random shit like this, not to mention the lyrics to every song Oldies 104.3 played between roughly 1985-1993.
And now, after wasting who knows how much time doing pointless research to prove myself right and then writing about it, it's time to return my nose to the proverbial grindstone.
It will be a miracle if I survive this weekend.
*EDIT: I remember now. That particular entry ended, "Human voices woke me. I did not drown." And yet I can never seem to get it straight in my head whether the car crash that nearly killed me happened in 11th or 12th grade. I mean, seriously. What the fuck?
P.S. Hey Laurie, I promise I'm not stalking you or anything. Tomorrow, I may well be struck suddenly by the exact lyrics for a cereal jingle I last heard in 1989. This is just the way my twisted little mind operates.
So I'm sitting here, pounding grimly away at my thesis while trying to convince myself not to delete the whole wretched thing and start over again, when out of my busily-typing fngers comes the phrase "memory and desire."
The first thing that pops into my mind is that this is a line from T.S. Eliot, so I google it. Yep, it's from the first few lines of The Wasteland:
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Okay, great, you may now revel in my extreme English major nerdiness. But something else has been nagging at the back of mind this whole time, so I do a little research and find out that I am, again, correct. See, I've been reading
discountsatori's online journals on and off in their various incarnations since I was a wee sophomore in high school and she was a Wise and Witty Senior. One of these incarnations, begun somewhere around the time she started college and I began trudging through the angst-ridden hell of 11th grade, was called Memory and Desire. Oh yeah, and let's not forget to mention that not only do I remember that T.S. Eliot was (and, for all I know, still is) her favorite poet, but I also very clearly remember an entry from back in the Zen and the Art of Psychoanalysis days, which involved the line "Til human voices wake us, and we drown*," and was my first-ever introduction to the wonderful "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."If I ever spent that much brainpower on, say, writing, I could have graduated by now.
See, this is why I have such a hard time in classes where I have to memorize stuff. All of my memory brain cells are tied up with random shit like this, not to mention the lyrics to every song Oldies 104.3 played between roughly 1985-1993.
And now, after wasting who knows how much time doing pointless research to prove myself right and then writing about it, it's time to return my nose to the proverbial grindstone.
It will be a miracle if I survive this weekend.
*EDIT: I remember now. That particular entry ended, "Human voices woke me. I did not drown." And yet I can never seem to get it straight in my head whether the car crash that nearly killed me happened in 11th or 12th grade. I mean, seriously. What the fuck?
P.S. Hey Laurie, I promise I'm not stalking you or anything. Tomorrow, I may well be struck suddenly by the exact lyrics for a cereal jingle I last heard in 1989. This is just the way my twisted little mind operates.
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But what if I wanted a stalker?
Date: 2003-11-30 08:43 am (UTC)Good luck on your thesis!