DUKE ORSINO
If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.
-"Twelfth Night", act 1 scene 1 (William Shakespeare)
I can hear the collective sigh of nostalgia from all you secondary school Lit Loonies. Heh.Lit in university couldn't be more different from Lit in secondary school than Jimmy Choos and Crocs. Frankly, I have alot of say about Crocs but as usual, I am determined not to succumb to my tendency for digression. I'm not saying that I don't enjoy Lit at the moment - although listening to Triple G's attempts to cram tonnes of intellectual garbage into the space between my ears during lectures will probably be detrimental to my health in the long run - it's still an immensely enjoyable subject to study and I'm still very much the same girl in the white blouse and ankle-length navy blue pleated skirt who could be moved to tears of pity or mirth by the lovely tapestries of words (overused, but very apt phrase). Who can still, at the age of 19 and 2 months, spill water all over herself while reading Sula in the comfort of cafe Olio, and not realise it till after a delay in reaction time of approximately 10 seconds because she was too engrossed in the part about Plum being burnt to death (spoiler spoiler) by his own Mama. Aiyoh.Cyril, my Lit tutor, lead a discussion about self-destructive thoughts on Thursday. I'm actually comfortable with calling him by his name 'cos he seems more like a knowledgeable peer than a teacher. Anyway, Conrad's The Secret Agent deals with how people become alienated from others because of a lack of communication...how a secret grow inside a person like an insidious weed on a fertile bed of soil, eventually devouring him from inside out. We talked about how such ends can be self-induced and somebody brought up the example of depressed people who seem to actually languish in a self-imposed state of misery and don't do anything to pull themselves together. This immediately reminded me of Orsino from Twelfth Night, not really in love with the beautiful Olivia, but with the idea of Love itself. o_OThere's definitely a bit or Orsino in everyone ; we all have emotional quagmires that we willingly sink into at some points of time, and everything seems to come to a standstill until we finally let the blows of reality sock us into action again. Nothing wrong with being a little self-indulgent - it is, in a sense, an innate vulnerability that makes us human, right? The only thing I resent about this is the amount of time wasted during that period, sighing/moping/crying/basically doing nothing. We spend time mulling over things that are probably irreversible and overlook the things that actually do matter, as well as the people who love and care about us. I always wish that I could turn back time and redo many many things. Sounds cliched, but don't you wish you could too? So many things left undone, to be undone...countless words I wish I could have taken back, others I regret having left unsaid. I am so not good at handling all that emotional stuff where matters of the heart are concerned and I find myself always, always retreating into this state of total inertia and melancholy. I hide my emotional baggage like how I used to hide stuff all over the place when my Mum wanted me to clean my room; some things get lost along the way but some remain buried and forgotten until a random occurence results in their discovery, like the dredging up of a not-so-forgotten memory. I really want to buffer myself against all the hard knocks that'll come along, as well as the occasional repercussions from past memories... but obviously that's a very naive thought. I just want to protect myself.Many transitions have been encountered since the end of my sheltered Dunman High School existence, and even more so, after the end of Junior College. Moving on is good, but I'm still trying to get used to the pace of varsity life; the pace of lectures and tutorials, meeting so many new people in different tutorial groups (and struggling to remember their names)... Sometimes, it's like an out-of-body experience because everything seems so fleeting, that precious little has enough time to settle in and budding friendships aren't really given the chance to develop. It all seems kind of superficial, people just walking in and out of one another's lives...so sad, because I have this feeling that I can be really good friends with some people if we had more opportunities for interaction. Sentimentality and nostalgia. As I sit here typing, there's this vase of dried flowers sitting on my shelf. It's been there since year 1 of JC, and I really have no reason to keep them anymore..yet, I can't bear to throw them out. My thoughts also drift to that box inside the cupboard with all my stuffed animals. My very own Pandora's box, which I still don't have the courage to open.
Okay, I really need to clean my room.
Labels: Literature
