Unicorns!

While in Ireland, I had a dream that I was a unicorn!



No, not that unicorn. Just a regular unicorn (as if there is such a thing as a regular unicorn). I was a beautiful unicorn prancing around the countryside, trying to decide what to do. I was in love with Andrew, but he was a human. People didn't like that a unicorn and a human were in love, so they tried to kill us. We ran around the countryside (which was really just like a big yard on a hill) avoiding death traps and then we got pinned down by people shooting guns at us. Then I woke up.

The moral of the unicorn dream story is this: if you don't like Andrew and I being in love, I will unicorn-chop you! With my magical horn!

Ok, so the unicorn-chop part wasn't in my dream, but I feel that's what would have happened next if I had kept sleeping.

I e-mailed my film professor a paper topic idea at the beginning of this week. I wasn't sure if it was a topic he'd get behind, and it took him forever to email me back. So I spent the whole week semi-freaking out that I'd have to think of a new topic. I'm actually interested in the one I have now, so that's making the research a lot easier to do. I was worried I'd end up writing about something I had little to no interest in and that it'd show in my work.

Here's what I e-mailed my professor: " You mentioned widescreen as a participatory practice and some of Sobchack's
thoughts on repetition and the collapsing of temporality (lots of good stuff on
33-36). I'd like to tie these ideas to DeMille's '56 The Ten Commandments and
how the film invites participation through its content and the yearly Easter
showing. It's interesting because through the telling of Passover, it makes
present the past but also relates to seders and the repetition and
story-telling that occurs there. It allows for participation in the film (if
vicariously) along with the holiday - reminds me of the oldest church ever
found that has paintings on the baptistry wall of disciples going to Jesus'
tomb to find him resurrected, as if they are on their way to your baptism to
find you resurrected - another collapsing of past and present. However, it's
also complicated through the yearly television showing around Easter and how
DeMille constructs Moses as a Christ-figure - but at the same time, that
incites participation and ritual, clearly emphasizing the representation of the
event."

Anyway, that's my idea for my paper topic for my film class. I think it'll work out, and so does my professor. Which makes me glad.

In between the preliminary research for this paper and another paper on Scorsese's use of Sacred Heart imagery in The Last Temptation of Christ, I've been hitting the library like mad. I've requested lots of books from other libraries, scoured the divinity library (finding very useful books sitting next to the non-useful book I looked up) and I have a huge stack of books checked out. I barely have the shelf space for all of them. I've started piling books up in front of other books.

I bought some tikka sauce at the grocery store yesterday, and I'm testing it out today. I'm afraid I might have over-tikka'ed my meal tonight, but we'll see how it goes. I'm seasoning my chicken with the sauce and I mixed a small spoonful into the rice I made. I have a big thing of yogurt, so let's hope that balances it if it's too spicy - although for me, it's rare to find something too spicy. Unless Erich cooked it.

More from Ireland

Tomorrow I come home from Ireland (sad). But it's been a lot of fun since I've been here, so that's nice.

This morning I made cream cheese french toast for Andrew and he said that it was so good he's going to hold on to me. What a compliment. But I think Mom and Kari should be pleased to know that their experiment ripping off IHOP will get me men.

We went to Dublin this week from Tuesday to Thursday. It was pretty fun, even at the same time as being tiring. There's so much to do in Dublin and we had so little time, so we tried to pack as much in as possible. That meant on Wednesday we went to 1. Dublin Castle 2. Chester Beatty Library (scraps of 1 c. parchment/Gospels!) 3. Christ Church 4. Guinness Brewery Tour 5. the place where Barney Kiernan's used to be (a pub where James Joyce set a chapter in Ulysses, a chapter on Andrew wrote a paper) 6. the Post Office 7. National Musuem of Archeology and History, 8. National Library 9. sushi for dinner! 10. Davy Byrnes (another Ulysses reference, where Leopold Bloom had lunch) and then finally to our hotel. Some places we just briefly stopped at (Christ Church, Barney Kiernan's, the Post Office), but all in all, we saw a lot and walked everywhere. I was v. v. v. tired by the time we went back to the hotel. Sushi helped my exhaustion, but there's only so much raw fish can do.

Thursday we went to another bunch of places before getting on the bus and heading back to Cork. We went to an exhibit at the Musuem of Decorative Arts and History (weird combo) about the Easter 1916 Rebellion and then to the James Joyce Center. We also walked through St. Steven's Green where the waterfall was NOT working. Bullshit! Dublin is about a 4 hour bus ride away from Cork, so by the time we got back to Andrew's apartment, I was pretty tired again. Not as tired as on Wednesday, but tired nonetheless.

Last Saturday we also went to Blarney Castle to kiss the Blarney Stone. I have a lovely picture of Andrew kissing it, but not me. I blame this on Andrew. He didn't take a picture of me kissing it because "it was the wrong angle. It would have only been your legs." Laaaaame. He's a jerk. (In his defense, he did offer to buy me a copy of the one the Castle takes, you know, like on a rollercoaster. I think those are ripoffs to begin with, and since you couldn't even get it printed on a mug or mousepad, I didn't want one.)

Today we're going to go to an Easter beer festival held at a local brewery here. I'm pretty excited since I love beer and I love Easter. You know, Jesus dying and raising and all. Then tomorrow I fly home where I land at 11:00pm and take the midnight shuttle, putting me back in New Haven at 2am where I can sleep for a bit until I have work that afternoon. I'm going to go see Tessa in a few weeks, so that's exciting too. The semester is almost over - I have about four weeks of classes, then a reading week and then exams period when all of my papers are due. Crazy.

Dispatches from Ireland

Right now Andrew is asleep and I am checking my favorite internet sites I haven't had a chance to check on. He got up early for class while I slept until 10, not to mention after we got home from our afternoon excursion, I took a nap. So he was a little more sleepy than I was tonight.

Ireland has been a lot of fun! I've been here for a week and I'll be here until next weekend, so there's still lots of time to do stuff. Andrew took me to Killarney and we went to see Ross castle, which was very pretty (and cold). On the walk there, the weather couldn't decide if it wanted to be sunny or hail, so it did some of both. Probably the only day that I've been hailed on and got a bit of a sunburn too (on my face - just a little pink!). Ross castle was built in the 15th c. and traded hands many times before present day, which adds a lot of interesting information to its history. It had just opened for the season, so barely anyone was there. We had our own private tour of the castle, which was really nice. There were monastary ruins that you could get to by boat from the castle, but the boat drivers weren't there or it wasn't open; either way we didn't get to see the monastary ruins. Not as bad as missing the Sistine Chapel, but pretty lame.

Today we went to Cork city Gaol (jail... pretty phonetic). It was kind of creepy. I'm usually not a big fan of touring places used for imprisionment or torture, but at the same time I feel that the point of visiting these places is to make sure conditions and situations like those never happen again. We also hit up the Cork City Musuem. Pretty interesting to see the history of the city... although the exhibit did make a big historical jump from 600 BC to 600 AD in one glass case. I think they're probably just working with what they have, though.

Tomorrow we're going to Blarney Castle to kiss the Blarney Stone. Exciting! Andrew feels weird about kissing a stone that millions of people have kissed before, but I told him he's pretty much doing the same thing every time he kisses me. Haha!

Tuesday is Dublin. Monday is St. Patrick's Day - there's a parade and everything! I'm excited. I should probably head to bed so I'm not tired tomorrow... although I seem to be tired more often here. It's probably all the walking. Much more than I'm used to, but not an extreme amount. It was about a 2 mile walk to Ross Castle, but it's also about 2 miles from Andrew's apartment into the city center. Anyway, more walking than just around the library bookshelves like I'm used to. More later. Love!

Ireland!

Today I bought my plane ticket for Ireland! Whoohoo! I'm leaving March 7 at 8:30 AM (yuck - means I'll have to be up early early to get to the airport) and arriving in Cork at 11:25 PM. Then, on the way home, I'm leaving Cork on March 23 at 4:00 PM and arriving at JFK at 11:00 PM. And then there's another 2 hour drive home. So, apart from the annoying drive to and from the airport and the annoying long flight, it's all very nice. The nice part is the time in between the flights when I'm in Ireland with Andrew. He's my boyfriend. He's nice. So many nice things. Now that I've spent the majority of the money I saved in the fall on my plane ticket, I have to save some money to do things in Ireland, like see castles and drink beer. I'm working more hours this semester, so that should be helpful, at least. Plus it's my birthday soon and it's tax time (rebate! unless I've been screwed by The Man). I have to save lots of money. I put away about $50 every week or two this semester, so it should be easier now that I'm making more. I think once I'm done saving for the trip I'm going to keep up saving at this rate. It's a good habit to have, plus it'll come in handy next time I have to pay over $250 for books for one ONE of my classes.

I started second semester and all of my classes are going well. It's way nicer to have afternoon class as opposed to morning class. Less of an opportunity to sleep through it. Here's my schedule:
M: 1-6 work at the library
Tu: 9:25-11:15 Cinematic Spectacle, my Film class downtown
1-6 work at the library
7-9 Theology and Cinema
W: 1:30-3:20 Christianity and Culture
6-10 work at Holy Grounds
Th: 3:30-5:20 Reading the Visual Culture of American Religion
F: 9-12 work at the library
S: Nothing!
Su: Nothing!

I'm so excited not to have to work Saturday morning. I hate hate hated it last time. But now that Susan, my boss at the library, loves me, I don't have to worry about working crappy shifts anymore. Sunday I even got to train one of my friends and close the library. You know, the high rolling stakes of being a circulation desk employee.

My classes all look great. They're all about stuff I'm very much interested in and potentially classes I hope to teach at some point, so it's nice. Lots of reading for my Visual Culture class... although the "Reading" in the title kinda gave that one away. But I'm reading some pretty cool books, so no worries there. I don't know if I can read the pretty cool books at a rate of 2 per week though.... so I lied about the no worries. There are some worries. Small worries. I'm especially excited about my Christianity and Culture class. The professor is very cool and he's paired some really traditional theology of culture readings with pieces of literature, art and music. It's a pretty interesting way to do it.

I went to bed early last night (10:30 Mom, just like you) and slept until 10... it was great. I woke up a bit and rolled around, but I always got back to sleep right away. I had some crazy dreams, none of which I can really remember. I used to be really good at remembering my dreams. I need to start doing that again. I need to put more importance on writing my dreams down right away once I wake up. I have my journal by my bed, but I need to move it to a more prominent position, I think.

Ok. Goodbye.