What's the plan, Phil??

Today's post has a very simple motivation behind it. I was watching a movie today which I was not expecting to be quite so depressing as it was, and it put me in a bit of a slump. There's really no practical explanation behind this; it centred around life events which I feel myself to already be past. . . mainly having to worry about school. I've never been a slouch academically and so these worries have been absent from my life. I tried to explain a weird feeling I have about school to a close friend recently though. I almost want it to be harder. It's not that school was just easy for me in that five-year-old-math-prodigy kind of way - trust me, I worked for every good grade I ever received - it's that I feel as though I'll never really be satisfied until I've had to go full on, flat out to get what I want. Moving on.

The answer to de-slumping wasn't going to be reading today. After finishing Dunant's Blood and Beauty, I started in on The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. If you haven't heard of the novel yet, it's been getting major press this past year as an 800-and-some-word literary undertaking, and winner of the 2013 Man Booker Prize. At the same time, I began Alice Munro's collection of short stories, Dear Life. Please tell me you've heard of this one. Canadian. Nobel Prize for Lit. All I can say so far is pick it up. It's not a heck of a big time commitment (the stories are only around 30-40 pages), but it's so satisfying to read the work of something who knows what they're doing and can do whatever it is in a limited number of pages without you feeling that it was meant to be either longer or shorter. The ability to compose short fiction is a very impressive talent indeed.

So why with both of these fantastic works to choose from did I deem it a literature-less afternoon? Because I decided instead to look at clothes on the internet. These items are adorable and remind me that it's not always going to -39 (celsius) with windchill.

"Presentation and Accounted For" - Modcloth

"In Due Corsage" - Modcloth

"Promoting Elegance" - Modcloth

"Madeline" - Out of Print

 -Colleen
P.S. http://outofprintclothing.com/ is a website you should definitely check out if you haven't already.

Bloodline Beauty

Well ladies, it's been the better part of a year since my last post. Isn't there a movie where one woman is speaking to another and wondering what happened to make things turn out the way they did? The answer given is simply: "Life." So that's my excuse for now. Life happened, and blogging did not. For some reason though, the combination of several inches of snow overnight, a pink cashmere sweater, and the consumption of the last sweet from Christmas has made me reach once more for the pen (keyboard). It feels like time to pick up, though not exactly where we left off, and carry on. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.

So, so much has happened in the past year. I've graduated with distinction, gotten a new job, applied for grad school, been accepted to grad school, and read an absolute tonne. Today's post title comes from my current read, Sarah Dunant's latest: Blood and Beauty: The Borgias. If you care anything for historical fiction, Dunant will have you hooked from the beginning. If you already consider yourself a mild to extreme fanatic for the genre, Blood and Beauty will practically propel you out of your seat and on a plane to Rome.

Speaking of Rome. One exciting event I'm looking forward to is my return to Italy. I was there five years ago, before studying and minoring in the language. This time I'm looking forward to more interaction in the national tongue, more cities (I'm venturing further north), and certainly more to blog about. Ai miei amici italiani: dove devo viaggiare stavolta?

The other big life event quickly coming up on me is my move into the big city for grad school. Almost immediately after returning home from il bel paese, I'll be relocating to one of my country's big centers, possibly for good if things work out in my career.

Stick around and let's see where this year goes.

-Colleen  

No, that's why it's WORTH so much

Today's quotation comes from the beloved 1998 film, "You've Got Mail." I was inspired to write the following after rewatching this movie last night, so continue reading, if you please.

Tonight I watched "You've Got Mail." Kathleen Kelly and her Shop Around the Corner made me realize something. I want to write. Not in the journalistic style of a blog, but in the way I longed for smooth pencils and clean lined notebooks back in third grade. Last summer I was visiting Toronto, Ontario when I happened to pass by the Scholastic publishing house. Even such a short time ago, I had been unsure of my path, only knowing that I did not want to teach. The life-size Clifford charging up the wall behind the staircase, visible through the glass-fronted establishment, seemed to point me right to it: you will be an editor. You will not write a book of your own (I acknowledged this as meant to be and not in a self-deprecating way), but you will help others. You will give them the chance that no other has given and you will make them happy.

I do not necessarily feel that when it comes to jobs one may be worth less and another more, but now I feel I could do more. And I think children's literature could do that for me as well. These are the stories that teach us who, where, and why we are. They demonstrate the value of hope, the depth of love, and the possibility of magic. They make us smile and they make us cry. They make me wish I had enrolled in the Children's Literature course. Do you want to know something shocking? I didn't take it because it is one of the few English courses that DON'T ACTUALLY COUNT towards my degree. As an English major. I've never really been bothered by this before, instead just mindlessly avoided the class, selecting instead Renaissance Lit or the History of Theory and Criticism (that was mandatory, by the way), but now it strikes me (no pun intended) as a slap in the face to authors who write to a young audience. If schools of academics and the intellectuals of our future, and in the same discipline as many of these writers no less, don't take them seriously, who will?

The answer that comes to me is of course, the children. There will always be the children learning to love, read, and be inspired by the people who have said "You know what, Department of English? Children's literature is worth something to ME."

-C

Can I make a special request?

If you're any kind of student, university or otherwise, you know that sometimes school can really mess you around. If you've read my little description (right under my wide-eyed self-portrait), you may be able to infer that my own university experience has failed to be something that could be consistently described as "such stuff as dreams are made on." I really thought this would be a post in which I neglected to make a literary reference, but that last quotation, which I'm sure many of you will recognize, comes from Shakespeare's The Tempest. It seems that the part of my brain that feels the need to make constant literary and filmic references simply refuses to be caged; especially when we throw one of my favourite plays into the mix. Well, let's just roll with that and get into the reasons for my title today.

As my previous posts will suggest, I love wordplay. Toss me a metaphor, a parallelism, a synecdoche, etc. etc. and I'm on board! With this in mind, let us reacquaint ourselves with today's title. My desire to make a special request can first be linked back to my occasional university woes, my post-secondary pains, my higher education hindrances; the list could go on. Well, the time has come ("the walrus said, to talk of many things") to start considering which courses I'll be taking in the fall. Let's just leave Lewis Carroll here and mutually acknowledge the unlikelihood of me studying anything to do with shoes, ships, or sealing wax. To be perfectly honest though, these things may not be as far off the mark as you might think. I've nearly completed my degree and only have a few more mandatory classes to take. What this means in practical terms is that my remaining time at university will be largely occupied with the taking of electives. 

Don't get me wrong, I do love a good elective. They make first years so giddy they nearly wet themselves and have yet to fail at putting a spring in the step of upper years (such as myself) who can practically taste the sunshine-y goodness of the light at the end of the tunnel that is graduation and the wonders of the wider world. Phew, that was a lengthy line! The point is, I'm going to be taking more courses from other faculties than from my own (Arts & Humanities) and it's seeming a little ridiculous. Sure, it might be fun to have a schedule with space exploration, major anthropological finds, accounting, women's experience in the workforce from 1700-1900, and art history of the Baroque era (as my public school music teacher always said, "If it ain't Baroque, don't fix it!"). Actually, that's a lie. I cannot imagine a world in which I would derive any sort of pleasure from taking accounting.

Joking aside though, I'm sure you can see how completely irrelevant it will be for an English and Italian major to pack her final time at uni with things that have no practical use in the real world. I thought that's what high school was for?! Just kidding. Stay in school kids. I would like to please make a special request to my university that they assist me in making the end of my time here both fun and functional, nifty and necessary, enjoyable and educational. I promise that's the last sentence like that for this post! In case they don't pull through though, I've turned back to the cotton candy world of beauty and pulled out my own little "Special Request."

Sephora by OPI's "Special Request"

A bit too much flash, but look how shiny!

This one's blurry, but it shows the colour the truest. It's a really lovely coral-y orange! My favourite!

 -C