Author Archives: Murphy

_Women in Love _ by D.H. Lawrence

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D.H. Lawrence is scandalous. He’s most famous for Lady Chatterly’s Lover, which announces its scandalousness loudly by having “Lover” in the title. It screams “Sex is happening here!”

This meant that he got banned and censored. Even better! Nothing so titillating as a banned book.

Yeah, except…A lot of the time the books that are banned are not as raunchy as the imagination of the people who banned them. True smut is seldom banned; it’s just put in the back room and left for the pervs who want it.

And D.H. Lawrence’s smut is sort of weak and intellectual. Yes, Lady Chatterly had a lover. And yes, Lawrence tells all. But when you get down to it, the all is kind of disappointed. He tells it like it is, and wouldn’t that be the definition of “prosaic”?

In daily lives, relationships are like that. They’re not scandalous—even the scandalous ones.

Well, I read Lady Chatterly a long time ago, and that’s not the book I’m reviewing now. I picked up Women in Love because I knew D.H. Lawrence was a highly regarded author, and I had only read LCL and one short story by him. I wondered if other his other books were worth reading.

So, this morning, I finished Women in Love. The story starts with two sisters, Ursula and Gudrun. Both of them were extremely modern ladies, but with really old-fashioned names. Gudrun especially has that contrast. I didn’t even know Gudrun was a name, it’s that archaic, but she herself was an artist. She made her living at it, even. Ursula was a little more tame; she was a teacher.

There were the men, too. Gerald Crich and Rupert Birkin reveal themselves as the love interests for the two women in love.

All these four are strained to the breaking point with their sensitivity. They are constantly in rapturous heights, or seriously believe that they will die of their disappointments. It seemed comical to me, after the first time, how overcome they are by their feelings.

And they are constantly on very high intellectual discussions. What is the meaning of things, really? And they come to conclusions, by paths not apparent to others, which are very definite. All so important.

Love to them is not a soft pillow to fall into and languish upon. It is an argument to resolve, or a cause to take up. They snuggle sometimes, and ask “Do you love me?” of one another. But they had previously torn to shreds any assumptions about love and what the word means, so both the question and the answer are blind groping.

Oh yes, and add to the two cute hetero couples a strong homoerotic tension between Rupert and Gerald. Whew. Even I felt a little steamed up by some of the scenes between those two.

All of these characters seem to want so much. They don’t believe in anything they have known, but they want to find something that they don’t know to believe in.

…a phrase which sounds utterly nonsensical and as if I could have lifted it directly out of the novel. I don’t think I am inadvertently quoting, though…

These people are so modern; they seem unable to exist with any satisfaction in the world they are in. Gudrun, who is the most modern of the group, can find no satisfaction of mind anywhere. She does however, enjoy nice stockings. That particular detail shows that Lawrence is in charge of this book of contrasts.

Bibliomania tells me “Lawrence maintained that it was his finest work.” It was finished in 1916, but not published until 1921. I can tell that it fishes deep into the spirit of the time. Many of the ideas and impulses described seem so in keeping with what I know of the period. I could imagine that it would resonate strongly with his contemporaries.

It’s not an easily understood book, but I’m glad I read it. Especially now that I know he thought it was his best. I don’t feel like rushing out and reading the rest of his stuff though. But if one came to hand, I wouldn’t turn it away.

baby, you were born to blog

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I watched a South Park episode last night. Kenny, whose most prominent feature is his propensity to die, had gained proficiency at a video game. The game was a war between heaven and hell. He was extremely good at it, achieving level 60

Of course, he died, but it turned out that his death served a purpose. The video game really was a simulation for the war between heaven and hell. His skill at the video game saved the world.

Kenny’s propensity to die, combined with his skill at the video game, had saved the world.

There are people who have incredible skills that are meant for highly specific intersections of the time-space continuum.

Remember Rubik’s cubes? My brother had a friend back then who was so good at solving Rubik’s cubes that he had to lubricate them to allow for the super-fast manipulations. What a genius! Incredible!

The rest of us cheated, and moved the stickers. But this one guy, he was a master.

What might have happened if he was born 50 years earlier? He would never have discovered his talent.

There are possibilities that are for only that moment. Right now, not any other time, blogging is happening. I have a feeling that blogs will evolve into something else pretty soon, but RIGHT NOW there are some earth-shaking bloggers out there.

Instapundit has a blog. He is like a perpetual motion machine of blogging. With the incredibly wide and sometimes deep levels of curiousity and knowledge he has, can you imagine what he would be like to live with before he had to blog to put that into?I imagine that his wife was relieved when he began to blog.

And in a totally different genre of blogging, there is James Lileks
His perpetually funny and often profound writing is also massively popular.

These two guys are totally different in style, but similar in that they are born to this time, this space, this blog

My blog has dropped from popularity lately. Not so many people are stopping by, because I have not been maintaining my ‘web-presence.’

I try to tell myself that I am a different sort of writer, when faced with the web titans I have mentioned.

But as for some people…They were born to blog.

The Library

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I moved into my new home last year. In August. Or was it September?

And it is a nice home. I enjoy it. There is a small kitchen, one bathroom, and three bedrooms.

Of course, one bedroom is to sleep in. The other bedroom is for Chris to use as his office.

and then the third. The third bedroom has remained as a place to stick other things. All the unfinished things, not yet ‘away.’

It is the junk room.

But no more. I cleaned it out. I cleared the floor. I found a place to put things away. Even if it was just the garage. It has a corner vanity, where I keep my jewelry. I have a lot of it, you know. But there is a coffee table, which holds my laptop and the cat, much of the time. There is also a comfortable armchair, pulled close to the spot for the laptop. The cat is in this the rest of the time. And a few blank places along the wall. But I ordered bookshelves for them. By next week, it will be the

LIBRARY

and not a bad one. It makes me happy to sit in it.

HOORAY! No more junk room! I posses all of my home now!

Whoops

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Friends, I apologize. My ISP screwed up the site, and it was down for several days. It’s up now, and there should be no more of the ridiculous password nonsense.

BOUND

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I knew it was coming. It was waiting for me when I got home.

I picked it up. I had to find a knife to open it. But I had to pace around is an addled way first.

I found a knife. I sat on the couch. Chris sat with me.

I slit the tape, but I had to stop. I held it a moment longer. Then I opened it all the way.

I held it. It rested in my hands. I turned it over. Chris touched my shoulder.

Only a few moments more. I couldn’t breathe.

I put it away.

I paced around the house in my addled way again.

I knew the next day at work would be long.

It was. But I didn’t forget about it.

It was waiting for me when I got home.

This time, I remembered to breathe when I held it. I flipped the pages.

I smelled it. It smelled subtley wonderful. I know the smell will mellow nicely.

I walked around addled some more, but this time I was holding it.

Then, I sat down to read it.

It was bound. It was a book. It was mine.

It felt like a book. When I read it, it had pages with numbers. I turned them, and I read it again like I wanted to know what happened.

I got about 20 pages in before I stopped myself, laughing. Of course, I already know what happened.

I wrote it.

They call it a slippery slope because it’s easier to go down than up

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So Chris and I went to the Grand Canyon this weekend. It was a good getaway

This became my fourth visit to the spot. It is beautiful and amazing. I look at it, and two things amaze me.

First, that this happened. How did this big canyon happen? The river ran through the rock and wore it away. But that didn’t happen anywhere else. There are no other huge canyons like it anywhere.

It is vast and astonishing. But the water was only doing what was in it’s nature. And the rock was just doing what was it’s nature. Makes me want to consider the nature of the other things I encounter.

Second, that it is a long way down and I want to see it. I wonder if I will ever manage to get there. I want to try. Chris says he will maybe try with me. That it is a good goal.

He talked me into trying to climb Mt. Whitney. That was a sort of conquering thing, “I AM KING OF THE HILL!”

But the Grand Canyon is down. It is not conqueroring. It is exploring. I personally want to see what it looks like down there. We’ll see if I ever make it.

perhaps the back cover is even more important than the insides

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I am done with the first step of getting my novelette ready to publish. But I am having trouble with the back cover.

I remember in an English class, the one on theory, where my teacher said that we seldom read ANYTHING that we don’t know anything about.

We always have some idea of what to expect. It is packaged in some way, or has something on the cover that tells us how we are supposed to read it

poems are
written in separate lines
so that

We know to take them
seriously and soberly
as we read

and then there are all kinds of other conventions. A whole language before you even get to the language. Is it bound in cardboard or on a spiral coil? How does the paper feel/ Are there colors?

These are all things I am having to take into consideration. It’s pretty exciting.

Follow your gut

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Oprah talks about her gut feelings.

Women are supposed to have intuition.

But then, we are also ‘over-emotional.’ We are prone to burst into tears at certain times.

So, the problem with ‘gut’ and intuition is that I don’t always know if I am over-reacting.

How do you learn to listen to your gut? My gut doesn’t speak too often. Usually, there is enough ‘there’ there to hear what is being said.

But this week my gut was speaking. I had an overwhelming sense that something was not right.

I was travelling. I often feel a little apprehensive. I don’t mind flying, but I often feel like I might have forgotten somethng.

The feeling persisted. I got to Atlanta, and I was tired. I thought, “Oh it must be jetlag.”

And it was that time of the month.

And it was humid…and this was wrong..and that other thing was not right…

By the end of the second day there, I was trying to analyze myself. Thinking, “What is wrong? What is wrong with me?”

I love travel. I love it. How could I suddenly not be loving this trip?
I love learning new things? How could I not be paying attention during a class?

What was wrong with me?

I tried doing things that usually comfort me. I had a hot bath. I had a book. I watched Law & Order. I called Chris and vented.

Yes, I ate chocolate.

Chris was incredible, as he usually is. I had devolved into “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Maybe I really do need to go to the doctor…or a chiropracter…I feel so tense! Something is wrong.”

“Yeah,” he said. “You’re really having a tough time. This isn’t like you.”

It took me the whole trip, a trip of several days…feeling very very uncomfortable…to realize that it wasn’t me. It wasn’t me!

It was OUTSIDE of me. The situation I was in was kind of complicated, but in the long run it became utterly clear that the whole trip my gut was screaming RED ALERT and I just couldn’t hear it.

I know now exactly what the problem is.

I hope I have learned how to better interpret gut-ese.

Perhaps I will remind Chris that that is one of the possibilities. He can help me remember by asking, “Is this a message from your gut?”

I don’t know that I could have fully realized what was wrong before I had finished my trip. I knew something was wrong. But maybe I could have realized that it wasn’t me. It would have been nice to know it wasn’t me spinning out of control, it was the situation.

downtown atlanta georgia

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I am sitting in a hotel in Downtown Atlanta.

I’ve never been to Georgia before.

I’ve never been to the South before, since McLean, Virginia doesn’t really count.

This is supposed to be the time when it’s ‘nice’ around here. I am now aware of my zero tolerance of humidity.

I am also surprised that what I have seen so far is not historical at all. I would have thought there would be older buildings and things from over a hundred years ago. There are a few statues, which are interesting.

But not a lot of historicity.

The people are friendly, there does not seem to be any graffitti. But the humidity is a no go for me.