Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Almost Normal

I almost feel normal.  That is, I toss and turn for an hour, then get up and write in my journal.

How I miss Summer.  In Summer one simply lies down on top of the bed and goes to sleep.  In Winter one covers  up with a blanket AND a quilt, and every time you turn, you get wound up in bedding and have to fight your way free.  Getting sleep is a nightmare -- pun intended.

That last paragraph is a mixture of third person and second person references  but who can keep his grammar straight at five am?  Anyway is makes me remember Professor Phillips.  He would have abjured this kind of writing. 

Advanced Composition was a subject required of High School seniors  planning to go to college. I passed the course with an A or B, but then FLUNKED the composition portion of the college entrance exam, and had to take "Subject A", a remedial compositon class. That was a no-no for Enlish Majors. 

I muddled through Subject A and Mr. Phillips writing class, and English 1A and 1B and then English 36A and English 36B. (If the first year is 1A and 1B, why is the second year 36A and 36B?  Why not 2A and 2B? Where is the logic in that, UCLA?)

American Literature was fun, but Enlish Literture was torture.  Who on earth could read all the works assigned?  My idea of English literature was Sherlock Holmes, and theirs was Faerie Queen/

Pope was good with his rhymed couplets, and Shakespeare with Tragedies Hamlet and MacBeth, but his Comedies were unfunny, Taming of the Shrew and Two Gentlemen of Verona.  I loved old Caliban in Tempest.

I met wonderful characters in English Lit.  The witches who vanished "into the air", McDuff who was "untimely ripped from his mother's womb". Henry V who shouted "Once more unto the breech, Dear Friends, or close the gap with our English dead. Prove that those you call fathers did beget thee." Imagine stopping the battle to shout rhetoric.  Heroic indeed.

Once more unto my bed, or else the journal be filled with literary Dribble.

I'll proof-read tomorrow, maybe,

 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hope your feeling better !

Anonymous said...

I enjoyed your treatise on Eng. Lit.   mark

Anonymous said...

I Pity folks who focus on form, foregoing fantastic phrases in favor of rules relating to usage.

Enough of that foul science known as "grammar." Be gone! Allow me to write as I live: free and unfettered by tyrants and others who would limit my horizons and place obstacles in the way of my pursuit of happiness.

Get out, Grammar!

And take spelling with you.