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The Awakening....the epitome of sexual frustration. That book is so freaking intense. Incredibly intense. I am not really one who enjoys listening or reading to the feminist ideals and what not, but this book is rather entertaining. However, I cannot see why she does not like her husband. There is not as much of a reign of opression from him as I expected there to be. I actually like him. The only thing that he complains about is her doing stupid things like, leaving the house and not telling where she is going. Either way, I guess that it is just supposed to represent the over all pressures of society that she has to suffer through or something. Either way, I do not like Edna. I really do not. She seems a little to melodramatic for my taste. Perhaps all of her sexual frustration has just made her this moody. Hell if I know.

Oh, my english teacher went over the funniest Billy Collins poem today in class.

Taking off Emily Dickinsons Clothes

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer's dividing water,
and slip inside.

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women's undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything -
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.

What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.

Our class laughed so hard through out the entire thing. I love Billy Collins. Especially his poem Nostalgia. Oh lord I loved that poem!!


If any of you have ever heard of the Reduced Shakespeare Company I applaud you. I actually just saw their performance of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) in my theatre class and loved it!!! I am posting a link to my favorite thing from that play, well technically two. One is a part from the introduction that is supposed to give a biography of William Shakespeare. And the other is their interpretation of Othello. When you see, you will understand the what I mean by "supposed to be" and "interpretation" and you should pick up the allusions (in both) and get the humor behind everything like Beverly...Hills that is....if none of you know what that is from, I will be ashamed. But here is the Intro part and Othello link (they go in order):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-0FsTVY3Cs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC-f0drvdmM

Hope you enjoy and find a way to watch the whole thing!

Peace, love, and candy apple hearts
Kimmers