Sweet

1. The Complete Poems, Anne Sexton
2. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
3. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
4. Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
5. Sideways, Rex Pickett
6. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
7. Le Morte D'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory
8. The Sonnets, William Shakespeare

So yeah...finished Morte D'Arthur. Pretty fun.

Been thinking for a bit about the whole Lancelot-Guenever thing and whether or not it's sad or just irritating. I mean, on the one hand, you can't control how you feel for people. You can, however, control what you do about it. Guenever comes across as a raging bitch for most of the book; not only is she cheating on Arthur, she's pretty mean to Lancelot. I guess it's understandable, seeing as how he does go off and have a kid with some other lady, but still. He's the best knight in the world, man, people are gonna want to get with him.

Is it really tragic when people do things that are wrong, know that they're wrong but can't help themselves? Or does it just make you want to slap them upside the head and tell them to grow the fuck up? I don't really want to get into a, "What is the nature of tragedy" thing (though I do have the Poetics sitting over here to be read sometime) because I think those conversations (and this isn't even a conversation, or if it is it's incredibly one-sided, which I suppose some of my conversations end up being sometimes and holy cow this is becoming a long parenthetical) tend to be overly abstract and academic when you're talking about a more emotional, visceral reaction. I mean, when you see or read something, you know if you find it sad or not. So is it sad, or do they just get what they deserve?

It's kind of like how I felt about Wuthering Heights when I read that; I mean, yes, it's sad that Heathcliff is so restricted by his circumstances, and was unable to pursue Catherine, but what does he go and do with that? He comes back and repays all the people who treated him so badly with the same pain and hatred. Is it any wonder that he then turns into a bitter man? You get back what you put out into the world, so is Heathcliff really a tragic character? Or again, just a grown man acting like a spoiled child, throwing a tantrum because he's refused the one thing he wanted, focused on that one thing to the exclusion or deliberate destruction of everything else in his life that he could have been thankful for; someone who could use a good slapping.

I don't know. It's somewhat callous to say, I suppose, but the reality is, shit happens (the Buddhist equivalent of this idea is that life is difficult, but shit happens is a bit punchier). It does. It happens to everyone. So what are you going to do when shit happens? Cry? Run? Make life miserable for those around you? Or stand up, face it and take care of business. I don't mean to say you can avoid sadness completely, that's not healthy either, but neither is wallowing in it, being self-indulgent. At some point you've got to stand up and take responsibility for the things you can control, and for the people in your life who depend on you and who are important to you.