Three Days

Nothing much to report...been studying according to schedule, is all. It feels good to sink into a routine of my own devising. The sense of ownership makes it easier to keep to it. Been happier than last week, partly because the affair has been concluded in its entirety (for all practical purposes at least), but mostly because I've started doing Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which is a great work! Heh, it's been a real pleasure memorising quotes from there because the modernity and colloquialisms make them easier to remember, and because they're just fun. Really funny. Heh, which other work will offer something like "The way to a man's heart is through his wife's belly"? And it's definitely easier because I agree with its basic premise, all that absurdist/existentialist stuff about malleable realities and subjective perceptions.

There was a strange quote I came across though; Martha says, "George, who is good to me, and whom I revile; who understands me, and whom I push off; who can make me happy and I do not wish to be happy, and yes I do wish to be happy. George and Martha: sad, sad, sad." I originally thought she was referring to herself when she says "I do not wish to be happy", but maybe what Albee means is "George, who...I do not wish to be happy". Which one do you think it is? Either way the grammar is still rather awkward.

Oxford people having their interviews this week. Good grief, it causes so much unnecessary acrimony, this whole uni application thing. To be sure, it concerns our futures and all that, but some of the competition is just plain unproductive, and is just inconsiderate. It's things like these, I realise, when the competition is raised to an obvious and unavoidable level, when all the ugly politicking emerges. And I realise that this kind of thing tends to happen only with girls. Frankly, some of the people have been positively rabid, blowing the significance of this one interview into a life-and-death struggle. Such insecurity...it seems that in the game of realpolitik, any confidence in one's own abilities and chances is annulled by an overdose of pragmatic and assiduous covering of every single base and vulnerability. The truth is, some of the competition can feasibly be foregone in favour of just some more niceness.

Of course, it's undeniable that my aloofness is made easier because I can afford to do so. Yet when I envision myself in that kind of situation, I don't think I can bring myself to go to such lengths to snatch every possible advantage over other people. Heh, I guess I'm timid like that...skin not thick enough. It's just easier for me to forgo the competition and step back. At this point I'm beginning to think that perhaps it's an insufficiency on my part, my inability to play the game an enter completely into the rat race. It may be that I do need to learn how to survive in the real, vicious world. But at this point it just seems to be such a trivial thing. It's not even a philosophical point we're fighting over; it's just a place in a university which was already unlikely to end up in our hands to start with. A little bit more intelligence probably would make no difference, so why not forgo it for some more decency, which will make a difference to other people?

Hmm...yesterday Purvis was talking about Silas Marner, and again the whole Christian-bashing routine came up again. I'm still bemused at how one is supposed to see Eliot's morality concept and Christianity as mutually exclusive. There is nothing that Eliot says that is forbidden in Christianity; if anything, I'm continually surprised at how much the priests seem to agree with what she says. Christianity (or Catholicism at least) seems to be rather compassionate to people and individuals. It's more forgiving than real life, really, without the viciousness and intolerance of failure. To me at least, if you can survive the strictures and prejudices of real life at its worst, then whatever doctrines there are in Catholicism are no problem to accept.

Tomorrow going to MFA again. Heh...yesterday logged into the PSC gateway, and the application process is rather annoying. So much data that must be inputted. I think I should construct a proper CV to keep all the records straight. Someday. And there's also the choices that need to be filled in...I think I shall put MFA as first choice, but beyond that I don't have any ideas. Must find out if MOE will take my SPS degree, if only for the social history stuff that I want to do. Anyway...tomorrow. I hope it'll not be racked with tensions. The last session was very pleasant, with mellow people and intelligent discussion. Basically I think what made it so nice was that it felt natural, like no one was forcing a certain image of themselves. For tomorrow, I hope people won't be putting up pretences about themselves.

pondered by phoenican @ 19.10.05