Everest

This paper may just kill me. Mostly because it is all I have to focus on between now and Wednesday.

I know, I know, poor baby, right? One paper!

But I am getting too much in my head for it. There isn't going to be any way for me to pull this off the way I would like to. I wont be able to finish the novel the paper is based upon, let alone to adequate research on the auxiliary topics I necessarily have to touch on. So I am getting stressed - do I just keep writing out my ideas until I have exhausted them all, and then turn to research? This seems obviously wrong, but at the same time I am desperate to get some words down so that, at least superficially, I will not be starting from square one.

And, as one may expect with a 947-page book, there is such a variety of topics I need to cover. The reception of the novel, in France, Germany, and North America; the nature of guilt and responsibility during total war; France's relationship in the past to artistic representations of of the Vichy Regime; Historiography of Germany's WWII motives/responsibility; the uses of fiction by historians; the nature of testimony; the list goes on, believe me.

And I am just not in a writing state of mind. I am an excellent bullshitter when I want to be, and usually when I need to be. But now, when I need to weave my magic web of articulate and charming bullshit, my abilities escape me.

I am starting to feel old. My mind and body are clearly deteriorating. The skills I had as a vivacious undergraduate are slipping away from my mind, like a dream upon waking. And I'm getting fat. To make myself feel better about this physical and, yes, I will grant, likely imagined, degeneration, I went to Holt Renfrew with Claire and bought makeup. Grown up women need to spend top dollar to keep themselves looking youthful, when their minds and metabolisms have quit. And it is always nice to have a salesclerk explain that "really, you don't need much foundation - you're skin is beautiful." Why thank you. And that thank you is, of course, directed at Keihls and Olay, jointly responsible for keeping me young.

In keeping with this (pathetic?) nostalgia which has seemingly reached into my soul lately, I nearly burst into tears today when I thought of my friend Heather. My heart actually aches from missing her; I was on the verge of sobbing in savasna. In response to this news, she, equally nostalgic, shared with me the following quote, from Dante:
Nessun maggior dolore
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria.

There is no greater sorrow

Than to be mindful of the happy time

In misery.

Canto V, lines 121-123