blessed be the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

People never tell me very interesting things about writers. Apparently Edgar Allan Poe was a pedophile. And nobody tells me why?

But I love his poetry anyway.

Evening Star

'Twas noontide of summer,
And mid-time of night;
And stars, in their orbits,
Shone pale, thro' the light
Of the brighter, cold moon,
'Mid planets her slaves,
Herself in the Heavens,
Her beam on the waves.
I gazed awhile
On her cold smile;
Too cold- too cold for me-
There pass'd, as a shroud,
A fleecy cloud,
And I turned away to thee,
Proud Evening Star,
In thy glory afar,
And dearer thy beam shall be;
For joy to my heart
Is the proud part
Thou bearest in Heaven at night,
And more I admire
Thy distant fire,
Than that colder, lowly light.

I almost wish that I managed to subconciously keep my pseudo British-American accent that I had when I was little. It was kind of cool, actually; I sounded vaguely Canadian after awhile.

a sense of history

I think that I like the TLIW depiction of Eleanor of Acquitaine better than the historical figure I'm reading about. I've managed to get to chapter 14 or so of the Eleanor of Acquitaine biography I've been reading, up to the point when Richard goes on the latest Crusade and his dear mum is essentially the ruler. Interestingly enough the biographer makes a rather unnecessary point that Richard's homosexual and had an incestuous relationship with Eleanor. Ouch; that just shattered a lot of pretty preconceptions that I had of her. In the play it's more subtly implied more than anything. James Goldman does much more justice to Eleanor and Henry there, though their sons come off pretty shoddily except for Geoffrey, who just appears to be a demonic, charismatic misanthrope who is unmistakably cool nevertheless. Phillip II Augustus manages to get away with history and fiction quite beautifully.

And it seems that Eleanor was probably blonde and blue-eyed. Ack; I had pictured her to look exactly like Katharine Hepburn, who's actually distantly related to her.