johnguinness's Diaryland Diary
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The Joan of Arc one
I'm still looking for direction - I feel like...I can't write it myself, but something, not a red balloon, caught up in a strong wind that's buffeting(?) it around in fits and starts, up and down, this way and that.
Edit: I've written a few more paragraphs, and noticed my words are all over the place, like "my" for "me", etc. I'm typing with emotion, so I'll just apologize in advance. End edit.
Friday morning after posting I made up my mind to get out and go to IHOP when they opened and stop by the supermarket on the way home. I built up the enthusiasm to burst out the door around 5:45 and...it snowed. Big flakes had already covered the road. I postponed. I did get to the gas station where I'd meant to get gas, but bought some fresh baked goods and called it a day.
I don't recall a lot of my day, except that my sleep time keeps ratcheting forward so I got up just short of 5:00 PM. I know I watched Grey's Anatomy, and really got into it, which was unusual. With 20 minutes to go, I spotted the obvious massive plot twist ending, but I played along, and in the end, there was no damned plot twist. It wasn't a red herring or anything - two people were exactly who they told us they were.
I'm still having pro cycling withdrawals. I made a few forum posts then reactivated the Blocksite add on. Part of me was still upset with the guy who told me I was wrong when logic says I wasn't. It flamed up after he came up with a copy of a document in the Armstrong case and everyone hailed him as both hero and expert. I ended up looking at a couple of Armstrong articles. Later one of the ten people I let follow me on twitter stopped. I went to see who was left, and saw a cycling tweet, which led me to an account where that person responded to someone who puts all of her time into doping stories in cycling. It had my head reeling a bit - there are all these people who discuss all the cycling stuff, and the doping stories, and there's anger and people against things, and I used to be an active part of it. It feels weird, because I'm out of it, and have spent months in a kind of detox, but I just don't know - it took up so much of my time when I had nothing else to do. But there are people who argued with, possibly even insulted other people today, and are angry at a lot of things in cycling, and they plan to continue waking up each day for more of the same. And they're all waiting for a magical Sports Illustrated article about Lance that's been rumored for weeks.
Please, get me out of there.
I tried watching The Passion of Joan of Arc on Netflix. It's got an 8+ rating at IMDB and something crazy like 97% at Rotten Tomatoes. It turns out that during the heresy trial of Joan of Arc, three guys took notes of the questions asked by the judges, and of her responses. There were sixty guys against her, and some had already had their lives damaged by her, and others in Paris stood to have their lives changed if she went on. Anyway, the three guys would get together each day and come up with official type notes, and when it was all over, five copies were made of the whole proceedings. A couple survived, and are in Paris today. In 1928, someone made a silent film showing some of the questions and answers. All copies of the film were thought to be lost over time, until one quality version was discovered in an insane asylum in Oslo(?!)
I've made it through other silent films in the past, but this one doesn't even have music, and minutes go by where mouths are moving but there's no written dialogue. I tried twice but failed.
I ended up at Amazon, and read reviews of that or another film version, and someone mentioned a Mark Twain version of the story of her life that was interesting.
I went looking for a transcript of the trial (God bless court stenographers) and found a good one at a college website, with nicely written introduction. It was mentioned that she looked to her visions for answers, but it was too noisy in the courtroom and her prison most of the time.
I also went to Google Books and found a copy of the full Mark Twain one. It's said to be a copy of the memoirs of a guy who had been Joan's boyhood friend, had been her assistant or something during the battles, and was the last one with her before she died. When he was in his eighties, he put the story down for his great great nephews and nieces. At the start of the book was documentation of the sources used to verify the story, etc.
I watched an old episode of Psych as a mental palate cleanser, and dove in, with the question of how Twain fit in in the back of my mind. I got a couple of pages in, and there was a lot of unnecessary nonsense, setting the tone. I started to call shenanigans when he, in the late 1490's, spoke of a dragon in the woods, and when the faeries surrounding the big beech tree on the hill arrived around page ten, I came up for air.
I did some more searching, and found that the book was originally serialized in a magazine, and Twain's name wasn't used, because he didn't want his reputation to influence perception of the story. He'd never researched for a book before, but he spent twelve years on this one, and checked out both the English and French versions of the story. Then he spent two years writing what I for a few minutes thought was going to be a first hand account of what happened. Sigh.
So, I want to know the story. It's amazing that the whole trial is documented word for word, or close, as it's been through French and Latin before moving to English. I guess I'll deal with the 500+ pages at the Fordham website. And get the LeeLee Sobieski version of the movie in, because she's cute, and her name is fun to say (try it!).
I guess I'll tackle the Twain version that everyone says is so great, but I'll have to change my mindset first, which means I need to sleep first. Do I go for the fiction that was researched for twelve years first, or the actual words of the trial? Can I make it past an American author telling me, in a tone set for great great grand nieces, about faeries who come up with wreaths of black flowers not found in France when one of the local children die? Or of the dragon that was either blue and gold, or probably all gold as all dragons were?
So yeah, as they said on the pitcher's mound during Bull Durham, "we're dealing with a lot of stuff".
I do other things too, like follow the stories of dead birds and fish, being highly suspicious of all explanations because I watched Close Encounters and saw the government planes spread stuff to make the sheep and cattle pass out so they could scare the residents away from the UFO landing strip.
Hey, I didn't write it, and the fish and bird thing makes the top Google searches list.
But anyway, everything is up in the air right now. Maybe I'll go to IHOP in three hours to get that over with, and get a few healthy items at the supermarket. Maybe I'll just end up using a $5 off 25 coupon at the dollar store on the same old stuff. But mostly I'm stressed out because I think of how much better things would be with food stamps, but the depression was bad a year ago or whenever my appointment was, and I relived the time I went in person four years ago and walked out. Do I want to call, wait on hold forever, and explain why I didn't make it to the appointments or even open the letters sent after I missed?
It's not lost on me how much better the last four and a half years of my life might have been if I was part of a couple. Someone could have helped with the lawyer. Opened the letters from the University Provost. Helped me get to the food stamps interview. Making sure I spent money on MAF and Sam-e instead of having a pizza delivered when I had no cash, or the roads were snowy, or I was in the physical state that nothing but ordering food delivered makes go away.
Living alone, with zero active friends, while suffering from a brain injury and depression, is not something I'd wish on anyone. And I'm not feeling sorry for myself right now, just looking at reality like I look at my "before" picture. And I'm pretty sure that the only reason I'm feeling physically stressed and anxious right now is my earlier brushes with pro cycling fans. But it's all part of why I say everything is up in the air right now. I don't know if I can get myself to a restaurant three hours from now to eat two nice strips of bacon, two eggs, two sausages and two proper pancakes with nice strawberry topping. The deadline is Monday. I could go right now, but it would be a waste of gas as the supermarket isn't open.
Anyway, the Saints play in the NFL Playoffs today, and I'll be watching. It's all I can predict about my weekend.
2:42 a.m. - Saturday, Jan. 08, 2011
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