Hehhh. So found a pretentious note (c.f. earlier post) I'd typed out a long time ago on my phone half-asleep and bothered by thoughts about literature and books and why analysis sometimes can make a book seem less of itself. It's strange that I struggle with the objectification of a book when that is precisely what it is: an object. Anyway, I liked the violence. I did feel like I was doing violence by interrogating the guts of a book.

In other news, I'm sick!! Down with a cold and it's exhilarating to be sniffly and at home with no pressing obligations 'cept a cover letter, but that's another matter. I feel a peculiar sense of freedom. But also because I managed to read two books—popcorny soap operas: one set in space with wormhole travelling and the other on the Titanic—and I haven't read for fun in two weeks and it's a good feeling. I would like to begin reading Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. I hear it's an epic medieval-era medical mystery set in a monastery—which sounds about right for me. Books, ideas, housework, this is the life.

O.k. I do have complaint. Everyone's been hounding me about my employment status. For a while I felt pretty bad that I didn't have a job yet—as if I could be loved only if I was a productive member of society and not when said person takes care of the million and one household chores without making a big deal of it amirite. But then as we went around the room at a meeting for retreat prep, and everyone introduced themselves by their names and jobs e.g. "Hi I'm XX and [insert job title]" I was like "Hi I'm Natalie, and I'm a person who's currently unemployed." 

And it felt good to emphasise the bit about personhood, and also delightfully rebellious heh. Such an anti-utilitarian stance—that a person cannot defined by what he / she can / cannot do, that s/he matters simply because they have mass and take up space—they literally are matter.

Probably why I love literature so much—books move beyond mere functionality to point towards a greater truth: the human soul is not something that merely functions to work, to eat, to sleep, to reproduce. No if we were, then I should be nothing more than a robot or an animal. But we dream as well. In the great drama of our lives we all aspire to greatness. Our nature is to tend towards something beyond appeasing the base appetites of our bodies. We have goals. And we disappoint ourselves when we remain in meanness and smallness of character. When our hands are clutched tight because we are afraid to give.

Not that work is bad. It's not, it's good, it gives dignity to a person. But I'm just saying that I don't understand the fear of joblessness? Maybe it's because I don't have to pay back loans for university fees or I don't have to support a family and nothing about my life is desperate, but as it is, the fear and worry of the people around me looking for work is quite, quite frustrating. If I do find a job, then Lord, let me do it well. If I don't, then let me go on searching without discouragement or meanness of soul. The duties of each day are enough as they are.

Simple in Virtue. Steadfast in Duty. The IJ motto has never resonated more with me until now.