Saturday, October 06, 2007

Medievalism Round-up

My paper went okay -- it got a few laughs, I got to say rude words because they're in the text and it was fun. The conference was very enjoyable and brought together a wide variety of folks, mostly (but not all) medievalists. Topics touched on books, films, video games and of course, opera (my paper was on Julie Taymor's Grendel opera). I've got a few things to look for and had time to do a little writing.

The parks here are full of black squirrels. It took me a while to get used to that. Growing up with yellow squirrels, it was odd to see grey ones in New England, but black ones! They look somehow a lot more exotic.

There was a rainbow in the sky as we entered the main building on campus this morning, even though it had not rained.

Hotel rooms are restful. No work lies in wait, no reminders of things to do -- it always feels like you're a little outside time, rather like airports. As soon as you enter an airport, you're in no-time (as opposed to Noh time ;-) and time passes at a different rate. Mostly it's slower because there's nothing to do but wait. In a hotel room, you have a little hideaway where no one's looking for you and once the conference is over, time is your own.

Yet I was restless last night and kept waking up. The strangeness of sleeping alone -- no Gene, no Kipper -- and all the strange noises. I have learned the trick of turning the radio to static to provide white noise and drown out noisy neighbors. It will be good to get home and sleep, even if the responsibilities return, too.

2 comments:

Robert said...

It was in Rome where I saw the yellow squirrel!

yellow squirrels? where did you grow up?

C. Margery Kempe said...

No, it was in Rome we saw the yeller dawg! Yellow like this one.

I didn't know the London squirrels are famous.