Reading, Riches, and Poverty

Today it was a delightful sunny day. Of course I stayed immured in our apartment like the lazy mole I unfortunately tend to be. But at least my mood was lifted, if my feet were not.

I've showered, made my bed, played Chopin mazurkas and waltzes, read The English Orphans by Mary Jane Holmes online, read newspaper articles online, and eaten. My hands are not perfectly healthy yet, but they're much better. Yesterday I read the introduction and first chapter of a book (my uncle's Christmas present) by Rick Gekoski entitled Eine Nacht mit Lolita. It's about the author's encounters with various books, and the history of the books' publication.

I also read two articles from the New York Review of Books, one being David Grossman's speech at a memorial service for Yitzhak Rabin, and the other being about Marie Antoinette and fashion. There was an interesting phrase in the latter article about the court being a place where affected sentimentality took the place of any real emotion; also, I found it illuminating to read that the Queen could not reach for a glass of water herself if she wanted one, and was forced to request someone else to give it to her. Of course neither idea is an innovation, but I hadn't thought of them as clearly before.

The general idea about Versailles and other courts is that it has little relation to the "realities of life." But certainly the life of a court lady or gentleman would not have been any more unnatural and un-human than the life of a pauper of the slums. If the "realities of life" means "the unpleasantness experienced by the lower classes," certainly the pauper would know more about those; but that is not, I think, all that reality is about. I often wonder what reality is. Most people seem to think of it as a set of shared experiences. But, after all, everything that happens is reality. Anyway, I think that if I actually read philosophy I would be able to spare everyone my tentative speculations! (c:

I'm still thinking about my French Revolution story. The d'Eules family is currently expecting an elderly aunt from Paris, who will hopefully turn out not to resemble Betsy Trotwood or Lady Catherine de Bourgh or any other pre-existing ladies of literature. But I've been thinking that I haven't been writing the book "in my own voice" so far, and I want to re-write it anyway.

As for other projects, I want to donate blood some time soon, and research more about applying to university (personally, I find the former less painful). I still have "existential angst," or whatever it is, off and on (though not as badly as just before I wrote my last post), and I've been seriously considering doing volunteer work for the very selfish aim of not feeling that my life is useless. I've been wondering, for instance, if there are any orphanages in Berlin. That may sound like I'm still stuck in Dickens and that I'm trying to emulate Little Dorrit or some other pious heroine, but the real reason I'm wondering about them is that I've read unsettling things about orphanages in Russia. The other thing is that I have no real idea what's going on in the poorest parts of the society in which I live, and I think I should. But it seems to be so difficult to really help. For example, is it really helping to serve food in soup kitchens to homeless people? Couldn't some of them do this themselves, and be paid for doing it? Still, maybe if I actually tried it out I would see the rationale for it, instead of which I am still entirely an armchair philanthropist, who doesn't even donate money to charities.