A very short space of time through very short times of space

Edinburgh's been cold, windy, and naggingly wet since I arrived back. There was a moment yesterday when the sun was at such an angle that it shone directly through the window over my desk into the opposite corner of my bedroom. The window created a sort of subtle magnifying glass effect, and the light was very warm, and I stepped into it and just sort of let my neck rest against the warmth, and it felt very nice, to be momentarily bathed in such incubating yellowness.

I'm amazed at how fast I've fallen into seclusion--I expected whatever anti-social demon that resides within me during these dreary and uncertain months to wait at least a couple weeks after my return before taking on its full, consumptive form. The positive side is that I've been more productive than I have in years, turning to and exploiting whatever school work that lingers as an excuse to avoid human interaction. Of course, there's only so much work to be done; never did I think I'd see the day I'd find myself worrying about running out of homework. Luckily, books can be very long, and a degree in literature technically requires one to read quite a few of them. In any case, I don't think the months are necessarily the only dreary, uncertain ones around here.

So if I haven't been hanging out with people, you inquire, what have I been doing? I'll tell you! Reading Ulysses, predominantly. A chapter here, a chapter there. Ha; I wish. More like, one fifth of a chapter here, another seventh there. It's not that it's impenetrable like they say (it's actually much less frightening than I initially expected), but it certainly is dense, and it is effort, and while I can sail easily from some passages to the next, others just tire me out. Of course, I'm at that tedious beginning stage of any epic, when you've yet to be reeled in emotionally or whatever. So I'm just going to shut the fuck up about all of this until I'm not this bored/so frequently confused by the shift in narrative all the time.

I also read an essay critiquing James' Daisy Miller in light of some theory involving "Cowboy Feminism," a phrase apparently coined by Maureen Dowd (who I've actually found, with the aid of Google image search, to be surprisingly attractive/cool-looking in comparison with the person I always envisioned to be Maureen Dowd. She was even wearing red cowboy boots in one photo, which I definitely support, even if they might be a result of her adopting her aforementioned catchprase a bit too literally..) in like the '90s or something, and I just want to make something quite clear: while I freakin' love cowboys, I fucking hate feminists, especially ones who conclude fifteen page literary essays with cheesy lyrics about where all the cowboys may have gone (answer: we are the cowboys? they've all turned into feminists? I don't know), and I think it's shitty that there has been even an attempt to try to taint an image so fucking rad as that of the American cowboy's with something as lame (and hello! dated! what is this, 1978?) as feminism. This is all a joke; I'm actually pretty sure that under scrutiny I'd probably test positive for feminism myself; this is all very shameful.

Foresee myself switching to Tumblr in a matter of days. Had no idea Truffaut directed the Fahrenheit 451 film. Also, had not idea that's how Fahrenheit was spelled, or that it was even a proper noun.