I should be focusing exclusively on my paralegal studies, but, true to my eclectic attention span and ranging tastes in brain fodder, I am distracted. However, exclusive focus on one subject could result only in my inevitable spiral into insanity via stagnancy. So, hello to my distractions:

I started this novel on my way to Denver, and just finished it today (I had to put it down to do some homework). This was a re-read. I am more a re-reader than a reader - the first time I read a novel I get through it quickly to find out what happens. Then I re-read (usually again and again) to get the finer points and the technical stuff. I don't know if I'm such a fan of the technical stuff in this novel; I'm always left with questions, but it's such a complex story I can never really figure out or remember what my questions are. However, she wrote a great love story here. I mean, sooo good. I believe this love, to the extent that it leaves me weeping and broken by the end. Read it. It's worth it.

My distractions often lead to other distractions. This novel led me to a fresh new obssession with Rainer Maria Rilke, because of an excerpt from the Duino Elegies as follows:

Angel!: If there were a place that we didn't know of, and there,
on some unsayable carpet, lovers displayed
what they could never bring to mastery here - the bold
exploits of their high-flying hearts,
their towers of pleasure, their ladders
that have long since been standing where there was no ground,
leaning
just on each other, trembling, - and could master all this,
before the surrounding spectators, the innumerable soundless dead:
Would these, then, throw down their final, forever saved-up,
forever hidden, unknown to us, eternally valid
coins of happiness before the at last
genuinely smiling pair on the gratified
carpet?

I'm not sure what all that means, but I know I like it.

My third and final distraction for this entry is this fellow:

He's a terribly funny fellow - long-lost member of Monty Python, indeed. I keep falling asleep though, because I watch late at night and he has a soothing storyteller-type delivery. Combined with a smoother British accent, it's like sleeping powder in my teacup.