The Sheila Variations

Favorite things

I stole this from Mrs. DuToit. I love the idea.

My favorite sculpture: (Small note: I thought I knew my favorite until I saw Mrs. DuToit's and now I feel I may have to reconsider. Look at her favorite statue!)

But regardless: here's mine, since I first saw it in my Humanities class in high school. Rodin's "The Kiss"

My favorite painting:

I literally wish that I could step into the world of - this one - always have. Van Gogh.

My favorite food:

Probably a semi-burnt hamburger from off a grill during a summer barbecue - cold beer to wash it down - Yum

My favorite beverage (hot):

Coffee. Coffee. Coffee.

My favorite beverage (cold):

My favorite play (modern):

Summer and Smoke, by Tennessee Williams. I've read it countless times, I have worked on it myself - I will never get to the bottom of it. Its very ambiguity is what makes it so beautiful, that haunts me.

My favorite play (not modern, not Shakespeare):

I cannot choose one. Do not make me.

Duchess of Malfi, by Christopher Marlowe
Saint Joan, by GB Shaw
The Seagull, by Chekhov
Uncle Vanya, by Chekhov
Hedda Gabler, by Ibsen

My favorite Shakespeare play:

I might have to go with The Tempest. I don't know why. There is something in the magic there, the fantasy, the magic island - Ariel and Caliban - the split between flesh and spirit - that just gets to me. And I love the title. I think it's one of his best.

Miranda says one of my favorite lines he ever wrote:

O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!

My favorite sonnet:

I am partial to Sonnet 29:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

And I may be partial to the sonnet above, but I love Sonnet 116. Sonnet 116 HURTS.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

OUCH

My favorite book (non-fiction):

Probably The Book of Abigail and John (compiled letters of Abigail and John Adams. I've read it 10 times or more.)

My favorite book (fiction):

Oh, how to choose. Probably Catch-22, by Joseph Heller.

But Ulysses by Joyce needs to be on there too.

My favorite poem:

No question: "The More Loving One", by Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

My favorite song:

"Oh Darling", by The Beatles. I have many other favorite tunes that come in and out of my life, but that one always makes the list. I just LOVE it when McCartney screams.

Posted by sheila