I was so upset reading The Children of the Arbat
At around 7 a.m., after reading for a couple hours (and it was already so hot that I was drenched in sweat, which puts me in a foul mood) – I had to put the book down. It was too much. I can’t wait to get back to it, but I had to take a break. I felt haunted.
So I bustled around my apartment, dusting (no, not singing at the top of my lungs. It was too early. I took a shower. I emerged at 8:00 am. And immediately, again, became drenched in sweat. The Children of the Arbat was still working its way through me, so honestly, I felt on the verge of tears. Babyish? Sure. Couldn’t hold it back though. Hormones. Also: I’ve genuinely been on the edge for about 4 days now. Afraid to cry, actually.
Walked out of my apartment into a BLAZING hot morning. The sun still low in the sky. The heat unbearable.
What enrages me about my own sweat-habits is that I do not sweat in the pits. Or – I DO, of course I do – but that’s not where it mainly happens for me. Would that it were. I get sweaty IN MY FACE. Literally. I feel like Albert Brooks in Broadcast News during his catastrophic broadcast. Sweat running off my face, my hair as wet as if I had been swimming the Hudson … it POURS off of my face.
I can’t wear makeup on hot days. It’s pointless. I am a slave to my sweaty mug.
I hate the summer. I yearn for fall.
I got onto my wee air-conditioned ghetto bus into the city (have I ever told about those busses??) … and struggled with this feeling of hopelessness I had. I don’t know where it came from. A combination of things. Menstruation. Children of the Arbat. Blazing heat. The fact that I was so sweaty I felt EMBARRASSED. If only I just sweat in my arm pits like a civilized human being … I literally needed a towel to wipe my face off.
I opened Room with a View and began to read.
I have been LOVING reading this book again. I had forgotten the funniness of it. Every page is a delight.
And then there are passages that are just … sheer perfection, as far as I’m concerned. Forster had such HEART when he wrote.
This is from the part in the book when Lucy runs into the rampaging skinny dipping men by accident. One of the men happens to be George Emerson, the guy she had the kissing encounter with in Florence. A man she is not engaged to, and barely even likes (so she thinks). But … but … she kissed him. And now she is engaged to someone (the wonderfully awful Cecil) … and George and his father have suddenly rented a cottage in her vicinity … and … oh no … now she must run into him all the time … what will that mean … what will happen …
You know … all that delicious stuff.
Lucy faced the situation bravely, though, like most of us, she only faced the situation that encompassed her. She never gazed inwards. If at times strtange images rose from the depths, she put them down to nerves. When Cecil brought the Emersons to Summer Street, it had upset her nerves. Charlotte would burnish up past foolishness, and this might upset her nerves. She was nervous at night. When she talked to George — they met again almost immediately at the Rectory — his voice moved her deeply, and she wished to remain near him. How dreadful if she really wished to remain near him! Of course, the wish was due to nerves, which love to play such perverse tricks upon us. Once she had suffered from “things that came out of nothing and meant she didn’t know what.” Now Cecil had explained psychology to her one wet afternoon, and all the troubles of youth in an unknown world could be dismissed.
It is obvious enough for the reader to conclude, “She loves young Emerson.” A reader in Lucy’s place would not find it obvious. Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome “nerves” or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire. She loved Cecil; George made her nervous; will the reader explain to her that the phrases should have been reversed?
But the external situation — she will face that bravely.
I don’t know how to say it, but I just find that so FUN to read.
I loved the movie, have never read the book. My shame.
I sweat the same way. You are not alone.
but think of it this way- your pores are sooooo clean.
CoA is a bit intense, isn’t it?
I sweat the same way. I usually carry a cloth hankerchief becuase of that, a habit I picked up in Tokyo.
John – I’m tearing through it. It is intense – but it’s a kind of intellecutal inensity that I love. All the familiar names – Zinoviev, Bukharin … and I’m realizing what we are leading up to. I’m figuring out where the book is headed – it’s headed to the murder of Kirov – so now we see how Stalin built that case, in his own mind. It’s terrifying. The Stalin chapters are AMAZING.
The one scene where he watches City LIghts and cries – because “it’s a movie about me”.
The grandiosity, the self-pity … unbelievable.
John – I think I need to get a hankie. It just all seems so unladlylike, to have a big sweaty Irish head. I catch glimpses of myself as I pass by store windows and think: who is that BEAST???
I hesitate, at risk of prolonging your melancholic mood, to send you this on a weekend.
Sheila,
“It just all seems so unladylike, to have a big sweaty Irish head.”
If I was feeling sad this morning, that comment would have cheered me up for the entire day. As it is, I’m not sad, and the comment made me just laugh out loud.
By the way, I sweat like you as well. I bet even worse. I’ll be thinking of today when I work out and then go for a run in Eagle Creek Park and I’m more drenched than Aqua Man on crank.
Take care
I screwed something up, obviously. Oh well, here’s the the low-tech version: http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2005/08/on-weekend.html
I always get nervous when someone starts talking about a rectory.
I have done some back-of-the-envelope calculations based on your written output here and your self-reported activities, and I conclude that you sleep about…eleven minutes a night.
If it’s ladylike you’re going for, you could carry a fan (I shall refrain–with some difficulty–from extension-cord jokes, ba-dum).
“Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice”
That’s it, in a nutshell. We’re all groping in the dark…