{"id":77626,"date":"2014-02-01T11:23:26","date_gmt":"2014-02-01T16:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=77626"},"modified":"2024-10-27T08:44:20","modified_gmt":"2024-10-27T12:44:20","slug":"snapshots-64","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=77626","title":{"rendered":"Snapshots"},"content":{"rendered":"

— Almost done with The Richard Burton Diaries<\/a>\"\"<\/i>. An extraordinary document. My God, what a mind. The diaries often make me laugh out loud, but there’s this hugely tragic keen in them, the lure of alcohol which was a losing battle his whole life. But his observations, on acting, on process, on directors, on Yugoslavia and Tito (my favorite section is the hanging-out-with-Tito section: the whole Burton-Taylor with Tito thing was featured in the wonderful documentary Cinema Komunisto<\/i>, about the film industry in what was then Yugoslavia – I saw it at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2011<\/a>). And then of course he’s eloquent on Elizabeth (she just POPS off the page, she even writes little notes in the diary), on his kids, his work, his career, and, best of all, all of the books he reads. A voluminous reader. A sad story, ultimately, and I am nearing the end. An extraordinary man, who gave what were possibly one or two of the greatest stage performances of the 20th century (certainly top 5), filled with demons and doubts, but sparkling with intelligence and commonsense. Highly recommend. <\/p>\n

— Taking a road trip with friend Allison<\/a> in a couple of weeks. It’ll be a short weekend away, but we haven’t traveled in a long time together, not since Ireland in 2006 or whenever that was. It’s easy to feel like you can’t step out of the flow of your schedule, not even for three days, but we decided to flee the coop together and I’m really looking forward to it. <\/p>\n

— In the next two months, I will have two new nieces\/nephews, and I still haven’t gotten used to Pearl, the newest niece, born in December! Pearl is the best! I held her for four straight hours at Christmas. Glorious. My siblings are procreating faster than I can keep up (we aren’t Irish Catholic for nothing) and I am proud and happy and very excited. So when we go on our family vacation next summer, there will be THREE new people with us. <\/p>\n

— I had forgotten all about this dumb song but it came up on Shuffle the other day and now I am in a feedback loop of fun with it. It cracks me up. I like the blunt-ness of the lyrics, and I like the “nyah-nyah” bratty sound, it’s somehow cathartic. No redemption, no new understanding, no “we at least learned something from one another”. No. “She fuckin’ hates me. La la la la.” The guy from 2012 probably feels this way about me, when he thinks about me at all, although “hate” is certainly too strong a term now. Sure, it’s important to heal\/forgive\/grow. There are situations, though, that are so useless and such a waste of time that why even bother. Hatred is cathartic, too. To quote one of my idols Rebecca West:<\/p>\n

\u201cA strong hatred is the best lamp to bear in our hands as we go over the dark places of life, cutting away the dead things men tell us to revere.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Amen, sister-wife. (Of course she was talking about politics, not romance, but it can apply there too.) Everyone is not required to have a good opinion of you. That’s the breaks. <\/p>\n