Hi!

I love the smell of creamsickles. I don't even need to eat one, I just need to inhale those artificially made flavors. Nothing in nature smells like it, and yet it is so appealing to me.

I got a haircut today, a beautiful cut. She did it with a razor and it was like she was scraping away a year of my life. I hadn't gotten my hair cut since April, and then it was my friend who just hacked it straight off at the ends. Now it's above my shoulders, drastically shorter, and it feels gorgeous.

I feel so swishy!

The other day I was complaining about a bunch of girls who take History classes. They drive me batty - they make dour jokes, dripping with not-very-interesting sarcasm, and constantly try to talk seriously about Romance novels set in Medieval England. I was whipped into a fervor.

There's a guy in one of my classes who astounds me with his rudeness. While people are speaking, he leans back in his chair, shuts his eyes, and makes snide comments. Then, when he says things and is wrong, which happens often enough, he argues with the professor trying to save face.

"Why are the boys at the coed school down the lane so obnoxious?" I asked a friend. She said that it's just the obnoxious ones that stand out, and she's right. I like the other boys in my class, they are earnest and good.

"Gah!" I said, loudly. "They make me feel so righteous." I said the word with all of my mouth, and it bristled.

My friends laughed. One said "I think you mean self-righteous." We laughed. "There's a bit of a difference..."

So I guess A&E made a version of the Lathe of Heaven. I am still not entirely sure what has happened here. I forced one of my poor, sweet friends to watch the original PBS version last year. It is a compelling book, but only until the last few chapters. The explosion of Orr was written with some of my favourite language, and this was preserved in the PBS version. I watched the A&E version in a sort of dazed state of confusion - it was a new movie, but it was very much similar and so I didn't really believe my brain that this is a new production. The old movie had its faults (oh, the music was painful also they made some really unfortunate choices for special effects), but I don't know if it needed to be remade if they were just going to be so true to the old movie, practically shot for shot.

It is the Lathe of Heaven. Ah, it's a fabulous story and I highly recommend it to any of you. It is more than the unexpected consequences of hasty fixes. It's always in the last bit that I realize it's stronger than that, reflecting something else. I always remember Orr saying that he doesn't think we have a purpose, we just are.

Those whom heaven helps we call the sons of heaven. They do not learn this by learning. They do not work it by working. They do not reason it by using reason. To let understanding stop at what cannot be understood is high attainment. Those who cannot do it will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven.

2002-09-14, classroom gripes / lathe of heaven

before / after

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