Tangental obsessions

Kitty and Levin in Anna Karenina. Click for source.

There is so much I should write about: the Great River Race in London; moving up to Durham in the next week; how Felix and Indy escaped; the upcoming trip to see Twelfth Night at the Globe.  But no, not today. Last night I went to see Anna Karenina, only having known the basic outline of the story, and I am smitten. Instead of putting me off reading the book, I came away with a sense of its perfectness, and like the indistinct outline of trees on a hazy morning, the movie only pointed me to a dim perception of its greatness.  Tolstoy was a flipping genius. 

I'm reading through War and Peace right now and I'm not even done but know it's the best book I have ever read. And it's life changing. Or affirming, very deeply and harshly, the things I already know to be true and beautiful and right and horridly wrong.  It's agonizing because there are so many pages, and the scrutinizing gaze that Tolstoy so aptly animates his figures is also turned on the reader, and I can't help but squirm as page after hundred page I lie under its gaze. Every decision, every moral predicament, every reason behind behavior, turns back and heaps itself onto my own head, stripping me from any judgement, only furrowing internal contemplation.  I firmly believe Tolstoy is perfecting my soul. Today, I should be perfecting this paper, and with the heinous amount of money I'm pouring into my PhD, I should be doing more than a minimal amount of work.  But today all I can think of is the perfection of my soul, and while I have the luxury of piling into my day, anything I wish, or wish to exclude, without the shackles of a nine-to-five, I will step into the garden with it's slanting September light, and read to my heart's content. Wish me, in the words of Kipling, "good hunting."