Just always reading!

Books, books, books!!

j'em

Old ladies describing ancient Montreal places on the bus.

Everything is so good.

Went to a screening of Jules et Jim at the Bloor last night, and it was wonderful. I love nestling down in the back row and just watching.

Today during my break I watched Sunrise in the library, which I have been wanting to see forever but have been unable to find, until I came upon the wonderland that is SMIL (aka the film library). I loved it so much. Everything about it was so adorable. I love their faces, I love their expressions: his face when she runs off into the woods and he tells her not to be afraid of him, and when she can finally look at him again, and when they're laughing after leaving the photo studio. They are so tender with each other. I love that dreamy George O'Brien. I had the silliest smile on my face the whole way through. And a tiny little half-cry face at the end.

I love my new camera so so so much.



I love my roommates. Living with an old boyfriend is the easiest thing, more than I could have imagined. There are no hard feelings, no old feelings. Instead we have a quiet deep kind of understanding that pops up unexpectedly from time to time. When one of us mentions something that the other remembers. When a nod explains everything.

I love riding the subway home at sunset when it comes above ground.

study breaks.

!!!!

I got my new camera today! One million times exciting. I have been waiting for this foreverrrr.

Yay!



I also have a million pounds of reading and 'devoirs'.

the centripetal force

If only there were some way to really experience going to the movies during the studio era. I always imagine what it would be like, from getting properly dressed and going to the movie palace, then the shorts, the newsreels, the features, the intermission. I just love the idea of spending a couple of hours there, of films as an event with surrounding rituals and experience. Traces of that remain, of course, but it's not nearly the same. I suppose you could say it's gone downhill since the '20s and the end of presentation-cinema. I always think that nowdays going to (most) theatres to see a film is a frustrating, crowded, busy uninspiring experience, not to mention newsreels and shorts replaced by ads. I suppose crowds pose the same frustrations no matter the era, but I do think they would have been less bothersome back then. People had different manners, ones that, for the most part, appeal to me. Maybe I wouldn't mind so much if current people dressed more entertainingly.

I really am stuck in the early 20C these days. I would like to write a book on some part of this period.



DSLRs are on sale at Black's until sunday. I want, I want, I want. SIGH.

old country garden smell

Ta-da!

Okay, french class was not so bad. I'm home already and I'm not even tired.

Today =

write a letter
sew a dressing gown
read a million pages about Rome
cook something delicious?

(more likely boil up some dumplings and maybe scrounge a salad)

perhaps go out and find a big bag for school, mine is far too small.

I have a great many Serious Errands to be run, but I'll do them tomorrow, after all I have the whole day off.

scarves and bags of books

I cannot feel studious and collegiate unless it is chilly out. Thank goodness!

I visited the Library of Moving Image and Sound, a wonderful place, and checked out Zazie dans le métro. Now I know what to do with my long breaks on certain days.

Things:

a new camera
a second major (film)
to read all night and not have to get up at 6 am for french class

sigh

to go to the flea market.

Fall weather, you put me in mind of Montreal.

Just got back from seeing Brideshead Revisited at the Bloor. My afternoon tutorial was cancelled and I looked at the schedule just in time to see that they were showing it at 4.30, so I ran off to the cinema. Having just read the book, I suppose I went primarily to see the costumes and settings. And it was beautiful. The lighting was wonderful and close-up everyone looked like a painting.
We rented Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day on Sunday evening, another book I'd just finished, so I did complete my book-movie set. I definitely rented Pettigrew for the costumes, and it was worth it, especially this one:
It's awfully interesting to see how film makers interpret the book, keeping the story the same and coming to the same conclusions (usually) but taking liberties with the plot along the way. I like what they did with Brideshead, although the themes were hammered out rather more forcefully than they were in the book.

By the way, York, why didn't you take me for film?!?!? I love it most of all! I wonder if I can switch my major now that I'm already in there?

I am presently enmeshed in the early 20th century, at any rate. It is my period of the moment. I love everything: the clothes, the architecture, the manners, the thoughts. I tend to love books from the '20s and '30s no matter what. Am now reading The Age of Innocence, which takes place in about the 1870s, but was written in the '20s.

Anyway. Afternoon films are absolutely one of the very best parts of being a student. The music that rolls with the credits of Brideshead is a violin piece, unusually beautiful, so much that I almost couldn't bring myself to go through the theatre doors until it was over. Going out into the bright windy cool evening with the sun setting was the perfect thing.

I wore my "collegiate sweater" today and was quite pleased with it.

greendreamteenscene

Knit knit knit today. I went to the store for some needles to make a hat and naturally came away with two new yarns. It is impossible to resist! So now I'll have two hats, which is really not an extravagant thing at all, and a new pair of (very expensive) socks. But enough of that.

School started, and I love it! I love bundling up my little notebooks and heading out early in the morning for the bus, getting a coffee from the Portuguese bakery on my way, wandering along green paths all over campus in search of my buildings. It feels just right. I love that I am the only one in my French class who can speak half-decently, and I'm not even going to pretend otherwise.

Speaking of. Any time I start to complain and bother over having left Montreal, which is often, let me just remember that this summer, within the space of a month and a half, I encountered both Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. That would never ever have happened there. It's amazing. I can't hardly believe we really crashed a party at TIFF, and were at a party with Jimmy Page! I can't believe I imitated a girl from the Globe and Mail on the phone in order to find out where the party was! I can hardly believe I stood not three feet from the greatest guitarist of my favourite band ever in the world and shouted that I loved him!

More on this later, and on the party itself, and the uhh... interesting experience of standing in the gutter outside a swank hotel while the monied guests made their way into the gutter before the party. But tonight, I am deadly tired. And my day is pretty long tomorrow. I'm just going to gaze adoringly at my snagged guest pass for the party for a while and then drift off.