Woolf the monk and Clooney the drunk

Part of me still finds the Academy Awards a nauseating, insular clique of overly privileged mutual admirers...but I'm glad The Dude finally won his Best Actor Oscar (of all those nominated for Best Picture, I most want to see Crazy Heart), and that a female director finally won. Just one question: was George Clooney super drunk, or what?

On an unrelated note, I was recently reading about Virginia Woolf and how those who visit her former home, Monk's House in Rodmell (photo above) - now open to the public as a museum - are surprised to find how small and unadorned her bedroom was, her narrow single bed, and how equally bare-bones her writing lodge, located through the garden, was as well. Lisa Williams in Letters To Virginia Woolf writes of the "chaste and monastic life" Woolf led that allowed her to get so much transcendental writing done. It made me think one day - I've had the this fantasy-future glimmering in the back of my mind for a long time - I will have to leave the city, leave technology behind, and be like Woolf, or Thoreau, go out in the woods, live in a cabin, relinquishing all my material possessions, in order to accomplish writing the great novel or book or whatever it may be that I feel lurking brilliantly yet unobtainably in the depths of my soul and psyche. That was sort of the idea in going to work in Glacier Park a couple summers ago, but it didn't turn out that way. Work ate my summer, and sharing a tiny room with three other guys made that sort of solitude impossible.

The so-called Bloomsbury Group influenced my attitudes, values, and personality a lot at a formative age. Too bad the literary upper middle class they belonged to has all but disappeared. Still, I consider them spiritual predecessors and want to carry on their talent for enduring friendships that last a lifetime. That seems to be harder than ever in a modern urban setting especially, but I'm determined.

On another unrelated note, it just so happens that I appeared (briefly) on channel 2 KTVU news last night here in the Bay Area! They were filming a segment on the LGBT Community Center in San Francisco while i happened to be there perusing the job listings. A friend of mine found the media clip online, if you want to check it out.

Cheers!

glam