A fourteen hour flight to D.C. I Slept for 8 hours, probably enabled by what the pharmacist at Boots suggested as sleep aid, but what I later researched to find as antidepressant. I might say the pharmacist was more informed than google. The drug helped me sleep for 8 hours, assisted no doubt by my business class seat, a last minute upgrade well worth the money spent. As an anti-depressant, however, it didn’t help at all. I woke up as depressed as I was before going to sleep.
But back to my flight. After 8 hours of only slightly interrupted sleep, I watched in-flight entertainment, Bright Star, about John Keats’s affair with Fanny Brawne ending with his death with TB. I’m always taken by films on artists, the Romantics being a special old favorite of mine. And this one was well-made. Keats says poetry, if it doesn’t arrive as naturally as a tree then it’s not worth pursuing. I live in Kuwait where most of our trees don’t come out naturally, so maybe our poets are exempt from that rule. I’ll have to keep that in mind as I re-read Buthaina Al-Esa and Mais Al-Othman in preparation for my conference paper – still to be written.
I follow this with Notes of a Scandal on my newly acquired best friend iPod Touch – such a cool toy. Judi Dench is indeed brilliant as a black widow. I am now ranking her almost next to Meryl Streep, probably partly because I saw Streep perform live at Central Park and I am now possessed by her. The movie is a work of art, both brilliant in plot and captivating in cinematography. How do they do it? Bench is a vindictive lover. Women’s jealousy, especially when linked to loving another woman, is a most destructive weapon.
Hanan 