Elise > Recent Status Updates

Continuity issues aside:

“I put it into her hand. And then, before she could hand it back to me, I made her a slight bow and walked away.”

THE. FEELS.
#Youknowyou’retooemotionallyinvestedinafictionalcharacterwhen

It sucks to realise you’ve gotten older and life’s made you that bit more jaded. Got to this page noting that there was a jump in the time from 7 January to 21 January, signifying time between Caroline returning Jane’s call in London. Found myself thinking, “What the hell?! It’s Darcy’s diary and he’s in London! Surely he went to the theatre or met with his steward or his sister or SOMETHING!”

“His understanding and opinions all please me; he wants nothing but a little more liveliness, and that, if he marry prudently, his wife may teach him. I thought him very sly; he hardly ever mentioned your name. But slyness seems the fashion.”

😜 One of my all-time favourite letters of literature. 🥰

…she chooses Wendy’s not because she likes it, but because she can go and tell her friends or fellow church-goers how humble she is, how down-to-earth, that even on a day as special as her birthday, all she did was eat a side salad from a fast food restaurant. This thing in Mum drives me nuts. This thing where she yearns to be pitied.

WHY DO SO MANY PEOPLE CHOOSE TO LIVE LIKE THIS WOMAN?!?!

We see the [assumption of childbearing factors] in many predominantly female conditions: women with endometriosis are told that delayed childbearing caused it [✅], or that pregnancy will cure it [✅]; women with breast cancer were once fed this line until advances in research (which only occurred because women campaigned for better knowledge and treatments) proved otherwise.
💯💯💯

While the Berlin Wall may have fallen, other cities remain divided, and growth constrained by urban motorways, elevated freeways and concrete coolers. The environmental, health and wellbeing consequences of this are dire. By creating an urbanism that can only be negotiated by car, fuel use rockets, exercise levels plummet, and isolation and loneliness increase.

Roman poet Juvenal’s image of Ancient Rome was hardly one of marble classicism and Ciceronian rhetoric. He complained that sleep was impossible for ‘the movement of heavy wagons through constricted streets and the oaths of stalled cattle drovers would break the sleep of a deaf man or a lazy walrus… most sick men die here of insomnia.’

Another random pick of a book I’ve had for years & never read, but - unbeknownst to me- the Holy Spirit actually told to read since I was travelling & have more *reading* time than usual.

Already crying at the airport bar.

“There is a time in history of almost every nation when those who are in power are so removed from the common people that they have no sense of their suffering and, finally, their anger.”

After a whole bit talking about how Americans don’t know anything about the world and geography outside America and she’s made an effort not to be that, author gives herself away by not knowing the difference between Switzerland and Sweden.

Unfortunate.

Huh. New context on the character of Mrs Bennet. 🤔

“…Enlightenment doctors had genuine sympathy for their patients, not least because they were gleaned from the rich and famous […], the ‘victims of an interestingly delicate nervous system buckling under the pressures of civilisation.’ […] Madness was still a personal failing, but hysteria was a sign of accomplishment.

In naming hysteria a disease of civilisation, what Sydenham meant was the richer a person was, the more demanding life was, and so the more likely they were to become hysterical. He believed the social conditions that enslaved women caused inner turmoil that resulted in physical illness—an observation ahead of its time.

Postmodern man, with no direction, destiny or purpose, can only follow arbitrary impulses while he passes the time, waiting for death. An aimless, impulsive life isn’t very pretty.

A refined palate […], requires cultivation. Children initially have undeveloped tastes in food & drink, just as they initially have undeveloped tastes in literature, music & art. For them to appreciate good food generally requires education & maturity (some psychiatrists report that adults who suffer from arrested emotional development often display a correspondingly childish palate).

You have to choose between a consumerist lifestyle and a life of beauty. You can’t have both. Beauty will require a lot of sacrifices. But the alternative is banality and boredom, punctuated by guilty pleasures in the disordered. We can do better than that.

It’s no coincidence that faith communities that ignore beauty are also lukewarm and poorly catechised. They don’t know their Faith, and they’ve reduced the entire Gospel message about love for God and neighbour to a crushingly familiar cliche about fellowshipping and social activism—even though, ironically, there isn’t even much community or volunteer work happening.

Chapter 23 was an oddly beautiful and bittersweet chapter.