And. I'm. Done! I'm alive again. For another semester I've managed to get out of taking the finals (except one on Wednesday, but that's required for everyone and there's no exemption). While this usually isn't anything special, it's still surprising to me that my grades made the exemption cut. My performance in med school has been lackluster at best, and facepalmingly horrendous at worst.
I am off to catch up on sleep. Take that, Med school! It's only 5.42pm and I am going to get me some Z's.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Monday, June 8, 2009
221B, by Vincent Starrett
This has always been my favorite Sherlock Holmes poem. I just rediscovered it today.
Here dwell together still two men of note
Who never lived and so can never die:
How very near they seem, yet how remote
That age before the world went all awry.
But still the game's afoot for those with ears
Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:
England is England yet, for all our fears--
Only those things the heart believes are true.
A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane
As night descends upon this fabled street:
A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,
The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.
Here, though the world explode, these two survive,
And it is always eighteen ninety-five.
One good thing about all this brouhaha over the 2009 film is that the love of Sherlockian purists is made only stronger. I haven't reread the stories in years and now I think I will. I can remember when I used to print out Sherlock Holmes illustrations and poems and frame them, or paste them on notebook covers and folders. None of my classmates ever understood or felt the same but I did have the comfort of the Internet; I knew that somewhere, somehow, the Diogenes Club was sitting down to breakfast to commemorate Professor Moriarty, or having a tribute to roses (the one flower Holmes singled out and praised).
Here's to you, Holmes. My life is crazy and everything in it seems to be changing for the worse, until I don't know what to hold on to, but part of me always feels secure--because it's always 1895.
Here dwell together still two men of note
Who never lived and so can never die:
How very near they seem, yet how remote
That age before the world went all awry.
But still the game's afoot for those with ears
Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:
England is England yet, for all our fears--
Only those things the heart believes are true.
A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane
As night descends upon this fabled street:
A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,
The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.
Here, though the world explode, these two survive,
And it is always eighteen ninety-five.
One good thing about all this brouhaha over the 2009 film is that the love of Sherlockian purists is made only stronger. I haven't reread the stories in years and now I think I will. I can remember when I used to print out Sherlock Holmes illustrations and poems and frame them, or paste them on notebook covers and folders. None of my classmates ever understood or felt the same but I did have the comfort of the Internet; I knew that somewhere, somehow, the Diogenes Club was sitting down to breakfast to commemorate Professor Moriarty, or having a tribute to roses (the one flower Holmes singled out and praised).
Here's to you, Holmes. My life is crazy and everything in it seems to be changing for the worse, until I don't know what to hold on to, but part of me always feels secure--because it's always 1895.
Elementary
I really do think that of all the fandoms in the world, the Sherlock Holmes fandom beats all. (Given time the Harry Potter fandom might trump it, but we'll see.) Longevity (since the late 1800's, and still very much alive and thriving!), the famous people involved (everyone from Monsignor Ronald Knox, through Dorothy L Sayers and GK Chesterton... and so on and so forth), the richness of the literature produced by its scholars, and the sheer number of people dedicated enough to not just read the series but to join clubs for discussing them as well! The number of Sherlock Holmes-centric societies around the world is just staggering. There's even a Sherlockian who's-who database to keep track of these societies and their respective scions.
And the publications! Not just the scholarly work of those authors bent on playing "The Game" (Ronald Knox is really the first person who comes to mind) but the pastiches. How many are there now? Does anyone even bother keeping track?
And other fandoms have statues of characters built. The Holmes fandom, so much loved and embraced as it has been, caused the numbers of a street to be changed just to accommodate a fictional address.
*hugs my dearest fandom*
I once wanted to dedicate my life to being a Sherlockian scholar. No, really. I wanted to live in London and to be curator of the Sherlock Holmes museum at 221B. I don't regret my decision to pursue med school and to live a life of quite a different track of scholarship, but sometimes, looking at web pages of people who manage these societies and who write scholarly manuscripts on everything from elusive bicyclists to Professor Moriarty, I do feel a certain Holmes-specific wistfulness.
And the publications! Not just the scholarly work of those authors bent on playing "The Game" (Ronald Knox is really the first person who comes to mind) but the pastiches. How many are there now? Does anyone even bother keeping track?
And other fandoms have statues of characters built. The Holmes fandom, so much loved and embraced as it has been, caused the numbers of a street to be changed just to accommodate a fictional address.
*hugs my dearest fandom*
I once wanted to dedicate my life to being a Sherlockian scholar. No, really. I wanted to live in London and to be curator of the Sherlock Holmes museum at 221B. I don't regret my decision to pursue med school and to live a life of quite a different track of scholarship, but sometimes, looking at web pages of people who manage these societies and who write scholarly manuscripts on everything from elusive bicyclists to Professor Moriarty, I do feel a certain Holmes-specific wistfulness.
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