prose for once

hey =p as you may have been able to tell if you are SUPER perceptive, i have run out of poetry material for the moment. If I have to, i'll delve into the archives and come up with some old stuff... all of it is rather personal, but we'll see how it goes. Well.. I polished war and peace, enduring tolstoy's pedantic if interesting treatises on history and the nature of history and such.. it was 1 in the morning and the book was making me nauseous but the thought of having to read it tomorrow was worse =p so i got it down. I have to talk about natasha rostov, she's the strangest character in the book. She's a young girl, probably about my age... pretty, graceful, a good singer... but her whole personality is so fascinating and magnetic that she charms everyone. It's just so vivid.. and she's so naive and everything to her is either new and wonderful or terrible and heartbreaking. She falls in love at least three times... she seems to be tolstoy's vision of the typical young girl, spellbound by the world around her. Being in love is her natural state, she's impulsive and innocent. It's cool.
lol i'm into tale of genji now.. it's this ancient japanese novel, from like the 10th century. Genji is this amazing, smart, talented, handsome prince =p he's just superlative in everything. Always the best. And the book is about his life... it's really interesting... apparently in ancient japanese culture, everyone was expected to be able to make up tankas on the spot, with clever double entendres and allusions to other poems. It's kind of interesting how women were supposed to meet fixed standards. They were judged on how dignified and proper they were (dignified without being stiff, proper without being cold), the style of their handwriting, the skill of their poetry, their ability to run a household, their taste in clothing and behavior... it's interesting because if they satisfied a man in all those categories, they were a satisfactory woman.. and if not, then it was a flaw that might or might not be overlooked. And in society today... what are women judged on? someone tell me. It all seems so confusing. Am I supposed to be smart so that i can challenge a guy's intellect, or stupid so that he can feel smart? Obviously i'm supposed to be pretty... what about how i dress? I've been criticized by different people for dressing too conservatively or dressing not conservatively enough. My ability to run a household? Guys aren't supposed to care about that anymore =p but it must be a factor, right? It just feels like the basic message i'm getting is that i'm supposed to find a boyfriend and then cater to him. It doesn't matter what I do, as long as it's what he wants. Does anyone else feel like that? It's wierd for me. I ignore it because that's the worldly view, not the Godly one =p but still
toria