Hi Miss Hazel,

How are you?

Guess what, I'm reading Jude the Obscure again. I recently and finally got a copy of it and Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

I'm just a bit past the pig slaughtering part but God, i realized how stupid I was in High school when you lent the book to me. haha i hadn't enjoyed it the way i do now. Thomas Hardy was way ahead of his time, and I have yet to find a writer at present who can equal him in terms of wit, imagery, imagination, etc. Can you? I had been reading another book before this, but I dropped it unfinished; Jude the Obscure is a scenestealer.haha. If you're reading something interesting now, please please share with me.

I don't know if this is the right reaction, but I find it so funny how Thomas Hardy describes Jude's naivite, etc. I kept chuckling during the slaughter scene, "Upon my soul I would sooner have gone without the pig than have this to do! A creature I have fed with my own hands." well i laugh only to realize later that i am guilty because my mind has not been spared from also subscribing to the machismo that's demanded of men, despite my abhorring it outwardly.

On Arabella and a girl friend meeting years after the wedding:

As usual, they laughed before talking; the world seemed funny to them without saying it.

--so funny and true and timeless; Hmm... Arabella has a multitude of great great granddaughters, many of whom are keeping skin whitener sales shooting up.

Among others, i found this particularly striking, recalling the time Arabella threw the pig's penis at Jude while he was engrossed with his Christminster dream:

It had been no vestal who chose that missile for opening an attack on him. He saw this with his intellectual eye, just for a short fleeting while, as by the light of a falling lamp, one might momentarily see an inscription in a wall before being enshrouded in darkness. And then this passive discriminate power was withdrawn, Jude was lost to all conditions...of a fresh and wild pleasure...

Gosh, Hardy is one of those who makes me feel so unworthy of writing with a byline! I wouldn't have thought of such a metaphor for lust disabling ones restraint and intelligence.

All this time, I haven't seen Bare yet, and I'm happy i haven't. I admit, i read and reread many pages, this Hardy loves to play riddles with his readers huh. it's like a proverbial tug-of-war between hardy and the reader, like...ops ops ops, sigurado ka nga na intiendihan mo to? balik, balik, balik! hahaha! I'm not even halfway through, but I adoooore Thomas Hardy!

Hay ambot, damu pa gid tani. I miss you, I miss reading you! Musta na? Abe, chikahi ko! hahaha

Thanks, Miss Hazel, for introducing Thomas Hardy to me. I'm glad I'm reading it the second time. mwah!

Kimee