2004-12-18 - 9:53 a.m.

raphael's poetry

I found something very strange on the internet last night. It was some of Dr. Raphael's old poetry. Of course, on the site it listed her name as "Rebecca Raphael," but out of respect I have a tendency to forget that my professors have first names. Anyway, it was lovely- well written and emotionally striking, but I felt dirty as I read it. Poetry is a great way to look into ones' soul, and I feel that looking into Dr. Raphael's soul is something I'm not really supposed to be doing. I have a superhuman level of respect for her, and the thing that really hit me about the poetry is just how HUMAN it is. This was not poetry written by the sarcastic and impossibly wise persona I see her in, but by someone who gets happy and sad and really sad and then writes about it. Also, the picture of her was *ahem* humanizing as well. It seems that with Dr. Raphael, the awkward phase we all go through in youth lasted a decade-or-so longer than usual. How strange- she really is a pretty woman, it's just always hard to see that behind the brains. It's like how my girlfriends (do I still have some of those? I thought I had lost them all) always said that Jason's not so much handsome as smart. Must the two be mutually exclusive? You know, the only person in the Old Testament who is described as both beautiful and intelligent is a woman- Abigail, who later is married to King David. I can only wonder about the fate of such a beautiful, intelligent woman who is used to being master in a domain where her husband is stupid (as her pre-davidic husband was) who is then transfered to a situation where she is a voiceless one-among-many in David's notoriously large harrem.

The last thing I wrote before this thing. The next thing I wrote after this.