feeling good, getting in touch with my Arab side

Literary quote of the day:

Poetry is, in short, the universal art of the mind, which has become essentially free, and which is not fettered in its realization to an externally sensuous material, but which is creatively active in the space and time belonging to the inner worlds of ideas and emotion.
From The Philosophy of Fine Art by Friedrich Hegel, German Philosopher

So even though my obnoxious room mate is back in Paris, I have been feeling okay. I realised that I was trying to hard to please her, to make up for my little mental breakdown episode (as if I need to apologise to her for anything anyway!) and she wasn't accepting it. So fuck her, I can be a bitter bitch if I want to be. SHE HASN'T SEEN SHIT YET!

School was good today. My French teacher didn't ask too much out of me (I hate speaking French). After French class I have a long break, so I caught the metro to l'Institut du Monde Arab (Institute of the Arab World) to take a look at the Napoleon in Egypt exposition (which was awesome!) and the permanent collection in the museum. It was so cool... the intricacy of some of the art was amazing, some of the old clothes and trinkets, every day household objects... so old, so beautiful! I have to do a small French presentation on Thursday so I will talk about IMA.

The institute was not so far from where I take classes, so I decided to walk back instead of taking the metro. I passed by a few Arabic restaurants and decided to sit down and have some lunch. It wasn't my mom's cooking, but it was still nice to have some basics. I chatted a bit with the restaurant dude, listened to some Elissa music... and walked through the Latin quarter back to my class.

My literary criticism class is getting better and better by the day. Today we were introduced to Hegel and his view of aesthetics and fine arts. After a long explanation of his system, he talked about different art styles and forms. He mentioned three types: Symbolic (Oriental art, religious architecture, Pyramids), Classical (Greek art, human body sculpture), and Romantic arts. He broke down Romantic arts into Painting, Music, and Poetry. Those three were in ascending order of spirituality. Painting is a very sensual art form, it's all about images and vision and color and light. Music also uses the external senses, it needs the medium of sound. Poetry (writing, prose, novels) on the other hand, is closer to the spiritual realms of religion and philosophy because it expresses pure ideas in the mind, doesn't rely on images or sound (or any senses) to create ideas (see the literary quote of the day, above). I really felt and understood this... I've always appreciated language arts more than painting and music, and I finally figured out why. Thank you dear Professor and Mr. Hegel! note: In the end, Hegel dismisses art in general, claiming art is dead, and that we shouldn't bother creating art, but rather focus on the science of art (art/literary theory and criticism), i.e. read his books instead.

P.S. I got my mid-term exam back too, 3.9 baby! My first exam in ages... I guess my brain isn't completely mush after drinking all summer.