Saturday, April 19, 2003

Although I usually don’t take too well to poetry, gentle reader, I read Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “The Cry of the Children” today and found it striking. The syntax, the refrains, the weave of words, the protest against child labor in English mines and factories–all of these things reminded me of why I enjoy English courses. After savoring this poem, I turned to Dickens’ Hard Times, a novel infinitely more engaging than Sense and Sensibility.

Coupled with the drab gray outside, this literature created in me that sweet, tangible melancholy so popular in nineteenth-century England. And so I exited Norris to a campus made primordial with the raw smell of ozone, and then the clouds insisted on drizzling, and dinnertime eventually rolled around. Tim, Esther, and I decided to sup at Cafe Luciano.

At this point, my satisfying melancholy turned to disappointed annoyance. Much of the restaurant–the patrons, the host, and the waiter come to mind–screamed Norshore, and I accordingly expected the food to taste Norshorely good. The cuisine, it turned out, was on par with that of Olive Garden, and I would have gladly chosen the latter for equally good food with 75% less pretension. A word of warning (and possibly of advice): If you ever want to knock someone unconscious, grab some bread from the good Cafe and use it to whack your victim.