damn i'm grumpy. i had to go to an eye appt at 9 this morning and i was there an hour and fifteen minutes, for an entire fifteen minute examination. now i'm up for good...and what do i have to do? not too much. i should probably read my summer reading book, which i think is still in the car....last ngiht i read a play by albert camus, "caligula". it was the story of the roman emperor caius caesar, whom everyone called caligula or "bootsie" because he'd spent much of his early life in military camps. after his beloved drusilla dies (she happened to be both his sister and his mistress), caligula, who has till then been a model ruler, realizes that life is imperfect and that that sucks: "Men die, and they are not happy." Caligula has a crazy scheme of logic by which he plans to achieve impossible things, overturn the entire world, and become greater than the gods he becomes Chance and Fortune, distributing favors where he pleases and death is great swathes throughout his kingdom. he commands utterly and then he contradicts himself utterly, just for the hell of it. "There's no understanding fate; therefore i choose to play the part of fate. I wear the foolish, unintelligble face of a professional god....any man can play the lead in the divine comedy and become a god. all he needs to do is harden his heart. " he decides to use his freedom as emperor in a way no man has ever done, to give himself no boundaries. He orders the random deaths of eery landowner in the empire; he takes people at their word when they vow to sacrifice themselves for his well-being; he closes the public granaries to create a famine. Caligula desires the moon, the most impossible (to him) thing of all....of course Caligula's subjects aren't totally pleased with this, and plot to kill him, because as Cherea says "He is converting his philosophy into corpses and--unfortunately for us--it's a philosopy that's logical from start to finish. And where one can't refute, one strikes." Caligula doesn't seem to care, and doesn't even punish the ringleader, Cherea, when he has evidence against him. In fact he destroys it and declares his foremost enemy innocent, releasing him to continue his plans. He claims to love life, but in doing all the things he does he is basically setting himself up for death and he knows it. he has an armload of knives delivered to a roomful of conspirators. he makes them him enemies knowing on some level what they will do, and he accepts it, desires it....Camus called it a "super-suicide". he didn't do it himself, but he caused it all the same. of course they kill him in the end, but as they are stabbing him the last line of the play is caligula crying/laughing "I'm still alive!"

I'm not sure how much of that made sense, but it was a very thought provoking play. Definitely let me see the dark existential side of Camus. We talked about it endlessly in english with lynch, and i remember how many existentialists spoke of the "absurdity" of existence, and that was something that was mentioned in the play several times, the absurd roles that people play in life. i think i remembered it because i thought absurd was a strange term to use to describe life....although i always understood how sex would be considered absurd. all the emphasis we put on it in society, all for a few minutes of strange contortions and facial expressions. very odd.