19 December 2011
Seriously, the last two weeks have been hella stressful.
Every semester I tell myself that I’ll be better about my grading, but I
totally failed at that this semester. As a result, I haven’t done much the last
week but sleep, eat, and grade. Thankfully, now all of my grading is done and
my grades are posted. Now comes my yearly pre-Christmas frantic cleaning and
errand running. Fun! (not really)
But all of that is for tomorrow. Right now I’m watching my
go-to relaxation movie, Howl’s Moving
Castle. I bought a copy of this ages ago solely because I’m huge Studio
Ghibli fan (and apparently I paid a whopping $24.95 for it). I watched it, and
enjoyed it, but it wasn’t until I spent a semester in England that I really
became attached to it.
Without a doubt, that semester in England was one of the
most stressful periods of my life, and I did not handle it well at all. I
realize now that I was going through a pretty serious bout of depression (which
began before I even left for England), but hindsight is 20/20. I spent four
months cold, broke, sick, lonely, and hungry. I was there January through May
of 2007. English winters were a shock to
me. Now, I’ve lived in the South for my entire life, ya’ll. I was not used to
months of cold, rainy, cloudy days. I did not have suitable attire for English
winters, so I was cold pretty much all the time. My stomach was constantly
hurting from the stress of the work load. And every two weeks, like clockwork,
I got sick.
For some reason, the only thing that would give me any
modicum of relief was watching Howl’s
Moving Castle. I’m not sure why. I would watch it over and over again in
one sitting. That movie was my escape, my comfort. It still is. Even now, I rarely travel without
it. Even though Diana Wynne Jones was English and movie is Japanese, something
about it felt like home. In watching it, I was able to get lost in the
narrative. It enabled me to forget about looming paper deadlines (there was
this paper about Mary Wollstonecraft’s A
Vindication of the Rights of Women that was particularly torturous) and the
need to put together a dissertation committee from overseas. When watching Howl’s Moving Castle, all of that
disappeared for a bit.
There’s something captivating about the story. I love
everything about it, the narrative, Sophie, Miyazaki’s signature animation style, his
use of color and imager, I even love the English dub. And I have this movie to
thank for introducing me to one of my all-time favorite authors, Diana Wynne
Jones. (fyi: Howl’s Moving Castle is
a delightful book, quite a bit different than the film, but fantastic all the
same) Watching it today reminds me of that time in my life. I don’t regret
going to England. I met some interesting people (oddly enough, they were mostly
Americans). I got the chance to live with an English family for five weeks. I
was able to go to London multiple times. I got the chance to see Patrick
Stewart perform in two different Shakespeare plays (Yes, I was in the same room
as Captain Picard!!!) I read some absolutely fantastic Victorian literature,
and I loved, loved, loved talking about that literature in my classes.
But underneath it all, was that insidious depression (mental
illness is a bitch like that). I wish that back then I had been brave enough to
get help. What I didn’t realize at the time was that no amount of interesting
and cool stuff and fun people could make that go away. I really felt like a
freak because I couldn’t have fun like the others. But for a couple of hours at
least, Howl’s Moving Castle, helped
me not think about it all. And for that, I’m still profoundly grateful.
