Lusting for Men in Paintings, and More

My months long disinterest in novels abruptly ended 3 days ago with the discovery of Colette (a french writer), whom I have been thinking of reading based on the book covers. It turns out Colette is amazing, and I've even looked up some literary criticism for some of her books; whoever designed those covers is my best friend right now. I finished Chéri and The Last of Chéri on day 1 of my renewed zest for reading. Yesterday and today (days 2 and 3) have thrown me 500 pages into The Complete Claudine (which is 650 pages, four novels in one volume), and I'm thoroughly in love with it. I've laughed out loud a million times already from her hysterical irrelevance.

In one passage Colette's Claudine describes how she's deeply attracted to the man in this Bronzino painting: "I had discovered, quite by chance, the boy who could have made me commit sin. Lucky he was only on canvas! Who was he? 'Portrait of a Sculptor,' by Bronzino. I wanted to touch that forehead, just where it swelled above the eyebrows under the thick black hair, and that ruthless, undulating lip; I wanted to kiss those eyes that looked like a cynical page's. Did that white, naked hand really model statuettes?" After that passage I looked up the painting right away. She's right, he's quite attractive. 

I had an incredibly cocky day today, in which I responded on the French quiz to amuse myself completely, without any of my usual scruples for grammar or correctness("tout de suite ... l'histoire continue a la prochain quiz"). In Gender & Science I inwardly raged at myself for having lost a measly 5 points on a midterm for a question that I knew was lacking. After class I laughed out loud at a guy who was convincing a black girl something about black people and how they're scientifically something or other because of where I had just come from (GENDER and SCIENCE). Something about meeting a real life "biological determinist" amuses me as much as it angers me. Later, a random dude on rollerblades fell on the ground, which I hardly took note of, except I looked up briefly at him after he picked himself up: he then looked right at me and said "the show's over, thanks." Not willing to compromise his idea that his biting remark was making me guilty for supposedly taking pleasure in his spectacle (I wasn't in the least, in fact I was wondering if he was alright), I quickly looked down at my book again and tried not laugh at the poor guy, whose blind rebellion to my presumable scorn was rather pointless.