Heathcliff

I can't just not mention Heath Ledger. I don't have anything to say that hasn't been said, but I just can't ignore his passing.
Instead of saying anything trite, I will quote Joe Queenan, because he captures what I felt about Ledger's role in Brokeback Mountain.

"Brokeback Mountain is no more about gay cowboys than Hamlet is about indecisive, twenty-something Danes. It is about two people who are madly in love but whose lives are destroyed because they cannot be together. They are separated not only by social mores, by marriage, by distance, but by class: Jake Gyllenhaal, buoyed with the emancipation from financial worry he has achieved by marrying into a wealthy family, can do whatever he damn well pleases, whereas Ledger, a cash-strapped day labourer, does not have the money or the social mobility to go where he wants, whenever he wants. Gyllenhaal, a talented actor, does a very nice job in Brokeback Mountain, but Ledger gives a performance that is literally heartbreaking."

The world is poorer for his loss, however he died.

A correction from yesterday. Cypress, known as the Cypress Bowl, isn't just one mountain. I had wondered about why I'd never heard it called either Mount Cypress or Cypress Mountain, so I asked Alex Y and he explained.

I was reminded today, during a conversation with a workmate, a term I have decided to reclaim whilst rejecting the creeping use of 'co-worker', that one can like a person whilst finding their behaviour unhealthy, bizarre or even disquieting.
This seems in some ways counter-intuitive to me, and so it inclines me towards a behaviourist theory. It was so drummed into us in teaching, that in the end, you start to actually think that way.

And at the end of the day...it gets dark.