How do you pick your mate?
What is good? What is evil? What are we?
How do you deal with displacement and abandonment and that foreverlonely you feel in the pit of your stomach, no matter how much you try to squash it down with loud noises and bright lights and even seemingly-worthy Pursuits of Happiness?
"Literature answers philosophical questions with particulars. Novels throw a bunch of people together on a level playing field and have them work out these human problems."
And we watch and learn, laughing and crying and frowning in vicarious pain and joy and ah-hah moments.
That's why people believe in life-saving poetry and stuff. It's how terrible circumstances are redeemed as tools for recovery and encouragement; like how phoenixes rise from their own ashes and how beautiful flowers grow from poop.
Good words to think about on a melancholy Monday afternoon of a fourth-year fall semester.
Thank you, God, for literature.
Thank you, God, for this undergraduate path as an English major.
Thank you, God, for Mysteries of Udolpho and the weepy sensibilities of Emily St. Aubert and for saving us poor unfortunate souls from ourselves.
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| for a lucky few, life is not so struggley. though maybe that's an unfair judgment from a haughty perspective. |
