I Cannot Do Your Meme

Sometimes, you read to open your soul up to that Something so much larger and older than you, that Something that you feel like you share with everyone else who has ever curled up on a soft seat to read that book, too.

And sometimes you read to escape, to give yourself a break from what’s going on around you.

And sometimes you read for inspiration, to catch a glimpse of the lives that could be yours, if only you were more daring.

I have a hard time reading when I’m unhappy.  Tonight, I have a hard time thinking about books.  I feel cheated by words.

I made my mom cry this afternoon, not me, by my words, just the truth as I knew it.  Not the half truths we tell each other to get through. Not the lies we tell to protect each other.  Just the truth, and it made her cry, imagining her son in jail, unreachable.

I think of Frigg, begging everything on earth to spare her son, knowing, though, that even the gods can’t escape their fates, knowing that her pleading for just one more break had to be hopeless.

When they discovered he was invincible, they made a game of trying to destroy him.

We don’t hear what Frigg thinks of this.  I suppose she could not bear to watch, but that’s just my guess.  I just think she knew it was inevitable.

Maybe she did watch, hoping that it would happen sooner, rather than later, and maybe that guilt was hard for her to live with–a woman powerful enough that her words could keep even the Old Man safe, who couldn’t keep her baby boy out of harm’s way.

I wish we had those stories, too.  I feel a little cheated without them.

My dad and the men in his family can turn any family tribulation into some echo of Biblical tragedy.  It makes them feel that there’s order, meaning to the random, meaningless shit that happens.

It’s hard for me to think of stories at a time like this.  I want to think about books I love, but I’m not sure at the moment that I love books.  I mean, I know there is some girl who lives here who loves them, the feel of the shape of words in her mouth, the smell of fresh ink on wood pulp.  But I feel cut off from her.

Like I have to shut the door on her for a while in order to make it through this next week.

Lady Macbeth, standing on the edge of the world, a mad sea and Vikings as much a threat as her conscience, says, “Unsex me here,” Let me go of the things that make me weak so that I can do what must be done.

I have no desire to kill kings.

I can’t remember what my point was.  Just that I feel cut off from th familiar things I love.  And thinking about books makes me cry.