Public Service Message

Please don't buy 'Freedom' by Jonathan Franzen no matter how many pictures from his younger days you come across whilst viewing back copies of The New Yorker (he was quite dishy) because if you're like me - underpaid and grumpy, with an excellent taste in books and shoes (to quote Geet, 'I am my biggest fan') it is quite likely that your admiration for his looks will disappear in a jiffy.

You will then want to toss his book aside. Except you won't be able to. It's quite heavy - for a paperback. You can congratulate yourselves on buying an excellent weapon to aim at your siblings the next time they refuse to knock before entering your room, like you have asked them to but not as much as you will hate yourself for spending a thousand rupees on a book you did not enjoy reading and only finished because you had paid a decent amount of money for it.

Seriously, Jonathan Franzen, if we ever meet I'm going to demand my money back. If you were still good looking, I would've settled for taking a picture with you but we both know that's not the case anymore, is it?

Dirge without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, --- but the best is lost.

The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

-Edna St Vincent Millay

On my 25th, this is all I can think about. Quarter life crisis, I suppose.