Lately I feel like all I do is read. I’m taking 5 classes this semester - 1 science, 1 literature, and 3 (3? What was I thinking?) history classes. Additionally, 3 of these 5 are honors classes (re: stupid life choices). This means a heavy, heavy reading load.

In one night, I bounce from 150 pages about genocide (right now it’s Stalin, then on to the Nazis) to 3 different novels (about 150 pages combined), followed up with a delightful book of essays on the detrimental effects of media reductionism on Western/Middle Eastern relations (a refreshingly light 30 pages). All of this does not include, of course, the actual writing assignments on the topics that these readings cover.

It’s all just starting to bland together into one blank block of blandness.

And I love reading - really, I do, or I wouldn’t be an English major with a history minor - but this is beginning to make me resent one of my favorite activities. I read to unwind, but now I associate reading with stress. It’s somehow worse than being stressed by other, more traditionally stressful activities (like having to write long papers or take tests).

I’m going to cap off this frazzled rant from Walker Percy’s The Second Coming, which I’m reading for my literature class.

He smiled and nodded: I know why it is better to be shot at on a Sunday afternoon than not be shot at.  Because it means maybe there is an enemy after all. If there is no enemy, then I am either mad or living in a madhouse.

Peace is only better than war if peace is not hell too.  War being hell makes sense.

I actually like the book (or at least what little I’ve read of it so far), but the appreciation is tainted by the pressure.

… is that they’re usually so dry.

I’m not saying that it’s impossible to write a good history book - I’ve read a couple of excellent nonfiction books, either interesting overview types like The Unfree French (which is very textbook-esque but manages to remain interesting) or engaging fact-based narratives and memoirs like Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed or Christ Stopped at Eboli. My point is: just because it’s nonfiction does not mean it has to be boring.

This is especially frustrating for someone like me - someone who has a mind for stories, not dates and figures. I read a dry history book and think: there is such an interesting story here, why didn’t you tell it, instead of just telling me about it?

It’s such a tragedy that most historians fall into this trap when attempting to pull their weight as authors. What a waste.

Anyway, I’d better get back to slogging through my history reading.

An odd bit of comfort: I have a friend who, whenever someone is stressed, worried, or generally fretful, attempts to reassure that person by reminding them that “in a hundred years we’ll all be dead and none of this will matter.”

For the longest time, I didn’t get it.

Shouldn’t that be MORE of a reason for stress? How could anyone take comfort in the fact that they’re doomed to fade into oblivion in such a (relatively) minuscule span of time? That’s terrifying.

Then, I read a wonderful piece called “Happy Endings” by Margaret Atwood for a class of mine. It’s short (about 3 pages) and wonderful.

It begins with the setup “John and Mary meet.”

It then goes through possible fates for John and Mary: A, the generic happy ending (John and Mary live a happy life and eventually die old and satisfied); B, which adds a bit of drama in the form of unrequited love and changes the ending a bit (John and Mary live different lives and eventually both die a different way); C, which plays around a bit with characterization and setting, and changes the ending yet again (the characters live and eventually die in a slightly new way); and so on and so forth with D, E, and F.

Some would protest that not every story must end with the deaths of the characters, but I disagree. Whether the story chooses to show it or not, the characters are (almost, considering some genre fiction) always mortal - inherently finite. They will die, whether the story has stopped recording their lives before that point or not.

The ending of Atwood’s piece (for it is not a story, but a multitude of stories) presents the underlying truth:

“You’ll have to face it, the endings are the same however you slice it. Don’t be deluded by any other endings, they’re all fake, either deliberately fake, with malicious intent to deceive, or just motivated by excessive optimism if not by downright sentimentality.

The only authentic ending is the one provided here:

John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die.

[…]

That’s about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.”

I read that, and suddenly - after six years of being told basically the same thing by my friend - I finally got it.

It’s brilliant.

All that crappy stuff that’s happening to you now? All the stuff that you feel like you have no control over? All the stuff you feel is going to ruin your life?

It doesn’t change the ending of the story.

Nothing - but NOTHING - is strong enough, big enough, to negatively affect the inevitable ending of the story.

The story is yours, the ending is certain, and nothing terrible has the power to force you from your path.

In a hundred years we’ll all be dead and none of this will matter.

(Where is my textbook?!?)

I am in college, studying Japanese. Japanese, being a difficult language to learn, is a difficult class. It’s a five credit hour course that meets three days a week, and at the start of the semester, it hits the ground running. There is a lot of fast-paced reading, writing, memorizing, studying, and general work-work-working involved. (Very nearly) all of which requires a textbook.

It is the second week of school, my (new, second-level) textbook was ordered two weeks ago, and I am now two weeks behind on my assignments.

It was supposed to arrive today.

That is what I was told. That is what I told my sensee (teacher).

That, as it turns out, was a lie.

Now it’s on back-order (apparently), and no one would give me a straight answer as to when I could expect it to arrive.

Right. Because now is the time to be careful about making promises you can’t keep, college-bookstore-guys.