I think I can remember being dead. Many times, in winter, I approached Zeus. Tell me, I would ask him, how can I endure the earth? - Louise Gluck, excerpt from Persephone, the Wanderer Spring 2014 The thing about spring is it always comes quick and unexpected. It rolls in thick and heavy like northwestern fog. All of a sudden it is everywhere. Two weeks ago it was winter and bleak. It will still…
Your father comes outside only to tell you that the orchard has closed. He finds you in the backyard, drifting through the pool on a half-deflated float and finally finishing Franny and Zooey. There is little else to do when you come home to visit your parents; it’s also probably time for you to return the waterlogged paperback to your friend, as she sent it to you in the mail two years ago. You have…
Let me tell you about fear. It rises in you; it pulses like it is a part of you. It settles on your chest and clots in your lungs. It is the water scudding toward shore, tightening into an immense wave. The fear exists always in that moment right before it crashes into you; it is always rising up, ready to strike.
I wasn't an early adopter of Supernatural. I knew some huge fans—long-distance, half-online, half-IRL friends who shrieked about it regularly on Facebook long before any of us had Facebook. I didn't get into the show until one day when I walked into a certain university bathroom stall and discovered a shrine to fandom. Every surface was scrawled with declarations of love, from the classic Kirk + Spock to a host of Sherlock pairings.
Feel free to ask Aunt Acid a variety of questions at advice@the-toast.net at any time. Previous installments can be found here. Hey! So... I have a younger sister who is the best person I know. And this is a good thing! We somehow, between the two of us, divided up all the "Traits of awesome peopleness" so we're evenly matched, but split. She's more patient than I am,…
