For those of you on tenterhooks, in the end I went with the HTC One. I was leaning that way anyway, and when I got to the store, they were sold out of the Galaxy S4! Easy choice.
I'd like you to direct your attention to this essay by Brandon Sanderson about the genius of Terry Pratchett. It's what I've been saying for yours, and it's nice to see those sentiments echoed by a writer I enjoy so much.
I had my last poetry class yesterday, and it was suitably short and touching. The professor gave us all signed copies of one of her books, gave us some tips on how to continue working together as a group, and sent us out into this big, scary world to scrawl our names in the heavens. Before we parted, I told her how lucky I felt to have been a part of her class -- how it's sparked a renaissance in my personal story, and that now I feel as though I see the world with younger eyes. None of that was hyperbole, either. I owe her a lot! She told me to drop her a line if I was ever in the west of Ireland, and she'd buy me a drink.
I left the class and drove to get my new phone, on the way listening to a book by John Green called Looking for Alaska. I'm a little more than halfway through it, so I can't really give you a full review; suffice to say that it's really enjoyable and touching, brimming over with humanity (in all its petty flaws). The main character's relationship with his roommate especially connects with me; they're described as being like an "old married couple" in their dynamic, and that hearkens back to the friendship I had with my college roommate, Rick.
I don't think I could have asked for a better roommate, someone as sensitive and thoughtful as I was, but slightly more worldly. Someone who would only laugh at me a little in my naïveté, and then step up and help me learn what I needed to know about life. Someone who, when the time came to decide what our living situation would be the next year, was just as scared as I was to bring up the subject, in case it turned out the other wouldn't want to room together again.
We've lost touch (despite my efforts), and I kind of got the feeling that he just wants to leave everything from college in the past. I've given up on trying to re-establish contact, and decided to just focus my efforts elsewhere. But every day, I'm reminded that a huge part of who I am is thanks to the random bureaucratic decision to put us in the same room.
Bureaucracy is a very funny thing. Yesterday, my wife's grandfather passed away; he had been sick for years, so it wasn't sudden or shocking, but still very affecting for my wife and her whole family. Tomorrow, we'll head up to Rhode Island for the funeral. I know that I'll struggle to connect with the emotions running high through everyone there, as I'll spend a few days surrounded by people who knew and loved this man whom I barely met. I will be as sympathetic as I can, but I know that it'll be an alienating feeling for me.
The reason I mentioned bureaucracy is that I learned I would be required to use sick time to go to this funeral. My work provides for bereavement leave, but not for so attenuated a connection as a grandparent-in-law. Parents-in-law, however, are covered, as are my personal grandparents. I can see the logic behind it -- they have to draw the line somewhere -- but it still feels so arbitrary. You know, a lot of the rules that we live by are completely arbitrary, but just because we follow them out of habit, and have done so for such a long time, they can become normalized in our consciousness.
It's in me to question norms, to constantly judge and attempt to discard the ones that don't make sense. Part of me has always felt a little less bound by the common rules we theoretically all live by; the older I get, the less I feel they apply to me. I look at some older people who use their advanced age as an excuse to break those rules, and it's amazing how I feel the exact same contempt for the artificial limits society has conspired to place on my behavior.
There are those, and some of you may be among them, who would decry such flagrant violations of the social code as immoral, harmful, unethical, or inconsiderate. And, depending on the actual transgression, it might be! But it behooves us all to look past these potentially obsolete strictures to the reasons underlying them, in order to be certain we are doing what is right rather than what is done.
Hoo boy, is that vague! It's not that the social mores I'm contemplating myself breaking are anything serious; I mean, hasn't everybody wanted to start screaming and dancing at a funeral? I'll let you know how it goes.
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