Welcome again to Your Life is Terrible, the column where our characters tell real people what to do! Here's today's letter:
Arthur -
Continually, I am becoming more and more morose. Every day is the same droll existance. I am surrounded by a plague of idiots. I am the make-up on the face
of an ancient, wrinkled grandmother - I do not belong with these cracks!
My question is thus: should I abandon this sinking, wretched shit-ship of a life, and swim in the open seas of ART! MUSIC! LITERATURE! LIFE! or should I continue feeding
on fish guts and whale bones? Fastidious response graciously demanded.
Yours in Prose,
A
Arthur writes:
Hello, "A". A single character seals a letter, as a kiss may seal a night of passion - how profound! Magnificent! Truly, I sense the divine spark of that most precious gift, the Word, within you.
In answer to your question - yes, yes, a thousand times, yes! To expand upon your exquisitely-crafted ocean metaphor, truly, those who swim free in that great ocean of the
mind are the only ones who are wholly alive in this world. To the stagnant and monochome world of the mundane, the movement from the sea of art to the shore of drudgery
is seen as an evolution, a movement forward in the order of the universe, a step upwards to be emulated and sought after. Blasphemy, I say! Utter pap!
Jump off your boat, "A", and come swim freely with me! We shall dance through coral reefs of the word, ride the jetstream of great and wonderous ideas, delve the depths
of the most profound expression.
The open ocean of art can of course be disconcerting for those who have grown used to the feel of solid mundanity beneath our feet, as so many tragically have.
But nothing worth having is gained without first risking it all. So dive! Dive into that ocean, "A", and never look back!
Yours in Poetry,
Arthur
Editor's note: Arthur was later heard to comment:
Wait, that was a chick that wrote that, right? I mean, I just assumed. Shit, it WAS, wasn't it? I felt like it was, and just went with it. Was it a guy? It can't have been a guy. No
man would write like that. It had to have been a girl; I, of all people, would be able to ascertain such a mundane fact from reading one's writing. It must have been a woman.
You guys know I'm not gay, right?
