She had everything

It has as much meaning as I give it.

How do you deal with the press of absurdity? The overwhelming sense that it doesn't matter much, nothing matters, it's nonsense or it's gallows humour, or it's hilarious and macabre.

I want to be a peasant. I want to be in the Middle Ages, early Middle Ages, when Europe is cold and the growing season short. I want to be able to survive on thirty acres, communal acres, and maybe a goat or pig. I want to be working for my life. I want to be hungry when it is cold out. I want to drink ale, eat staple crops, suffer debilitating diseases, dream of Cocaigne, beat my plows into a sword when the Lord says so, and back again when the Priest says so.

I want to be empowered. I want to lead a peasant revolt. Or maybe I want to be taken up with religious fervor and swear off the world, because the lilies are clothed, the birds do not lack for food, and the world is frankly quite questionable. But what peasant does this - no, it's mostly upper crust women who have that luxury to abhor the fleshly world. I want to have a husband, and I want to be his pride in the world, his raison d'etre, and I will be strong and maintain the house and farm. We will sleep in the same bed as our children and our guests. I want to have my many holidays, saint's days, feast days. I want to have my lay religiosity, my cousin who can read, my carefully cut clothes.

When King Arthur clops up beside me on his laden-swallow-shod-horse, I will say "Help, help, I'm being ahppressed!"

Dear world, I know that I have grown soft, but you must realize, world, that this is the hand I was dealt. It was the odds that I was born here, it was the luck of the draw that I went to college and have nothing to worry about but whether or not I go hunt pterodactyls this weekend or roast a chicken stuffed with onions. It was crazy odds, it was one moonlit night in late 1981 that my parents copulated, and the nine months later that I was born myself. I will not apologize, I will just pretend something else.

The summer was transformative. What can I say? I changed my policies on everything, without necessarily changing the good things about myself.

I suppose I could turn my back on my class. I could become an ascetic and renounce the world, or join a convent. I could run away, I could quit school, I could get pregnant or get married. But why would I give up a gig like this? It's great, I get to do what I want, I get my self improvement movements financed. I just have to stop myself from apologizing.

2002-10-01, She had everything

before / after

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