On Reflections After Reading "The Woman Lit By Fireflies"
I cried today. I am Valerie, I don't cry. I cried today, while reading my assignment for Literature. I cried. I am crying.
There she was, right in front of me, on the page right before me. Perhaps it was because it was in East Lansing were she said good-bye to her father. Or maybe the fireflies- they seem to light up those late springs night in such a way as to suspend time. Maybe the three-legged cat, or the best friend (dead). It could be the unbelievably strong mother-daughter relationship or the line "They're like the buffalo" said in reference to the white pine. I tell you, as Michigander that line probably has deeper meaning than it should (or perhaps it is just deep enough). Maybe it is the simple happiness found by walking in the rain. Or the idea of Paris and the heart's ever stronger longing to return. The beret. Or the need of travel. Or the countless lost chances of love. Doestoevsky. The bonding over an author (or maybe I am just deceiving myself here). The weary, almost dark humor. The concept that the tree, the cat, the bird are all greater than a human life. Or maybe the idea that pure joy is a bottle of wine, a good book, and an animal at your side. But there I was, forty years in the future, sitting on the page right in front of me.
I was sitting curled up in my favorite chair in the corner of the fake room in the Union with all those dead people staring almost vacantly across space as three tears fell on the words that the Valerie-named-Clare thought. More than three tears fell walking back to the bus stop as my right hand froze to such a point that it hurt.
What the heck is wrong with me this week?
On Sunday I woke up to the realization that I had just had a dream I was secretly dating my English professor. (I should also say here that the first day of class I assumed he was a GSI until I saw Professor B- on the top of syllabus.) Anyways, it is needless to say that was an odd dream, albeit a sweet one. Valerie-Clare fell in love with her English professor. He loved her back. Or perhaps he loved her first, but nothing ever happened. He killed himself in New York City. I prefer Paris. I miss Paris. It'll be absolutely gorgeous there in about a month's time when the trees along the boulevards all come into bloom.
I hope I don't find myself forty years from now Clare-Valerie. Life was almost happy for her.
And that counts as deja vu. An omen? I doubt it. (I hope it wasn't.)
There she was, right in front of me, on the page right before me. Perhaps it was because it was in East Lansing were she said good-bye to her father. Or maybe the fireflies- they seem to light up those late springs night in such a way as to suspend time. Maybe the three-legged cat, or the best friend (dead). It could be the unbelievably strong mother-daughter relationship or the line "They're like the buffalo" said in reference to the white pine. I tell you, as Michigander that line probably has deeper meaning than it should (or perhaps it is just deep enough). Maybe it is the simple happiness found by walking in the rain. Or the idea of Paris and the heart's ever stronger longing to return. The beret. Or the need of travel. Or the countless lost chances of love. Doestoevsky. The bonding over an author (or maybe I am just deceiving myself here). The weary, almost dark humor. The concept that the tree, the cat, the bird are all greater than a human life. Or maybe the idea that pure joy is a bottle of wine, a good book, and an animal at your side. But there I was, forty years in the future, sitting on the page right in front of me.
I was sitting curled up in my favorite chair in the corner of the fake room in the Union with all those dead people staring almost vacantly across space as three tears fell on the words that the Valerie-named-Clare thought. More than three tears fell walking back to the bus stop as my right hand froze to such a point that it hurt.
What the heck is wrong with me this week?
On Sunday I woke up to the realization that I had just had a dream I was secretly dating my English professor. (I should also say here that the first day of class I assumed he was a GSI until I saw Professor B- on the top of syllabus.) Anyways, it is needless to say that was an odd dream, albeit a sweet one. Valerie-Clare fell in love with her English professor. He loved her back. Or perhaps he loved her first, but nothing ever happened. He killed himself in New York City. I prefer Paris. I miss Paris. It'll be absolutely gorgeous there in about a month's time when the trees along the boulevards all come into bloom.
I hope I don't find myself forty years from now Clare-Valerie. Life was almost happy for her.
And that counts as deja vu. An omen? I doubt it. (I hope it wasn't.)