Dear you,

Granted you've violated my sensibilities but i seem to be surrounded by peekers and cheaters! Though i tend not to read books that are overly sentimental puddles of goo and usually do not need to be wary of being tricked into a meltdown. I avoid pink covers and anything called chicklit also and cannot get too close to most of any Obookclub stuff due to forced popularity. For instance the audio book i just finished (totally need more by the way) had something like 5 or 6 deaths with varying degrees of skeletons, murder and old age but none really induced upset. Except for one, which just seemed unfair but it was just one thing among many. Thats the trick i think. You do have to know what you're in for or be willing to let the book take you where it wants and read as little about it as possible so that it can do just that. Part of the fun of reading is the surprise. I don't want to anticipate a word or sentence or plot twist. I want it to just be. You're robbing the author of what they're suppose to be good at. Leading you out into nothing and creating something wonderful. I cannot agree that its good in anyway to peek at the end of the book. It shows a profound lack of trust but then apparently with good reason it sounds like. So i don't know. I mean especially if one is looking at a romantic comedy and one of the main characters goes and dies on you. That sounds especially ridiculous and would only be valid if it was a cut to old age scenario. The end of SixFtUnder had me weeping- expressing a profound grief for aging, mortality and life and love and all the rest. I can't say I've found much else that upsetting except when Phil that crabfisherman dies. I was a mess. But in both scenarios I knew I was going into something with that express end. Certainly they weren't billed as anything other than what I got- though in both I thought much better delivered than I could've imagined. A letter writing campaign to the marketing dept of said book could be an outlet. I mean I would be enraged. well or eyetwitching. you know- something.

One of my favorite psalms- well its a standard really. Is Psalms 23. And there's a part where it says, "And yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death..." It occurred to me recently that its not just in a specific moment of being in a valley or trial, but its everyday the Lord is with you... and everyday you may face the inevitable curse of man. It's the tragedy of life. But do we need to address it everyday? I don't know. Definitely not in romantic comedies where only pratfalls and silly but blissful encounters occur, with witty banter I hope and exotic travel. Though in avoiding it does it stigmatize it more- should we let ourselves be carried away to tears and sadness oncenawhile. Is it healthy to sidestep when catharsis might be better? Death DOES come for us all. Such meditations don't really cause me to relinquish my life or spend it regretting, or in a grey wearing daze filled with ennui- as the LORD is with me. Maybe addressing pain and the inevitable would be a better measure then suddenly and without warning? But just as a meditation, not as a morbid obsession or a shutting out of it but just a, ah, yes- i see that and in light of it, must walk in a different way-- those shining days of wonder and magic kind of ways...

Well anyway there's also just enough emotional investment in a day to not have it elsewhere, especially in what you're watching. I've been anti-dramas for a while now, just because I don't want to go there. I don't need to. But I let one sneak up on me everynow and then.

Allright, enough ruminating really. My lips are chapped. Its freezing in here. And its uppose to be 105+ in the valley today. Oh excessive heatwarnings shmornings. I've logged some eerchay leading videos, am 1/2 way thru james/peach, currently hungry and craving... a fruit smoothie. Appropriately. Have not dealt w/ the edd or juryduty summons yet and am about to do research on this watchmaker guy for the thing i'm doing now/farmtown/burndvds.

If i die after having sent the fed ex and before dinner i can't say it will make a good end to my story. But maybe, if spun correctly, as life had just been upon my lips, it will be better read.

m.