Love Is A Shadow. How You Lie

I Felt Overstuffed And Dull And Disappointed, The Way I Always Do The Day After Christmas, As If Whatever It Was The Pine Boughs And The Candles And The Silver And Gilt-ribboned Presents And The Birch-log Fires And The Christmas Turkey And The Carols At The Piano Promised Never Came To Pass.

I Didn't Know Shorthand Either. This Meant I Couldn't Get A Good Job After College. My Mother Kept Telling Me Nobody Wanted A Plain English Major. But An English Major Who Knew Shorthand Would Be Something Else Again. Everybody Would Want Her. She Would Be In Demand Among All The Up-and-coming Young Men And She Would Transcribe Letter After Thrilling Letter. The Trouble Was, I Hated The Idea Of Serving Men In Any Way. I Wanted To Dictate My Own Thrilling Letters.

I Started Adding Up All The Things I Couldn't Do.

Frustrated? Yes. Why? Because It Is Impossible For Me To Be God — Or The Universal Woman-and-man — Or Anything Much. I Am What I Feel And Think And Do. I Want To Express My Being As Fully As I Can Because I Somewhere Picked Up The Idea That I Could Justify My Being Alive That Way.

Apparently, The Most Difficult Feat For A Cambridge Male Is To Accept A Woman Not Merely As Feeling, Not Merely As Thinking, But As Managing A Complex, Vital Interweaving Of Both.