Pill and Pillow

Dear Eugene,

Yesterday when I was driving his friend home, my son made a comment that he hasn't found a way to grow out of since first making it a few years back: "Why do we have to learn Shakespeare?  Like someone's gonna ask you question about him in a job interview?"

I suggested maybe one day he will find truth from the mouth of "King Lear," truth that might make a difference of life and death to him.  Or maybe without Shakespeare there's no Eminem.

The preeminent Canadian literary theorist Northrop Frye suggested, "Nobody is capable of free speech unless he knows how to use language, and such knowledge is not a gift: it has to be learned and worked at," and that "wherever illiteracy is a problem, it’s as fundamental a problem as getting enough to eat or a place to sleep."

So in a world where eating and sleeping and reading are no problems, we tend to be ignorant of how problematic lacking any of these could be if we are not gifted with the opportunity to learn about and work at their cultivation.  How we die every night into our sleep without giving thanks for our pillow yet taking for granted a resurrection by sunrise?

When I wanted to force myself to stop fidgeting in bed I would often imagine rocking in a train out of Siberia where there is no room for fidgeting--or sorrow.

I could have used a pill.

Yours, Alex