Dear Eugene

Dear Eugene, This morning I got to sleep in for another 20 odd minutes, just enough to finish up a nightmare. I was running around in UBC, my alma mater, trying to reach the room where I am going to take a math test.  I thought I knew my way but was all wrong.  Then I went into strange corridors and eventually fell into a bog.  A pretty standard, by-the-numbers bad dream. I woke up and thought, Well, I'm glad that was only a dream.  After all in real life I have only one math test to attend to, no call for such high-strung melodrama... Then I woke up from my waking up and realized, No, I don't even have one math test to attend to in real life! Then I woke up yet again from my waking up to the waking up and realized, No, in real life every step is a test.  The same way in The Odyssey  Penelope tests Odysseus to prove his identity, asking him (actually Eurycleia) to do something that the real Odysseus would know better the difficulty and...

Dear Eugene, Don't you agree even if born under the most inauspicious skies a person would still strive for a better tomorrow, a brighter future, some impossible ideals? Oh, the good life, full of fun seems to be the ideal Mm, the good life lets you hide all the sadness you feel You won't really fall in love for you can't take the chance So please be honest with yourself, don't try to fake romance I love this Sacha Distel song, popularized by, of course, Tony Bennett .  There is a touch of irony in every turn of phrase. And I love how Bennett sings it, how the sadness oozes out of a wound of broken dreams with the triple unmitigated, inconsolable up-and-downs ( of-fun , to-be , i-deal ), a fatalism pervasive and powerful but you aren't quite ready yet to make up your mind and let it kill you. I was the one who said I will never let a dog roam in my house.  Yet having loved my own Sumi that is in this world, I would love her unto the end. There used ...