People Talk About Grief As If It's

The Rites Of Passage In The Academic World Are Arcane And, In Their Own Way, Highly Romantic, And The Tensions And Unplesantries Of Dissertations And Final Oral Examinations Are Quickly Forgotten In The Wonderful Moment Of The Sherry Afterward, Admission Into A Very Old Club, Parties Of Celebration, Doctoral Gowns, Academic Rituals, And Hearing For The First Time "dr.," Rather Than "miss" Jamison.

If I Can't Feel, If I Can't Move, If I Can't Think, And I Can't Care, Then What Conceivable Point Is There In Living?

No Amount Of Love Can Cure Madness Or Unblacken One's Dark Moods. Love Can Help, It Can Make The Pain More Tolerable, But, Always, One Is Beholden To Medication That May Or May Not Always Work And May Or May Not Be Bearable

It Was As If My Father Had Given Me, By Way Of Temperament, An Impossibly Wild, Dark, And Unbroken Horse. It Was A Horse Without A Name, And A Horse With No Experience Of A Bit Between Its Teeth. My Mother Taught Me To Gentle It; Gave Me The Discipline And Love To Break It; And- As Alexander Had Known So Intuitively With Bucephalus- She Understood, And Taught Me, That The Beast Was Best Handled By Turning It Toward The Sun.

As Best I Could Make Out, Having Never Heard The Term Until I Arrived In California, Being A Wasp Meant Being Mossbacked, Lockjawed, Rigid, Humorless, Cold, Charmless, Insipid, Less Than Penetratingly Bright, But Otherwise---and Inexplicably---to Be Envied.