The Other Boleyn Girl

The first of December proved a disappointing day. I woke up to a chilly dawn - a cloudy, dismal sky, and that immediately took away any drive I had to be productive. I burned about four hours reading The Other Boleyn Girl, spent the subsequent hours obsessing over English history, looking up Henry VIII’s wives. I was royally miserable, tired and confused – precisely the mood that gets me randomly trying to unravel the mysteries of the universe.

But yeah, maybe the word 'universe' is an overstatement. 

ONE. Was Henry VIII that much of a jerk - not ever realizing that he may be breaking hearts? I'd like to know how he was thinking. Was anything ever real back then - love? honor? 

TWO. Why does nothing in real life make sense? Everything in my books - each character, confrontation, setting - they have reasons why they're there. (Yeah, I know, it's pointless asking this.) Even when I write, I create scenes where the characters look at this or that, and feel something inside of them click. 

I've already tried my hand at different things, learned to say yes or goodbye as I felt I should. But there's no feeling of purpose, no sense that this is leading to somewhere. 

We're all here once upon a time, where's the happily ever after?

THREE. I believe in a Supreme Being, One whose thoughts I will never be able to fathom. 

Is there a need for religion, then? Is there a need to impose a way of worship, a way of communion, a way of believing? Can't it just be as easy and natural as conversing with a close, close friend? Is this world too wounded, grown much too cynical, that it will never be that simple again?

Somehow, it just feels wrong to see people dangling Heaven as a prize to win, saying that theirs is the only way to salvation. 

FOUR. When can people say they 'love'?

Do we even have to give it that silly name? 

There's this guy I know I like. For so long, I don't even remember how or why. (And that's all you can get out of me, officer.) I don't understand, but I do. 

Is that...

And I don't even see him now. I wonder what he thinks.

FIVE. Are grades just numbers? A lot of people seem to say that to me. And yet if I take that for truth, I would have said that the taxes people pay to fund my college education are likewise just numbers.

SIX. Does the rainbow have only seven colors? Between red and orange, aren't there millions of others? 

SEVEN. Why do we wish on shooting stars? They're going to land hard on Earth from their glorious perch up in the skies. They're going to join our lot and our mutual misery. Ha-ha.  

That's a very sad metaphor: the whole lot of us depending on something that's bound to fall.

Well. That wasn't so bad, was it? Guess I'll just have to count the days 'til a new year starts, a faux new beginning.