Easter Sunday Night Post

Happy Easter to any Christians reading this post, and to the rest, happy whatever makes this day good for you.

My daughter returned from her first overnight visit to Mum-Mum's house (her maternal grandmother). Apparently all went well, save that my daughter did not sleep well in the playpen we sent, and as a result, neither did Mum-Mum. Good to have a day or two on our own, good to have her back.

I have finished re-reading the draft of Small Magics and am going to send it through the spellchecker once more before it goes back to my publisher (Dragon Moon Press) for final proofs. The cover art is coming along swimmingly (and you'll notice I've added Laura Diehl's link to my list on the side there). Laura has done a great job, and put up with me which is no easy feat.

And now, because I read this recently, and meant to post it earlier, I'm going to put here an abridged quote on the nature of existence by Leo Rosten. It struck a chord with me when I found it on the Walking with Ghosts blog, so I thought I'd share it:

Credo, Leo Rosten

I BELIEVE that you can understand people better if you look at them as if they are children. For most of us never mature; we simply grow taller.

I have learned that everyone - in some small, secret sanctuary of the self - is mad. If we want to stay sane we must moderate our demands - on ourselves and others.

I have learned that everyone is lonely at bottom, and cries to be understood; but we can never entirely understand someone else, no matter how much we want to; and each of us will forever be part stranger - even to those who love us most.

I have learned that it is the weak who are cruel and that kindness is to be expected only from the strong.

I have had to learn that life - so precious, so variable, so honeycombed with richness and delight - is held cheap in the scheme of impersonal events. When a human life is snuffed out in an instant, without meaning, without reason, without justice, how can one deny that all our lives hang by threads of nothing more than luck? I cannot escape the awareness that in our last bewildered moment just before we die three simple, awful questions cry out from our souls: 'Why me? Why now? Why forever?'

I have come to see that every person is subject to fantasies so obscene, yearnings so mendacious, drives so destructive that even to mention them shakes the gates we have erected against the barbarian within.

I have been driven to believe that no despotism is more terrible than the tyranny of neurosis. No punishment is more pitiless, more harsh and cunning and malevolent, than what we inflict upon ourselves.

Most men feel cheated if happiness eludes them. But where has it been written that life will be easy, our days untroubled by suffering, our nights unfouled by the beasts within our nature? Where, indeed, is it guaranteed that life will be at the very least fair?

People debase 'the pursuit of happiness' into a narcotic pursuit of 'fun'. To me this is demeaning. I would question the sanity of anyone not often torn by despair. Euphoria is the province of lunatics. I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be 'happy'.

I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honourable, to be compassionate. It is above all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.

And while looking up the reference to who Leo Rosten was for those who wish to know, I found this quote from the man which nicely sums up one of the major problems with neo-conservatives, both north and south of the 49th:

Extremists think "communication" means agreeing with them.

And now, I am going to bed.