as i sit here in the library trying to do too much conference work on your brilliant novel bleak house in far too little time to give it adequate insight, i just want to take a moment to thank you.
i was on the second to last page of some critical essay that i was reading on an online database and i was letting my mind wander to the awesome scope and intermingling lives of your characters and the thought of being a grandmother crossed my mind. i thought very briefly of being eighty years old and having a crazy-looking house with a porch and dilapidated roof and flowers of various types in every stage of life and cats and baked goods. and i thought about my daughter and her crazy kids coming to visit. well, i didn't think about my daughter. i don't know anything about her. she is just an assumed part of the equation to get me to the crazy grandkids in grandma-made wings and fair isle sweaters running up my porch steps for water that i've colored blue and pink and green with food color and cloves-and-cinnamon apple cider served in a collection of neon wine glasses and thrift store mugs. i then thought about how even if i just barrel on through college for the next 3.5 years, just straight through, buckle down, i have so much life to live. i still have time to be fantastic and eccentric. maybe it's good to be normal (that is, a college student straight out of high school) or eccentric in a smaller setting (the college) first and then graduate and be brilliant in the real world. and even if i'm not brilliant, then, as i've learned from you, dear charles, and the neo-futurists, i even as a seemingly normal person am actually bizarre and fascinating.
thank you charles dickens, thank you!
love,
emma
p.s. i hate your fucking guts for writing a novel so long and intricate that i cannot remember and understand all of it and i am still a little angry at my don for assigning me to read it and read about it and all.
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