Monday, June 6, 2016

Advice from Charles Dickens for the 2016 Graduates.

Hey graduating class of 2016, Charles Dickens and I have some words for you. Charles will go first:

"I whistled and made nothing of going. But the village was very peaceful and quiet, and the light mists were solemnly rising, as if to show me the world, and I had been so innocent and little there, and all beyond was so unknown and great, that in a moment with a strong heave and sob I broke into tears. It was by the fingerpost at the end of the village, and I laid my hand upon it, and said, 'Goodbye, O my dear, dear friend!'
     Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle."-Charles Dickens, Great Expectations  (p. 208)

Thanks for using your magic and summing up moving away from home Charlie, you're a pal.

My fingers keep putting pressure on the keys, but the backspace steals the letters away again. Perhaps I have nothing left to add besides this:

  • There is an exhilarating magic when literature speaks your own heart.
  • Its okay when things are a bigger deal than you thought. And its okay to cry about it.





2 comments:

  1. I absolutely love your sentence about the backspace stealing the letters away again. Dickens is one of my favorites and was on the list of "reporters turned novelists" I hero-worshipped in college. It's intriguing to me that many of his works were serials. Did he map them out, did he know the ending chapter before publishing the first? Or did he write with abandon? Is the backspace a release or a restraint?

    Your writing is profound.

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  2. Thank you for your kind and insightful comment!

    ReplyDelete