In Which I Review Literature
Say hey!
You delay, I delay – we all delay! Sorry it’s been so long, but fortunately we’ve been keeping up lately, so you have an idea of what I’ve been up to! I very much enjoyed reading your post, and I believe I have a few things to respond to, but I’ll begin with the easiest one – booze! Old fashioned and whiskey sour. What else could you need? Pro tip, make your own syrups. It’s just sugar and water in a 1:1 ratio. I recommend just doing a ½ a cup, since I don’t use that much in a short amount of time.
Now, on to the heart of the matter (see what I did there?). I am so happy that you’ve found love! It is not an easy thing to come by. I think it’s great that you paused and took some time for reflection too – a hard thing to do in the face of strong emotions! And you had a serious conversation about your future? Sounds like you’re in a real mature, adult relationship! You have found something special if I can believe you 😉 so hang on to her! I have learned with you how challenging long distance can be, so it’s great to hear you making a plan to be together soon. It sounds like it makes a lot of sense to enjoy the Nashville area while you’re young, and like you said it’s not forever. It is a tough situation though when you both have good opportunities in different areas, family to consider, etc. (for reference see my life, page 394). Of course, I’ll still remind you that my area is a great place for hip, young cool people like yourselves to move to 😉. And hey, no hard feelings towards the lady – I know you love me, and the love you and her share is a different kind of love. So I suppose I can share.
So besides being happy about you happiness, what have I been up to? Well, like the true yin to my yang, the peanut butter to my jelly, there must be balance between our circumstances apparently (more to come on destiny and fate later). Things have, in the grand scheme of things, been going just fine! But if you take a magnifier to the last couple weeks I’ve had you’d go AGH! To keep it short, and not fall into a rant, work has been incredibly stressful trying to get a release out (even though I know it’s not super critical) and some staff trouble looming for my Monday morning. That’s kind of the least important, but most prevalent (you know since I’m there 40 hours a week) stressor at the moment. My grandpa is not doing very well. I saw him on Mother’s Day and it was pretty bad. Luckily he got in to the doctor last week and seems to be doing better, but he is 92, so of course I want to keep him around as long as we can, but I am well aware of his age. And just today I found out my youngest aunt who has had health problems for years is not doing super well. Of course family health issues are always worrying, and to top it all off there’s been trouble in paradise, as you are aware. We haven’t had another discussion yet, so I’m still feeling a bit in limbo in our relationship, but I care about her so much and will try to work things out how I can, while still being true to myself and my values. I appreciate you offering your insights the other week, more than you may realize. So, it’s been a difficult time, but there are good days on the horizon! I am excited to move in August, some trips coming up in the summertime, seeing you crazy kook, and of course some sort of return to normal life as the pandemic situation improves.
Now, on to what you’ve really been waiting for – my lit review! So I just finished reading The Lady of the Lake, the final piece of the Ciri and Geralt storyline for the witcher books, and as I usually feel after finishing a series, I am full of emotions! I’ll avoid any direct spoilers for your sake, as I think you know enough about the witcher genre to follow with whatever philosophizing is about to follow. Not surprisingly, the ending was what one might call bittersweet. What I suppose I was more surprised by was to learn that the games are not canon. I had seen so many similarities between the games and the books, that I figured I would get to the end of the novel and see the jumping off point for the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Minor spoiler alert – I did not find that jumping off point. Sapkowski gets into some very interesting ideas weaving different myths and legends together towards the end of the series, which I thought was very neat as a DnD player who thinks planar travel and time travel are super cool. His “realism” or pessimism, depending where you look at things from, I also found a bit refreshing from a lot of modern media, where everything kind of works out for the best. Much like George R.R Martin, Sapkowski was not afraid of being brutal to his characters, and maybe it was easier because even though I am in love with his characters, it always felt like I was an observer, listening to the retelling of a story that was already written, the ink dried, the outcomes already made up, no matter when or how I turned the page. (One of the ways he did this I very much want to take as inspiration for DnD – between each chapter he includes an excerpt from a book that exists in his world; encyclopedias, a book of fairy tales, war records from opposing sides, etc.). So it was almost nihilistic to keep reading, knowing there wouldn’t be a happy ever after, but that didn’t stop me from eating it all up.
Everything has been, everything has happened. And everything has already been written about. ~ Vysogota of Corvo
Is this paragraph about the witcher too, you wonder? Why yes, yes it is. And that line is from a character that I was surprised by how much I ended up loving, despite his relatively minor inclusion (note I do not say minor role). In the last few chapters of The Lady of the Lake (which also, go figure, is a frame story – I bet you can put some pieces together), Sapkowski talked a lot about Order, Chaos, Evil, and Progress, which was all interesting and in the bar scene that these conversations took place, I didn’t find myself able to agree with any one character. It was a good reminder that although problems can often seem black and white (especially in the polarized political climate nowadays), many things are not so simple to categorize into right and wrong. Gosh there is just so much I could get into with these books, but to begin wrapping up, I was particularly interested in a short monologue about Destiny from sorceress Philippa Eilhart. I won’t get into it, since I plan to use a lot of the ideas for a certain elven ranger you might know, but it is such an interesting concept to think about, particularly when things happen in our lives beyond our control. Many times people say things like “Everything happens for a reason” and slap it on a picture of a mountain in fancy cursive writing to confront such hardships. My perception is that in this modern era we don’t talk about destiny, but maybe we still believe in it without realizing. Maybe we have to. We’ve explained so much through science and reasoning that one can make an argument against destiny, even some against religion, but I’ve always been someone who has been able to believe in both, despite any contradictions that might arise. Life, love, destiny, the pursuit of happiness – how can we know everything about everything? There will always be something beyond us, above us. It doesn’t explain away tragedies like the sudden loss of a loved one that too many of our friends have experienced recently, but the one thing I (and Sapkowski) think destiny offers us is hope. Maybe this was obvious to you all along, but it’s a realization I’ve only recently come to, and I’m grateful to these books for that, at least, in a time where I feel like so much around me is going wrong, I lean on destiny to remind me that it will be alright. Whether that is a good or bad thing to do, does that really matter? I don’t think so.
Well, having lived up to my title as Professor Souls, I’ll leave you to ponder. Naturally, I recommend you read these books! They’re a bit different in writing style, but I ended up falling in love with it honestly. And if you won’t read, then play Gwent with me! Or don’t. What media have you consumed recently that made you think deeply?
And at long last, you’ve reached the end of this post. The serpent Ouroboros has grasped his own tail, and an ending becomes a beginning.
Thinkin’ hard,
Professor
5.16.21












