After awhile she turned to look at him. 'Oh Bobby,' she said.
'We've made such a mess of things, you and me. What are we going to do?'
'The best we can,' he said, still stroking her hand. He raised it to his lips and kissed the palm where her lifeline and heartline tangled briefly before wandering away from each other again. 'The best we can.' – Stephen King, Low Men in Yellow Coats (in Hearts in Atlantis)


Warning: Listening to William Hurt read this in his rich and textured voice is enough to break your heart.

For the last few weeks my life has been like A Series of Unfortunate Events – minus the weird, but undeniably cool, siblings. I’ve been working harder than I ever have in my whole (and quite short) life – what sucks though is the fact that I get no satisfaction from it because most of my work consists of marking first year students’ assignments and tests and I’ve never met people who are as apathetic as the first year students at UJ. Tolkien must have been made of ridiculously tough mental stuff to mark exams for so many years and still be sane at the end of it all... then again students were much brighter back in his day. Perhaps if I continue on this course I’ll get so bored that my mind will be forced to come up with a story so brilliant that it parallels The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings to try and stop itself from withering away.

One of my life goals is not to live a mediocre life, so being surrounded by so many students who just don’t give a damn is rather shocking! I struggle (and fail most of the time) to be the best Charlie® I can be every day but these people don’t even seem all that bothered about trying. The whole business makes me think of Jagang’s Imperial Order in Terry Goodkind’s The Sword of Truth novels in which Jagang and his men try to make it seem that people who try to aspire to be better than their fellow men are being full of themselves and selfish. The sad reality is that we live in world where mediocrity is not enough to get you to the top – bearing in mind that my definition of the top is probably drastically different from yours... mine involves a huge library.

Anyhoo, I’m tired and need to be heading to Slumber Land to rest my weary body. In a few hours it’s my birthday and I’m looking forward to being twenty-two – it’s exciting I think, what being a full blown adult person and all.

Good night furry friends :)