Taxes are done!

And I'm about to be $3000 richer.

Expanding

I don't normally do poetry, but for the longest time I've had a desire to read Paradise Lost. So that's what I'm doing, and in the spirit of poetry I shall be reading it out loud to myself. This is only some what uncomfortable for me, but it seems like the right thing to do.

A Farewell to a Farewell to Arms

That title is deep.

I enjoyed the book, of course I did. But at the end I felt a way I've never felt before about a book. I'll let Alex from Everything is Illuminated explain it. He is referring to a fictionalized biography Jonathan is writing about his grandfather.

I could hate you! Why will you not permit your grandfather to be in love with the Gypsy girl, and show her his love? Who is ordering you to write in such a manner? We have such chances to do good, and yet again and again you insist on evil. I would not read this most contemporary division to Little Igor, because I did not appraise it worthy of his ears No, this division I presented to Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior, who acted faithfully with it.

I must make a simple question, which is what is wrong with you? If your grandfather loves the Gypsy girl, and I am certain that he does, why does he not leave with her? She could make him so happy. And yet he declines happiness. This is not reasonable, Jonathan, and it is not good. If I were the writer, I would have Safran show his love to the Gypsy girl, and take her to Greenwich Shtetl in New York City. Or I would have Safran kill himself, which is the only other truthful thing to perform, although then you would not be born, which would signify that this story could not be written.

Although the circumstances at the end of Farewell are different and my feelings aren't as fierce as Alex's I did definitely feel like, "why couldn't they just be happy?"