The Quill Newsletter
Issue I (February 2009)
Order of things
Intro
Poem
‘Leaves’ by Luke Landtroop
Poem
'Yadda Yadda Yadda’ by Daniel Levesque
Short story
‘Love at Last Sight’ by Daniel Levesque
Commentary
His Majesty’s Dragon By Naomi Novik
Daniel Levesque
Perspectives
‘The Bardic Role’ by Luke Landtroop
'Commonplace Contentment’ by Daniel Levesque
Influences
Outro
Greetings, salutations, and welcome to the very beginning of a great endeavor between two individuals. In this first edition of The Quill Newsletter, and all others for that matter, we have but one simple goal. We desire to put forth material that we have created, for your enjoyment and consideration. In the future, it would be excellent if we could also have individuals who wished to get their voice out somewhere they knew would be read, and submit material for us to post as well. With that said, read, give your opinions, and tell others about it. Peruse, and enjoy.
-Daniel Levesque
Leaves
Luke Landtroop
That leaf is cursed
That falls alone upon the hard-packed ground
Or perhaps upon the stony surface
Of a concrete drive
And lies lonely to wither
And crumble into fruitless dust
Unless some kindly breeze
Waft it into woods where many lie
That leaf is blessed
That falls in a forest full of trees
Or on any wooded grounds
Even in a lawn
Coming to rest among brethren
Dying away into the warm
Embrace of earth and kin
Among the roots of the tree that bore it
Yadda Yadda Yadda
Daniel Levesque
Yadda yadda yadda
That’s what they all say
Its trying to break me
But they can’t take my life away
Bring it on
Try to break me out
But I’m stuck here in this cement
And I don’t care what its about
Because they all say something
They all shout loud
But there’s a thousand voices out there
And its hard to see with my head inside these clouds
So shake it off
Brush off the stains of shame
That come from just forgetting
But you are not to blame
For we all fall
In the muck or in the mire
But in this filth and failing
Is when we climb up higher
Love at Last Sight
Daniel Levesque
Some people don’t believe in love at first sight, but I do. I have a good reason for believing in it, because I experienced it. I can say that with all sincerity, but I must admit, in the end it didn’t help me at all. You see, what everyone does agree on is that love is one of the greatest things that God put in this world, but unfortunately, it can also be the worst thing.
Perhaps I had better tell you my story first of all. This story is just about to end, and though there has been many, many happy days, I will say-good riddance. I just hurts too bad
It was over twenty years ago when I met her. I was eight years old, she was at the ripe old age of seven. It was a bright Sunday morning outside, but inside the church that my mother had penned me inside of, it was getting a little stuffy. I was squirming around in my seat, praying as fervently as an eight-year-old could for God to betray his own minister and blow him away from the pulpit that his was droning away behind.
But then I saw her. Now, I admit, eight years old is a little young for love at first sight, but I got very close to it that beautiful, glorious morning. She was sitting two pews behind of me, with her chin propped on the back of the pew in front of her, and believe it or not, she was smiling at me. At me!
I can’t you a single thing that the minister said after that, though I probably couldn’t have told you anything anyway. Our subtle eye contact continued until the dismissal rang out, and believe it or not, I was disappointed when it was all over. Needless to say however, I now had a chance to meet her. I hopped out of my seat and trotted over to hers, only to see her and her parents already disappearing out the double doors and into the parking lot. I almost called out to her, but realized that I didn’t even know her name.
The next week was the longest I had ever experienced, and I’m sure I had never been so eager to go to another long service as I was the next Sunday morning. I jumped up into the pew, and acted like an angel for the next half-hour of the song service. But the second the minister stepped up to the pulpit and drew his first breath; I turned around in my seat and scanned the pews behind me. I felt a terrible shock in my heart, and faintly wondered if I was having a heart attack before I even realized why I felt this way.
She wasn’t behind me, anywhere. I frantically scanned the entire church, desperately hanging onto the thread of hope of that she might just be sitting somewhere else. But she simply wasn’t there. I slumped back into my pew, feeling hot, salty tears clog my nasal passage. The minister’s voice droned into my depressingly morbid thoughts. He was talking about how God loved you more than any other person ever could. I just didn’t feel like hearing it. Suddenly, his voice trailed off. His train of thought had been interrupted by some latecomers. The doors thudded closed behind them, and my heart lurched up from its abysmal depths. Could it be her? I rocketed into a kneeling position on my seat. My joyful feelings escaped into a tiny squeak that caused my mother to gently nudge me.
But she was here! My life became bright and happy again, all in the matter of 5 ½ seconds. They managed to find a seat in the exact same pew that they had sat in last week. The moment they had settle into their seat, out eyes connected. The rest of the morning was spent in perfect bliss. We said nothing, and we were nothing more than children, but to this day, that is one of my happiest memories ever. By the time that the service had quickly screeched to a halt I was ready.
I shot up from my seat and barreled into the nearby walkway, nearly running into her.
We both said it at the same time. “What’s your name?”
She answered first. “ My name is Candice,” she lisped in an absolutely angelic voice.
“I’m Darrell,” I replied, sticking my hand out, and feeling like an idiot the second I did it. But she took it, and shook it gently. I felt a thrill of excitement that told me to jump around and scream. I had touched her! Oh happy day!
Instead, I stood there like a fool until my mother grabbed me and guided me out to our car. “Who was that?” she asked.
“Candice,” I whispered, still flying above Cloud 9.
She said nothing else, and somehow we got home, I’m not really sure if there was any stop lights on the way or not. Through the next six days, everything was a haze, and I lived in a daze. I have always been a vivacious eater, and so I really had my mother worried by the end of the week.
The next week, I was prepared. I somehow convinced my mother to sit behind the seat that we usually sat on, and I eagerly awaited her arrival. Thankfully for me, she didn’t disappoint me. Also, she sat directly behind me. I smiled at her, staring like a buffoon, until I remembered the reason that I had sat here.
I whispered to her through the song service. “How old you?”
She told me. I told her how old I was. The next question I had to ask, though I hated to. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
She told me no.
“Do like someone?”
She nodded, a mischievous smile appearing on her beautiful little face. She was taunting me! I felt a single tear escape from where it belonged, and course down my red cheeks. The smile disappeared from her face, being replaced with a frown.
“I like you!” she whispered desperately, gently touching my trembling arm. Wiping the traitorous tear away, I managed a shaky smile. “Just me?” I asked cautiously.
She smiled, saying everything with that one gesture. We smiled back and forth for the next hour and a half, whispering any little questions that popped into our minds during that time.
The end of the service once again cruelly ended our time together, but I was already a very happy man. I walked to my mother’s car, without being escorted, wondering pensively how I had ever lived my last eight years without this little girl in my life. The next six years continued on this way.
I shamefully admit that Sundays were not almost my happiest days, actually sometimes very bad ones, that is when she wasn’t there. But as I began to grow up, my emotional life revolved around two hours every Sunday morning.
By the time I had turned fourteen, I was beginning to see more of her. Through the years I had discovered that she lived only four blocks away from me, and every once in a while, when I could get her out of bed or away from her job, I was able to convince my mother to take me for a visit to her.
I had other friends at the time; I was a pretty outgoing kind, but none like her. She was the only one that I always wanted to see, never got tired of being around, and could talk to about anything. The years flew by in a happy haze. School, friends, family, drifted by me, but she was always there, no matter what. I graduated from high school with high honors, the second in my class.
She graduated from her school, the same year, first in her class. I had just turned eighteen, and prepared to move out. I’m sad to say my mother was glad. It wasn’t my fault, I had always been a good kid, but she never could never seem to handle me very well. Thing never felt right around her, words never came out just the way I had planned them to. But, thankfully, she wasn’t the one that I got most of my emotional needs from.
I heard ‘I love you’ from her three times, that I can remember of. I had already lost count of how many times I heard it from a certain someone else.
The next night, Candice and I met in the nearby park. It had been very busy that week, and I hadn’t seen her for three days. The moment she stepped out of her car, I felt like a drug-addict that had suddenly seen a needle after an eternity of forced abstinence. We met in each other’s arms, as I finally kicked aside all the worries that had built up through the demanding week that I had already began to forget.
I breathed in the aura the surrounded her, and knew that heaven was here. Though I hadn’t quite gotten accustomed to it, today was a special day, and our lips connected. It was the second time, and I feared I was going to suffocate with joy, but I also knew that I would die happily. After an eternity of pure bliss, I put my arm around her slender waist, and we walked over to a nearby bench. “I love you,” she whispered, sending unexplainable thrills racing through my heart.
I had things that I planned to talk to her about, but right at the moment, I couldn’t think of anything that I wanted to do besides feel her body snuggling against me. The hours drifted past, us accomplishing nothing unless attaining perfect happiness could be defined as an accomplishment. I think it can.
Night and darkness began to drift into the silent world around us. A light chill started to permeate even the warm glow in our hearts. Candice shivered delicately beside me, sending chills up my spine that weren’t from the cold. I stood up, hurriedly clutching her warm body against mine.
Just then, a light mist began to drift down from the cloudy atmosphere above up. Holding tightly to her, I dashed to my car. Opening the passenger’s side, I helped her in, then dashed to my side. Jumping inside, we silently watched as the sky open, and the torrents poured down. I clutched the steering wheel, not really sure what to do.
“I’ve got to take my car back home,” Candice murmured.
“I know,” I replied, trying to glimpse her vehicle through the downfall surrounding our little oasis.
Realizing that I was feeling obligated to do something, Candice clutched my arm. “I don’t have to go right now,” she whispered, causing my heart to gallop away from me. Our bodies reconnected after an eternity of five minutes apart. I don’t remember much of what happened after that, though it is the happiest memory of my life. I’d like to think that I didn’t break any rules that my moral standards had created for me, but I’m not sure. After a certain level of rapture had been reached, nothing else registered anymore, and I really don’t know what happened after that.
Sometime that night, I somehow got back home, but I never went to sleep. I stared at the ceiling and wondered, could I live without her? I hated myself for even dreaming of a life without her, but it had escaped from the prison that I had locked all my evil thoughts away to. I began to imagine the life ahead of me, and felt nothing but excitement for my future and hers. If anyone could life happily ever after, it was us.
There were memories to create, vows to be made, children to steal a little drop of the love that I had for her. Suddenly a laugh escaped from my throat. I had the whole world going for me, just because of one person. What more could I dream for?
The next two weeks were filled the flurry of moving to a new home. I was moving to a shoddy apartment in the nearby suburbs. I still managed to get little moments of time with the main thing that I lived for. After I had settled in, I began to look into my next steps in life. I already had college planned, and coincidentally the collage that Candice was going to had also accepted me. Just one more reason to look forward to my future ahead of me. We both planned to get doctorates, hers in literature, and mine in law. We would both be living on campus, and therefore would be seeing each other very frequently.
The night before we moved onto the college campus, we spent another memorable evening together. Once again, I have very few memories about it, but the ones that I do, and the ones that I don’t are some of the best I have.
But now, another time of our lives had begun. No one had taken the time to tell just how hard college really was. Courses crawled past, and the months flew by. We still saw each other often, and there was nothing I would place over spending five minutes in her presence, outside of spending more time than that with her.
But, life began to demand more from me than she did. I still tear up when I say that I began to drift away from her. There came a day that, should someone have asked me who the gorgeous girl who walked by was, and it was Candice, I would have said, “Oh that’s my best friend.”
Nothing wrong with that, but there was a day when she was so much more than that. Nearly a year past and it had to come where I only saw Candice about once a week, sometimes twice. We still spent time together, very happy times, but they were different. My career had almost become more important. When she nervously mentioned that she had met someone else, and asked what I thought, I barely even bristled.
Two years past. Candice was still my best friend, but that was mainly because I just hardly even had friends anymore. Other things were more important, or so I told myself at the time.
She was still the girl I dreamed of marrying, but she would have to wait for another six years. I guess somehow, in my heady, naive way, I didn’t even realize that I was drifting away from her. She was still there waiting for me, waiting for when I would wake up and realized that this diamond was still here, ready, whenever I would realize that there was things more important that a career. I might have realized this all, had I had the time.
But everything ended one terrible day. I can’t even call it a day. Nothing on God’s green earth could create such a terrible event. I never even had the time to realize how much I truly loved her, and just had forgotten. It was a beautiful Monday morning, at least in the beginning. I had just turned twenty-one two weeks before. She was one of the two party guests I had, the other was my favorite professor. She was now twenty. The most beautiful young woman you would ever lay eyes on. The sweetest, kindest person there ever was, and the greatest asset to anyone.
Anyway, it was a bright, warm Monday morning. I hadn’t seen her since my birthday. It had been the longest stretch I had gone without seeing her for as long as I could remember, and I had mildly rebuked myself for it, but really hadn’t suffered for it. She had called me the night before, sounding a little odd, and asked to meet me for lunch the next day, today.
I was on my way when my cellular phone rang. I answered, half expected Candice, but instead heard a gruff male voice on the other side. I first thought it was one of my professors, but marked them all off without placing the voice.
“Is this Darrell Maline?” the voice asked.
“Yes sir, it is,” I replied, shifting curiously in my seat.
“Are you related to Candice Turner?” I felt a hot flash sweep across my body.
“She’s my best friend,” I hurriedly answered.
The man identified himself as a police officer, and gave me the address to a nearby hospital. “Get there as quickly as you can,” he ordered.
I ran more than one red light, my heart pounding almost as fast as the last time I shared a kiss with Candice. In record time, I flew into the hospital’s parking lot, and dashed inside. I was immediately directly into a ward. When I found her room number, I flew inside, and screeched to a halt the moment I entered.
The only person I had ever truly cared for. The only woman that had ever stole my heart, lay strapped to a bed, surrounded by hospital personal. They saw me, and a hush rang out in the room.
Candice’s eyes opened, and she saw me. Her bloody, torn, and beautiful face lit up with immediate happiness. Her hands outstretched to mine, and with sobs racking my body, I took them. Her ragged lips labored to say something, and I struggled to hear the words gasped through her pain. “I love you. I always have. You’re the only person I’ve ever really loved.”
“I love you too,” I gasped, tears pouring from my eyes.
Her hands contracted, but still held tightly onto mine. I stroked her bleeding knuckles, and cried uncontrollably. “I’m so sorry,” I sobbed.
Candice shook her head, wincing from the pain that the selfless act caused.
The doctor laid his hand on my shoulder, gently guiding me to a nearby chair. “She was crossing the road, and got hit by a car going sixty miles an hour.”
I groaned, agony coursing through my body.
“You should let her get a little rest,” he cautiously advised.
I shook my head. “I’m not leaving her,” I stated through clenched teeth.
The doctor nodded, and rising left the room, leaving us alone.
“I won’t leave you,” I repeated, turning to her pain-stricken face. “Never again.” The day passed, and I never left her side. I spent that time thinking of the times that I spent with her, every time more perfect than perfection itself. I then thought of all that time that I didn’t spend with her. I would never forgive myself, no matter what happened.
Suddenly her body shuddered. I jumped out of my seat, touching her torn cheek gently. Her eyes opened, and she struggled to say the same words as before, but this time it took a little longer. “I-I……….love….you.” The life that I so cherished then flickered out, never to return, to leave me and my pathetic life alone, with nothing left but a career to comfort and taunt me.
The doctors and nurses poured through the doors and frantically surrounded her, trying to revive her, but I knew it was too late. If there was as much as a milligram of life still in her, I would feel it. The world fell down around me, crushing everything that I knew into nothing.
I turned and walked out the door, but one of the nurses stopped me. She handed me a envelope with my name on it.
“She was carrying that when the car hit her. That’s how we contacted you.”
I nodded blankly and ended up at my car. There I tearfully opened the envelope. A single sheet of paper fell out, covered with my darling’s handwriting. I read it, tears smearing the pages, and washing the ink into meaningless blobs.
Dear Darrell,
I know we haven’t spent that much time together lately, and I’ve started to worry about you a little bit. I know I’m going to be talking to you before I give you this, but maybe this will help you realize where I’m at right now. I still love you just as much as I did three years ago, which is more than I thought I could love any one person. I can only hope you love me just as much. Whether or not you do, I just want you to know that I will always be here for you. No matter how far we fall apart, or how close we become and become used to each other, I will always be here for you. Just think about where you are today, and decide if that’s where you really want to be. I miss the days we used to spend together, our simple love that meant so much. Darrell, I’m begging you, don’t lose me. I don’t know if I could take the pain that it would create for me. I could only hope that for your sake that you could if I was no longer in your life, but I hope that that time never comes. I’m still here, don’t ever forget, I will never go anywhere else.
Candice
I didn’t think I could cry any harder than I already had, but somehow I did. I had no chance anymore. I remember nothing about the next month, and very little about the next year. I dropped out of my classes.
I don’t know how I have made a living during these last ten years. Somehow I have, though I wonder if it would have been better I had just starved to death.
It would now, I’m sure. I’m now a drug-addict. Live in a toolshed. Drink rainwater and eat out of trashcans. I’m your first class bum, but I have an excuse for it. I have absolutely nothing to live for. She’s gone.
That letter is nailed to the only sturdy side of my toolshed, and it’s the only reason I haven’t overdosed already. But I’m fed up with life. And to makes things worse, or better, depending on the way you look at it, is that today’s a special day. Exactly ten years ago, to this day, was the day that my darling died. I really think that I died that day too, because I don’t think that this body that I’m in now is me. Tomorrow, they’ll have one more dead bum to dispose of, but I’m happy about it. Well, not really happy, but I’m not sad, and that’s almost happy, cause it’s the happiest I’ve been in ten years.
Okay. She died. I’m about to die. We’ll both be dead. Maybe, just maybe, we will somehow come together again. That’s why I’m happy.
I still have one picture of her, and that’s the last thing that I will see. I lay it before me, and drive the whole needle of poison into my bloodstream. It won’t take long. Goodbye world. Goodbye pain. Goodbye everything.
His Majesty’s Dragon By Naomi Novik
Daniel Levesque
In His Majesty’s Dragon, we are presented with a very original and immersive style of story that, while introducing an excellent fantasy ideal, revolves around our world, in the time of the Napoleonic era. As we enter the story, we find ourselves in a time that is identical to the early 19th century except for in one respect. This world is inhabited by dragons, though they are just as widely accepted as ships and gunpowder.
The story begins with Captain Will Laurence, commander of the HMS Reliant. He is comfortable and content with his life as the captain of a frigate in His Majesty’s Navy. However, when his ship captures a French frigate, his life takes a shocking turn in circumstances. The frigate had been carrying a dragon egg, an extremely valuable find because of their rarity and zealously guarded condition.
But the dragon begins to hatch while they still at sea, a very serious situation. Dragons must immediately be mastered, nearly at the moment they are born, or they will quickly become wild, a very dangerous prospect from a creature that could attain the size of 10-20 tons. His sense of duty obvious, Captain Laurence steps up, asserting himself as the dragonling’s master, thus forever tearing himself from the life at sea that he had known and loved for so long.
But now, a whole other world is now opened up before him. The rarified and revered Aerial Corps, the protectors of Britain’s skies, accept him and his young dragon, Temeraire, into their ranks. Thus, they enter into a world that few imagined even existed. The time for enjoying the turn in events is scant, however. Napoleon’s forces are swelling, eyeing Britain more and more, full realizing how stretched and inadequate Britain’s armies are. Every dragon counts, and Laurence is immediately pulled into intensive training with his fast growing dragon, which he is more and more realizing is much more than just an ordinary creature. Thus, the true adventure begins.
This story unfolds in a leisurely, but somehow addicting pace, drawing any fantasy lover in almost instantly. A contemporary story to the core, it yet has the writing and feel of a classic, and reads like ‘Master and Commander’ meets ‘Eragon’, making for a highly enjoyable and original read that I would heartily recommend to anyone.
The Bardic Role
Luke Landtroop
Richard M. Weaver, an eminent philosopher of the 20th century, described the foundation of any culture as something he termed its “metaphysical dream”. He defined the metaphysical dream as “an intuitive feeling about the immanent nature of reality, …the sanction to which both ideas and beliefs are ultimately referred for verification.” Furthermore, he asserted that “Without the metaphysical dream it is impossible to think of men living harmoniously over an extent of time.” The metaphysical dream is to the philosophy of a culture what axioms are to geometry and logic, givens that must be accepted before any further examination can progress.
To my mind, it is obvious that the contemporary Western world is suffering from the lack of consensus on our “metaphysical dream”, our weltanschauung. The West is internally divided and in conflict with its own sense of identity. The growing economic prowess of the Orient and the cultural hostility of the Middle East threaten to supplant or destroy the West, but we cannot summon the collective moral authority to deal with these issues. The moral vigor which called forth such enterprises as the Crusades (questionable though their enactment might have been) eludes us at every turn. How are we to understand our global rivals (friendly or otherwise) if we cannot understand our own legacy? In my opinion, this malaise is due to the infirmity of our metaphysical dream. To be sure, it has not perished altogether. It has survived in the basic impulses of our people, but we have denied the authority of the sources which nourished these impulses, hence they are never firmly backed by principles. How are we to confront this illness? In answer, our society is ever more in need of bards.
What is a bard? Perhaps we can gain a better understanding of this by first looking at what a bard is not. In our modern world, the majority of creative matter (books, music, art) is produced solely for the purpose of mass entertainment. As it is a commercial product for the masses, such matter often appeals to the lowest common denominator. In reaction to this, those who aspire to a higher level of literary or artistic achievement practically abandon the common culture and form their own super-culture of literati, composing without regard for the masses at all. In this view, the accomplished artist functions separately from society and culture, congratulating himself on his self-imposed isolation from it. So far I have only identified what I see as problems of modern society, so now I will turn to what I see as part of the solution, at least in literary terms. We must revive the time-honored model of the bards, scops, and skalds of the old cultures of Western Europe. The bard was neither vulgar entertainer nor did he dwell in an ivory tower. He was an integral and special part of a community, he communed with kings and commoners, and most importantly, he was the one responsible for preserving and nourishing the community’s metaphysical vision. He it was who passed on the myths and legends of a culture, and the values that went along with them. He did not just recount ribald yarns, nor did he sit about merely moralizing. Instead, he was a living reminder of that society’s ideals of right, truth, and beauty. Through the grand old tales which went naturally along with the hearth and the feast he communicated and perpetuated the weltanschauung. He was the thread which maintained the continuity of the tapestry of life. Today, there is a need for artists who neither succumb to the lowest common denominator nor secede from society in lofty disdain. The artist’s goal should not be mere self-realization, but to nourish and sublimate those things which are best in a culture.
Now, with all this talk of the metaphysical dream and its necessity, one might understandably wonder just what is that guiding vision which the West must recover. That is really the subject for another paper entirely, but I will attempt to attain some measure of resolution. In the face of the threat of collectivist systems some have come to the conclusion that our goal is maximum individual autonomy, that is, spiritual and moral individualism. However, that would seem to negate the very concept of culture. The purpose of the metaphysical dream, according to Weaver, is to carry, “an evaluation, which is the bond of spiritual community.” I will not seek to define our vision here, but I will say where I think it is to be found. It was foreshadowed by the pagan Greek philosophers, but they lacked the moral authority to imbue it to the common man. It was only with the advent of Christianity that the West gained this authority, and only there will we find it again. Is this to say that we must return to the Middle Ages, with all its bloodshed and brutal intolerance? No, but now that we have thrown out the bathwater of brutality, it is time to recover the baby of wisdom and spiritual vision which we threw out along with it. We must always temper moral certainty with the ethical restraint of a civilized society, but we must not be in a continual flux of doubt as to the virtue of our values. Rather we should sift out the chaff without destroying the grain. Without a defined system of authoritative ethics, we enter an age of vast technological potential at our social peril.
Commonplace Contentment
Daniel Levesque
As I stare out my window at this very moment, I am absorbed by what most would call a beautiful and entrancing view. My second story window overlooks a pasture, albeit somewhat dead and brown at this time of the year, filled with peacefully grazing goats and cows. Beyond that the entire landscape is filled with a vista of rolling fields, now empty and dead, but somehow still all the more breathtaking for its condition. It is a sight I see every morning, every time I look out the window, and as such, is so easy to not take the slightest notice of. That is the form of beauty that I live in and have grown accustomed to.
People see beauty in so many different ways and forms, usually in the perspective that they live in, but only as a standing point to look out from, as they admire and envy all the other choices out there, that they cannot have. Personally, I see an almost paranormal attractiveness in the veneer of a bustling city. The towering skyscrapers, lines of shining cars, people rushing by street corners. However, oddly, that description would just as soon repulse some people as attract others. For others, that is just a thing that they see every single day, and yet never have truly noticed it, but, really don’t even care. All those points of view are primarily because of the lifestyles that these different individuals live in. And all these lifestyles have created personalized perspectives for individual preference.
What defines beauty, and what defines the subject’s definition and understanding of that beauty? The maxim, ‘The grass is greener on the other side’ certainly begins to have a very important role in this question. Perhaps, ‘Familiarity breeds contempt’ would be even more appropriate. But beauty and what attracts an individual are only truly surface reactions to something a little deeper. It is almost inevitable that no matter what one has, they will still always want more. That’s pretty well a proven fact. Now, point made on that, the next question is, what causes such a lack of satisfaction in the true sense?
People as a general rule are never satisfied. That is one of the greatest blessings and also one of the greatest curses of humanity. While it gives us a sense of drive, a desire to constantly better ourselves, it also puts us in the place of never being able to completely be happy, always wanting a little something more, a little more than we can ever get. And possibly most importantly, it almost indefinitely causes us to never be able to entirely appreciate our own little worlds.
I’m still sitting at my window, looking outside yet again. It’s dark now, completely dark. No city lights to keep it all eternally lit. No people walking past. No cars whizzing by, a sound I have always oddly loved. Sometimes I tell myself I’m missing something because that isn’t there. But, I can see the stars. I can sit outside, in silence, or walk without any interruption. And in all that, perhaps gain one of the hardest things to find. Appreciation for what I already have. A satisfaction for where I am right now. And since satisfaction is such a rare thing, I think its safe to say that attaining that is a very noble goal.
Influences
Daniel Levesque
Book: ‘Mark of the Horse Lord’ by Rosemary Sutcliff
Movie: ‘Stardust’
Music Album: ‘The Best Worst-Case Scenario’ by Fair
Luke Landtroop
Book: ‘The Journey of Desire’ by John Eldredge
Movie: ‘Walk the Line’
Music Album: ‘The Light of Things Hoped For’ by Brave Saint Saturn
Well, that’s it. And if you have actually completed this, there is really little more to say. So, we both hoped you enjoyed this as much as we enjoyed making it, and hope to see you next time! Thanks for checking The Quill out!
-Daniel Levesque
