trying to get started

So Mac and Helena and I spent a lot of time in the strangely empty school library today.  I am starting to get the impression that we are the only ones who mostly care that we  have work to turn in before we graduate, and even we don’t care that much.

I am in the organization phase of this grand project.

According to the project guidelines, I need to have an attention getting introduction.

Imagine the possibilities.

I know better than to let my imagination take control,so I went a step further. (Ok, Helena made me.)

I need to find a defining key word or phrase, or use a quotation or write a brief history.

I like this quote.

“Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.”  ~Sydney Smith

I could do  a brief history of the letter tracing it’s  roots in historical cave etchings and possibly smoke signals.

I think I have a bad attitude today.

Call me Diego, if you must

My senior theme (I hate it that they still call it that, it makes it sound like this is the one thing that will set the whole tone for the rest of our lives,like some bad high school dance in the gym of the world.), is on Epistolary Literature.  You would be amazed at how many people at my school, a few of them teachers, thought this meant I was going to write a paper on handguns or maybe hair removal products.

I wish I was kidding.

Although a handgun that removed hair might be interesting.

No one wants to be dead and hairy.

For those of you who really want to know

“There are two theories on the genesis of the epistolary novel. The first claims that the genre originated from novels with inserted letters, in which the portion containing the third person narrative in between the letters was gradually reduced.^[1] The other theory claims that the epistolary novel arose from miscellanies of letters and poetry: some of the letters were tied together into a (mostly amorous) plot.^[2] Both claims have some validity. The first truly epistolary novel, the Spanish “Prison of Love” (Cárcel de amor) (c.1485) by Diego de San Pedro”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistolary_novel

But I don’t plan on limiting myself to the novel.   I was at the college library, a surprisingly humorless place, browsing while Mac furrowed her brow at a Sylvia Plath biography. I pulled out a book at random.  Maybe to find a fact to stave off the information vampires that feed on me, and a letter floated out.  I didn’t read the whole thing; I just saw what was on the bottom.

Sometimes you just know