My Life as a Charles Dicken's Novel

Have you read a Dicken's novel?

It goes something like this: Sad people, sad about something sad, and then they are happy for a (very) short season, and then there is some horrible climax where somebody dies, or nearly dies, and it could be a bad guy, or it could be a good guy (just depended on how old Charlie was feeling that day), or somebody has a change of heart, for the betterment of all the rest of the crew, and then subsequently dies, and then something awesome happens (either a good or bad awesome) and then everybody is happy, or nearly so, or at least resigned to their lot, and the book ends in a sort of weirdly sad happy way.

If there was a formula for Dicken's that is it.

It's like Agatha Christie in a way, only her formula is more gruesome (where, oddly, hundreds of people end up dying in the same little town and only some old lady or crotchety Belgian know what's going on, and for some reason Scotland Yard isn't all over those two. Miss Marple and Hercule are like human death black holes...).

Anyway, I was revamping my blog a while ago, and so I was reading some of my old posts. I was so happy back when I first started. I blogged blithly about everyday life, and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

And, as if broadsided by the complete works of Charles Dickens, I started down the sad path. Maybe you can't see it in my blogs, but I could see it.

As I experienced life, life bled into my writing, and tainted my light-hearted prose.

I'm waiting for the denouement, where I have some sort of life altering epiphany.

I need some sort of Ghosts of Dara's Past, or something. Or maybe some crazy guy to try and murder me. Or maybe a corrupt banker to erase my fortune and make me destitute and happy.

I need the boost of an upward swing. I sort of fabricated my own today, since no mongering banker was lurking in the shadows. I gave up Castleville on Facebook and started painting again.

It's amazing what you can do when you aren't worried about when your stone blocks are going to finish "cooking," and I feel happy. Even Eva throwing up her peanut butter sandwich and the chicken nuggets she had for lunch four times didn't dampen my spirits. Maybe it was the paint fumes messing with my brain.

I was thinking of something Mom said to me a little while back. She, after twenty some odd years, took an oil painting class and, as she stood in her kitchen dabbing paint on a canvas, she looked at me and said, "Don't wait to do thing things you want to do."

Okay, Mom. Will do.

Perhaps I should hop out of the novel I've been in, and start one of my own. After all, perhaps the reason all of Dicken's books were so sad was because everyone was living to be acted upon, instead of picking themselves up and doing something about their problems.

Sorry, Charlie. No offense intended.

Comments

Trillium said…
Please explain the "characters" in the last frame.
Anonymous said…
On the far left is Dickens, followed by the Ghost of Christmas yet to come, then the ghost of christmas present, then Marley, then Little Dorit, and Oliver Twist. :D

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