a woeful epistle

Alas!  Dear Friend,

Perhaps it is the kindred spirit of dear Anne of Green Gables rattled to wake in me a speech utterly dramatic (I may or may not have spent an hour reading just now...), but nevertheless, I am afflicted sorely with recently felt and soon-to-come woes.  O awful pang!

Shall I number my misfortunes?  Please, do dam thy tears:

I am a most miserable Irish set dancer.  Indeed, graceful motion alone seems to elude me.  How terribly dreadful! You would imagine that out of my six feet and half inch, some part of me might want to cooperate with another, but - alas! - it is hopeless.  More than that though - how dearly I wish to be Irish!  Even in my imagination!  But when one has not red hair (Anne, be happy!), nor Gaelic tongue, nor feet of an Irish dancer, what can be done but to succumb most despairingly to one's own fate?  I thought perhaps taking a class this summer might cure me of my clumsy malady, but as the mirrors in Dance Room 301 so brutally honestly showed last night (my first class), my future remains bleak and ever so American.

When one finds despair in a particular corner of life, often he or she copes by finding joy in another, no?  Words provide such hopeful solace for my wilted soul, and so naturally, I turned to Dictionary.com to browse my favorite words (no, really... I'm not being facetious on this point).  What greeted me but this story flashing across the home page: "Obscure language isolate will die with this woman."  A language?  Dying?  It happens all the time - and it is occurring with greater force every day as people learn global languages - but how sad it is!  This particular language is called Kusunda; not only is it moribund (worse than endangered - no kids speak it), but also isolate (meaning that it is not related to any other spoken language).  At any rate, this story dampened further my already drenched spirits.

And lastly, I have little joy for which I may hope in the near future, as tonight I begin my first math class in four years.  Granted, it is only a summer course in college algebra, and I honestly do not find mathematics to be the dismal plague I so often describe them to be - in fact, math was once a favorite subject of mine... but where the open wound of my wearied heart craves the salve of sesquipedalian locution, poetic verse, and vibrant musical tones, it is slathered with a coarse cream indeed: sharp points of rigid numbers and dryness of exact measurement.  How tragical!  What hope can sustain me?

Friend, it is a pity to lay my griefs upon you so heavily now in our brief acquaintance - do please find it within yourself to forgive me.  Thank you.  Thank you ever so much for your patient ear and sympathetic visage.  It heartens me.  I can now surrender myself to the grave - or math class - content to know that I went with a speech most romantic.  I am ever eternally, gratefully yours,

Sara