Things Suck, But It's OK

A few days ago, a friend asked me to take a look at her blog and tell her if I thought there was a book in it. Well, of course there's a book in everything if you're good enough. And she is. See for yourself. She's already written one book, and the blog is an enormous mine of fresh material.

The question, I think, was really this: What kind of book is in there? What's the unifying thread, what would the structure look like, which entries would fit and which entries just wouldn't? Now, she writes about so many different things--tap dancing, moon landings, the Grateful Dead, power outages, photo shoots, yoga, Spaghetti-O's--that at first glance you might despair of finding a through-line. But the more I read, the more I felt a unity of approach to all these different subjects.

Things suck, but it's OK.

Which is a gross oversimplification, and doesn't do justice to the varied and beautiful ways she elaborates the theme. But for us reductionists, that's the essence of it. Disasters large and small befall us--the power goes out, romances self-destruct, bad and even humiliating things happen to our cars, people we care about get sick and we can't help them. And all this makes us feel just the way it should--awful. But inevitably, if we have the insight or the courage or just the stubbornness to seek it out, there's a moment of peace or beauty or enlightenment that makes it possible to carry on.

Things suck, but it's OK.

More to follow...