"the course of true love... " shakespeare
senior year in college i wrote an essay on shakespeare's use of apostrophes in the title of his play Love's Labour's Lost. the topic and resulting paper were the mixed result of a late night, not having read the play for a long time, a blank page and a looming essay due in the morning, and a fine-tuned ability to write interesting content on obscure topics while somehow in the process discovering meaning and importance in the details of such randomly selected subjects. I do believe that
that was what i really learned from being an english major, and it has served me extremely well and in fact enhanced my perspective, understanding and appreciation of the word (ha! typo... i meant to write.. world) ever since. oh and we spent the rest of class the next day discussing the issue i raised of the apostrophe in the title. so perhaps in due course, avoiding one way of looking at things can haphazardly bring about an understanding of something else that's
usually avoided (and in this case, i'm directly referring to the tripped over and forgotten, the use and misuse, of apostrophes, haha. but i'm serious...)
but all i meant to write here, was that, staring into nothing across the mess surrounding me just now, my eyes focused in on that very title, the words facing vertically down on the book cover binding: Love's Labour's Lost. and i got it i mean literally through osmosis it momentarily settled my nerves and came over me. and i got it. by shakespeare i got it. i could write that essay again with an entirely different meaning. those apostrophes say it all. they did back in college and yesterday and then again, today, it hit me, and it meant everything, and in the ink-stained hands of time, the touch of shakespeare's pen scribbled on the to do list sitting on my desk in front of me, reminding me that it's all happened before, this is the experience, the process, and in the tradition of his timeless words,
the course--
Love's Labour is at times, overlooked; Lost. at other times, it is again found. and at times like this, it is somehow all at once lost, found, running and smooth.
"the course of true love never did run smooth--" shakespeare. of course.
x c
.jpg)
Posts
