Last night, I made a late night trek to the grocery store for some much needed items. Once at the counter, I realized that to some, it may seem odd for a woman to be at Albertson�s in the middle of the night with nothing but a bag of cat food and a cannister of shaving cream. I�d rather call attention to something that odd than allow someone to think about it quietly in their own head. So, as the check out girl scanned my items, I said, �Gotta shave the pussy every Tuesday night!� Just kidding. I said, �It�s Tuesday night, time to shave the cats,� hoping she�d be dirty enough to get my little double entendre and share a laugh with me.

Instead, she replied, �I don�t think the cats would like that very much!� and laughed at her own, innocent joke. Sigh, people. It took me a long time to get tired last night. I�ve entered one of my pensive cycles, which is good in so many ways. I tend to draw inward during these, pulling creativity and a thirst for new learning from depths I rarely see when I float near the surface of myself.

The book by my bed lately is Dante Alighieri�s Divine Comedy. Last night, I got through another little chunk of it and stumbled across something that gave me mental pause. I actually set down the book and had to reflect on it in order to continue reading anymore. My father, having read the original ancient Latin version of Dante�s Inferno, thinks my version is overly simplified, but oh no, my good people. It�s been translated by John Ciardi, who, though the language is much updated from anything you would find in the 1200s, still maintained the beauty of the original poetry. But I had a freakin� point here.

Ciardi attached notes at the end of his translations, and it is one of his notes to one of the many Canto�s lines that caught my attention last night:

They yearn for what they fear - Hell (allegorically, Sin) is the deliberate choice of the damned, who consciously hardened their hearts to God in life; divine grace is denied to none who wish for it.�

Think about that for a moment, because you can plug that simple idea into almost every aspect of your life. Happiness is denied to NONE who WISH for it. Unhappy? Then according to this, you don�t WANT to be happy. Just think about that. How beautiful is it? I was so excited about that line that I continued reading, this time aloud, the next 3 Cantos before finally giving in to sleep.

-Barbarella

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