A

plus I'm still in shock. Annabel Patterson, my intimidatingly brilliant British teacher who tore my first paper to tears, announced this morning most of our Spenser essays were quite decent. Some terrible disasters, but on the whole they were ok. Afraid to get my hopes up to ok, I hunched down as she circled the table handing out judgements. Seriously she passed me mine on old man Despair. In Book I, Despair's a crafty author. He casts inchaunting rimes, whines life is meaningless struggle, and most dangerously reminds our knight of all the awful things he's done. Suicide seems compelling when Despair convinces Redcrosse he's just as bad as he suspects. Suspecting the worst, slowly flipping through twelve pages, I still can't believe what I saw. This may be the best paper on the Despair episode I have ever read. A+.

Despair leads the damn knight to doubt life by letting him doubt himself. The argument works from the knight's conceitedness. There's only one world and he's it. Inward bent, if he's filth, everything is. The dangers of solipsism. He forgets the battle's not with himself. That there's so much to see and love and fight outside. Wary of pride, don't mean to be Redcrosse boasting. But bursting with joy, bathed in the orange warmth of 4 o'clock washing a room that doesn't exist, I can't tell you have happy I am. But I do tell. Write too much self sometimes because speech is something magical for seeing and sorting. And because you listen to the loneliness and loss, here's a voice found.