The Accursed Lot

(Unrelated, earlier photo of J.C.O., not looking particularly accursed, I admit, but it's such a great picture. Her cat as fat as she is skinny.)

There are those--a blessed lot--who can experience life without the slightest glimmer of a need to add anything to it--any sort of "creative" effort; and there are those--an accursed lot?--for whom the activities of their own brains and imaginations are paramount. The world for these individuals may be infinitely rich, rewarding and seductive--but it is not paramount. The world may be interpreted as a gift, earned only if one has created something over and above the world.

To this, Ray would respond with a bemused smile. You take yourself so seriously. Why?

Always Ray has been the repository of common sense in our household. The spouse, who, with a gentle tug, holds in place the recklessly soaring kite, that would careen into the stratosphere and be lost, shattered to bits.

-Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow's Story