Jordan, ‘10

Whenever someone says to me, “You don’t know what cards you’re gonna get dealt in life” I can’t help thinking…where the heck is this big deck of cards that everyone’s talking about?  Who was the first person to use that expression?  Did he/she have anything to do with playing cards?  Or was he/she just present at an unlucky hand?  I wonder how the backs of the cards are decorated.  Are there stars and moons—a mystical deck?  Is there a big question mark ringed in rainbows like a deck from some arbitrary cosmic board game?  Or are they blank (this all assuming they’re tangible to begin with)?  And if they are blank, then what color does that imply?  White or black?  Gold or red?  Does it matter?  Would you choose to pick a card or have one drawn for you?  I don’t know if I like the image of a giant deck of cards deciding my fate—even when absolutely nothing is going my way.  It seems so profoundly arrogant.  If we were created with a will then we—or at least the parts of us that are eternal—have a say in what happens to us.  And yet, what about those accidents that plague our existence like an obnoxious reminder of universal unknowability? 

As you can see from my rambling existential dilemma scrawled above (or would be scrawled if I free wrote that instead of typed it), I enjoy writing.  Well, that’s a dramatic understatement but for right now digressing into the overwhelming emotion experienced when a written work is complete would end up being just that—digressing.  All you budding romance novelists, desperate poets, and prose-rs will love to know that the Richmond campus definitely fosters the creative monster.  The Messenger is the literary magazine on campus and it’s a pretty neat expressive tool for written tourette’s (and the pensive, exquisite written word as well, of course).  Last semester I submitted a short story the day before the deadline passed and I was very pleased and feeling pretty fulfilled when I received my copies of the Messenger and saw my words, my thoughts, in print. 

Definitely do some surfing on the UR website if you’re unsure of a desire for this academic and social environment.  The Messenger is just a tiny offering in the UR student activities smorgasbord.  And who knows?  Perhaps something (or you) will pick up the card from the deck and you’ll realize that those scribbles you submitted to this literary magazine (under duress from friends) are calling you into the unknown where events unfold as if they were plucked one by one from your wildest fantasies. 

Be bold, be good, be grateful,
Jordan

Enjoy Thanksgiving!

Quote of the week:
“No fear, no distractions.  The ability to let that which doesn’t matter truly slide.” – The Narrator, Fight Club