The Myth of Divorce

Gripping my jeans rather uncertainly, I shifted six degrees left. There, in the headlights, an even stretch of asphalt, disappearing somewhere out of eyeshot, revealed itself, suddenly and shockingly, along the curve, with clinically applied streaks of white paint and other cars. A sudden chill sloped down my spine, coming to rest somewhere in the rear-crotch and warming my lap, neither act disrupting my terror. Slowly, somewhat surely, I kicked the clutch to Off, and the engine followed. The ensuing silence was marked by a distinct absence of sound, notwithstanding my grimly impassioned yelps and the roar of other cars.

Newly appointed by the roadside, I made my ingenious bed and lay down peacefully, passers-by my infrequent radio, slowly lulling me with inane afternoon questions. When the moon and its minions crept inexorably into view, I found my dreams and the night was over. I was on the roadside. The next day's heat was beating up my blanket. Rising with typical morning legs, I climbed back in front of the wheel and grazed some more highway. The mood on such occasions, as all but the dimmest attest, moves towards the bleak, with highly damaging detours of unprovoked joy offering unwanted contrast. The weather, too, lowers, from sensitivity or cruelty, somehow by design. In such foul spirits, the surrounding political machinations lose their cloaks, and the love of others feels counterfeit. All we can do is drive on.

When a bad mood's rising, the arts dip. You may have noticed, at certain points, that smelling the roses along your walk is as pointless as it seems on paper. I thusly hypothesise that emotions, as they are, don't breed discrimination, as is so often thought, but lead to lower discernation. If you view such an opinion with the disinterest of distance (I'm assuming you have no connection with the person in question), you will also no doubt spot this correlation. The falsehood of the previous assumption, as I see it, has nothing to do with the opinion itself; rather, it has to do with its failure to identify the intrinsic link discrimination has with base, some would say crude, logic. Now, this logic is something we all possess, whether we admit to it or not, but the wise among us have educated it — indeed, have evolved it — to the point where its conclusions are as well-informed as we ourselves are. The discriminatory, on the other hand, have not interfered with it one iota, and its ill-informed assumptions remain at the forefront of thought. Education, then, is still the key, as it is in so many other areas. The sooner we realise this, the sooner it will be.