Fiction relies on pathos to make an impact on its readers, but the pathos used in fiction can also be a call to action.
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Swimmers, how do we protect ourselves and each other from becoming swept up in dangerous pathos?
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Dear Swimmers, please prepare to get all hot and bothered by a character who has had book nerds swooning for centuries.
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He looked at me with his chubby, rosy cheeks and batted his Snuffleupagus eyelashes and said he needed a hug because he loved me so much.
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If a tree screams a protest but there’s no one in the forest to hear, does the scream of protest make a sound?
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When Jane was in third grade, she learned about a special STEM academy in our school system. She was going to have to apply for a spot, which is highly selective because each class has only 48 spots to accommodate students from our entire county. So my industrious little Jane went merrily about the application process.
She was not accepted.
There were some tears.
She survived the disappointment.
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My husband, Joe, is fond of saying that if you don’t look back on yourself from five years ago and cringe, you’re not growing properly as a person. He usually tells me this when I’m in full-on cringe mode, but if growth was relative to cringe, I should be roughly the size of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man by now.
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When I was four years old, someone told me the story of the Miracle of the Sun. This story scared the daylights out of me.
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"Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood." -Mary Oliver, from "Mysteries, Yes"
Remember that saying about being careful what you wish for? In my excitement to ponder the mysteries of the universe with you, I didn’t specify what kinds of mysteries I wanted to think about.
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Let’s dive into some of the mysteries that have stood the test of time and remain unsolved or unsolvable. If it’s labelled ineffable, let’s go eff it up.
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My dear mother-in-law to be embraced me at a rest stop somewhere in Pennsylvania. She didn’t even say hello first.
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‘One only understands the things that one tames,’ said the fox. "...If you want a friend, tame me.’
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Once upon a time, I took four children between the ages of two and six for a walk to visit seven goats whose names each began with G. I sincerely believed in my inexperienced, delusional innocence that the children would be delighted by seven G-named goats. I was wrong.
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In the Norwegian language, one would say I love you to a child, but not to a spouse. The sentiment for a spouse is a phrase that translates to something like I'm happy with you.
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We humans really love our dualities, don’t we? Light/dark, good/evil, life/death. The problem is, we just don’t seem comfortable flying a middle path between them.
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One hundred and seventy-two years ago, the civilly-disobedient writer/naturalist/philosopher Henry David Thoreau did something super weird: he went to the woods around Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts to live like a hobo.
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Team Icarus , we have a Big Problem. While Icarus Swam is infatuated with big-picture metaphorical thinking, the reality is that we humans are connected in a more literal sense.
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For the record, I can hear your skepticism: How could a myth really save the world?
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Humans are story-telling animals and boy have we told some doozies.
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