Chapter 14
FIRST DAY OF SOPHOMORE YEAR, 1996: Eyes as deep as eternity (they knew it, the joys and terrors of ∞ + ∞ = infinity.) My brown wells of saltwater (seashells by the seashore shined through my shoals) bored through the back of my skull, as leaden (but naturally so) as an Atlantic City crane or Edgar Allan Poe’s laudanum-lidded orbs. But, in the terms of Gilles Deleuze, gothic morbidity (as anything more than a glamorous pose) would be reactive (weak, negative, resentful, backward-moving, and life-denying) as opposed to active (strong, positive, unresentful, eternally-recurring, and life-affirming.) Nay, a moldy library stocked with many volumes of quaint and forgotten lore was not the place to start my climb to the stratospheric heights of High School popularity. ...