on nights like this i get this feeling like i should be staying up late working on some massive project so my life isn't wasting away. then, sometimes, i actually stay up and nothing gets done, the evening into the night into the wee hours turning into a long series of sweet laziness and "oh no, i should really get some sleep or i'll regret this tomorrow" laments. other times i go to bed around the normal time or maybe even a bit early in order to contradict my instincts even more, and i sleep lightly between intense dreams and passionate thoughts of those i care about most. ironically, those visions and emotions are exactly the fuel i need for one of those writing projects, but the lure of sleep keeps everything murky, like these overcast days coming up or the night itself, and whatever inspiration that had occasion to come upon me slips away.

which is to say i can think a really amazing book, but that doesn't help me at all.

today was an uneventful day, much unlike the last week, and i used it to catch up on coursework i'd been neglecting. i read some marlowe and remembered this passage from haven kimmel, which amazon's "search inside" feature allows me to reproduce despite the absence of my copy of the book:

Then they read Marlowe's Faustus, and there was something from the beginning so perfectly...what was it? When they finished the play, the professor asked the class, “What was Faustus's real sin? Where did he really fall?” And there had been the standard answers: He was greedy. He desired power, knowledge. He was lustful and blasphemous. Dr. Hempel agreed that Faustus had been all those things, but that Marlowe had very carefully planted a clue in the first scene of the play; he had revealed the trap from the beginning.

In the text, Faustus is reading the vulgate of Saint Jerome, and comes to Romans 6:23: “The wages of sin is death,” he quotes, and stops right there, despairing, without turning the page. Dr. Hempel looked out at the class. "You're all good Christians, right? What's the rest of the verse? What would Faustus have seen if he'd turned the page?” There had been no answer. “‘For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.' Don't you understand? Faustus was eternally damned because he was a bad reader."

-- Haven Kimmel, The Solace of Leaving Early

which, as kimmel has amos comment after this in the book (not exactly in these words), is pretty fucking clever. especially since the lesson is so multi-layered-- the reader has to know what the rest of the verse is to understand, which requires research if not piety. you have to do what he didn't and follow through. lesson learned.