Language can be both startlingly aggressive and powerfully delicate.
Therefore, I spend as much time as I can, while still making the rent, reading both literature and garbage. In the midst of a horrible novel I'll find a brief passage of lyrical brilliance that simultaneously amazes and depresses me. In these instances, I flash back to a childhood fascination with those globe paperweights full of snow that look suspiciously like that Southern delicacy grits. The trappings were tacky, the snow swirled sluggishly, but at the heart of it was an immutable scene.