Staring at Dostoyevsky, Trying to Believe

This handsome feller is one Fyodor Dostoevsky. Well, an artistic rendering of said feller. This very poster hangs above my toilet in the bathroom, so I've stared at it every time I've taken a piss, dead sober, dead drunk, and all points in-between. I bought the poster in Staraya Russa, in the gift shop in D's old summer house, where he worked on The Brother's Karamazov and The Possessed. I visited this locale over ten years ago and the poster has seen better days. That dark ribbon is from some kind of bathroom-related water damage and the huge tear started as a small tear after my ex-girlfriend (Erika) thought it'd be funny for some reason to glue a tampon to it and of course the poster ripped when I tried to rip it off. Somehow, Erika and I still talk occasionally and remain friends.

The Big D believed in God and died in 1881 with a copy of the New Testament on his lap. Sometimes, I wonder if it would help my own literary career if I believed in something, though I suppose it would depend on what I believed in. Stephanie Meyer is a Mormon, as is Orson Scott Card, and their god seems to be bringing in the big bucks. And those two Left Behind shitheads, they're money-based God seems to have kicked some serious ass for them. Does my own work suffer from my searching agnosticism? Or is it a strength? Do agnostics buy as many books as Catholics bought tickets to see The Passion? Probably not. Jesus, as I type this Jason Kidd just said on TV his faith in God gave him the strength to hit a three pointer tonight against the Miami Heat in Game 5 of the Finals.

Maybe I should get on this religious crazy train!

"He suddenly remembered Sonya's words: 'Go to the crossroads, bow down to people, kiss the earth, because you have sinned before it as well, and say aloud to the whole world: 'I am a murderer!' He trembled all over as he remembered it. And so crushed was he by the hopeless anguish and anxiety of this whole time, and especially of the last few hours, that he simply threw himself into the possibility of the wholesome, new, full sensation."

-Crime & Punishment

Okay, time for us here at Blogagaard to have a drink in bed! Whoop!