Nature Is The First Tutor. No One

Each Way To Suicide Is Its Own: Intensely Private, Unknowable, And Terrible. Suicide Will Have Seemed To Its Perpetrator The Last And Best Of Bad Possibilities, And Any Attempt By The Living To Chart This Final Terrain Of Life Can Be Only A Sketch, Maddeningly Incomplete

Curiosity, Wonder, And Passion Are Defining Qualities Of Imaginative Minds And Great Teachers...restlessness And Discontent Are Vital Things... Intense Experience And Suffering Instruct Us In Ways Less Intense Emotions Can Never Do.

But Then Back On Lithium And Rotating On The Planet At The Same Pace As Everyone Else, You Find Your Credit Is Decimated, Your Mortification Complete: Mania Is Not A Luxury One Can Easily Afford. It Is Devastating To Have The Illness And Aggravating To Have To Pay For Medications, Blood Tests, And Psychotherapy. They, At Least, Are Partially Deductible. But Money Spent While Manic Doesn't Fit Into The Internal Revenue Service Concept Of Medical Expense Or Business Loss. So After Mania, When Most Depressed, You're Given Excellent Reason To Be Even More So.

Chaos And Intensity Are No Substitute For Lasting Love, Nor Are They Necessarily An Improvement On Real Life.

The Rites Of Passage In The Academic World Are Arcane And, In Their Own Way, Highly Romantic, And The Tensions And Unplesantries Of Dissertations And Final Oral Examinations Are Quickly Forgotten In The Wonderful Moment Of The Sherry Afterward, Admission Into A Very Old Club, Parties Of Celebration, Doctoral Gowns, Academic Rituals, And Hearing For The First Time "dr.," Rather Than "miss" Jamison.