Preface

“I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul.”

This strip originally ran on March 13, 1995. I was thirteen. (I didn’t realize until today that this strip came so late in the comic’s run.) For whatever reason, Calvin’s explanation—“I must obey…”—lodged itself in my brain. I still love that line. Part of it is the precision and poetry of the phrase “inscrutable exhortations”; part of it is the way sentence is both true and bullshit. I used it as the epigraph of a seminar paper in grad school once, and now I’m using it for this newsletter.

Why am I writing a newsletter? I don’t know, I just am; hence the name. I think mostly I miss writing without a motive, which grad school ruined for me in an earth-salting way, and I’m ready to rediscover it. You’re welcome to come along.