College is a great place to explore, but UGH, the cost! There have to be cheaper alternatives to exploring.

As I read your comments it was hard not to think of all the situations where people avoid the hard look at things — real or unreal. It almost seems as if the world wants to pretend things are one way when really it’s another. Could be politics, marriage, children, work — almost anything.

And probably what rang mostly loudly — “…to the unforgiving confines of adult reality.” That’s the real, scary stuff!

Good luck with your lecture. Reminds me that in retirement I need to sit in on some classes…

Old days at least. And photographically, they were great. Was learning a lot in a hurry back then.

Car club for hearse drivers — now that’s wild.

Once in awhile, when things are quiet and I can just sit, I’ll think about some of the things I did as a kid and try to remember what I was thinking. There definitely was an excitement that is hard to replace as an adult. I do get close when I’m riding the Vespa. And sometimes when I make a photograph. Or when my wife shares one of her ideas. I suppose it’s there more than I think, and my memories of childhood are filtered to display only the best…

The gothic allows our rational, scientific culture to explore the threatening safely: we can approach death through the lens of fantasy and artifice, looking if not closely at least frequently at that which we fear most in a way that is spooky rather than truly psychically damaged.

In other words, like its modern outgrowth, science fiction, and perhaps like graphic novels and superheroes, we can look at the real in a way that is unreal enough to allow us to look long and hard.

This is probably related to tragic plays (novels, films etc.): these all allow us to stand just close enough, and yet just far away enough, from true terror and loss.

And most of this stuff is consumed when we are at that tender age wherein we are neither child nor adult: we need to look at the hard stuff but we aren’t quite ready to look at the hard stuff.

And we are midway in our journey from the fantastic world of childhood – when we truly believed that there might be a monster under our bed – to the unforgiving confines of adult reality.