Paradiso

Remember this? It's been a while, but since then I've read the Inferno and Purgatorio. Now I'm in Paradiso, and brother, is it sweet.

To be honest with you, I began reading the Inferno when things were indeed hellish. Not as hellish as they'd ever been, and not as hellish as they got, but on the whole, they were hard.

You know what I'm talking about.

It's not inconceivable that I dreamed, on some level, that things would change as I read through the cantos, threaded my way through the seven circles of hell and up the spiralling mount to Paradise. Because sometimes books do mirror life. Coincidentally, sure. But it happens.

As in this case.

Paradise doesn't look like I thought it would. This isn't what I fought for. Now I know how Dante felt when he found himself unexpectedly in Eden. How did everything get so pretty so suddenly? When did the sky lift, and what's that light up ahead?

So my trick seems to have worked. Here we are in a glorious place where all faces show love, and a calm beauty prevails. Let it last, Alighieri.