Word: grasps
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Horn's permanence paradigm just doesn't cut it anymore. It's not that her friends are in a state of denial about the passing of their studenthood; they just have a better grasp on the realities of today's marketplace--which isn't surprising, since they're real people, while Horn is, after all, just a student...
...other things also suggest than Horn has an all-too-elusive grasp on the real world, like her reference to paychecks. Way passe! Anybody with any sort of a marginally permanent job these days (that's one where you're pretty confident you'll still be working tomorrow) has direct deposit. And rent! Paying rent is a clear sign of early-real-personhood (the stage where I still reside). Advanced (or real) real personhood involves shedding rent in favor of mortgage payments, thus assuming a debt burden even greater than your student loans...
Despite Bishop's mostly patient efforts, the nuances of it all--the fine line, say, between friendship and deference where Sinatra was concerned--still lie beyond my grasp. Why, I ask, were people so afraid of him? "They weren't afraid of Frank Sinatra. They were afraid of honesty. The one thing that he demanded above all else was honesty." All the same, and even though Bishop had "carte blanche" with Sinatra (as he tells me more than once), "I always dealt with him with humor." That would include up to the last time the two men spoke, about...
...keep coming back to Shakespeare? The hard truth is that most modern theatergoers can fully grasp only a fraction of his dense Elizabethan dialogue. Critics, moreover, seem intent on making the experience even more intimidating: they become stern schoolmasters when judging those who dare tackle the iambic pentameter. Alec Baldwin's brawny, quite watchable Macbeth at New York City's Public Theatre last winter drew testy reviews. Still the show was a sellout...
...rattled like a dry seed in that large space between who I had come from and who I was going to be. I thought I was throwing off shackles, but, all the time, I was too fettered by a lack of imagination and compassion to grasp that original thought was not strictly my domain. I counted on my mama to be ever anxious and ever annoying back home, to be always bristling with superstition and suspicion. In so doing, I never perceived her as even eligble for the freedom I demanded for myself...