Leo Kottke on sadness:

If the tragic view continues to shrink--and, with it, the strange, sad chance it offers to cheer up--there are worse things than the too literary: there is boredom, there is the total avoidance of the literary, or the dismissal entire of the "tragic view"...and the ensuing headlong, or headless, rush into kitzch: refrigerator magnets, un-founded optimism, soul-less-ness, blunted faith, religiosity. This is worse than sadness. (No, let's just say it's different.) It's still nothingness, though. It's being a reindeer, and reminding rooms full of people that there's something to be said for free-floating gloom. It's being ribbons on a poodle, fake flowers on pencil erasers, a bumper sticker...not fate, but flaw.

All of which makes me sad. Angry, even. It may be self-loathing that makes a thug, but it's a numb smile that pisses him off.

But we can be happy. We can swim with the mammals, maybe. If kitzch is the denial of shit (just to be literary and quote Milan Kundera) reality is the tragic view--Maybe Dick, to quote Bullwinkle. We are pinned by choice...because we're too damn sad, or stupid, to make up our minds.

Maybe I am only talking about myself.