been reading Tolstoy...

     Why did Pierre get married?  Why did he fight a duel?  And why, after all that, does he grant his wife power of attorney over most of his fortune?  Who the hell knows?
     Consider - how could Andrei change so much?  He is wounded, falls back, and sees the sky:  'How is it that I've never seen this lofty sky before?  And how happy I am that I've finally come to know it.  Yes! everything is empty, everything is a deception, except this infinite sky.  There is nothing, nothing except that.  But there is not even that, there is nothing except silence, tranquillity.  And thank God!...'  Even Napoleon, Andrei's hero, seems '...such a small, insignificant man compared with what was now happening between his soul and this lofty, infinite sky with clouds racing across it'.  Indeed, in Andrei's vision, Napoleon appears '...with his indifferent, limited gaze, happy in the unhappiness of others...', and this disturbs Andrei's peaceful communion with the lofty, infinite sky.  How is it possible that a young man of firm convictions will change so because he sees the sky above him on a battlefield he hoped would be the stage of his triumph? 
     Then there's Sonya and young Rostov...one could, of course, get lost in it all.  Still, still, the question remains - why does any of this happen?  What moves these people?  Folks often grow impatient here and try to find a simple 'motive'.  They inevitably fail, and then castigate Tolstoy - he's a terrible novelist, you know, because his characters aren't 'rounded', 'believable', 'understandable'...but this is in fact one sign of his genius.  The fact is, most of us make the most dramatic, momentous decisions for practically no reason at all.  Most of our 'reasons' are made up later to justify, or judge, what we've done or left undone. 
     Think of the suicide - how we wring our hands, searching for a reason!  We are agape at the horror of it all.  Why would he do that?  He seemed so happy!  A man just doesn't pay his bills, kiss his wife goodbye of a perfectly ordinary morning, purchase tickets for a cruise, then drive to a park and shoot himself.  No no, there would be signs, and we only need learn the key to deciphering 'em.  The sad fact is, there are rarely signs we can so read, even with much practice.  Sometimes, like Anna, people just kill themselves.  It's the conclusion of a train of thought that's not so much a syllogism as a fugue.
     We are a mystery to ourselves, to one another, and this mystery is not less intractable for being such a scandal.  There is only One who plumbs that mystery, One who is Mystery itself.  We know this in part because he became man...riddle me that, my friends, riddle me that...
     Peace out.