A lot of new-age, feel-good gurus are telling us these days that if we want to feel good (or feel anything at all) all we have to do is to “act as if.” In other words, if, for example, we’ve just heard that a gargantuan many tentacled parasite hairball gacked up by a passing canine has somehow invaded our intestines, and within six months our entire insides will be eaten out rendering us wholly hollow, no problem! All we have to do, folks, is to act as if everything’s cool, and guess what? It will be! With the right outlook, it all just becomes Parasite Be-Gone. I wonder.

I do. Now take Edgar Allen Poe. What was the deal with that guy, anyway? Did his mother wrap him in black swaddling clothes or something? Here was a guy who had a real thing for big black birds, bricking up walls, (preferably when someone who’d ticked him off was behind them,) and peering into caskets he had absolutely no business peering into.

An incredibly gifted writer, the poor guy also had a tiny difficulty with recreational swallowables, and very, very young lady friends. Too bad Edgar couldn’t have learned this new trick of this century — to “act as if.” Perhaps if he’d stayed away from bad wine and brick and mortar, if he’d merely acted as if life was a sunny day at the beach, he wouldn’t have had such a bad attitude and that nasty black cloud hovering over his head might very well have turned into a flock of happily chirping bluebirds in the sunshine.

Not. But you know? Maybe.