Hearing these happy songs after so many years. False memories of an ease you never acquired.
2. Start over.
Your long-awaited genius grant; your self-designed modernist house; your late career retrospective; your fond encomiums from friends and colleagues: zero, nada, zippo, zilch.
The illusion of control is the source of untold human misery.
When the pet adoption form reveals itself to be an unexpected inquiry into mortality.
Think about the meaning of any word long enough, and you will lose your mind.
·
You just need to rest. A day of healing and rest. Around midnight you find yourself in a Thai karaoke bar down the road from your sister’s house. You vaguely remember Norman Mailer writing that scotch is for people who’ve given up hope, and order one. Midway through your second, watching a stoned girl and her catatonic friend wander listlessly through I’m a Believer, you have your first panic attack.
You’ve always known you’re unremarkable. But now, on your day of healing and rest, curled up on the bathroom floor, you’re spectacular.
A feral hyena pack in a feeding frenzy, heads buried up to the neck in carcass of the New America.
What’s really being said is what’s been left unsaid.
The sole perspective that I may have, that you may not have, in your privileged existence, is of time.
Stock characters:
1) man with gangrenous wound.
That dreadful moment when you realize you’re despised.
