By the time you get her attention, the bartender already seems annoyed. You’re getting that a lot lately. You expect it, really. You give her a short nod, turn and head out into the rain. You’ve come down with your third cold of the season and there seems to be something wrong with your legs. Your father died 20 years ago today. The earnest, dignified man you remember could be your brother now. Limping home in your wet coat, almost comical in your desolation, you wonder. In 20 years, will anyone raise a toast in your memory?

This was the day he realized everything was a bonus.

The group repudiated any suggestion of esthetic joy or gestural flourish in its practice. Details not grounded in rigorously defended academic theory were ruthlessly prosecuted. Working there was like joining the Taliban.

After years of rigorously eliminating everything pretentious, self-serving or inauthentic in his character, there was nothing left.

The promise of the future has receded into the distant past.

Every night you experience something far stranger than any drug.

August in the city when nobody gives a fuck anymore.

The word practice—cultivating a veneer of respectability while retaining the frisson of artistic endeavor.

Although he thought of himself as a “regular” there, he always had to wait to be seated. One night as the hostess went looking for his table, he snuck a look at the note next to his reservation. It said asshole.

 In your selfie face I see only pain.

Thoughts seemed to harbor great peril, but their absence even more.

On the fifth anniversary of her mother’s death she found a lump on her breast. There was no one to tell; the roommate-slash-fuckup she occasionally slept with had skipped out in the middle of the night without paying rent. She wasn’t close with anyone at work, and anyway, she’d been laid off three weeks earlier. Yesterday she’d thought, “if one more thing happens, I don’t know what I’ll do.” And she’d been right: she didn’t know what to do.