I think about the beach cottage we always rented the first week or two of August. The photograph I took each day, hoping to preserve it all. The older couple we saw every year, who we never saw again. The roadside farm where we bought eggs, vegetables and topnecks. I wonder if the same books are on the shelves. I wonder if it has crumbled into the sea.

Glimpsed in a reflection, he saw himself as he must look to the world: bewildered, as if expecting a final blow to the head.

Isn’t it about time you drop that veneer of confident expertise and admit you don’t know anything? You can barely keep your underwear clean, for godsake.

Help line
If considering jumping, press 1.
If considering overdose, press 2.
If considering strangulation, press 3.
If considering firearm, press 4.

When you have gone through all the layers of the self, its inmost nature, its essence, is nothing. You are nothing.
K., Public Talk 5, Madras (Chennai), 7 January 1978
He stood at the back window he had photographed a thousand times, without having really been there at all. Somehow, his fear had evaporated, and despite the knowledge that it might return at any time, he was grateful.

Something you never figured out: life is what it is, not what it isn’t.

Apparently it’s The Summer of Josh Brolin. If one is to fully engage in contemporary life, one needs to grapple with the notion of Josh Brolin-ness.

1) infinite entry points for any text, image or situation
2) when the mind’s conception of itself becomes unsafe

Drifting off to sounds of birds, or the wind, or cooking in the kitchen.

Something else you said… it left a bad feeling. I’m trying to remember what it was. I meant to get back to it—on account of not wanting my emotions to send destructive signals to my body. Like right now, I’m… rather than letting go, I’m nursing my resentment, which if I’m not careful—
Cancer.
Bingo. Or ignoring it—
Auto-immune.
Exactly. Which leaves us…
Heart attack—of course.

Sick with worry, half-mad with hope. Talking to an empty room. Help is on its way.

Our neighbor ran a small extermination business from a remodeled garage behind his house. Some weekends we’d sneak in, fascinated by a wall display of such mounted horrors as a freakish two-headed moth with a 12-inch wingspan. Later I discovered that every exterminator had one of these as part of their standard franchise package, fabricated by XYZ Pest Museum in Silver City, NM.

Popular culture has been slowly preparing us for an unbearable future.

Thirty years of thinking have emptied you out. Finally, you know nothing.