The illusion of control is the source of untold human misery.

Intelligence, inversely proportionate to reliance on jargon.

A surprisingly common admixture of spiritually adept and psychologically unaware.

Although he had longed for it, after retiring from teaching and moving to a house in the woods, he became severely depressed. The diagnosis: loss of horizon.

All that time, all that work, adding up to so little.

Is any word more ominous than the word ominous?

As they walked through their friends’ beautiful house, he was saddened to glimpse the exhaustion in his wife’s eyes. For her it had been for poorer, not richer, and in sickness, not health.

The workings of mathematics, never fathomable, in the middle of the night became a source of terror.

Through all our grief and sadness, we hadn’t yet learned to be without hope. Clearly that was necessary.

In the mirror was the face of someone who didn’t know what had hit him—and until that moment hadn’t even known anything had.

Passing the funeral parade, he noticed a woman in dark glasses stopped at a red light, weeping without consolation or restraint. How he envied that dead man.

Mon
Stepped outside. Seemed gross. Went back inside.
Tue
Same.
Thurs
—
Next week sometime
Birds, wind. Weeping.

Self-involved, not entirely stupid, blind to your own deficiencies. You’ll do well.

The few minutes each evening this time of year when the back windows flood with wild monkey light and birdcalls echo through the trees. Something in you lifts and you feel the heaviness of what you’ve become.