All-purpose advice: wire now, detonate later.
After his death even his journals were found to consist of vague, ambiguous and purposely misleading statements.
It was a period in history when, for whatever reason, people by default ended up in Portland.
The promise of the future has receded into the distant past.
A few more moments of oblivion
before facing it all.
For years I saw him once a day with his after-work drink and loosened tie, desultorily watering the lawn with his free hand. After a few minutes she’d join him, in her Jackie Kennedy white pants, smoking a cigarette and regarding him through narrowed eyes. When he’d finished his drink he’d throw the ice in the bushes before they went back inside. I never figured out if they hated each other or were deeply in love.
With art, he said, it’s not the thing that’s the thing, it’s the thing behind the thing.
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A few times a month I take the empty gun from the drawer and hold it to my temple. If someone asked why, I’d probably come up with something about “clearing the mind.” The truth is, I just like the way it feels.
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Last week for the first time I took a bullet from the cigar box, loaded it into the chamber and gave it a spin before holding the gun to my head. I can’t describe the surge of adrenaline as I visualized pulling the trigger.
The ego has 100,000 tricks, and once you’ve learned them, 100,000 more.
Shoveling wet, heavy snow in a rage, wind roaring in your ears, you find yourself hoping for a heart attack and thinking, how fucked up is that?
Whatever; if you say so. I grew up poor and afraid. I believe you more than I believe myself.
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.
The parallel life his father had always sensed, shimmering just out of reach, riding a limitless cusp of possibility that never materialized.
He led by example. Everything he did, I did the opposite.
Be the sound, not the hearing
The breath, not the breathing
The wind…
Did that work for you?
For a while.
symptom: fatigue
diagnosis: fatigue
When someone tells you they’re behind you “1000 percent,” you know you’re on the way out.
