Author: OoD

They had gone so long without, a compliment would have destroyed them.

When the pet adoption form reveals itself to be an unexpected inquiry into mortality.

Even the simplest form possesses sufficient esthetic complexity for a lifetime of contemplation.

The world had badly damaged him, or he had damaged himself, or he had damaged the world, or something.

never not trying too hard

Hope is not your friend.

Don’t look away. The ugly beauty might surprise you.

There was an uneasiness between us. They always gave me booze for Christmas. It was the one thing they knew I liked.

The search for truth has led to delusion.

Intelligence, inversely proportionate to reliance on jargon.

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

Oh, what a mess we’ve made.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget her bewildered expression as they drove her away.

With a year of hard work my project has grown from grandiose fantasy to lackluster reality.

Beneath the rage, fear
Beneath the fear, sadness
Beneath the sadness, love

We were in deep shit, but I was too caught up, strung out, beat down to see it. It was the air we breathed and the ocean we drowned in. Today, looking back, I’m afraid for that young couple. I’m afraid for all of us.

Hearing these happy songs after so many years. False memories of an ease you never acquired.

Addiction—the one thing you can count on.

He told me that he didn’t much care what he did during the day as long as he could drink at the end of it.

They didn’t know it yet, but they’d worn out their welcome before they arrived.

To feel the beauty in all of existence, but not in oneself.

In the space of a few months your hair and clothing begin to fall awkwardly on you—or maybe you just begin to notice.

At the time it felt catastrophic, but in retrospect it was a golden era.

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

In the last year of his life, his work was monochromatic. Yellow, the color of his yearning.

You could have been a little kinder. Which is to say, a lot kinder.

After decades of sensible moderation, I packed it in and began drinking in earnest.

And at the end of all my searching, all my suffering, I came to understand: I loved the algorithm.

In the harmonious spaces and bright clear sunlight of this elegant house, you feel an acute awareness of how coarse and awkward you’ve become. If only the light could pass right through you.

Change is coming, more than your tiny brain can imagine. My one satisfaction is knowing it will take you by surprise.

Last week we had dinner together for the first time in 20 years. In the long run, gravity always wins.

You’re less a quantifiable entity than a loosely tethered association of wave particles in a shared location.

Don’t elevate the legs. Not with a torso wound.

Look at you, still believing in your shit.

The species had evolved a highly athletic technique of depositing, almost contemptuously, startlingly vivid droppings on vertical surfaces.

The house was quiet, countrified, peaceful. It brought to the surface all of our inner chaos.

This found bit of scrap metal is better than this tossed-off sketch, which is better than this elaborate story.

His audience had demonstrated a bottomless need for his bottomless need of their bottomless need.

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

As his senses aged and became less acute, they also became less convincing.

Front view: almost acceptable. Side view: disaster.

The Hangover Decades

Hope or expectation, that’s where the trouble begins.

A great artist and an excruciating bore.

Would I give up a lifetime for one more day with you? In a second.

Your brain has lost its goddamned mind.

In all those years I never came close to pulling it off. But I won’t stop trying—and failing massively—to the end.

Another word for conceptual: simplistic.

The standing O triggered another harrowing bout of imposter’s syndrome.

Time passed. Oh, how it passed.