Author: OoD

We’re making the world up as we go along.

Active language receptors, but no coherent brain function.

The self-consciously Dad things you attempted to pass on to your family—arbitrary techniques, fetishistic naming of parts and categories, unexamined dictums—mattered less than the unacknowledged resentment, grievance, and rage.

I suspect the only true answer to pretty much anything is maybe.

Stopped by the Hudson River overlook where we used to take the girls on the way to New England. Headed into the snack bar set back from the cliffs. Asked the kid at the counter about the “Free beer tomorrow” sign we always joked about. “Oh, we can’t serve alcohol here,” he said. “We get all the jumpers now the bridges are closed off.” I took my coffee outside, but couldn’t bring myself to look down. You moved on long ago. I’m still falling.

We’re no longer the hopeful naïfs who left a week ago; we’re the people who came back.

This rote deflection of even the faintest praise isn’t humility, but a putrid species of narcissism.

There was more art in her household chores of a single afternoon than in his entire creative lifetime.

The question isn’t whether AI has become sentient, but whether humans have.

Seeing an old friend for the first time since the pandemic. Seeing in his shocked expression what I hadn’t yet noticed in the mirror.

That dreadful moment when you realize you’re despised.

He’d often had the feeling people were laughing at him, and finally understood why.

I already had those side effects before taking the medication.

Looking back, it’s clear that you were far more ridiculous than you realized at the time, and that the same is true today.

Everything proceeded from an assumption of insufficiency.

You lie awake for hours unable to remember if the word is epitaph or epitath. Falling into blackness through a two-letter hole.

Your mind, trapped inside your mind.

We all fell apart, while they just got younger and younger.

His work appeared to consist of random isolated details drawn from our entire cultural apparatus, observed at various magnifications from the front or behind.

The symbol of the cross, which refers to the indivisible nature of the spirit and the incarnate existence it is nailed to.

It’s difficult to reconcile the apparent stupidity of the individual Ramones with the conceptual audacity and intelligence of their collective practice.

The wind, always present, but only its effects visible.

How I despise your certainty, and your love of jargon.

My participation in events to which I’d thought myself central, I came to realize, went mostly unnoticed.

Hurtling toward the last curve, picking up speed and terrified.

The universe deposits money in our accounts every day, in the form of reality.

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.

The residue of your thoughts and actions. You built this house; live in it.

Holding your breath and breathing at the same time. That’s no way to live.

People seldom remembered having already met him.

Assholishness somehow protected him from sadness.

The two primary obstacles to improvement were (1) starting, and (2) continuing.

Like many films of the period, it featured a sociopathic hero, a saintly villain and the default bloody Jackson Pollock ending.

Such sky, such earth, such trees, such absent leaves (which will return), such peace (that won’t), all this past and future splendor I leave you.

Zoom out, insignificant. Zoom in, grotesque.

Sleepless hours attempting to think great thoughts. The smarter you get, the more ordinary you know yourself to be.

Resolutions, born of regret, nightly, always betrayed the next day.

Bring a little generosity when you look; you might be missing something.

He’d finally reached a minimum level of accommodation to his perception of reality.

You droned on, demolishing in the space of a few hours any previous possibility you might have been deemed interesting.

He couldn’t take great prose. The thought of someone having written it was too exhausting.

People tended to refer to him in compound nouns:
Fuckup
Dumbass
Shithead

When I mentioned that even in the absence of an actual box, you could draw a box on the floor and your cat would sit in it, she burst into tears. I can’t stand it she said. That’s too sad. I don’t think that’s sad at all, I said. I think it’s miraculous.

On a good day you add up to about a quarter of an actual adult human being.
(Long exhale) Could be worse. Not so bad. Better than I expected.

The next level in luxury, disease-free living.

Alprazolam
Clonazepam
Diazepam
Lorazepam

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

What’s the problem?
No idea, really. It’s quite the mystery.
How does it manifest?
Microagressions, slamming drawers, muttering, occasionally striking oneself on the head with a crystal paperweight. The usual.
Does it leave a mark?
Only above the hairline.