The part that’s left when you take away the part that you think is you.

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

The poignance of the indoor cat who finally gets out on Christmas.

The situation was fluid. Which was to say, he’d been drinking a lot.

Street photos of narcissists—like shooting fish in a barrel.

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

Some forgot to wash. Some forgot to eat. Some gazed absently as they drank milk from the bottom of a cereal bowl.

After years of rigorously eliminating everything pretentious, self-serving or inauthentic in his character, there was nothing left.

Thirty years after the loss of their son they still look for him in restaurants—the man at the corner table, laughing with his beautiful wife, waiting for someone to join them.

Watching your neighbor doing Sunday yard work you can almost see the self-righteous thought bubbles about the value of hard work floating above his head, played in his dad’s voice.

We spent the next two decades holed up on the Cape in a drafty pink ranch house where I slammed out hundreds of short stories for low-paying sci-fi pulps. As it turns out, financial ruin and amphetamines make for a powerful muse. For a time we had a side line raising mushrooms in our basement, but it never paid off. That period finally ended when a collection of my writing marketed under the title The Unsound Mind of L. Rand Steiner met with modest success.

Listen—I never really made it out of there. The kids gave up on me long ago. Ann and I no longer speak. The last time we spoke my son looked me in the eye and said well, Dad, it’s been weird. I didn’t know if he was saying goodbye, and was afraid to ask.

No idea
Who the fuck knows
It’s anyone’s guess
Fuck if I know

It was a period in history when, for whatever reason, people by default ended up in Portland.