Two and a half drinks in, trying to build a fire the way his father did, cursing, hating himself.

2. Start over.

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.

In LA the bottom finally dropped out—a numbing sequence of brilliant days, synaptic movies printed on his retinas, but underneath, blackness. He’d read somewhere that the self was an illusion. This was good news.

A world held together by duct tape and magical thinking.

How did you get this far without learning anything? Flattery doesn’t mean they love you. This is business. They will pick your bones dry.

Life stages
1) unfolding
2) refolding

For the third time in as many months, the man at the body shop presented my repairs with an understated flourish. “It’s just like you have a brand new car,” he said. And I thought, how many times in life do you get to start over, as if nothing had ever happened?

Each meme a chunk of life replaced by an x/y coordinate, gone forever.

Little soul, you came so far to be here, on the other side of your mother’s skin.

Your brain has lost its goddamned mind.

Sunday morning: half dead but fully alive.

The best thing about God was all the money.

God, not as an entity, but a mental position affording consciousness safe navigation of reality.