Another day, another pithy aphorism.

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.

The house is quiet and cold. The washing machine has stopped working, joining the dead car battery, the leak in the roof, and the broken back window covered with cardboard. You sleep in the dark in the blue chair where, in happier times, your cat once joined you. You are a joke variant of a Hank Williams song, as interpreted by BJ Thomas.

If lost, see where it leads.

After his death many of his journal and notebook entries were found to have the notation “FE.” His final post, in its entirety, was “failed experiment.”

Figuratively speaking, he hit the windshield.
Figuratively speaking, it took weeks to clean him off.

Everything I’ve lost, I want back.
Except for the bad parts; those you can keep.

Your long-awaited genius grant; your self-designed modernist house; your late career retrospective; your fond encomiums from friends and colleagues: zero, nada, zippo, zilch.

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.

Diagnosis: zero personality disorder.

Something else you said… it left a bad feeling. I’m trying to remember what it was. I meant to get back to it—on account of not wanting my emotions to send destructive signals to my body. Like right now, I’m… rather than letting go, I’m nursing my resentment, which if I’m not careful—
Cancer.
Bingo. Or ignoring it—
Auto-immune.
Exactly. Which leaves us…
Heart attack—of course.

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

You used to drink in order to relax. Now you drink in order to drink.

When someone tells you they’re behind you “1000 percent,” you know you’re on the way out.

The best thing about God was all the money.