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.

Such beauty that the only suitable response would be to no longer exist.

Lost in a forest of assumptions.

Your hearing starts to go, and then your vision—preparation for leaving this world.

Throughout that troubled interlude, he felt this spirit, roughly translated as house wind, watching over him.

At one celebratory banquet, Mr. Aldrin was breathlessly asked, “Tell us how it really felt to be on the moon!” Afterward, he rushed outside into an alley and wept.

When someone tells you ‘it is what it is’,
what they really mean is ‘fuck you.’

Sunday morning: half dead but fully alive.

A funeral in the rain, attended by five people who knew him online.

Someone reports that Jeff Goldblum is dining at the Griddle Cafe. He is wearing mirrored sunglasses. Someone asks how tan he is.

My aunt had a big old chunky hand-carved Dubrovnik set she picked up in Yugoslavia in the early 80s. Each piece was over 5 feet tall and moved around on a football field-sized board with an elaborately geared system of pulleys and levers. Tournaments were winner-take-all affairs, with the losers consigned to tower jail cells. In the event of a draw both players were executed.

Saw someone on the street and wondered if she was about the age our girl would be now.
I thought this might be what she would have looked like.
·
If—what a word that is.
You know those movies with large, boisterous families who get together at the summer place, or at the old homestead for Christmas? What a pile of shit those are.