found – Page 52 – Office of Development (Flux Labs)

That couple holding court over there, accomplished, attractive, older (my age?), she a composer and head of a department (the Composition Department, I would guess, if there is such a thing) and he a well-known painter, portraits of John Coltrane on black velvet, in kingly dress—I’d assumed undertaken with some irony, but having once mentioned this in his presence and receiving an embarrassed smile, as if he was embarrassed for me, apparently some internalized form of post-ironic sincerity.

When I am forced upon their radar, they regard me with a vague distaste that doesn’t quite come up to the level of dislike. I’ll show you later on—if we walk in that direction, the flurry of minute physical adjustments as they calculate whether they can safely avoid us without personal discomfort. Since the accident I’ve been pleased to detect a new note of fear in their uneasiness, as if I now represent the additional possibility of freakish misfortune that might befall anyone, no matter how charmed or lucky.

I bring this up because I owe my newfound awareness to you, the last time we met, when you mentioned that for you it would be hell on earth to know what other people really think of you. The way you said it, though, I got the impression that you really meant it would be hell on earth for me, and I haven’t been able to shake it.

We thought of them as our oldest friends, and I only gradually came to understand that they had always regarded me, in some fashion I was unable to decipher, as an object of ridicule.

A feral hyena pack in a feeding frenzy, heads buried up to the neck in carcass of the New America.

Although he had longed for it, after retiring from teaching and moving to a house in the woods, he became severely depressed. The diagnosis: loss of horizon.

We were in deep shit, but I was too caught up, strung out, beat down to see it. It was the air we breathed and the ocean we drowned in. Today, looking back, I’m afraid for that young couple. I’m afraid for all of us.

To become accomplished is to experience a great loss.

The search for truth has led to delusion.

Although he thought of himself as a “regular” there, he always had to wait to be seated. One night as the hostess went looking for his table, he snuck a look at the note next to his reservation. It said asshole.

He had attempted to make great art, always a mistake.

Opinions—where observations go to die.

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

“We liked drinking together, but even more than that we liked drinking alone.”

That dreadful moment when you realize you’re despised.

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

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
(Prerecorded laugh track)
why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
(laugh track)