I do tend to be an anxious fellow, and I do tend to see the world as a little darker than perhaps it genuinely is, but I also do appreciate much more than a rosy scenario, I appreciate straight news.

But thanks to my rapidly dividing cells, I no longer have that feeling – although I remember it very well – that if I just buckled down to the great work at hand, lived more authentically, stopped procrastinating, cut out sugar, then my best self was just there right around the corner. Yeah, no. I’m done with all that. I.

In the right situation, highly formalized, high-suction ass-kissing not only comes all too naturally to me, it makes me breathless with a feeling of penitential power.

Why not be a communist, she thinks, if it means that kind of belonging?

Maybe there is some solace to be derived in that: bacchanal or funeral, after enough time, the detritus looks the same.

This brings up yet another, far more important misconception: that being comically generative and having a sense of humor are one and the same thing. The former is among the least important things in the world, while the latter is among the most. One is a handy social tool, the other an integral component of human survival. It bears repeating a third time: Not being funny doesn’t make you a bad person. Not having a sense of humor does.

We are disclosing animals, wired for unburdening. It’s what we do as a species. When I am being told, I listen, mindful of the honor, remembering all the while that the shore would be mistaken to believe that the waves lap up against him because he is so beautiful.

I think what it means is that central to living A life that is good is a life that’s forgiving.

I have so little control over the act of writing that it’s all I can do to remain conscious.

Everybody’s got something. In the end, what choice does one really have but to understand that truth, to really take it in, and then shop for groceries, get a haircut, do one’s work; get on with the business of one’s life. That’s the hope, anyway.