event horizon

I could only hope to not be this good at worrying for the rest of my life.

"We have changed plans."

This strikes the ear funny, if you let it. Maybe we haven't changed our own plans, but inadvertently changed the plans of others by our unwitting actions. The words don't discriminate. Plans have been changed, though, by us. We have changed plans. Keep repeating it, it sounds absurd if you keep at it. We have changed plans. It could also be that we are now in possession of changed plans, as in We have changed plans. We've come to be in charge of them, who knows how. You hadn't considered these notions, had you?

"...so flowers, except in the common-noun sense (he knew birds liked them, as did bees), sent no message to Keith's blue eyes." -- Martin Amis

How clever

cryptic, now is it?

Try as I might, I would be unable for some time to commit to a serious regime of verbal economies.
I had been warned that as a rule, one should beware of people who treated others according to a sliding scale of preference and status. A person wholly kind and honorable will treat everyone with kindness and honor, so this line of thinking went. Aren't we always, though, making exceptions to rules, for ourselves and for those we want to love? So I now saw her through this lens. That, and she was something of a fabulist. She only did it sometimes, I covered. Andrea is different, though. This assertion I have based entire worlds on, worlds. She really is genuinely nice. This could not be denied, either, for based on it were other worlds, presumptions, years of life tenderly lived in advance. These were not to be undone under any circumstances. She's not an airhead, she's substantial, unlikely to float away on an unfortunately timed thermal. This is no joke, either, I am not what's called an unreliable narrator. Self-deceit is for the birds.
I would say I was proud of being a good soldier for her, but that wasn't really the case; I didn't need to be the good soldier because I wasn't even thinking about it very much. She crossed the street, and looking back, smiled and waved again. Her smile is close to me, always.

with my ear to the ceiling

/;.


first things first, always

dream a little dream of me

shouldn't i quit it with all the rhetorical questions?

the writer

over his shoulder gleamed the radically bald and goateed visage of trent dilfer, professional yes-man former pro athlete

as preston is my editor and my witness, i will not see this post through to its logical termination

not alone by choice, by myself only because i want to be

from her to eternity

Mass Bay 153, OK to go!

pewter pot

The audacity, really, of these train advertisements is what's appalling

intention

fatwa

it has none

lackluster

Mr. B— felt deep in his bones that Contador was a coward and Schleck had been wronged. His mind could never change on this point; it was as a closed book. This was his strength and greatest weakness: consistency.

....could only fumble at the expression "God helps them who help themselves."

cars shark-like, marauding more than driving...

I put all my books in a box

if i could digress for a moment, and i will, how can you make a biopic about someone who's 26 years old, the facebook guy? he hasn't really lived long enough for us to judge whether his life has had meaning. plus, isn't it still entirely possible that facebook could end up being something of a fad, along the lines of say...myspace? i'm just saying, it's not like he's gandhi, he's a smarmy, opportunistic 26 year-old who happened to have a good idea. why the need to lionize him and analyze his life so much? perhaps i'm jealous because i'm 24 and i haven't invented facebook yet. nope, that's not it. i'm jealous that john updike got a story published in the new yorker when he was 22, but i wouldn't want to be this facebook guy.

[does anybody read these things?]

-allan

This Year's Model

I feel crazy today, thought I should write it out

Last night I

drowned in a sea of tapioca and tequila

Usually do not feel scorn

Ashamed, unwed

Do not have a kinship with the job,

fall in love with a cubicle

The blown-out umbrella on a platform in Salem had aimed to break

my heart

but it had no claim after we

laid eyes on

stacked railroad ties

* * * * *

I loved her I love her I will love her I have loved her It's her I love I can't not love her I am loving her usually do not feel this way, maybe that's a lie, I tend to love, Allan forms strong attachments with people that is the hallmark of him. He has to love others and bring them close to exhale into their ears twenty years of talk love breath fear anger beauty. This specimen talks too freely it wants to captivate people and inflict on them its oversized useless brain.

People laugh as they please to, People all want to be writers, People know everything there is to be known child please

That you weren't wrong

So if life is so hard, what makes it worth the while? It's the people, it must be. These people everywhere, I love them, they're imperfect and so worthy all the same, or because of it.

And how I missed her but then she would say these magic things that floated in and out and in my head. They were little things but that nothing was precious, it's trivial, but together these things accrete into everything that you have together, really a huge collection of tiny things. That's how I came to think of it, anyways.

I found it so funny that I could hang with them even on subjects that I didn't care about, or TV shows I hadn't watched in years. Could I help but interpret this as evidence of some kind of social intelligence now in my possession? It didn't used to be like this, high school was a long time that I don't remember three quarters of.

I was reading a Bret Easton Ellis novel, which I didn't understand at all. It was about people whose lives have become completely empty, and the flashes of human emotion that seep through into their days at the cracks. The emotions, when they're present, don't seem natural at all because the default state is a void. His next book was better by far, even considering the dark themes and the parts about people living empty lives, it felt warm and supple by comparison with the icy, nihilistic rigor of the first novel. Poor Bret, I'd have to say. It must be awful to even be able to write emptiness so realistically. I'd much rather not be able to write well about empty people. It might rub off if you're not careful.

in memoriam, fragments

Memories, they define us. It hurts to think of having only memories left to us when someone is gone. It is a final state, defined against our will. It hurt me today to contemplate this love that can live only in the mind.

I hate sad songs, never knew this until now. They are a poor substitute for what we miss, a false comfort. They seem profound, but reveal themselves as charlatans on close inspection.

Tennyson:
"Forgive my grief for one removed,
Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in thee,
and there I find him worthier to be loved."

Barthes:
"November 16th
Now, everywhere, in the street, the cafe, I see each individual under the aspect of ineluctably having-to-die, which is exactly what it means to be mortal. --And, no less obviously, I see them as not knowing this to be so."

Silence is my default mode, as it is everyone's. Why should this not be so? If there is nothing to say, silence prevails as part of a natural order.

RIP Tyler

Ecola

This place is my birthright. If you could understand what it means to me . . .

Sometimes I try to understand everything at once

Sometimes I try to understand everything at once:

Everyone else, to a man, was saying Good Luck, but I preferred to tell her Congratulations to be leaving that harried, always rushing place that took up so much of her life. Good Luck? An insult almost to her. I expect that she'll do good things; luck shouldn't have too much to do with her trajectory after she's gone from here.

* * * * *

My father became obsessed temporarily by the prospect of capturing the twin rocks as we saw them. It strikes me that they may have held a certain mystical taste of the past, to him.

* * * * *

Bad news for you: I got a twitter account. If I started saying the word 'tweet', though, it would feel like giving in. Twitter is entertaining. It gives me little doses of people whom I think are funny. Is this so frightening?

* * * * *

A full life, that's nice. If I come off disjointed, it might be on purpose, have you considered that? Do you answer these questions? I try not to bother, but I care just a little too much, you can tell.

* * * * *

Short on time, long on options. Shortfalls I fear are the ones that cut between you and I, but at least now it doesn't seem like there are many of those. Look at your picture and be happy, not regretting anything that has happened in the long stretch of time behind. Happiness doesn't come without peril, but I pray this is right, and I think it is.

Because the drum line's goin' wild in the San Francisco streets

A swirling mess of elbows and backs, while you try to avoid seeing yourself in the mirror for fear of embarrassment on your own behalf. Strangely attractive people all over the crowded room, being somewhat self-consciously quirky.

The gentleman at the front likes to remind people periodically of the evening's title, "Soul-le-lu-jah", which is not as clever as he might have hoped upon further review. The music is loud and archaic and punchy, stunning. There is a crush by the end, and we emerged dazed to greet the fresh air.