Albert Camus

“A person’s life purpose is nothing more than to rediscover, through the detours of art, or love, or passionate work, those one or two images in the presence of which his heart first opened.”
(image via)

Lenny Hearts Eunice

But I just wanted him to take care of me some more. Joshie has always told the Post-Human Services staff to keep a diary, to remember who we were, because at every moment our brains and synapses are being rebuilt and rewired with maddening disregard for our personalities, so that each year, each month, each day we transform into different people, utterly unfaithful iterations of our original selves, of the drooling kids in the sandbox. But not me. I am still a facsimile of my early childhood. I am still looking for a loving dad to lift me up and brush the sand off my ass, as English, calm and hurtless, falls from his lips. Why couldn’t I be raised by Joshie? “I think I’m in love with this girl,” I sputtered.

“Talk to me.”

“She’s super young. Super healthy. Asian. Life expectancy—very high.”

“I love love,” Joshie said. “It’s great for pH, ACTH, LDL, whatever ails you. As long as it’s a good, positive love, without suspicion or hostility. Now, what you’ve got to do is make this healthy Asian girl need you the way you need me.”

“Don’t let me die, Joshie,” I said. “I need the dechronification treatments. Why isn’t my name up on the Boards?”

Joshie was silent.

Lenny Hearts Eunice by Gary Shteyngart, my favorite short story this year

1. yes 2. okay

"what you hear in my voice is fury, not suffering." -audre lorde

Signfying nothing.

"She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing." — Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)

speaking on behalf of every cell in every bone and tissue in my body

if u tell me u like me as much as i like u
then i will live in poetry. i will climb
mt. tamalpais and stretch my arm away
from my shoulder and my hand away
from my arm and my index finger away
from my hand to make it more convenient
for a bird to perch
and serenade the sky for me.

if u tell me u like me as much as i like u
i would get back to work with my dreams
intact and your dreams blended in, with your
ring in mind and my heart on my sleeve
and every shitty day will have a silver lining
that is u liking me as much as i like u.

and if u did tell me u liked me as much as i like u
but u needed time or u weren't ready to do anything
more than to like me then i would say "hey, i
understand" because i would and i would do
what i have always done -- which is wait for
something that might never happen.

but if u so happen to like me less (for liking
me more seems illogical or maybe even impossible)
then i would take a day to take a breath
and then do what i have done since i have met u:
which is to like u without caring if u like me.

i had promised myself last october that the words
i wrote on your birthday would be the last words
i would write for you forever. but a funny thing
happens when u feel like i do for as long as i have.
it is no longer a feeling but an institution that is
as sacred as religion, it could possibly even be one:
"the church of wanting to make u smile".

but if u feel the way u do (whatever it is u feel)
i will reflect on the things
that i have done this year (regardless of the outcome)
for this is love, not an obsession.
i am your sucker, but i am not mine.