One's Company

People who research anything, who deep-dive anything, understand that solitude is never loneliness when you have your subject. The subject looms before you like a bright city on the horizon, beckoning you forward. And you’re forever living in it, or going toward it.

Other people can ruin a dream just by knowing it.

Like every person in denial, I believed my methods were acceptable simply because I acknowledged them.

At what point does it stop being a dream when you’re dreaming other dreams? Can a person strangle a fantasy with rules carried over from another place?

I understood the concept of religion, the one-sided relationship with the intangible.

The humiliation of being alive, and being seen! Oh, it wrangled me.

So many people wanted to solve their problem of self; I wanted to trash it entirely. The world was so haphazard and frightening, why not arrange it the way I wanted it? Why not?

I demand their opinions on things, "Don't you think we become other people every day?" I ask. Or, "Don't you think that who we are is determined by who we love?" I really want to know. "Isn't love a form of impersonation?

The world was so haphazard and frightening, why not arrange it the way I wanted it? Why not?

my life had been fairly boring but pleasant. I had held a job, and I’d known people on a friend and acquaintance level, and I had taken myself out to eat once in a while, taken myself to the occasional movie, read some good books, paid bills on time or close to it. And I had enjoyed the outdoors and lived in my own place—basic but mine, and it had been relatively clean and free of pests or infestations, and reasonably heated and cooled for comfort—and my health had been decent, and I had stayed out of legal and criminal trouble. I had possessed all of the things that a traditionally good life were conditional upon. I was functionally human. Why, then, had that life always felt like a pastime, just something I was doing while waiting for my other self, the actualized, better version of myself, to come along and make it real?

Love was a sickness. It had poisoned me. People lie when they say misery or loneliness kills; it’s love. Love is the lethal agent. The more you have to live for, the more can be taken away.

I fired up the DVD machine, trying to forget I was a human being confined to this one life cycle, this one lousy history.

If only they knew how I wanted to shuck it off, this shell. This bag. This thing that carried me around from place to place. When I looked in a mirror, I never knew what I saw. It wasn’t me.

There seemed to be a background noise to life, I had always noticed, a frequency that hummed continuously and held a certain color and mood. It changed with each season of the year though it was beyond weather, beyond any change of light. It was felt in my bones, the waves creating a wall of safety, of certainty.

How could we ever know another person’s life? All the tiny details that are never relayed to us

I figured that if the world was going to wreak its random cruelty on me

That’s when I realized what money can really get a person: respect they didn’t earn. I briefly felt disgusting

I had possessed all of the things that a traditionally good life were conditional upon. I was functionally human. Why, then, had that life always felt like a pastime, just something I was doing while waiting for my other self, the actualized, better version of myself, to come along and make it real?

In my former waking life, back when I was working in the supermarket warehouse and living in my trailer, the daily news of current events had been tiresome and upsetting, a white-noise villain that occasionally reached enough volume to gouge the few moments of peace I’d grabbed from the day. I had avoided it. I never liked being reminded that far beyond the grand drama of my own sorry life, a larger play was taking place, one that didn’t consult me but could obliterate me at any moment.

I had known these strangers only briefly, and only by which brand of chaw they preferred, or what cut of meat to set aside, but they threatened to fan the dying ember of the past into a full, hemorrhoidal flame again, just when I was about to leave it behind forever.

Love is the lethal agent. The more you have to live for, the more can be taken away.

I could not think of myself as rich, only as having more to lose.

Instead of sucking the energy out of me the way most people did by merely existing, her presence gave me a second breath.

Back then I never shared my plans or preferences, my ambitions or desires. I never gave away the things I loved. I knew better. Other people can ruin a dream just by knowing it.