Someone can truly believe it, but not me, not us. And by someone, I mean someone who is not alive, because anyone still breathing is programmed to think The Terrible can’t really happen, especially this iteration of human which has seen little but peace and growth. That “little” offers still further proof against panic: we have been through tough times before and always emerged victorious.

Past results don’t predict future outcomes and all other foreboding clichés have thus lost resonance. We can understand them on an academic level – multiply this probability by that one – but not at a level where we truly grapple with the consequences of numbers that declare a nonzero chance that life forever changes in awful ways. The numbers are, actually, quite beside the point since there aren’t numbers for that which has never happened before.

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honest, ugly feelings. Of course you don’t want to possess those feelings, and so stating your privilege is a wishful attempt to exorcise them. The hope is that by saying aloud I’m so lucky, reason will overwhelm Why do I want so much and remain so selfish when I already have so much?

It won’t.

you don’t want others to share it since greater universality would ruin your specialness.

If your weakness is unlinked to your identity, you want others to share it so you aren’t alone.

the easiest, most natural assumption is that something is off in that someone – even if that someone exhibits a preferable response.

who are tweaking anything (and everything) related to their bodies.

The first: those coveting weight loss. This is the largest contingent and the reason why damn near all health writing is geared toward weight loss.

The second: those trying to perfect themselves just ’cause. Some get off maximizing their minds, some get off maximizing their bodies. Both are worthy undertakings.

The third: those aiming to correct some underlying issue(s) unrelated to weight. This group is often mistaken for the second, even as there are far more participants in this one. Thus, if you observe some ostensibly fit person measuring out iron/phosphate ratios and organizing bags of supplements, it’s at least 70/30 that this individual is suffering in ways superficial appearance betrays.

is the one where I feel like I don’t have enough time. For some this feeling is induced by a list of nonsense tasks whose completion yields little in the way of accomplishment. It never is for me, and thus the not-enough-time feeling is precise evidence that I am filled with purpose.

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Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when on prevails the other dies. Leave men free, and their natural inequalities will multiply almost geometrically. To check the growth of inequality, liberty must be sacrificed, as in Russia after 1917. Even when repressed, inequality grows; only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom; and in the end superior ability has its way.

So the conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it – perhaps as much more valuable as roots are more vital than the grafts. It is good that new ideas should be heard, for the sake of the few that can be used; but it is also good that new ideas should be compelled to go through the mill of objection, opposition, and contumely; this is the trial heat which innovations must survive before being allowed to enter the human race. It is good that the old should resist the young, and that the young should prod the old; out of this tension, as out of the strife of the sexes and the classes, comes a creative tensile strength, a stimulated development, a secret and basic unity and movement of the whole.

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What writers have is a license also the freedom to sit – to sit, clench their fists, and make themselves be excruciatingly aware of the stuff that we’re mostly aware of only on a certain level. And that if the writer does his job right, what he basically does is remind the reader how smart the reader is. Is to wake the reader up to stuff that the reader’s been aware of all the time. And it’s not a question of the writer having more capacity than the average person. It’s that the writer is willing I think to cut off, cut himself off from certain stuff, and develop…and just, and think really hard. Which not everybody has the luxury to do.

But I gotta tell you, I just think to look across the room and automatically assume that somebody else is less aware than me, or that somehow their interior life is less rich, and complicated, and acutely perceived than mine, makes me not as good a writer. Because that means I’m going to be performing for a faceless audience, instead of trying to have a conversation with a person.

Trying to show how much he doesn’t like publicity. Except if he isn’t a genius, there’s no good reason to read the novel. You don’t open a one-thousand-page book because you’ve heard the author’s a nice guy. You read it – once you prop the thing open at all – because you understand the author is brilliant. He’s grabbed the wrong lesson: The people who seem to adore the press the way, say, Pooh loves a honey jar, look foolish; but the people who seem to hate it also risk foolishness too, because the reader knows how good press must feel, like having the prettiest girl in school drop you a smile. Like having the whole country rub against your toes and twist between your ankles.

So I think it’s got something to do with, that we’re just – we’re absolutely dying to give ourselves away to something. To run, to escape, somehow. And there’s some kinds of escape – in a sort of Flannery O’Connorish way-that end up, in a twist, making you confront yourself even more.

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xxxxxxxxx may well have been Satan. Actually, probably worse.

“Um. Hey. Would it be cool if my friend xxxxxxxxx lived with us too?”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

At least with Satan I could be assured a tan and the most interesting stories ever.¹ This oddly-named person offered no such guarantees. But sure, cool, whatever, it doesn’t matter, I like people, right? The more the merrier, right?

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Perhaps for that one fine day you were able to do it. As you committed to the deepest of commitments standing among your family and friends you thought: this is it, and it is enough. No wondering when or how you will be happy. No capitulation to the random desires that endlessly flow through your mind. Nope. Just gratitude to the point of disbelief, to the point where wanting is a foreign concept.

xxxxxxxxx kinda always knew how this could happen. He and I were fresh out of Torres del Paine travelling alongside an outrageous character – a guy who hiked “off trail” an entire day so he could avoid paying the $20 entrance fee; wore Walmart boots, jeans, and a hooded sweatshirt²; and whose calories came from nothing more than a loaf of bread and some dinky cheese slices – when it was time to rest for the night. xxxxxxxxx and I shared a room while “the character” negotiated a reduced rate for his own room by vowing to not use the bed, but rather to set up his tent on the ground, inside the hostel bedroom.

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