Every Day, In Every Way, I'm Getting Better And Better

Many a man has cherished for years as his hobby some vague shadow of an idea, too meaningless to be positively false; he has, nevertheless, passionately loved it, has made it his companion by day and by night, and has given to it his strength and his life, leaving all other occupations for its sake, and in short has lived with it and for it, until it has become, as it were, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone; and then he has waked up some bright morning to find it gone, clean vanished away like the beautiful Melusina of the fable, and the essence of life gone with it.

—Charles Pierce, Selected Works

It was an evening which, by some mysterious combination of failing light, and the smell of an unrecognized plant brings back to some men a sense of childhood, and of future hope; and to others the sense of something which has been lost and nearly forgotten.

–Graham Greene, The Honorary Counsul

That’s bullshit, and you know it’s bullshit. I put that shovel next to the porch and now it’s gone. I made a special trip to Home Depot to buy that damn shovel, and I think you can well imagine how difficult such an excursion was for me. I hate the very thought of places filled to the rafters with tools and all sorts of other inexplicable nonsense that makes me feel utterly useless as a man.

I can’t dig a hole if I don’t have a shovel. And if I don’t dig a hole I have no place to put the words. If I don’t have a hole in which to bury the words I have no reason in the world to produce the words, and so the words have no purpose and just pile up around me until I can’t even get out of bed in the morning.

Jesus, this place is murky. I feel like I’m living in an aquarium, and not a large one, either. No, it’s more like I’m living in a filthy aquarium in a Chinese restaurant, treading water while slimy eels swim lazy laps around me.

I’m not shitting you, people, maybe you live here, maybe you know what I’m talking about: All it ever does is rain. There’s a moment in every day when I feel like I’m going to fall right off the planet and into the darkness beyond the clouds, where the stars are like little farmhouses strung out across the great, empty country of the sky.