get it.

Last night, Sondra opens her gift from me out at the first bar on her birthday brewery crawl. One of the books I gave her, The Empathy Exams, catches Amelia’s eye, and a few minutes later, standing off by ourselves, she asks what it’s about. I start relaying this part I remember: empathy is actually a measurable, biological reaction which causes the same part of my brain to light up when I see a stranger slam their hand in a car door as if I was to slam my own hand in the car door. I tell Amelia how this biological response is good and necessary and allows us to feel compassion for other beings, but it also makes us naturally poor listeners. If someone tells me about their recent breakup and my empathy is, biologically, based entirely on a how I felt in my recent breakup – I’m not actually giving credit to how this other person felt, in this situation that was more likely than not vastly different from the one I’m comparing it to in my head. Listening, I’m trying to tell her, doesn’t come naturally to us. It takes effort to be a good listener. In the making of that point, we get interrupted six times, friends arriving to the bar or coming over to say hi or catching Amelia’s eye from across the room. She asked about the book and so I want to finish the point, but while I’m talking I’m thinking, why even are you bothering with this? This is not the place to try to have this conversation.

Later, in a different bar, a different friend asks me about the writing retreat so I start to tell him, and before I know it I’m back to talking about something too deep for a place like this, because he asked and because I don’t know how else to tell it. The bar gets so loud that he’s asking me to repeat myself over and over, and people keep bumping into us, and I laugh because I think it again, what the hell are you trying to have this conversation for? There is a time and a place for conversations like this, and this is not it. And it’s about that time that I call a taxi, say goodbye to the birthday girl and leave the bar, because, I realize, why would I want to be somewhere that doesn’t allow for conversations like this?

(JC, could you be any more O N T H E B U S)

To thick-enough skin pavement feels the same as grass.

a run around weds., a drink in the afternoon, the emotional slopes that define an over-excited boss, the pride of outlining the point of a complex article by Foucault in one single well-explained quotation, towels in the dryer, Tricia stopping over with a bottle of wine(that she will drink alone) because a boy is going to cook her dinner and she'd like to see me first, the doorbell ringinging and the snow

residu[al]

far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

By the Wars fought for Shrines

a tribute to e e cummings, (who knows-)

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms

for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

since living alone

"I learned last summer that if you place a banana and an unripe avocado inside a paper bag, the avocado would—as if spooned to sleep by the crescent-laid banana—ripen overnight. By morning, that pallid shade of green would turn near-neon and velvety, and I, having done nothing but pair the two fruits, would experience a false sense of accomplishment similar to returning a library book or listening to a voicemail.


There is, it’s worth noting, a restorative innocence to waking up and discovering that something has changed overnight."

— Since Living Alone by Durga Chew-Bose at The Hairpin

love like this

"I thought she was sleeping until I heard her call out from across the room, “Will you bring me a glass of water?” I did. Then in her always-sleepy tone and drawl she said, “Do you remember when you were a little boy and you would ask your mama to bring you a glass of water?” Yeah. “You know how half the time you weren’t even thirsty. You just wanted that hand that was attached to that glass that was attached to that person you just wanted to stay there until you fell asleep.” She took the glass of water that I brought her and just sat it down full on the table next to her. Wow, I thought. What am I gonna do with love like this."

— One Night from Dito Montiel’s A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints

five fit the lonesome

"Travelling can get kind of lonely sometimes. Or not travelling, what’s the word? Life. Life can get kind of lonely sometimes. Sometimes I’ll be talking to someone, and I’ll be like ‘Yeah, I’ve been really lonely lately’ and they’ll be like ‘Well, we should hang out!’ and I’m like, No, that’s not what I meant. That’s not what I meant at all."

— John Mulaney

without further ado

ma·ca·bre

məˈkäbrə,-ˈkäb/

adjective

adjective: macabre

1. disturbing and horrifying because of involvement with or depiction of death and injury.