I like when bad things happen, but not the ones I was expecting.

I like when something feels like a placeholder that never got replaced.

I like the feeling of starting to like a thing I used to hate. Like cheating on myself.

I like how you remember your hotel room number for the length of your stay, and then it’s gone from your mind forever.

I like to think about infinity, the curve that approaches the asymptote.

I like to think about the difference between hearing someone lie and watching someone lie.

A difference of point of view—their point of view, not mine.

There are orders of infinity, infinite sets that are not only larger but infinitely larger than the first order of infinity—but you know all this.

I like thoughts before they coalesce into “thoughts.” Before-thoughts.

I like when people lie a little bit and then admit it.

I like when there are buildings on the sides of mountains.

I like when there’s a hole in the roof of a building, to watch clouds blow through.

Norman Mailer, also drunk at a party, stabbed his wife—twice—almost in the heart—but did not kill, did not succeed in killing her.

You know this, you know this.

If there are infinite points between 0 and 1, there is infinite past, infinite points that must stay in the past, where they can be protected.

The past. It’s so still.

Bright & Distant Objects

I read a headline that said, “Human hair behind pigeons’ lost toes, study finds.”

I thought it meant that pigeons were growing human hair . . . behind their toes, their lost toes?

I felt sick with fear.

I read a headline that said, “Just thinking about bright objects changes the size of your pupils.”

So how do we know that we’re actually experiencing anything?

How do we know that we’re not just thinking about objects, bright and distant? Concepts? The future?

What do we know of “the actual”?

If you think about greyhounds, your pulse rate goes down.

I am thinking about 16 Psyche, a metallic asteroid so massive it exerts gravitational disturbances on other asteroids.

Some speculate it’s composed of gold and platinum, which would make it worth “quintillion dollars,” or billions of times all the money on Earth.

In these terms, everything in the universe is money, a concept humans made up, like emotions.

In the future, objects in the universe will be so far apart that distant civilizations could never discover each other, even theoretically.

They could not even think about each other.

Sometimes, during a period of dread, I momentarily forget the thing I’m dreading, but continue to feel the dread.

Sometimes, I feel like I’m about to remember something, but the memory never arrives—just the all-consuming feeling of about to.

Or the memory has arrived, but it’s a memory of nothing, with nothing to be about.

The feeling of pure, empty remembering.