William Gibson once described cyberspace as a "consensual hallucination" but social networking is more like a consensual manic episode.
There's a difference between loving w-o-r-d-s and loving language.
There's a fine line between celebrating and showing off.
Commiseration isn't empathy in the same way that proximity isn't intimacy.
Sometimes we mistake fear for ambition.
A small bird alights the tip of a Mediterranean Cypress. The tree's entire column sways. The whole world seems impossible, possible in that idle instant. And then the bird is gone and the tree is still.
There are sunsets; and then there's watching … the sun … set.
Once, I carried anxiety in my chest. Today it resides in sidebars, on social networking sites.
Sometimes the only silence is noise.
I think I used to be able to appreciate condensed pockets of time. Now I'm greedy. I want oceans. I want eternity.
Old sad songs that are new to me have a way of stirring long-dormant hurts.
One way to avoid forming a meaningful opinion about something is to avoid the thing itself.
There's a difference between trying hard and working hard.
The afternoon sun hitting the television so hard that I can barely make out what's onscreen is the world's welcome reminder that I should be outside.
Few things lull me into a trance like air-conditioning in February.
I know when I'm circling a truth because my breathing becomes shallow.
We are the evidence of what we are.
It's one of those neutrally buoyant Los Angeles afternoons where the air is the temperature of my thoughts and I'm not sure if the world's the dream or I'm the dream.
Respectful-awkward is always preferable to resentful-awkward.
If there's poetry in wakefulness on temperate nights, I haven't found it yet. Disordered sleep is a delicate thing: It must be handled with care and packed in snow.
Some correspondences are so effortless I don't think they're real.
I've observed that insulting someone's intelligence in order to spare their feelings is literally neither hither nor thither.
When it was just us, it was simple. Do people mean it when they say they don't remember? I mean it when I say I haven't forgotten.
Oh, look: there you are; and there you are; but it's not the same.
In my college days I once made fun of this girl named K____ for being the type of person who always thought earnestly about her response when asked how she was doing, and answered honestly—as opposed to a flippant, insincere Tony-the-Tiger-rific "everything's great!"
Turns out, in the intervening years, I've become one of those earnest, honest answerers as well. I don't think people always know what to do with that.
Sometimes I'm startled by the things people remember that I've said. I don't pay attention to nearly half the things people tell me. (The other half I obsess over.)
I felt vaguely guilty for including a Sacagawea dollar in the delivery guy's tip, but what the fuck was I supposed to do with it?
It occurs to me that I own an awful lot of DVDs for someone who seldom watches DVDs. I guess I like knowing my favorite cinematic moments are stored as ones and zeros on all those silver platters—within reach, just in case I need them.
Coca-Cola Blāk tastes like poison.
How does a month go by just like that?
I'm busy. Then I'm bored. Then I'm busy. Then I'm bored.
I'm better at keeping lists than I am at keeping time.
You crossed your T's, but did you cross your Z's?
I feel as though gradients and drop shadows are becoming the mauve bricks and glass blocks of current web design.
I can often remember the small-talk long after I've forgotten who I made the small-talk with.
I highly recommend chasing A.M. Homes with Wonder Showzen and an Ambien.
Minor quibble with last night's Lost: since when is clonazepam an antipsychotic?
I never noticed before how much Britney Spears looks like Ethan Suplee in the face.
Days of rain and smog suggest a poorly terraformed Mars.
Sprung from a private conversation, a general observation about betrayal, or feeling betrayed: I think what offends me about life's little indiscretions and disregards is their operational smallness, their very pettiness. That ordinary slights and insults make such effective slings and arrows is an unflattering commentary on the human condition. I'm probably approaching it at the wrong angle, in my robotic way, but that's how I see it. At least on a sun-stunned afternoon in March (feels like May).
Sometimes it seems as though all our big hurts arrive at us by small degrees. Maybe it's just me.
What ever happened to brevity?
I don't know why it's important to have too many pairs of socks. But it is.
It's only Monday and I already feel like I'm Thursday. (That came out wrong but somehow right.)
Sometimes I'll be reading something funny and unchallenging and reasonably narrative and I'll think to myself, "Hmm I wonder if anyone's"—or "I'm surprised no one's"—"optioned this yet." And then I'll want to punish myself in some ineffable, deeply internal way.
Apparently it's raining everywhere.