Would I do a PhD toay?
No. I wouldn’t believe I could.
Divorce has this side effect. I don’t know if it’s the same way as it is for women as it is for men. Among men, I don’t think I’m alone.
It stops you from believing in yourself. It ends your confidence.
Once I believed I could do anything, and so I took every road and every corner and enjoyed the drive.
Now I avoid most roads. You never know whether you’ll get a flat, whether the bridge will be out, whether it will lead you to a bad neighborhood.
You stay home.
— § —
The greatest instrument ever invented, not used nearly enough, is the harmonica.
It’s great because it’s a kind of talisman. There are souls living inside it, and their quiet arguments are the only ones that fate can hear.
Or is it fate? I’m not sure. It might be some substratum of reality that lives underneath carpets and floorboards.
— § —
In a strange, similar way, all the greatest books in history are books of aphorisms.
It’s not always obvious that this is the case; some people will say “But what about book X, that’s not aphorisms at all.”
They don’t understand that when an aphorism is truly great and concise, it can easily stretch to 1,000 pages and encompass entire lives.
— § —
Spring is nearly here. We will plant some grass.
Sometime soon I will die. I don’t know if that’s “soon” as in a day or “soon” as in three or four decades. But either way that’s soon.
Funny thing, the same is true about whoever reads this.
— § —
I got older and I didn’t have a favorite season any longer like I did when I was young. I didn’t “live in the present” as all the Wise People suggest I ought to.
As I got older, instead, with the start of every season I started looking immediately forward to the next season.
This is true even though the acceleration of the seasons brings me closer to my own mortality.
— § —
There are all these roads still in my head, from years and years of driving on them. Roads in San Francisco, Portland, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York… Roads that wind around trees and through cities and neighborhoods.
They lead to waterfalls and to mountain trails and to curly-haired, middle-aged Italians who sweep shop floors and sell steaming focaccia bread with their dirty hands.
The problem with being in love with every road you’ve ever been on is that you stop driving on new roads and you just drive the old ones again and again in your mind’s eye.
— § —
Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between being alive and being dead anyway.
What’s weird is that this isn’t a sad statement per se.
— § —
It’s March 2023 and it’s nearly over.
I remember laying on my back in half a dozen different apartments in half a dozen different cities wondering what life would be like when I’m 40.
Now I’m 46.
This is called “being alive.”
— § —
You can’t fight what is.