Apology

I have to say: this brief foray into the land of the living reminded me of what I live for—and, of course, what one has to sacrifice from time to time. Ah, the living. I envy the living. They have backyard gatherings where you can see a couple of stars in your peripheral vision in the northern sky, away from the glare of downtown lights. They will surrender to the osmosis of the confused crowd surging past fat, indigestible rails on the streets. They will parody banners strung from laundromat to pizza parlor. They write long lists of sordid anecdotes on toilet paper and use up the whole roll. They’ll throw the joke out there just for the hell of it, appropriateness be damned. They notice the curve and contour of jeans walking by, and sometimes give each other knowing looks. They will find the latest thing to obsess over, and on a good day even let it affect their behaviour. They are the opposite of exacting perfectionists who suck up all that weak human emotion during important presentations. They blaze in lofts. They haul away junk piles and sing the songs of their Armenian forefathers. They sometimes give thought to the bursting, flowing nets of family trees across forests and dales, valleys, fens, spinneys, sea-shores, peaks, crags and seas. These invisible humming reticulations. They even take away a lesson from a standardized test passage.

I can't wait to rejoin them. I can't sustain anything in the state I'm in.

Consider: "Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things."