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“The malignant self-obsession and childish vitriol only scratches the surface of the man’s flaws. His compulsions aren’t hidden or covered up. They are broadcast for the entire country to see, for hours on end, every day, late into the night.”
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Never underestimate temporary paralysis. It only takes one lifetime to forget all of human history.
The oldest burial sites and artifacts suggest such a belief in an afterlife goes back more than 50,000 years.
Can the dead talk at all? Leave the afterlife alone. You open a door only to find a fire inside.
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Petulant borderline (including negativistic features): Negativistic, impatient, restless, as well as stubborn, defiant, sullen, pessimistic, and resentful; easily feels “slighted” and quickly disillusioned.
Hollow, small, sunken, confused, jealousy. It just dominates so much of my thoughts. Intensities of abandonment or reckless abstraction. It doesn’t ever go away.
Everything was poorly communicated and treated as disposable. Identities. Aspirations. Jobs. Relationships. People, in general. We didn’t hang on to anything for very long.
Entropy was common and collective. Maybe we had more to learn from it than we think.
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Days were sharp and light, and the afterlife did both things. I had shingles in my breath and a throat stacked with wood to burn. We often lit a fire just to remember what the world felt like before.
She carried bags of ash and gray air. We had good seasons and bad seasons. More choices did not necessarily make either of us happier. The afterlife highlights the lack in each.
Causality is murky and hubristic. Causality is irrelevant. Falling masonry offers little refuge.
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Impulsive borderline (including histrionic or antisocial features): Captivating, capricious, superficial, flighty, distractable, frenetic, and seductive; fearing loss, the individual becomes agitated; gloomy and irritable; and potentially suicidal.
Hospitals were on their “worst case scenarios.” Every bird was made of metal and plastic. The weathervanes couldn’t tell the difference between wires and waves. There were too many angles to count. I think I was just tired.
We counted backwards from the crash site. There were few basic signifiers to indicate anything inhabitable. I used to hide survival tags in my room at night.
Chin, jawbone, brow, mouth, hairline. There wasn’t much I would choose to keep.
I wanted to cry, to feel my face wet and shallow and weak.
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What kind of nightmares are the easiest to nail down? The ones that already know your name.
I was short, stumpy-bodied, big nosed. My skin looked someone was trying to kill the color pink. I had wrinkles, my teeth were cigarette yellow and crooked and disorganized.
She preferred an affectionate cloth to a wire frame.
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Self-destructive borderline (including depressive or masochistic features): Inward-turning, intropunitive (self-punishing), angry; conforming, deferential, and ingratiating behaviors have deteriorated; increasingly high-strung and moody; possible suicide.
The barometer kept saying: chance of apocalypse. If only.
Big veins. Low self esteem. Not a risk taker. The center could not hold.
Peak-end rule. You pick apart the cemetery dimensions, go over the outline in your head. You make no payments to the future and repeat the same mistakes. You wear makeup and paint as if it will feel any safer. Just goes to show, the past you bleed is just the past you know.
For worse or for worse, felt like another afterlife was ready to fall.
jordan tierney 