When you’re young you think that anything is possible. I can’t even fully access those thoughts now, but I wanted: to write novels, to have influence, to live everywhere, to be everything. I consumed print media as though every piece of it that caught my eye were going to end up in a collage with my signature on it to be on view for the whole world. You know? Just the idea that everything mattered and had a connection and that I could help facilitate seeing the connections and that I would occupy some central point of communicating those insights to others…
Now?
Well, I still believe in the connections all around us — I just don’t think it fucking matters. At all.
I once could have applied myself for work in several different media. Now I think, what the fuck does that matter?! And of course I’m right; but I would have been better off the other way.
I never wanted a dog. My Princeton-era therapist wanted me to get one. (Just another example of how bad I now think she was.) And I emphatically did NOT want a cuddle-substitute. You know? I had done that with my PU girlfriend! A creature you could hold and pour all your angst and need into? I figured (rightly) that loving a pet could lead to further social alienation. I do worry about that still. Basically, it is easy for me to love my dog (and imagine that he loves me). Is that enough? It shouldn’t be. I will find out how well I do without him when I move soon into a building which does not allow pets.
Will I ever have a human companion again?
Or will that goal recede like my dreams for world culture domination? Is the process of getting older simply a matter of not giving a shit about anything? Is that progress or the worst kind of failure imaginable?
some thinks gone wrong 