First Person Singular

No matter how vivid memories may be, they can’t win out against the power of time.

I know a few beautiful women, the kind that anyone would find lovely and charming. But to me those beautiful women, the majority of them at least, never seem able to truly, unconditionally, derive pleasure in being gorgeous. Kind of strange, I think. Women who are born beautiful are always the center of men’s attention. Other women are jealous of them and they get coddled no end. People give them expensive presents, and they have their pick of men. So why don’t they seem happier? Why do they sometimes even seem depressed?

What I’ve observed is that most of the beautiful women I know are dissatisfied, and irritated by tiny, inconsequential flaws—the kind inevitably found somewhere in any person’s physical makeup. They obsess over these little details. Their toes are too big, or their nails are weirdly off center, or their nipples aren’t the same size. One gorgeous woman I know is convinced that her earlobes are too long, and always wears her hair long to hide them.

Whether you cut it off

or someone else cuts it off

if you put your neck on the stone pillow

believe it—you will turn to dust.

Once again, I was confused. It felt like bits of reality and unreality were randomly changing places.

Loving someone is like having a mental illness that’s not covered by health insurance.

Each and every moment, our bodies are on a one-way journey to collapse and deterioration, unable to turn back the clock.

In Hollywood in the fifties, a happy ending always involved marriage—the creation of an environment in which lovers could have sex legally.

I’ve heard it said that the happiest times in our lives is the period when pop songs really mean something to us, really get to us. It may be true. Or maybe not. Pop songs may, after all, be nothing but pop songs. And perhaps our lives are merely decorative, expendable items, a burst of fleeting color and nothing more.