JD Layman

I want specifics on the general idea.

There is so little to remember of anyone— an anecdote, a conversation at table. But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that wanderers will find a way home.

I want to overhear passionate arguments about what we are and what we are doing and what we ought to do. I want to feel that art is an utterance made in good faith by one human being to another. I want to believe there are geniuses scheming to astonish the rest of us, just for the pleasure of it. I miss civilization, and I want it back.

If you fellows can’t whip the VanDamm’s of this world without asking girls like her to bed down with them and probably never come back, perhaps you should lose a few cold wars.

Nouns describe objective roles, parts to play, scripts to follow. Adjectives are more amorphous and qualitative, describing how we put our unique mark on an expected role. Both nouns and adjectives are necessary.

Because, once alone, it is impossible to believe that one could ever have been otherwise. Loneliness is an absolute discovery. When one looks from inside at a lighted window, or looks from above at the lake, one sees the image of oneself in a lighted room, the image of oneself among trees and sky— the deception is obvious, but flattering all the same. When one looks from the darkness into the light, however, one sees all the difference between here and there this and that.