about having no communication

Sitting on the front porch in the middle of the night and debating whether a tree needs trimming. I wish I could make those limbs disappear. I wish I could make other things happen. I would start with that tree. But I should think bigger. Surround myself with a giant wall? Bring lots of people over here? Go somewhere else? No. Would I want to just lie on the couch at my parents', watching a movie with mom and dad? Would I want to live forever? Be young forever? Have billions of dollars just to live and die comfortably? Maybe there is nothing else anymore.

about burying family

She flew home to bury her sister for Christmas and caught the return flight two days later. People started asking how she was. "People die all the time," she thought. "What difference does it make if it happens to me or you or anybody else?"

Alan Parsons Project lyric

The sun in your eyes made some of the lies worth believing.

something about "The Elementary Particles" by Michel Houellebecq

Michel Houellebecq's "The Elementary Particles" diagnosis society with irreversible decline brought on by failing social values and an addiction to the promises of technology and positivism. The social-sexual revolutions of the 1960s implanted an unwavering allegiance to individuality, and this in turn cost us community and the possibility of intimacy among friends and lovers. This trend coupled with cold, hard science pushed us all apart, leaving a developed world of lonely, desperate, frustrated people. Isolation, depression prevail.

This tale of shifting value systems is played out in the lives of half-brothers Michel and Bruno. Their mother was a sexually liberated woman who had no time or interest for children. Being an easy target for bullies, Bruno led a difficult childhood; Michel fared better, being brilliant but clearly withdrawn and romantically oblivious. Bruno grows into a sexually frustrated and obsessed adult, Michel into a molecular biologist. Late in life they each find a sad but redeeming relationship with women but even this last hurrah only underscores our doom--both women die, leaving the half-brothers half whole and forced to recollect the pieces of their already broken lives. Bruno finds not-unhappiness medicated in a sanitarium while Michel goes on to ensure the death of humanity by pioneering asexual reproduction.

Not a bad book. But I wouldn't call it good.

about a passing

Leaving for the day, I looked out the revolving door and noticed the airy drizzle. These were the raindrops swelling up in the heat of your breath, suffocating me on the walk out from the suspended life of a day at the office.