The interesting thing is why we're so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness.

...Genuine pathological openness is about as seductive as Tourette's Syndrome.

So yo then man what's your story?

At root, vulgar just means popular on a mass scale. It is the semantic opposite of pretentious or snobby. It is humility with a comb-over. It is Nielsen ratings and Barnum's axiom and the real bottom line. It is big, big business.

What teachers and the administration in that era never seemed to see was that the mental work of what they called daydreaming often required more effort and concentration than it would have taken simply to listen in class. Laziness is not the issue. It is just not the work dictated by the administration.

Our attachments are our temple, what we worship, no? What we give ourselves to, what we invest with faith. . . . Attachments are of great seriousness. Choose your attachments carefully. Choose your temple of fanaticism with great care.

I know I never work in whatever gets called an office, e.g., a school office I use only for meeting students and storing books I know I'm not going to read anytime soon.