Later I would come to believe that erotic ties were all a spell, a temporary psychosis, even a kind of violence, or at least they coexisted with these states.

I've accrued a kind of patience, I believe, loosely like change.

I do have people in mind when I write. I don't know precisely who they are, however, or how many of them there are.

This is what happened in love. One of you cried a lot and then both of you grew sarcastic.

If you're suicidal, and you don't actually kill yourself, you become known as 'wry.

Love is the answer, said the songs, and that's OK. It was OK, I supposed, as an answer. But no more than that. It was not a solution; it wasn't really even an answer, just a reply.

What little reality television I've seen seems to be about economic desperation. Like the marathon dancing of the Great Depression, which should give us pause. People willing to eat flies and worms for a sum that is less than the weekly paycheck of the show's producer. I haven't seen "reality television" that is other than this kind of painful, sadistic exploitation of fit young people looking for agents.