I mean obviously we're all dealing with a lot more strangers due to the web. I'd say it has more to do with the quality of interactions. When you're physically interacting with someone, it forces you to be more present and probably a little more uncomfortable. You have to tolerate being outside the comfort of your own home.

I nodded, pretending I was relaxed. I watched the sunlight sparkling on the water and practiced mind-body integration for a few seconds by quietly hyperventilating.

He breathed out the bitter air that makes women doubt everything, and I breathed it in, as I had always done. I expelled my dust, the powder of everything I had destroyed with doubt, and he pulled it into his lungs.

It would require constant vigilance to not replace each person with my own fictional version of them.

A more normal, mature way to think about it [my work] would be, Oh, I work on multiple projects at once and they overlap, but the actual psychology of it is a lot more self-abusing.

The job of the artist is to point at things.

Would she understand that time had stopped while she was gone.