password

via Maud Newton, a list that reminds me overwhelmingly of one of the best scenes in Hackers. I don't think there's any overlap between the two lists (what are the passwords: god, sex, love, power, password and the user's own name?), but the idea is essentially the same. Humans are a remarkably predictable breed.

pine

We sat in a tree, all arms and legs and branches, your hand on my ankle and my hands on the slowly peeling bark. Everything you said to me was cruel, but that didn't stop me from listening intently, absorbing every word carefully, inhaling the smell of the hardening sap along with an intense feeling that I would never be old enough to understand all the things you knew so instinctively. Not only were you older, but your mother was sick, a fact which lent you an unimaginable authority over the rest of us. Your mother was sick and your father was dead, while the best the rest of us could boast were a few assorted parental divorces, a dead pet here or there. We knew nothing of suffering.

[I'm not ever sure why I write so much in the second person. I'm sure your average armchair psychologist could make something out of it, but for now, I'll just assume I like the way it sounds. There's something delightfully intimate about the direct address, and I hate making up names for characters.]

the story of my life

read it and weep.

(and then write your own)

descent

Turns out, Going Down is a very direct (if unexpected) ancestor of Reader's Block and all the not-quite-novels that followed. It's morbid and achingly intellectual, a trip through a kind of art-historical catalog of the dead, the maimed, and the crazy.

It's also very definitely a novel, a thriller, even, if you believe the jacket copy. Though I can't deny that it contains plenty of sex and death and intrigue (and, as Mr. Vonnegut points out on the cover, it does leave one rather woozy), I'm not sure yet that I'd quite go so far as to call it a thriller, but I still have a few pages to go.

an obsession, the color green

It started as a system, a genuine way to keep track of things. A way to ensure that you had a firm grasp on what you had worn the last time you had seen someone, and a way to ensure that you wouldn't repeat yourself too often. The fear was that, being someone who considered one's friends' preferences when choosing clothes, one would remember that Lucinda liked green, and so wear the green sweater when going to see Lucinda.

While this may not seem like something to fear, it's important to consider the possibility of repetition, or coming to that same conclusion over and over again, so that one wore the sweater every time on saw Lucinda. The resultant (feared!) tragedy, of course, being that Lucinda would not assume that the sweater indicated a shared interest in all things emerald, but rather that it indicated a limited wardrobe, possibly that you even only had the one sweater.