But of course there’s no logic to San Francisco generally, a city built with putty and pipe cleaners, rubber cement and colored construction paper. It’s the work of fairies, elves, happy children with new crayons.
How had this happened? Everyone in the world knew more than us, about everything, and this I hated then found hugely comforting.
Yes, a dark time passed over this land, but now there is something like light.
I met a lot of great people in Saudi Arabia and I’d like to see them again. And I’d love to spend more time in the desert and in the mountains. I felt really at home there.
High school teachers who want to get reluctant readers turned around need to give the students some say in the reading list. Make it collaborative: The students will feel ownership, and everyone will dig in.
Once a year, she remembers that she is insignificant. Then she forgets agains, because more than she is insignificant, she is forgetful.
But there was something psychological happening there that was just a little bit different. And the other thing was, there was no stigma. Kids weren’t going into the ‘Center-for-Kids-That-Need-More-Help’ or something like that. It was 826 Valencia.
The house is a factory.
One might think that a boy who was out in the snow for so long would get cold, but Max was not. He was warm, partly because he had on many layers, and partly because boys who are part wolf and part wind do not get cold.
But that in any city, in any cluster of people, there a few people who are awake at this hour, who are both awake and dancing, and it’s here that we need to be.
Paper is a uniquely beautiful format, more so than the web, I think: you need to invest in the aesthetics.
Loneliness is just a thing that I’m not personally interested in. So far, it hasn’t been on my docket of things to write about.
I still get my news from the newspaper in the morning. I just have an affection for paper, and that’s no secret, I guess.
I like the dark part of the night, after midnight and before four-thirty, when it’s hollow, when ceilings are harder and farther away. Then I can breathe, and can think while others are sleeping, in a way can stop time, can have it so – this has always been my dream – so that while everyone else is frozen, I can work busily about them, doing whatever it is that needs to be done, like the elves who make the shoes while children sleep.
My mind, I know, I can prove, hovers on hummingbird wings. It hovers and it churns. And when it’s operating at full thrust, the churning does not stop. The machines do not rest, the systems rarely cool. And while I can forget anything of any importance – this is why people tell me secrets – my mind has an uncanny knack for organization when it comes to pain. Nothing tormenting is ever lost, never even diminished in color or intensity or quality of sound.
How many times in life can we make decisions that are important but will not hurt anyone? Are we obligated- maybe we are- to say yes to any choice when no one will be hurt? We use the word hurt when talking about things like this because when these things go wrong it can feel as if you were hit in the sternum by a huge animal that’s run for miles just to strike you.
This was a new skill she’d acquired, the ability to look, to the outside world, utterly serene and even cheerful, while, in her skull, all was chaos.
And worse, you’re not doing anything interesting anymore. You’re not seeing anything, saying anything. The weird paradox is that you think you’re at the center of things, and that makes your opinions more valuable, but you yourself are becoming less vibrant. I bet you haven’t done anything offscreen in months. Have you?
That the volume of information, of data, of judgements, of measurements, was too much, and there were too many people, and too many desires of too many people, and too many opinions of too many people, and too much pain from too many people, and having all of it constantly collated, collected, added and aggregated, and presented to her as if that all made it tidier and more manageable – it was too much.
Under the guise of having every voice heard, you create mob rule, a filterless society where secrets are crimes.