This looks interesting,” I say, but what I’m really thinking is, Wow, Aimee, science fiction? Really, could you try any harder to brand yourself with the mark of the nerd herd? What’s next, anime?
You think, ‘Here’s something I can hold on to,’ but it always slips away.
You’re nothing but a product. And what’s this product called? Emptiness, dude, that’s what it’s called. And for the rest of your life, they sell you over and over, right to the end when they package you one last time and plant you in the ground.
Books seem a little old-fashioned, but hey, I can do old-fashioned if it’s good.
It’s more like I was daydreaming when the Supreme Being told me what I should do with my life, and it’s too late to ask what it was.
The only way you’re going to get something to last in this world is to work at it.
It’s fine to live in the now. But the best thing about now is that there’s another one tomorrow. I’m going to start making them count.
That’s how our system works. It’s a giant con game. One thing gets old, then you have to buy the next thing that gets old, then the next thing. Our whole society’s a training ground for addicts.
That’s all right,′ she says, and I have to wonder how many times she’s said that to the people in her life who screwed her over somehow.
I’m not a dream crusher. The real world already does enough of that without me getting into the business.
Just wait. Someone’s going to come along, someone you never expected, someone who needs you because you’re you.
Here in the realm of books she’s self-assured. She has some of the control she doesn’t have anywhere else.
Nothing lasts. You think it’s going to. You think ‘Here’s something I can hold on to’, but it always slips away.
Goodbye. Goodbye. I can’t feel you anymore. The night is almost too beautifully pure for my soul to contain. I walk with my arms spread open under the big fat moon. Heroic weeds rise up from the cracks in the sidewalk, and the colored lights of the Hawaiian Breeze ignite the broken glass in the gutter. Goodbye, I say, goodbye, as I disappear little by little into the middle of the middle of my own spectacular now.
But with this February sun, see, the light’s absolutely pure and makes the colors of the sky and the tree limbs and the bricks on these suburban houses so clean that just looking at them is like inhaling purified air. The colors flow into your lungs, into your bloodstream. You are the colors.
No,′ I say l. ‘It’s not all right. But I couldn’t help it.
Uh, sure, if it doesn’t take too long. I’m supposed to be at a big police banquet in about thirty seconds. They’ll probably send a car by for me if I’m late.
The best thing about now, is that there’s another one tomorrow.
My job is okay. You know what an okay job is, don’t you? It’s a job you only hate some of the time instead of all of the time.
Besides, it doesn’t matter if it’s real. It never does with dreams. They aren’t anything anyway but lifesavers to cling to so you don’t drown.
Nothing helps. I’m a black spot on the chest X-ray of the universe.