Men let women down. Over and over again. I’ts what they’re programmed to do.

The mind is infinitely larger than the world it inhabits. There is more to the human brain than machinery or meat. I believe in the soul, I thought suddenly. Everything I know about the brain tells me not to, but I believe in it still.

The thought of losing him again kills me. This is of course a figure of speech, I will remain alive, but I will not know happiness.

You and Meera didn’t have children. I imagine that was a private response.”“Why create hostages to a future whose shape one could so clearly see? The decision was to avoid grief. For oneself but also for others. “ from habit, I note detailing use of “one “instead of “I “or “we “and store the observation. “The world is too full. But the childless are always punished. It’s a great irony that one gets called selfish for making what is essentially the altruistic choice.

Lord, What a terrible shame. You're so attractive!'I know, I want to tell her. It should have happened to someone really ugly. And then it wouldn't have mattered.

I’m remembering there’s a word in Russian, izgoy, that describes someone with a flaw that makes that person singularly unfit to perform his or her professional role. A blocked writer, I lascivious priest, a drunken chauffeur. As a screwed-up therapist,someone like me should not be working at all. Not yet. It is far too soon. And you can tell that. Bethany, with her Competence Scale, already has. But here I am. An izgoy.

But weirdness is relative in the territory occupied by the mentally deranged.

It’s a ground floor apartment in the old part of Hadport. I don’t see much of Mrs. Zarnac, who lives upstairs. Lonely-looking older men visit her, And when she cooks for them vinegar smells waft down. Crosses my mind he might be pickling them alive, one after another, for some dark embalming project.

Hangovers are a vivid form of vengeance. Last night my apartment became the venue for a small, introverted chardonnay festival. A melancholy choir of Bulgarians provided the entertainment, via a set of headphones that ended up irredeemably tangled beneath the bed. Part of me just watched. The other part was in charge.

Watching TV puts your own hell into a different perspective, if that’s what you want. Today I do.