Dutch Is Not So Much A Language

What Can We Do?" Mom Asked Again. I Shrugged. But She Kept Asking, As If There Were Something She Could Do, Until I Just Kind Of Crawled Across The Couch Into Her Lap And My Dad Came Over And Held My Legs Really Tight And I Wrapped My Arms All The Way Around My Mom's Middle And They Held On To Me For Hours While The Tide Rolled In.

Television Is A Passivity.

You Know What I Hate? The Outdoors. I Mean, Generally. I Don't Like Outside. I'm An Inside Person. I'm All About Refrigeration And Indoor Plumbing And Judge Judy.

You Can't Just Make Yourself Matter And Then Die, Alaska, Because Now I Am Irretrievably Different, And I'm Sorry I Let You Go, Yes, But You Made The Choice. You Left Me Perhapsless, Stuck In Your Goddamned Labyrinth. And Now I Don't Even Know If You Chose The Straight And Fast Way Out, If You Left Me Like This On Purpose. And So I Never Knew You, Did I? I Can't Remember, Because I Never Knew.

One Of The Jobs Of A Writer Is To Add Nuance And Ambiguity To That Straight Line That People Often Draw To Very Specific Kinds Of Heroism. Most Of Us Don't Get To Be Snooki. For Most Of Us Heroism Has To Be In Our Everyday Lives.