I Will Never Write A Sequel To

Maybe The Only Thing Each Of Us Can See Is Our Own Shadow. Carl Jung Called This His Shadow Work. He Said We Never See Others. Instead We See Only Aspects Of Ourselves That Fall Over Them. Shadows. Projections. Our Associations. The Same Way Old Painters Would Sit In A Tiny Dark Room And Trace The Image Of What Stood Outside A Tiny Window, In The Bright Sunlight. The Camera Obscura. Not The Exact Image, But Everything Reversed Or Upside Down.

I Suppose It’s Comfort, Perhaps A Sense Of Self-control, Doing Worse Things To Yourself Than The World Will Ever Dare Inflict.

I Wanted To Destroy Everything Beautiful I'd Never Have. Burn The Amazon Rain Forests. Pump Chlorofluorocarbons Straight Up To Gobble The Ozone. Open The Dump Valves On Supertankers And Uncap Offshore Oil Wells. I Wanted To Kill All The Fish I Couldn't Afford To Eat, And Smother The French Beaches I'd Never See. I Wanted The Whole World To Hit Bottom.

You Grow Up To Become Living Proof Of Your Parents' Limitations. Their Less-than Masterpiece.

You Buy Furniture. You Tell Yourself, This Is The Last Sofa I Will Ever Need In My Life. Buy The Sofa, Then For A Couple Years You're Satisfied That No Matter What Goes Wrong, At Least You've Got Your Sofa Issue Handled. Then The Right Set Of Dishes. Then The Perfect Bed. The Drapes. The Rug. Then You're Trapped In Your Lovely Nest, And The Things You Used To Own, Now They Own You.