When School Friends Would Think About Appearing

Success On A Cosmic Level Completely Eludes Me. I'm Deeply Suspicious Of Things Being Too Good. It's Part Of My Superstition, I Think, To Generate Pain In Order To Give The Illusion Of Gain. I'm Not Saying I Reject Success, But Honestly, I Don't Quite Know How To Deal With It. It's An Old Feeling: As Soon As You Have The Thing You've Been Going After All Your Life, That Reasonable Degree Of Security, You Start Kicking Against It, Doubting It.

Girls Are Complicated. The Instruction Manual That Comes With Girls Is 800 Pages, With Chapters 14, 19, 26 And 32 Missing, And It's Badly Translated, Hard To Figure Out.

They, All Of Them, Work Incredibly Hard To Make Me Seem Clever And Heroic, Neither Of Which I Am.

I'm Not A Religious Man... I Find I Am A Fan Of Science. I Believe In Science. A Humility Before The Facts. I Find That A Moving And Beautiful Thing. And Belief In The Unknown I Find Less Interesting. I Find The Known And The Knowable Interesting Enough.

Death And Disaster Are At Our Shoulders Every Second Of Our Lives, Trying To Get At Us. Missing, A Lot Of The Time. A Lot Of Miles On The Motorway Without A Front Wheel Blow-out. A Lot Of Viruses That Slither Through Our Bodies Without Snagging. A Lot Of Pianos That Fall A Minute After We've Passed. Or A Month, It Makes No Difference. So Unless We're Going To Get Down On Our Knees And Give Thanks Every Time Disaster Misses, It Makes No Sense To Moan When It Strikes.