Notes Of A Crocodile Quotes

Secretly though, I did sort of enjoy being a fucked-up mess. Apart from that, I didn't have a whole lot going on.

Unhealthy love is two people stoking a shared fantasy of desperate beauty, weaponizing passion and desire.

I wish I could fall in love with a man, but there are too many beautiful women.

For a long time, my hidden shame had made me push everyone away. I'd rejected them before they could reject me. I ran away from close relationships even with the people who loved me. I was a blind man fallen into the ocean.

Tell me, just this once, if you still think of me. And let me recklessly, tenderly, tell you one more time: I love you.

No one will ever know about your tragedy, and the world eluded its responsibility ages ago.

She gave me a puzzle in a box. She put the pieces together patiently, one by one, and completed the picture of me.

Only healthy people are capable of being in love. Using love to treat an illness just makes the illness worse.' I realize that's exactly what I did: I used love to fight illness, and it ruined me. I have to change my ways. I can't be like that anymore.

Sweeping that other me into their arms, they led me in a dance within societal norms, along a trajectory based on a delusion. (Though I couldn't define what I was, I knew what I wasn't.)

All that is neither masculine nor feminine becomes sexless and is cast into the freezing-cold waters outside the line of demarcation, into an even wider demarcated zone. Man's greatest suffering is born of mistreatment by his fellow man.

Someday you'll find someone who's the total package. Right now you're sowing your oats, and that's not a bad thing. Life is a process of awakening by degrees, in depth and in scope. At its most profound moments, you experience wholeness.

Being in college gave me a sense of vocation. It exempted me from an oppressive system of social and personal responsibility- from going through the motions like a cog, from being whipped and beaten by everyone for not having worked hard enough and then having to put on a repentant face afterward.

Like death, college serves as a kind of escape hatch. But while death takes you straight to the morgue, college is a single rope dangling loose from the inescapable net of society.

My time was gradually consumed by tears. The whole world loves me, but what does it matter since I hate myself?

The fact is, most people go through life without ever living. They say you have to learn how to construct a self who remains free in spite of the system. And you have to get used to the idea that it's every man for himself in this world. It requires a strange self-awareness, whereby everything down to the finest detail must be performed before the eyes of the world.

People in this city are manufactured and canned, raised for the sole purpose of taking tests and making money, The eighteen-year-old me went through the high-grade production line and was processed in three years, despite the fear that I was pure carrion inside.

In the end, the world didn't owe me anything, not even half a chance. That was the hand I'd been dealt in life, and while detachment was enough for me to withstand hatred, extricating myself from the jaws of suffering called for enough detachment to exercise cruelty.

I don’t want to become myself. I know the answer to the riddle, but I can’t stand to have it revealed. The first time I saw you, I knew I would fall in love with you.

My prototype of a woman was the type who would appear in hallucinations at the last moments of your freezing to death at the top of an icy mountain, a mythical beauty who blurred the line between dreams and reality. For four years, that’s what I believed. And I wasted all of my university days–during which I had the most courage and honesty I would ever have towards life–because of it.

I’d taken everyone I loved and killed them off in my heart, one by one. I’d long been tending their graves—secretly visiting and mourning during the day, going out and erecting a cross on starry nights, lying inside and awaiting my own death on starless nights. That was my Atlantis, the kingdom I’d built in the name of separation. I’d never before unearthed so much of myself, and so suddenly at that. Inside the world of my tomb, everyone else was dead, I alone survived, and that was the reason for my sorrow. It didn’t take long to spot the largest sarcophagus. It was the one in which Shui Ling had been entombed, and across the front, it read: This woman is madly in love with me. And then reality finally hit me. I had my old schema (which offered a peephole, really) to blame for my decision to leave this woman, to kill her and preserve her body in this sarcophagus, where she’d stay mine forever. I’d evaded the perils of real relationships and robbed her of the ability to change with time. These two prospects had given rise to “my deep-rooted fear of a real separation, which in turn yielded the avoidant mentality that had only hastened it.

Though I couldn't define what I was, I knew what I wasn't. I was shown the limits, and being confined within a set of walls tormented me and drained me of life, for the real me spanned multitudes, stretching far beyond the bounds of normality encircling ninety percent of the human race.

Here’s a delusional and misguided hypothesis: If I could just fall in love with a man, it would put an end to the anguish of having fallen in love with a woman by somehow overwriting that earlier consciousness.

Separation was the thing I'd been dreading the most these past few years, and I'd been in denial that it was a fact of life. Refusing to let go, I'd practically thrown a temper tantrum. What's worse, my attempts to avoid separation had only hastened it. It explained why I'd always been so quick to lash out at those I loved.

We have to face the quantitative nature of the challenge,” he told me one day over lunch at the NYU faculty club. “Right now, we’re going to just burn everything up; we’re going to heat the atmosphere to the temperature it was in the Cretaceous, when there were crocodiles at the poles. And then everything will collapse.

The best way for any relationship to end is with the sentiment I wish the best for you, and I am grateful for what we once had together.

Only healthy people are capable of being in love. Using love to treat an illness just makes the illness even worse.

I became obsessed with Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer. I devoured all kinds of books for tortured souls. Started collecting issues of the independence movement's weekly. Studied up on political game theory, an antidote to my spiritual reading. It made me feel like an outsider, which became my way of recharging. At the break of dawn, around six or seven like a nocturnal creature afraid of the light, I'd finally lay my head - which by then was spilling over with thoughts - down onto the comforter. That's how it went when things were good.

It was clear from that moment on, we’d never be equals. How could we, with me under the table, scrambling to summon a different me, the one she would worship and put on a pedestal? No way was I coming out.

She had sought me out. I knew it would happen. Even if I had switched to a different section, she would have sought me out all the same. She, who hid in the crowd, who didn’t want anyone to see her behind her veil of averted eyes and aloofness. When I stepped forward, she came out, too. And she pointed and said, revealing a child’s wanton smile: “That’s the one I want.” And like a potted sunflower that had just been sold to a customer, I was taken away. There was no way to refuse. This, from a beautiful girl that I was already deeply, viscerally attracted to. Things were getting good.

at 378 parts per million, current CO2 levels are unprecedented in recent geological history. (The previous high, of 299 parts per million, was reached around 325,000 years ago). It is believed that the last time carbon dioxide levels were comparable to today’s was three and a half million years ago, during what is known as the mid-Pliocene warm period, and it is likely that they have not been much higher since the Eocene, some fifty million years ago. In the Eocene, crocodiles roamed Colorado and sea levels were nearly three hundred feet higher than they are today. A scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) put it to me—only half-jokingly—this way: “It’s true that we’ve had higher CO2 levels before. But, then, of course, we also had dinosaurs.

She closed her eyes. Tears fell from her eyelashes. Every last fiber in my body felt as if it were being twisted and wrung. I’d wrenched our relationship to the breaking point and watched it split apart. I know I made you suffer. I’ll never cut you off again. I spit out the words that were caught in my throat. She let out a laugh, and then, as if she’d finally been torn open, a cry of pain. To paint a picture of our embrace, I’d almost have to use her blood and guts.

Every inch of this man, every movement and word exuded his passion for the crocodilians he passed among. I couldn’t help but notice that he never tried to big-note himself. He was there to make sure his audience admired the crocs, not himself. I recognized his passion, because I felt some of it myself. I spoke the same way about cougars as this Australian zookeeper spoke about crocs. When I heard there would be a special guided tour of the Crocodile Environmental Park, I was first in line for a ticket. I had to hear more. This man was on fire with enthusiasm, and I felt I really connected with him, like I was meeting a kindred spirit. What was the young zookeeper’s name? Irwin. Steve Irwin.

It started at one thirty on a cold Tuesday morning in January when Martin Turner, Street performer and, in his own words, apprentice gigolo, tripped over a body in front of the West Portico of St. Paul's at Covent Garden. Martin, who was none too sober himself, at first thought the body was that of one of the many celebrants who had chosen the Piazza as a convenient outdoor toilet and dormitory. Being a seasoned Londoner, Martin gave the body the "London once-over" - a quick glance to determine whether this was a drunk, a crazy or a human being in distress. The fact that it was entirely possible for someone to be all three simultaneously is why good-Samaritanism in London is considered an extreme sport - like BASE jumping or crocodile wrestling. Martin, noting the good quality coat and shoes, had just pegged the body as a drunk when he noticed that it was in fact missing its head.

whenever two people kiss the world is born, a drop of light with guts of transparency the room like a fruit splits and begins to open or burst like a star among the silences and all laws now rat-gnawed and eaten away, barred windows of banks and penitentiaries, the bars of paper, and the barbed-wire fences, the stamps and the seals, the sharp prongs and the spurs, the one-note sermon of the bombs and wars, the gentle scorpion in his cap and gown, the tiger who is the president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty and the Red Cross, the pedagogical ass, and the crocodile set up as saviour, father of his country, the founder, the leader, the shark, the architect of the future of us all, the hog in uniform, and then that one, the favourite son of the Church who can be seen brushing his black teeth in holy water and taking evening courses in English and democracy, the invisible barriers, the mad and decaying masks that are used to separate us, man from man, and man from his own self they are thrown down for an enormous instant and we see darkly our own lost unity, how vulnerable it is to be women and men, the glory it is to be man and share our bread and share our sun and our death, the dark forgotten marvel of being alive;

On the left side of the balcony, at the rear just outside the open doorway through which I'm looking, I suddenly become aware of the presence of a figure. It is an imposing statue, about six feet high and apparently carved in one piece from some green stone - perhaps jade. The sculptor provided excellent detailing of fine robes, and a belt, and something - possibly a sword? - suspended from the belt. At first this stunning piece of sculpture seems just that - a harmless, inanimate statue. I'm curious to see more of it and move my point of view a little closer to get to look at its face. To my surprise, the statue is half animal, half human. It has the body of a powerful and well-muscled man but the head of a crocodile, like Sobek, the ancient Egyptian crocodile god. And now I suddenly realise it is alive - a living being, a supernatural guardian. At this moment its eyes swivel sideways and it is looking at me, taking note of me. The look is intelligent, appraising somehow sly, but yet not threatening. What is this living statue, this being of jade? The vision fades...

Steve and I would go our separate ways. He would leave Lakefield on Croc One and go directly to rendezvous with Philippe Cousteau for the filming of Ocean’s Deadliest. We tried to figure out how we could all be together for the shoot, but there just wasn’t enough room on the boat. Still, Steve came to me one morning while I was dressing Robert. “Why don’t you stay for two more days?” he said. “We could change your flight out. It would be worth it.” When I first met Steve, I made a deal with myself. Whenever Steve suggested a trip, activity, or project, I would go for it. I found it all too easy to come up with an excuse not to do something. “Oh, gee, Steve, I don’t feel like climbing that mountain, or fording that river,” I could have said. “I’m a bit tired, and it’s a bit cold, or it’s a bit hot and I’m a bit warm.” There always could be some reason. Instead I decided to be game for whatever Steve proposed. Inevitably, I found myself on the best adventures of my life. For some reason, this time I didn’t say yes. I fell silent. I thought about how it would work and the logistics of it all. A thousand concerns flitted through my mind. While I was mulling it over, I realized Steve had already walked off. It was the first time I hadn’t said, “Yeah, great, let’s go for it.” And I didn’t really know why. Steve drove us to the airstrip at the ranger station. One of the young rangers there immediately began to bend his ear about a wildlife issue. I took Robert off to pee on a bush before we had to get on the plane. It was just a tiny little prop plane and there would be no restroom until we got to Cairns. When we came back, all the general talk meant that there wasn’t much time left for us to say good-bye. Bindi pressed a note into Steve’s hand and said, “Don’t read this until we’re gone.” I gave Steve a big hug and a kiss. Then I kissed him again. I wanted to warn him to be careful about diving. It was my same old fear and discomfort with all his underwater adventures. A few days earlier, as Steve stepped off a dinghy, his boot had gotten tangled in a rope. “Watch out for that rope,” I said. He shot me a look that said, I’ve just caught forty-nine crocodiles in three weeks, and you’re thinking I’m going to fall over a rope? I laughed sheepishly. It seemed absurd to caution Steve about being careful. Steve was his usual enthusiastic self as we climbed into the plane. We knew we would see each other in less than two weeks. I would head back to the zoo, get some work done, and leave for Tasmania. Steve would do his filming trip. Then we would all be together again. We had arrived at a remarkable place in our relationship. Our trip to Lakefield had been one of the most special months of my entire life. The kids had a great time. We were all in the same place together, not only physically, but emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. We were all there.

Steve drove us to the airstrip at the ranger station. One of the young rangers there immediately began to bend his ear about a wildlife issue. I took Robert off to pee on a bush before we had to get on the plane. It was just a tiny little prop plane and there would be no restroom until we got to Cairns. When we came back, all the general talk meant that there wasn’t much time left for us to say good-bye. Bindi pressed a note into Steve’s hand and said, “Don’t read this until we’re gone.” I gave Steve a big hug and a kiss. Then I kissed him again. I wanted to warn him to be careful about diving. It was my same old fear and discomfort with all his underwater adventures. A few days earlier, as Steve stepped off a dinghy, his boot had gotten tangled in a rope. “Watch out for that rope,” I said. He shot me a look that said, I’ve just caught forty-nine crocodiles in three weeks, and you’re thinking I’m going to fall over a rope? I laughed sheepishly. It seemed absurd to caution Steve about being careful. Steve was his usual enthusiastic self as we climbed into the plane. We knew we would see each other in less than two weeks. I would head back to the zoo, get some work done, and leave for Tasmania. Steve would do his filming trip. Then we would all be together again. We had arrived at a remarkable place in our relationship. Our trip to Lakefield had been one of the most special months of my entire life. The kids had a great time. We were all in the same place together, not only physically, but emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. We were all there. The pilot fired up the plane. Robert had a seat belt on and couldn’t see out the window. I couldn’t lift him up without unbuckling him, so he wasn’t able to see his daddy waving good-bye. But Bindi had a clear view of Steve, who had parked his Ute just outside the gable markers and was standing on top of it, legs wide apart, a big smile on his face, waving his hands over his head. I could see Bindi’s note in one of his hands. He had read it and was acknowledging it to Bindi. She waved frantically out the window. As the plane picked up speed, we swept past him and then we were into the sky.

...while detachment was enough for me to withstand hatred, extricating myself from the jaws of suffering called for enough detachment to exercise cruelty.

Listening to her talk about movies was the greatest pleasure of all, not just because of her eloquence but because the only time she shed her self-consciousness and guardedness was when she was wrapped up in her feelings about a movie.

I am a woman who loves women. The tears I cry, they spring from a river and drain across my face like yolk.

Once your sexual frustration reaches a certain point, if you don't either fulfill or rid yourself of your desires, you're going to find yourself deep in the abyss of meaninglessness. And there's no easy way out. In fact, you'll cling even more desperately to the object of your fixation, and when you do, your desires will turn against themselves in full force.

We come from a long line of deviants throughout history, all with the same final destination in the celestial order: death. But not every death is a life fully realized, nor is there any guarantee that you'll make it to the age of ninety. Any history that says I can't live forever is bullshit. Since I was five and as far as I can remember, really, I've hated every breath that I've ever taken. But gradually I started to understand. Do you know what I hate the most? It's time. Heh. How can you defy time and space? What does heaven hold for those who do? Hey, we're the chosen ones!

My aching desires, born of a hunger for love, sent tremors through my badly starved body.

But some desires, once formed, are impossible to fulfil, so they become frustrations instead.

I didn't want to be alone, I was afraid no one would want me.

She’d ask me why I was sitting next to her, and I’d say because you’re smart. She’d also ask me why her. I’d say because you’re so beautiful. She said maybe you don’t know that I have nothing to offer you. I said doesn’t matter, other women don’t want me. She said you can’t handle me. I said let’s cross that bridge when we get there.

That guardedness was a by-product of my lifelong socialization, of other people labeling me and putting me in a box.

Wielding the ax of cruelty against life, against myself, against others. It’s the rule of animal instinct, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics—and the axis of all four. And the comma that punctuated being twenty-two.

A human being has only so much in them, and yet you must learn through experience, until you finally reach the maddening conclusion that the world wrote you off a long time ago, or accept the prison sentence that your crime is your existence. And the world keeps turning as if nothing had happened.

I knew there was no way I could protect her from the real world or from being yanked around by the tail. That said, I’d still step in and save her regardless. I was such a shitty human being, why not take advantage of her state of disgrace and kick her while she was down? No matter what kind of trouble she was in, I’d run over in an instant to toss a rope down and pull her back to safety. Now that I’d shown myself to be blindly at her beck and call, she was beaming again.

She had tied me up with wire and left me to die. But when all was said and done, she wanted me to die in her arms. So before entering my dreams every night, she yanked the wire tight to make sure I was still there.

I devoured all kinds of books for tortured souls. Started collecting issues of the independence movement’s weekly. Studied up on political game theory, an antidote to my spiritual reading. It made me feel like an outsider, which became my way of recharging. At the break of dawn, around six or seven, like a nocturnal creature afraid of the light, I’d finally lay my head—which by then was spilling over with thoughts—down onto the comforter. That’s how it went when things were good. Most of the time, however, I didn’t eat a single thing all night. Didn’t shower. Couldn’t get out of bed. Didn’t write in my journal or talk. Didn’t read a single page or register the sound of another human being. All day long, I’d cry myself sick into my pillow. Sleep was just another luxury. Didn’t want anyone around. People were useless to me. Didn’t need anyone. I started hurting myself and getting into all sorts of trouble.

No need to be silent. Are you sinking into some corner of your melancholy? In my heart, I called out to you.

Sometimes writing was like finding a parking spot: Just as I was about to give up, I managed to achieve a perfect fit, thanks to a bit of skillful maneuvering. Other times it was like examining food that had been left sitting out for so long that ants and cockroaches had gotten to it. On other occasions it was like a major year-end cleaning where I was forced to throw something away because I couldn’t find anywhere to put it. And still other times, it was like trading in a used car for a new one: I didn’t give it a second thought.

On how to love well: Instead of embracing a romantic ideal, you must confront the meaning of every great love that has shattered, shard by shard.

Besides, as they say, if the floodwaters are rushing straight toward you, what are you going to do to stop them? This was how she treated me, for no apparent reason.

She was a vine extending one slender, delicate branch toward my window, hoping I was the sky, not knowing that on the other side, there was no shade, and not much sunshine, either.

After I paid my admission fee, I saw that the reptile enclosures were kept perfectly clean--the snakes glistened. I kept rescued animals myself at home. I knew zoos, and I knew the variety of nightmares they can fall into. But I saw not a sign of external parasites on these animals, no old food rotting in the cages, no feces or shed skin left unattended. So I enjoyed myself. I toured around, learned about the snakes, and fed the kangaroos. It was a brilliant, sunlit day. “There will be a show at the crocodile enclosures in five minutes,” a voice announced on the PA system. “Five minutes.” That sounded good to me. I noticed the crocodiles before I noticed the man. There was a whole line of crocodilians: alligators, freshwater crocodiles, and one big saltie. Amazing, modern-day dinosaurs. I didn’t know much about them, but I knew that they had existed unchanged for millions of years. They were a message from our past, from the dawn of time, among the most ancient creatures on the planet. Then I saw the man. A tall, solid twentysomething (he appeared younger than he was, and had actually turned twenty-nine that February), dressed in a khaki shirt and shorts, barefoot, with blond flyaway hair underneath a big Akubra hat and a black-banded wristwatch on his left wrist. Even though he was big and muscular, there was something kind and approachable about him too. I stood among the fifteen or twenty other park visitors and listened to him talk. “They can live as long as or even longer than us,” he said, walking casually past the big saltwater croc’s pond. “They can hold their breath underwater for hours.” He approached the water’s edge with a piece of meat. The crocodile lunged out of the water and snapped the meat from his hand. “This male croc is territorial,” he explained, “and females become really aggressive when they lay eggs in a nest.” He knelt beside the croc that had just tried to nail him. “Crocodiles are such good mothers.” Every inch of this man, every movement and word exuded his passion for the crocodilians he passed among. I couldn’t help but notice that he never tried to big-note himself. He was there to make sure his audience admired the crocs, not himself. I recognized his passion, because I felt some of it myself. I spoke the same way about cougars as this Australian zookeeper spoke about crocs. When I heard there would be a special guided tour of the Crocodile Environmental Park, I was first in line for a ticket. I had to hear more. This man was on fire with enthusiasm, and I felt I really connected with him, like I was meeting a kindred spirit. What was the young zookeeper’s name? Irwin. Steve Irwin.

We turn right along and walk along the side of the Parade to look at a long-barrelled cannon about 30 yards away. Known as ‘the Turkish gun’, it was made in 1524, captured during the Egyptian campaign against Napoleon, and installed here in 1801. It is a splendid piece of artillery but achieved notoriety when it nearly became the largest assassination weapon in the world. A couple of years after the gun had been placed here, a man with the appropriate name of Captain Despard formed a conspiracy to assassinate George III while he was reviewing troops here. The cannon, loaded to its full capacity with grapeshot, was to let fly at the Royal coach as it trundled across the parade ground. The conspiracy was discovered in time, which was just as well because it would have blown the coach into a thousand pieces. Have a close look at it and note, on the carriage, the sly crocodile sneaking up on Britannia on the banks of the Nile.

Okay,” says Amy. “Production meeting number one. I’ll take notes.” Timothy can practically see Amy thinking that she will try to out-brisk Jane, maybe even out-no-nonsense her. “First item of business. We need fans in here,” says Jane. “On order,” says Amy frostily. “How many?” “Three. Three giant ones.” Jane sucks in her lower lip and says, “We might need four.” “They only had three.” “Well, there it is, then,” says Jane. She rises from the table. “So, we’ll mark out the stage here?” “I was thinking the opposite direction,” says Amy. “Get the width.” They both look at Timothy. He feels like he could step one of two ways: in one direction there is a ditch full of crocodiles and in the other a bucketful of snakes.

She shook her head, saying she didn’t want to talk about it. That meant her emotions were so precious that she didn’t want to ruin something by trying to articulate her feelings about it. Because I had moved on with my life, she offered me only the dregs of reconciliation, a cup of black coffee with no sugar, just cream on the side. I’d taken a sip of each, and I have to say, I preferred the coffee. The cream agreed with me about as much as she did.

All too soon I realized that I was an innately beautiful peacock and decided that I shouldn’t let myself go. However lazy, a peacock still ought to give its feathers a regular preening, and having been bestowed with such a magnificent set, I couldn’t help but seek the mainstream of society as a mirror. With that peacock swagger, I found it hard to resist indulging in a little strutting, but that’s how it went, and it was a fundamentally bad habit.

For a long time, my hidden shame had made me push everyone away. I'd rejected them before they could reject me. I ran away from close relationships even with people who loved me.

The power to construct oneself is destiny

Sabrina surely had one dead ex-boyfriend on her record. But did Martina have a deceased ex-boyfriend in her past too? Biggie’s words swirled in my head, mixing with the reality I faced: ’Sabrina reminding me of Lil Cease with her crocodile teeth, the warpath we rode apart and together, our laughter, our tears—my tears, their laughter—the player haters, the cocaine-snorting bitches, the cats with no dough, try to play me at my show, pull up and crack doors, short-change bitches with 5 to 20 euro notes not enough to powder their beak and nose. They still tickle me, Sabrina and them midgets cripple me, make me as hard as Martina's nipples be, I'm sour like a pickle be. You disobey the rules. Now the year’s new and I want my spot back; fake two, all the planes I flew, all the bitches I went through, mothersnuggers mad, cause I’m blue, bitches envy us, too many bitches in my club guard your dogs before I stick you for your re-up, maniacs put my name in raps, living by hugs from fake friends, your whole life you live sneaky, you burn when you creep me, you slipping try to break me, living by my love, hating me, they like to hustle backward, Acid rain, Cadillac Fleetwood look what you made me do, you made me and my girl Marine blue make you, open the safe too’ Della Reese had been on my mind since a while as if she wanted to tell me something a wisdom she wanted to share with me. The lyrics and the words the bad people played mindgames with me kept mixing up in my head. ’Maniacs put my name in raps; the club is dead without me they can hustle only backwards with all the beef against me. Blunt wraps and Dutchies, all the smoking accessories; they can't touch me. One third is on me. Martina's butt a public touchy-touchy. My enemies holding their cats shaky. Sabrina is dead or alive, her ghost is under me.

Mildred swallowed. (Nervous people tend to do a great deal of swallowing at key moments, so this is simply a brief note from the author reminding you, the reader, of this fact rather than leave you to exist under the misapprehension that I, the author, cannot think of another action to give my characters in order to show how difficult a time this is for them. I am quite sure they would rather swallow more than usual than give way to the ascending dread caused by having a bitey winged crocodile with chicken-legs nestled in a basket only a few feet away from them. Thank you.)

It's the rule of animal instinct, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics- and the axis of all four. And the comma that punctuated being twenty-two.

The college lifestyle is about becoming independent, with no one else around to force you to do anything. So there's this muck that hasn't been dealt with, and because all your arrangements are loose now, you have no one to hold on to, which means you get sucked into the vacuum cleaner and tossed around in it.

This journal from freshman year is the only thing I can give you. I’m not your everything anymore, so even though I want to love you now, all I can do is give you the old me, the one you once loved.

The crocodile had talked nonstop for three straight days without sleeping. Though I was dog-tired by then, I remembered its last words: “I gotta pee!

I’d taken everyone I loved and killed them off in my heart, one by one. I’d long been tending their graves—secretly visiting and mourning during the day, going out and erecting a cross on starry nights, lying inside and awaiting my own death on starless nights.