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Richard observed, although without noticing at first, that Lola was standing at her kitchen sink, staring vacantly out the window, and eating chocolate chip cookies from a large bag. At first, he barely noticed as she dipped into the bag and pulled a cookie out, but then, as he watched her successive movements, he gradually became aware that she was separating the chips from the host cookie, and only eating the chips.

“Lola, you’re just eating the chips. Why aren’t you eating the cookie?”

Lola… Continue

With the calculator on her I-phone, Jackie did a quick computation. Let’s see, the average life expectancy in the U.S, is 77.7 years. That equals 28,360.5 days of life--average life. I am 38 years old, and some change. So I’ve lived 13, 870 days, already—almost half a life. Of course, no matter how long I live, each day represents a larger percentage of the time I have left on earth. And like the doctor said, ‘We’re all going to die sometime…most of us just don’t know when or where.”

Jac… Continue

The approaching five-foot wave had initially looked as if it would pass by and break safely behind him, but unexpectedly, as if it had been hit by a sudden surge of backwash or riptide, had peaked, and broken directly in front of Buck. To avoid being caught inside the break zone, where he knew he would be pushed violently back toward shore, Buck immediately thrust the sharp nose of his surfboard down beneath the on-coming avalanche of roiling whitewater, as he frantically attempted to press the… Continue

A: I am Alexander the Great
D: I am Diogenes, the dog.
A: The dog?
D: I nuzzle the kind, bark at the greedy, and bite louts.
A: What can I do for you?
D: Stand out of my light.”

Diogenes, Seven Greeks: Translation by Guy Davenport., p175.

“I think you’ve had some challenges with men,” Jackie clinically observed to Lola, who sat staring, wide-eyed and incredulous at the pedestrian understatement of her therapist. “The stories you’ve told me since our first meeting, a few months ago, the stories about your father and about being a young woman in Hollywood, make me wonder if this is the best place for you, especially given your history?”

Is this, Lola wondered, what I am paying her 150 dollars an hour to tell me?

Lol… Continue