"Writing felt like it justified, barely, my existence -- this extremity of obscurity I had perversely chosen."

William Finnegan, Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life

The Pale Blue Dot

A couple days after the loss, my brother Patrick mentioned "The Pale Blue Dot". 

"That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there -- on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, that delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in this great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."

- Carl Sagan

1994

Catholic School Kids

"Evidently it took Catholic school to turn young kids into fearless, hardened apostates."

- William Finnegan, "Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life"

At 7:00 p.m. the main hatchway caved in, At 7:00 p.m. it grew dark it was then, He said "Fellas it's been good to know ya"

Just gonna stand there and watch me burn

But that's alright, because I like the way it hurts

Just gonna stand there and hear my cry

But that's alright, because I love the way you lie

I can't tell you what it really is

I can only tell you what it feels like

And right now there's a steel knife, in my windpipe

I can't breathe, but I still fight, while I can fight

As long as the wrong feels right, it's like I'm in flight

High off of love drunk from my hate

It's like I'm huffing paint and I love it the more that I suffer

\

IOWA

And I don't want you and I don't need you

Don't bother to resist, or I'll beat you

It's not your fault that you're always wrong

The weak ones are there to justify the strong

The beautiful people, the beautiful people

It's all relative to the size of your steeple

You can't see the forest for the trees

You can't smell your own shit on your knees

There's no time to discriminate

Hate every motherfucker

That's in your way

Hey you, what do you see?

Something beautiful, something free?

Hey you, are you trying to be mean?

If you live with apes man, it's hard to be clean

The worms will live in every host

It's hard to pick which one they eat the most

The horrible people, the horrible people

It's as anatomic as the size of your steeple

Capitalism has made it this way,

Old-fashioned fascism will take it away

There's no time to discriminate

Hate every motherfucker 

That's in your way

Marilyn Manson, "The Beautiful People"

Maryland

I want to live alone in the desert

I want to be like Georgia O'Keefe

I want to live on the Upper East Side

And never go down in the street

Spledid Isolation

I don't need no one

Splendid Isolation

Michael Jackson in Disneyland

Don't have to share it with nobody else

Lock the gates, Goofy, take my hand

And lead me through the World of Self

Splendid Isolation

I don't need no one

Splendid Isolation

Don't want to wake up with no one beside me

Don't want to take up with nobody new

Don't want nobody coming by without calling first

Don't want nothing to do with you

I'm putting tinfoil up on the windows

Lying down in the dark to dream

I don't want to see their faces

I don't want to hear them scream

Splendid Isolation 

I don't need no one

Splendid Isolation

Warren Zevon, "Splendid Isolation"

High School

"As graduation time drew near, the principal of Freehold High, a basically good guy with whom I had a pretty decent detente for most of my high school years, took it upon himself to suggest that to let me attend the ceremony looking like I did would be a discredit and disgrace to the class. He subtly hinted that perhaps someone should do something about it. That was it for me. I would not be the subject/victim of meatheaded vigilante retribution. On my Freehold Regional High School graduation day, I woke up at dawn. That morning, while the house was asleep, I got dressed, went down to the bus terminal and boarded the six a.m. Lincoln Transit Commuter straight to New York City. I disembarked at the Port Authority, grabbed the subway to Eighth Street and walked up the stairs into the early-June sunlight of Greenwich Village feeling free as a bird. My world. I was done. Let them have their little party."

- Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run