Do you like asking yourself questions?

Hell no! I want to be asked questions. I want there to be a stream of people thrusting microphones in my face, snapping photographs, and asking me a thousand unanswerable questions which I simple deflect with a wave of my hand and a dazzling smile which reveal my perfect teeth as I keep walking, and pausing – occasionally – to sign autographs and wave and blow kisses. All to the music of Josh Ritter. So it’s kind of a swell but also poignant and about-to-fall-off-a-precipice feeling. Oh, and I’m also rocking some designer bling as I’m doing this. In high heels. Backward. George Clooney may be holding my arm too. Or Jonathan Rhys Meyers (since we share that bit about being expelled from school at the age of 16). I’d be heading off to a rally for some cool social-justice cause or to party hard, depending.

1979

The Listeners 

God was not responsible for what came to pass. People said it was karma, punishment in this life for past sins, fate. People said that no beauty was permitted in the world without some accompanying darkness to balance it out, and, surely, these children were beautiful. But what people said was unimportant; what befell them befell us all.