Exhalation: Stories

It seemed to me that a perfect memory couldn’t be a narrative any more than unedited security-cam footage could be a feature film.

People used to think homosexuality, BDSM, and polyamory were all symptoms of psychological problems, but there’s nothing intrinsic about those activities that’s incompatible with a loving relationship. The problem was having one’s desires stigmatized by society.

Though I am long dead as you read this, explorer, I offer to you a valediction. Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same.

text doesn’t fascinate them the way it does human children,

Brahman Hindus believe that by reciting mantras, they are strengthening the building blocks of reality.

past and future are the same, and we cannot change either, only know them more fully. My journey to the past had changed nothing, but what I had learned had changed everything, and I understood that it could not have been otherwise. If our lives are tales that Allah tells, then we are the audience as well as the players, and it is by living these t

Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same.

Each time you do something generous, you’re shaping yourself into someone who’s more likely to be generous next time, and that matters.

Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough.