Maybe taking seriously the ideas of our departed friends represents the ultimate expression of friendship, signaling the possibility of a eulogy that doesn’t simply focus attention back on the survivor and their grief.

Writing offered a way to live outside the present, skipping over its textures and slowness, converting the present into language, thinking about language rather than being present at all.

I’d revolted against its oozing softness. Now it was a sedative, the only music I could bear. Not so much a way of escaping the present as a way of tunneling deeper into its layers and textures for a few minutes. A séance.

I really hope you can read this. I don’t care if you can see through me, I wrote, confessing to a list of imperfections and insecurities. Just as long as you can see me.

I’d never been around someone with such a lust for life, an appreciation for its exultant highs as well as its darkest lows.

Somehow, he remains optimistic. There’s no other way to be. The only constant in this life, in this work, is the passage of time, and with it, change.

I distinguished myself by the ferociousness of my attachments; there was something unique about my fascination with the film, something Ken couldn’t possibly understand. I was proprietary about liking things.

But I was stridently noncommittal to them. I always left myself an out, an escape hatch in case someone offered me a new adventure, the adventure I thought I deserved. I looked forward to a time when I would be the finished article, my sense of the world innate and effortless, with no evidence that there had been any rough drafts.

We craved new contexts, initiating routines that might eventually feel second nature.