If controversy sells, why aren’t negative reviews trending? Negativity is shortsighted in direct light although shortcuts illuminate what we take for granted. Even as we allow ourselves to change indeterminately, our stubbornness refuses to tell us how.   Either we are prone to start what we can’t finish or we seek what has no end. In a free society, the present feels more motivated than the past. But name the motivation that inspires and then diagram for me how it has changed.

If we are our own worst editors, aren’t we our own worst translators from heart to mouth? The most useful tallies are those we feel no compulsion to make. “From scratch” does not denote tenderness although intimacy is what we do with our hands. Translating a body is hard when we keep changing shape.  If I know you this  well in the future, it will not be because we outdid the past. The line between unreasonable expectations and high hopes inspires paranoia. There’s no feeling of ready. There is only the weight of our undone head in our calm and withered hands.

We tell children to use their listening ears but instruct adults in public speaking. The worst approach cannot be the one that engages others. Supporting  others’ art with conviction is as  challenging  as we make it.  It’s  better  reading if we wouldn’t  have put  those  words  there.  Will  you respect  me more  if I take  your  advice or if I do something else  entirely?  Despite our gut, we are not bursting with  conviction.  If  I realize after  the fact  that  you misunderstood me, who will benefit  if I  correct  the  error?  What  others  think  of us matters but what everyone thinks never matters. The best advice  I have for you is in the form of a heart and is not advice at all.

Our  art  derives  from our  vulnerability  so of  course we want to be loved for it. Love is never impartial,  yet we strive  to assess  art on its own merit.  What  else do  we  mistake when  we  conflate the art with its maker? Admiration is a symptom of love but not the other way around. When heartbreak lasts a lifetime, is it compelling evidence someone loved? If we struggle to remember does it mean we value the experience any less? Of course we can’t miss limbs that were never there. But there are those people who do.

One thing we get more of than we remember in a lifetime is sleep. Never   mind dreams and what  they do for our sex lives. What happens when we sleep and what happens on the ocean floor are equivalent  mysteries. Space is  so intangible it might  as  well be an  optical  illusion.  One algorithm for what we like but don’t yet know is surprise.