It could only make you stronger

Mmm-nnnh. Mmmm-nnnh.

Expect the best of/from your collaborators. Give the best of yourself. Model what you want to see. Be them before they show up. Your tribe is out there, even if you hack away at it all alone for a long time.

I don't know or want to know where the drive crossed into being fueled by pain and chemicals more than just the drive, but he chased it and left the lab as much as he needed to.

Get your shit done at home and then get out there.

Your lips move, but I can't hear what you're saying

The sky is unbroken and opaque today, humidity knitting up around us. It feels far away from the world's obiter dicta.

I'm going to try to stay right here for the time being.

In dreams the world keeps going 'round and 'round

The 21st-century, vacuous, vacuuming, echo chamber isn't good for someone who is living in their mind a lot. There's too much information, sure, but it's what's unsaid that's worse, the impulses behind any pronouncement. The contextless void.

What we need is old-fashioned back-porch jawing and justifications, sipping on cheap wine coolers from around the corner. Those times are missed. People looking at people.

Whom can I run to?

Notre Dame de Paris is burning. It has survived more than 800 years of humankind's travails and mistakes and joys. But a basic element, fire, can pull its soaring spires to the ground after all of this time. Wood disappearing into fire, which happened long before the cathedral existed, and which reminds us that we are no match for natural elements of this earth.

Even our longest-lasting, carved-into-stone aspirations aren't.