The olfactory bulb is a gift and a curse.
I can't stop sniffing Max's ass. It's something safe, familiar. I just want to sit him over my face and fall asleep, pretend I'm somewhere else instead of listening to the loud whirring of the bathroom ventilator and Rachael's shower going splishy-splashy.
I made the shirt myself, out of an old square piece of cloth I found in my mother's linen closet. I think it gives him character; otherwise, he would just be plain like everybody else. The buttons are from an old plastic container that once held a St. Louis microwavable dinner. Now look where they are. I used to line those buttons up in rows and count them, pretend they were jewels, string them up into necklaces. The foolish longings of childhood, I guess. Or just the life of an only child.
I like these quotes.
"Living is an illness to which sleep provides relief every sixteen hours. It's a palliative. The remedy is death."
Nicholas-Sébastien Chamfort
"It's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved, when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love."
Graham Greene - The End of the Affair
I miss reading that Graham Greene novel during the summer when I was working in my lab and had nothing better to do. It made me cry in the middle of the day. I don't know if Cheng heard me sniffing or not, but it doesn't matter. People who cry from reading books or watching movies are silly, just the way children are silly, old people are demented, and everything rational is supposed to be right.