This morning I woke unable to smile. Have you ever sneered at a cappuccino? I didn't even get the chance today, because I spilled the damn thing moments after frothing the milk, breaking the handle off of my favorite cup.

I am worn out
with the effort of trying to love people
and not succeeding.
- D.H. Lawrence

The fact that it is a beautiful day has not helped; that I rode my bike to work, on the path that runs through the tranquil farms with their grazing cows... no help. Talking to the SWANK editor, whose personality must have putrified when he began writing blockbuster screenplays, only agitates my seething disgust.

Woe, woe to the World!
For we're all self-consciously aware of ourselves
yet not sufficiently conscious to be able to forget ourselves
and be whimsically at home in ourselves
So everybody makes an assertion of himself
and every self-assertion clashes on every other.
- D.H. Lawrence

I tune out Mr. SWANK and look at the screen. How sad & pathetic; to recognize the appearance of a friend, only as a series of numbers - XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX, to never hear a voice or see a face, and all the while, to convince yourself that these digits are better than nothing at all, and actually feel happy. I willingly undermine my own sense of humanity. I hate the 21st century, where my own Brother exists only as a monthly hypertext transmission - a weak signal from deep space.

1:30...Time for lunch... mmmm... tastes like Surreal...

The taste for quotations (and for the juxtaposition of incongruous quotations) is a Surrealist taste.
- Susan Sontag

I smile after lunch. Walking back to work, I'm stopped by a cheery old man out for a brisk, joyful walk around the village green. He's 82 years old. In between his robust and youthful breaths(or is he having a heart attack?), he commends me on the fact that I'm outside walking like him; enjoying life. His energy level exceeds mine. We talk for ten great minutes about when they dug the Reservoir. Wonderful...