It Devours! (Welcome to Night Vale, #2)

by Joseph Fink

Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.

There are moments in life in which it is made clear to us how vastly we have misunderstood.

It was neither particularly hip nor culinarily groundbreaking, but it used enough of the terms and techniques to make everyone feel gratifyingly annoyed as they tried to just order some goddamn food.

Darryl was likable. But there is a difference between likable and good. In many ways, Nilanjana felt like one of the most important parts of growing up, and of approaching the world as an adult, was understanding the difference between likable and good, and recognizing that one often had no effect on the other.

A story never stands on its own, but exists in the context of the storyteller.

Saying a moment is awkward has never made an awkward moment better, but it’s a tactic that humans keep trying over and over.

The weather report was Sturgill Simpson’s song “Turtles All the Way Down,” which was a popular cover of the Canadian national anthem.

Defensiveness is natural, protective. The body’s number one objective is to preserve itself. Being told that your actions are bad would seem a threat to your well-being, harming your reputation, your self-esteem, leaving you vulnerable to retaliation, possibly losing your job, which is your livelihood, which is what keeps you sheltered and fed and alive. In the quick moment of a single piece of negative feedback, however catastrophic, the subconscious mind processes all of that far below the surface. It doesn’t make these proceedings transparent to the conscious mind. It doesn’t speak to itself in any kind of human language with constructed arguments for and against. There is no Robert’s Rules of Order in the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is ruled by neurons and synapses and the deep, conservative demands of instinct.

Therapists will say that the root of much human anger is guilt, that what makes a person most angry in another person is a reflection of their own recognizable shortcomings.

They did what all scientists do when following proper scientific method: (1) hypothesis; (2) argument; (3) fight; (4) cry; (5) hug.

“But this rebuilding stuff. It’s given me meaning. Or not me. It’s given the church meaning for me. Our god is dead, but lots of gods are dead. It doesn’t make them . . . you know, less. What matters is the people who are alive and there with me, working toward a common cause, following a common set of values. Stephanie and Jamillah. They still believe. I don’t think I believe anymore. But I also don’t think I have to. Religion can be something you do, not something you believe. And that can have just as much meaning.”