Mosquitoland

by David Arnold

I am a collection of oddities, a circus of neurons and electrons: my heart is the ringmaster, my soul is the trapeze artist, and the world is my audience. It sounds strange because it is, and it is, because I am strange.

I swear, the longer I live, the less things make sense.”

I wish wishing were enough, but it’s not.

“Not dead. Not abducted. (Though aliens are, as always, welcome.) You’ll hear from me when you hear from me.”

Help is help to anyone, Mary. Even if they don’t know they’re asking for it.”

“Have a vision, Mary, unclouded by fear.”

When you were born, you cried while the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries while you rejoice. Funny, as a child, I never knew whether to laugh or cry when Mom said that. But now I know the truth. You can laugh and cry, Iz. Because they’re basically the same thing.

easily avoidable buffoonery.

Add this to my list of clap backs.

You’d be surprised what I believe these days.

all my favorite movies have one thing in common: a singular moment in which you can feel the director telling his character’s story as well as his own. It is beautiful, poignant, and appallingly rare.

there’s nothing I hate more than a predictable ending.

I need to cheer the hell up. I should do whatever happy people do when they’re being happy. I try whistling.

I’m no longer listening. I am no longer anything at all.

there really is no kind of success like survival

I didn’t know her all that well, not really. I didn’t know her favorite color or movie, or what kind of music she liked, or if she preferred lakes to oceans. I didn’t even know her last name. But maybe those aren’t the things that channel love. Maybe the true conduit is more elusive than that. Maybe.

it occurs to me again how often laughter accompanies tears.

heroes are not without blemish, villains not without virtue.

“Life is more fictional than fiction.”

Life can be a real son of a bitch sometimes, bringing things back around long after you’ve said good-bye.

Mom used to say you could tell a lot by the way a person treats the innocent,

I cry because I love. For some reason, I always have.

It’s an odd feeling, being chagrinned by your own generation. Long ago, I traded my pie-in-the-sky idealism—as it relates to what people are like and what they are interested in—for a more realistic worldview. It all starts in middle school. Friends with interesting quirks, like double-jointed thumbs, or overactive gastrointestinal reactions to Cheez Whiz, suddenly strive to hide the very things that make them interesting. Before you know it, you’re in high school, wondering if you’re the only one who actually read Brave New World, rather than its summary on Wikipedia. Or you’re sitting in the cafeteria, pondering the complexities of the latest Christopher Nolan film while the nearest table of cheerleaders discusses whatever reality TV show is popular that week, then argues over who gives the most efficient blow job. I used to remind myself that it was only high school. Surely, the real world would be different. But I’m beginning to wonder if the whole damn planet hasn’t been Wikipedia’d.