Pretty Things

by Janelle Brown

if this is a church then social media is their scripture; and that tiny screen is how they deify themselves.

houses have character of their own; their own emotional palette that can be discerned in quiet moments. The way they stir and settle, tick and groan, the echoes that give away the secrets they contain.

It is a house that is empty even when it is full.

This is what the Internet has given my generation: the ability to play God.

Apparently if you don’t like to participate in things you must be mentally ill.”

You need me to be the monster so that you can position yourself in opposition to me and feel superior. Your ego requires me.

I’ve learned over the years to reserve judgment about what goes on underneath the surface of other human beings.

Spend enough time with any bestselling biography and you’ll come to the conclusion that greatness is practically guaranteed if you just do something reckless and wild.

She wasn’t quite rich, but on Instagram you’d never know the difference.

touching familiar surfaces with the lingering fingers of impending loss.

On social media it’s all or nothing: lavish praise or appalled outrage; sycophants or trolls.

Caption-and-comment culture in all its brevity leaves out the middle ground, where most of life is found.

The house is imposing in a way that no modernist goliath could ever be. It feels alive, like it has a heartbeat of its own, secrets mortared in with the stones.

Moral high ground is a pleasant place to perch, even if the view turns out to be rather limited in scope.

it’s much harder to judge when someone is in your face, human in their vulnerability.

Why are we fighting our parents’ battles as if they are our own?

We all build our own delusions and then live inside them, constructing walls to conveniently hide the things we don’t want to see.

Perspective is, by nature, subjective. It’s impossible to climb inside someone else’s head, despite your best—or worst—intentions.