Status Updates From A Field Guide to Getting Lost

there is a voluptuous pleasure in all that sadness... is it because joy that comes from other people always risks sadness, because even when love doesn't fail, mortality enters in;... is it that such sadness is only the side effect of art that describes the depths of our lives, and to see that describes in all its potential for loneliness and pain is beautiful?

beauty is often spoken of as though it only stirs lust or admiration, but the most beautiful people are so in a way that makes them look like destiny or fate or meaning, the heroes of a remarkable story. desire for them is a desire for a noble destiny, and beauty can seem like a door to meaning as well as to pleasure. and yet such people are often nothing extraordinary except in their effect on others

that because a choice had been made other choices could be made