Page 71 of Bad Words

From: [email protected]

Sent: Dec 27, 12:55 PM

Re: Kavan Retrospective

While I read. They spring up from the rage and despair of the moment. It’s more organic that way.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Sent: Dec 27, 12:55 PM

Re: Kavan Retrospective

Rage! Rage?

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Sent: Dec 27, 12:57 PM

Re: Kavan Retrospective

Rage. As I said the other day, I have exactly one life. We should all feel outraged when the irreplaceable moments of our time on earth are misspent.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Sent: Dec 27, 1:02 PM Re: Kavan Retrospective

So, let me get this straight. You’re on a quest to optimize every instant of your life? To live every moment in pursuit of maximizing your utils? You don’t see the value in disappointment or partial success, even just as, like, threads in the fabric of the human experience?

I also have to say that you’re a lot more morbid than I thought. I might have to revise my short story.

Have you considered converting to a religion that believes in reincarnation?

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Sent: Dec 27, 1:09 PM

Re: Kavan Retrospective

If the combined powers of Victor Hugo and Marilynne Robinson couldn’t bring me to faith, Parker, I just don’t think the concept of death is going to cut it.

I admit I have a morbid streak, but I also believe that morbidity is just another word for realism. We’re all an inch from death at all times, and I don’t think it diminishes us to recognize that. Actually there’s something dignifying about the idea that, teetering on a precipice, we still reach for something sweet. Like the man in Tolstoy’s fable, on the tree, tasting honey above the dragon.

As to your accusations of optimization. Yes, I see the value of disappointment and partial success. But while we’re talking about the whole fabric of the human experience, I also see the value in anger and even some level of defensiveness, which remind you to value your own life and time and perspective, and not to prostrate yourself at other people’s altars.

He didn’t reply for a while. I prepared myself for a wall of text about my self-centeredness. Instead what arrived was this:

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]