there's too many steps in Ulysses. too many decisions every single time you try to do something—to initiate a change in state or mode or whatever, just to make a new sheet or find an existing one or export or whatever—it just seems like an arbitrarily complicated spectacle of tapping and typing, and never being sure which of those you should or could be doing at any given moment. but whatever, that's not why i brought you here *why **did** you bring us here?* because i need to be alone and also i'm lonely because i'm afraid of money of change of people of life and also i still want to have an adventure i want to have a[nother] boy[girl]friend before i'm old and smell like poop. i'm afraid of making mind mistakes at one job, psych mistakes at another, and grave mistakes at the only job that really matters. did i mention i'm afraid? scared? frightened? a little bit hungry maybe? still subject to the same old self-referential clichés though, i s e e . realistic isn't always better of course you know she said. for instance the movies they always make everything so realistic real life's not like that i said i know what you mean. real life is scary it's hard to tell the difference between fantasy and science fiction. the movies:real life\::perfectcircle:sand dollar\::perfect line:horizon\::proscenium:backstage\::what you're supposed to feel:distant ache\::guilt:shame\:\:\:\:\:\:\::or is it the other way:around? but you was interested in her if for no other reason then because she wore those gauzy hippy skirts and smelled like sandalwood and had stretched-out calf tattoos of a longforgotten vintage. you think you may have seen her in key west one time, sucking on a key lime popsicle. you was like that was fun and she smiled, turned exactly one seventh past halfway to facing you, and said, yeah it was and then she laughed, that little river sound you'd come to love in the last however long it'd been since you first met her fifty-two minutes ago tomorrow. you suspected she was secretly doing something to mess with your equilibrium, and, giddy with that feeling, you let one tiny tiny piece of your guard down. it was enough. shit got crazy *really* fast. EVERYBODY ALWAYS TALKS BIG BUT NOBODY KNOWS SHIT. THE END. (2016)