I am reading a book I found in a used book store, Art & Fear. I have found in there some passages that have been life-altering. Sometimes someone says something you already know, but they present it in such an articulate and coherent way that it all comes together with power and focus that didn’t previously exist in the knowledge itself.

The other day I read something about perfection – namely, that artists who strive for perfection achieve paralysis. That there is no perfect in life. That art is about making something of the messy shit, and that process is in and of itself messy. I understood this concept in terms of community – namely, that I have pretty much completely withdrawn from society, because of this issue or that: lack of consciousness about Jews, women, Middle Easterners/Africans/Asians/Latin Americans, domestic violence, chronic illness, holistic healing, and fill-in-the-blank, plus lack of willingness to do the internal spiritual work demanded by Truth and Purity, to address all those matters and create the kind of world in which I want to live.

In short, nobody meets my standards. And that makes engaging with people some combination of exhausting and perpetually disappointing – in particular, after […]