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“It was snowing and you were kind of beautiful
We were in the city and every time I looked up
Someone was leaning out a window, staring at me

I could tell you liked me a lot or maybe even loved me
But you kept walking at this strange speed
You kept going in angles and it was confusing me

I think maybe you were thinking that you’d make me disappear
By walking at strange speeds and in a strange, curvy way
But how would that cause me to vanish from the planet Earth?

And that hurts
Why did you want me gone?
That hurts
Why?
Why?
I don’t know
Some things can’t be explained, I guess
The sky, for example, was green that night”

- That Night With The Green Sky

“We will drink beer and look at Facebook and write poetry about llamas and make drunken YouTube videos of us walking through a snowstorm at night in a gated community in Massachusetts. We will shower separately and meet in bed. You will turn off the light and I will sit on the bed and a car will pass on the street and its headlights through the window will briefly illuminate your left eyebrow and then your entire face as you walk toward me. The next day you will work on a novel about a lonely woman in New York City. I will work on a novel about depressed movie stars who don’t read books or look at blogs or have pets. We will meet in the living room at 3:30PM and eat watermelon by the window and watch small children walk home from school. We will write poetry about planetariums and outdoor recess and drink iced coffee and lay on the carpeted floor listening to acoustic guitar music by sad women in their late-20s. We will drive to a new Japanese restaurant across the street from a Wal-Mart shopping plaza and it will be very dark inside and we will sit side-by-side in a corner booth and hold hands under the table. We will eat edamame and drink green tea. We will stay more than two hours and our waitress will watch us from the distance and we will whisper illogical phrases to each other and nod with serious facial expressions and hold each other and look at the rest of the restaurant with wide and calm and discerning eyes while thinking about the future and death and the next day and boredom. After dinner we will drive around listening to emotional guitar music from the mid-90s and you will rest your head on my shoulder and I will pet your hair and think about crying and you will look at the speedometer and think about your childhood. In a 24-hour grocery store at 2:30 a.m. we will walk through the produce section and it will be very bright and I will say that I feel insane and drunk and you will pick up a muffin and ask me how many calories I think it is and I will say 860 and you will say 1120 and I will slap it out of your hand and while you are distracted I will kiss your mouth and then step back and look at your face. You will ask what I see and I will say your name and grin and hold your hand and we will walk through each aisle of the grocery store without talking. In the parking lot you will let go of my hand and run to the car and stare at me as I walk toward you with a neutral facial expression. In bed at 5:30 a.m. we will talk about organic gardening and small children and the future and Japan and Iceland and happy-sounding music with sad lyrics. When sunlight begins to brighten the room you will roll over and say you feel sleepy. I will pet your shoulder and hold you a little with my hand on your stomach. I will wonder if you are asleep and think about my friend in elementary school who I played Zelda with on regular Nintendo and what I would like the order of songs to be if I recorded a 5-song EP of sad songs with acoustic guitar and a muted drumset and a violin that sounded like it was being played in another room. ”

— We Will Drink Our Coffee And Complete Our Novels And Lay In Sunlight And Sit In Darkness  - By Tao Lin

“There was an enjoyment to being alive, he felt, that because of an underlying meaninglessness–like how a person alone for too long cannot feel comfortable when with others; cannot neglect that underlying the feeling of belongingness is the certainty, really, of loneliness, and nothingness, and so experiences life in that hurried, worthless way one experiences a mistake–he could no longer get at.”

—Tao Lin, Eeeee Eee Eeee

“Though if love was an animal, it would probably be the Loch Ness Monster. If it didn’t exist, that didn’t matter. People made models of it, put it in the water, and took photos. The hoax of it was good enough. The idea of it. Though some people feared it, wished it would just go away, had their lives insured against being eaten alive by it.”

—Tao Lin, Bed

“in a hospital the painkillers help your mood at night you feel like a five year old i don’t want to be in love or win the national book award i say ‘just let me live in a hospital for free with a lung problem’ you say ‘be careful what you wish for’ i say ‘um, why should i be careful what i wish for if i’ll be happy if i get what i want?’ you say ‘it’s hard to tell if you’re being sarcastic’ i say ‘a conversation like this would never happen in a hospital'”

—if i get hit a little by a truck tonight i’m okay with that by Tao Lin

“seen from a great enough distance i cannot be seen i feel this as an extremely distinct sensation of feeling like shit; the effect of small children is that they use declarative sentences and then look at your face with an expression that says, 'you will never do enough for the people you love'; i can feel the universe expanding and it feels like no one is trying hard enough the effect of this is an extremely shitty sensation of being the only person alive; i have been alone for a very long time it will take an extreme person to make me feel less alone the effect of being alone for a very long time is that i have been thinking very hard and learning about      existence, mortality loneliness, people, society and love; i am afriad that i am not learning fast enough; i can feel the universe      expanding and it feels like no one has ever tried hard enough; when i cried in      your room it was the effect of an extremely distinct sensation that 'i am the      only person alive,' 'i have not learned enough,' and 'i can feel the universe expanding and making things be further apart and it feels like a declarative sentence whose message is that we must try harder'”

—Tao Lin, “i will learn how to love a person and then i will teach you and then we will know”

“...if art is anything, then it is, to me, that which is created in the attempted absence of illusions, that which doesn’t instruct because its creator while creating it doesn’t know what’s good or bad, only that he/she wants to convey something.”

—Tao Lin, “Does the Novel Have a Future? The Answer Is In This Essay!”

“seen from a great enough distance i cannot be seen i feel this as an extremely distinct sensation of feeling like shit; the effect of small children is that they use declarative sentences and then look at your face with an expression that says, ‘you will never do enough for the people you love’; i can feel the universe expanding and it feels like no one is trying hard enough the effect of this is an extremely shitty sensation of being the only person alive; i have been alone for a very long time it will take an extreme person to make me feel less alone the effect of being alone for a very long time is that i have been thinking very hard and learning about mortality, loneliness, people, society, and love; i am afraid that i am not learning fast enough; i can feel the universe expanding and it feels like no one has ever tried hard enough; when i cried in your room it was the effect of an extremely distinct sensation that ‘i am the only person alive,’ ‘i have not learned enough,’ and ‘i can feel the universe expanding and making things be further apart and it feels like a declarative sentence whose message is that we must try harder’”

—Tao Lin — “i will learn how to love a person and then i will teach you and then we will know” from Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

“I think that scene is “touching” to me because—by seeming to have no purpose except to non-rhetorically relate what seems, to me, like a memory—it promotes, or is evidence, to me, that a single specific experience that doesn’t cost anything, and has no effect on anyone that isn’t involved, and that doesn’t have to be known by anyone else can be “worth more” to a person than years of comfort or love or accomplishment or millions of dollars or the respect and admiration of thousands. That a single person, or two people, using only themselves and each other, can easily create an intense, unrecorded, unshared memory that is more emotional, memorable, and affecting than winning the lottery or getting a masters degree or even “falling in love,” maybe, seems “beautiful” and exciting and affecting to me. I think I’ve had experiences like this even when alone, and even when feeling conventionally “negative” feelings, like being very lonely or feeling extremely desperate. These moments—rather than “accomplishments” or other hierarchal activities, or even some form of long-lasting comfort or calmness, or something—seem to be what I “want” most, if I want anything, in life, based on what I know currently. When I’m aware of this, and believe it, to a certain degree, I feel calm, I think. ”

—tao lin on almost transparent blue
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