jarringly genuine

i set my name to Paul Enis in the app because then the stickers they put on my grocery deliveries would say P. ENIS. it was like this for months, but now all the sudden they say PAUL E. instead

It is the phenomenon sometimes called “alienation from self.” In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question.

I love the hagiographies that are like "St. Christopher was 12 feet tall and frost giants helped him build an abbey out of the bones of a giant pig, which were gold"