Yes.

I love this thought, speaking as the child author of an unpublished how-to series on spying.

I think innocence is something that adults project upon children that's not really there. Children--in f you think back really what it was like to be a child and what it was like to know other children--children lie all the time. They have to lie. It's the only way they can do what they want to. They have no financial control. They have no control whatsoever. In order to go where they want to, do what they want to--`Oh, I'm just running down to Joshua's house.' Children do it all the time. And I think when adults become parents that a veil of forgetfulness sort of drips gently over them and I think they just forget how much children depend on lying and secrecy. Children love secret club houses. They love secrecy even when there's no need for secrecy.
-- Donna Tartt

Music: "Feeling Nostalgic" (Less Than Zero score by Thomas Newman)

Independence Day.

The passage below, scrabbled on the back of a flyer, was recently culled from my extensive archive. I decided to share it here because to me it's an embarrassingly perfect expression of pure self-pity, especially the kind you feel when you're a single twentysomething in New York in the 1990s.

I can remember whom this is about, but the details, as well as the feelings, are like one of those faded ad murals on the side of brick buildings, chipped away and barely legible. Like... I guess I cared about this at one point?

Still haven't totally conquered the self-pity reflex, and still don't have a good vantage point for the fireworks, but it's nice to come across stuff like this and recognize freedom from the b.s. of the past.

***

It's Independence Day, and appropriately, I have been ditched by friends, who migrated to Long Island, which in an odd reversal becomes the inside for a day while Manhattan is the outside. Realized that my window faces West instead of East, where the fireworks are, and without any rooftop access I'm able to discern, stayed inside alone and watched the reflection of the fireworks in the skyscrapers, listening and wishing the sound was a thunderstorm instead.

I don't feel independent at all. I feel shackled to this notion I had six weeks ago, when we were walking near his apartment one night and, inexplicably, fireworks began going off, so we watched from the corner. I looked forward to watching the "real" show later that summer with him and his friends, having someone to kiss, not having to wonder whether I'd be sitting alone in my apartment, thinking of him watching the same stupid show while kissing someone else.

Generally I don't really care much for the Fourth, anyway.

Music: "Game for Fools"