EXCERPT :

Sometimes things about myself strike me as funny that wouldn’t have struck me as funny when I was younger. But now I can be an object to my own self. I think about myself as if I was a history, and I try to put things down in writing. I have taken up smoking even though every scientist on the planet agrees it is unhealthy. It is one of the undisputed sins left. I don’t know why I’ve taken it up. Maybe I want to still be able to sin so I’ll know that salvation still counts for something. It calms my nerve as I think, anyway, when there’s nobody around me to offend.