This is an example of a letter you could draft to LUIGI MANGIONE cataloging the relevant motifs in your own life.
D got accepted into MED SCHOOL while you remain slouched on a computer. At Hart Bar you keep telling people you are seventeen, implying D is an OLDER COUSIN who has taken you under his wing post your emancipation from your family which is sort of what it feels like, admittedly, when he loves you, and how you like love best.
C broke up with her boyfriend who is not her COUSIN, unless it’s hotter to imagine that he is. No, L is not her COUSIN but it is a man who is also named L and is also a COUSIN to somebody meaning related through half of the bloodline. Imagine half a line of blood. You should only snort half of the line of blood in case you start tweaking and scaring and alienating P, who you love and are sort of afraid of. So only do half of the line of blood and keep it discreet in case you overdose on love.
In Materialist MEDICINE in Literature with G you’re talking about the construction of the actual institution of SICKNESS. Like, if you have to take PILLS every day are you really CURED? If you cut your hand open and don’t go to the DOCTOR, did anything really happen?
E visited for her birthday. You went to Bossa Nova and scammed a Nigerian man of his drugs in order to totally shift the narrative for her birthday :).
R CUT her hand open on a pole and you were all covered in her BLOOD. Do you see the difference now between half a line of blood and the full line?
You and E have had this bit since high school where you meet strangers, bring up that you’re COUSINS on your dad’s side, then make out voraciously. You are sort of COUSINS with E, that’s what it feels like. Distant friends who jump back into being related once they’re together.
You don’t speak on the phone.
G assigns this article Medical nemesis by Ivan Illich. He thinks there are rules that decide how we will think about death. In the current day the rules are that death is all-consuming and must be dealt with as a problem, not as an evil. We can be back. Soon we’ll be back. But in “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” by Tolstoy, death is incomprehensible because Ivan has lived a good life. He does not structure his behavior around the looming threat of death. You do not have to if you’ve lived a good life.
In the last few pages someone says, to Ivan Ilyich, “Кончено!”, meaning, “It’s over!”. For some reason this is translated to “It is finished!”.
Is it over? Or has it just finished, finished as a point of completion? Something that is always going to happen or something that has the potential to be stopped? Understand this in terms of eviction. Do you get evicted in every lifetime, or can you pay off your Hasidic landlord?
These are noble rhetorical questions. You think maybe you can ask BRYAN JOHNSON. You want to know if he’s terrified of death because he feels like he doesn’t deserve it, except for in his worst moments, or if he’s terrified of death because he has to think about it every day. You know why you’re not terrified. You’d rather die than get evicted. You die even if you have plans with people you know. And you can always have a son to use as a blood-bag. You’d love this because he’d be born of your COUSIN-DAD-BROTHER-LOVER, D, and you’ve always wanted a way to keep him forever against his consent.
This is an example of a letter you could draft to LUIGI MANGIONE cataloging the relevant motifs in your own life.
You fuck with his whole thing, but how was killing a healthcare CEO ever going to be effective? He was too worried about dying anyways because he had too much control over dying. Imagine the satisfaction of killing someone who doesn’t think they can die. He should’ve killed CHRIS KEMPCZINSKI, the CEO of McDonalds: an actual perpetrator of death (SuperSize Me ;).
He should’ve killed YOU. Because you deserve it more.
If you imagine you’re fucking your COUSIN when you fuck your boyfriend there’s a new level of SURGICAL intensity. It’s like, there’s so much connection here I almost don’t know what to do with it. It’s like, if I fuck my COUSIN, I gain a level of one-uppance over the narrative. If I fuck my COUSIN, I have no worries about INCOMPATIBLE GENES; I know our family history of illness. If I fuck my COUSIN, clearly, I require some sort of operation in my retarded and disgusting BRAIN, so I finally have an excuse to go to the DOCTOR and get some SURGERY. Any SURGERY will do.
