The used bookstore in Minneapolis...

Most of what I've bought and subsequently "read" (my attention span's too fucked not to skim long paragraphs) was fiction—old favorites I’d lost along the way like Dostoevsky’s The Possessed , Will Self’s Grey Area and Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son. I also read a lot of specialty magazines—music, art, skateboarding, anything with a strong internal logic. I told Will that I was becoming obsessed with figuring out the way things work—I have this strange new desire to learn how to read architectural diagrams. “But then again, not really,” I told him over California rolls. “I don’t want to really go through the trouble of learning that shit.” All the same, I realize I’ve wasted a great deal of time studying ephemeral notions based on scattered opinions. I've picked up things here and there without actually concentrating on any of them in particular. Anything that is truly systematic takes years to master. There’s an overpowering depth to the layers of technicality found on the average, professional blueprint.

In the weeks after 9/11 I was struck dumb by the beauty of things that were manmade. I craved intricacy: I wore expensive lingerie under my baggy jeans, so that every time I squatted to take a piss I could lose myself in the meticulousness of the pornographic detail.