Gimme fiction

For a while tonight, I watched home videos from the early to mid 1990s that my parents got somebody to burn onto a DVD.

Unlike my sister, who was all ham, I carefully avoided acknowledging the camera, ever. I think this has been my Personal Moral Code of the Camera: it is your duty to ignore them. They are documentary devices.

But here's the thing, Aiken: 15 years later, watching all these disembodied memories, I enjoyed watching my sister lope around for the lens. And it didn't take long for me to become utterly bored by my somber, quiet self. Fifteen years out, it's not actually accuracy that's revealing. It's performance.

Darwinian socialism

The guy who sits next to me at work just stopped in for the first time after his son's birth, and looking at his familiar face I felt this sudden rush of warmth -- a desire to do favors for this friend and his family.

It's a gift from my ancestors, sowed in my heart: one, two, ten thousand moments of reciprocal kindness in a long, long line.