July 13, 2022:

"They're so formal."

Well — exactly. They're experiments in form, where frequently content is secondary, and often absent.

By that time, he'd learned to tune her out. Her verbal aggression had been so extreme, and so seemingly random; she'd broken so many promises; she'd lied and manipulated and cheated so often. She'd hurt him so many times with her barbed, cutting, vicious, words. This was just another, so that it rolled off him without damage, without real contact.