Thank goodness people exude body heat and are capable of making so many different kinds of faces, otherwise the nullity residing where their souls should be would be alarmingly apparent at all times. My childish theory is that our capacity for such expressive facial nuance evolved for just this reason. It was crucial for the survival of a self-conscious species, a necessary mask on the face of harrowing blankness. People may be grinning mannequins but no one except for network television executives wants to be reminded of it every single second. Rather than feel depressed about this I'm going to turn it to my advantage somehow. One way is to realize that such a state of affairs sort of democratizes my thoughts, other people aren't all that special, they're just fragments of my perception like all the other fragments, they have no special status above the force of my imagination or the burblings of my unconscious. I could write myself a new history and if I lived with it enough it would probably feel more authentic than my "real" one. Anyway who's to say which is the real history? Things happen or don't happen for mostly no reason, or no recoverable reason, and people then remember them however they want, it's all pretty sketchy from the get-go. So I'm going to embark on a great revisionist narrative, where everyone is fascinating and unique, because that's so much better than this.