Last night’s film: Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton for the 38th time because it’s one of the best movies ever made: a microscopic collision between existential anxiety and end-game capitalism, a masterclass in dialogue, and the first three minutes might be my favorite opening scene in cinema—a perfect juxtaposition of cosmic horror soundtracking the ultramundane.

And I’m suddenly consumed with the overwhelming sensation that I’m covered with some sort of film. And it’s in my hair, my face. It’s like a glaze, like a coating. At first I thought, my God, I know what this is, this is some sort of amniotic, embryonic fluid. I’m drenched in afterbirth. I’ve bridged the chrysalis. I’ve been reborn. But then the traffic, this stampede, the cars , the trucks, the horns, the screaming and I’m thinking, no no no, reset, this is not rebirth. This is some kind of giddy illusion of renewal that happens in the final moment before death.