At this point, you ought to know that this did not happen often. She herself was too picky, her picture was too “out there”, her description too artsy. And despite the fact that she lived in Brooklyn, she was, oddly, one of those girls. You know how it is when everyone is weird: in every society, there is a certain variant of weirdness that's fully accepted as the norm, and another one that, strangely, is not – God forbid someone write poetry, like hiking in the mountains, wear oversized men's jackets, then her girlfriends lose interest, and boys are less apt to cuddle or even just “play fight”. That morning, Irene changed her description:
I'd like to meet someone without strings attached, light and frivolous, someone who likes sex, but not the serious kind. Who will come close, but not too close, someone amazing enough to disappear when things get uncomfortable. (Described several years later by her expensive therapist as: impossible on the conscious level; and unspoken: who will accept that I don't accept relationships as a form of contact, since I am afraid of closeness and suffer from a fear of unspoken rejection.) Fernando, drinking his first espresso with a hard cock and a strong determination to find a girl for the night, didn't spend much time coming up with a reply. Indeed, all you need to know about Fernando is that he pushes every girl to the right. He doesn't have a preferred figure, hair color, size, nationality or age. He is refined, but not picky. After the date, Irene dreamed about a woman with five breasts. She awoke in the middle of the night, totally fascinated. No less than five!
The next day she thought about impermanence, about how a person, when entering adulthood, assumes that he is surrounded by (a) permanent companion(s), and her personal discovery that despite everything, the easiest thing to accept is impermanence. The assumption that what we have will always be available leads to the first serious nervous breakdowns. Her whole existence expressed a fear of boredom, shallowness and obviousness. Holding on too hard to rules and people terrified her. But because of her twisted childhood, she became something of a control freak, someone difficult to invite into one's life, someone who keeps a distance but imposes. Who is ready to give up her life for her image. The construct was fundamental. She amused herself by thinking about whom not to invite to her funeral (her ex-boyfriends' mothers, for instance). This penetrating insight led her to Tao, she understood that beauty doesn't exist without ugliness, good without bad, and this dualism satisfied her. It keeps you alive, reprimanding and rescuing at the same time.
Jenga engages your physical and psychological skills. Players alternately remove elements of a construction which consists of 54 blocks. Each removed element is placed at the very top of the tower, forming a much taller but also less stable construction. The word “jenga” comes from Swahili and means “to build”. Fifty million Jenga sets have been sold around the world, which makes for almost three billion blocks.
Dates tore her heart to pieces; she wanted poetry and bananas with Nutella in bed, but of course she knew – that wasn't what she asked for, that wasn't what she openly declared. Leave behind pairs of contradictions, dichotomies, become a paradox, have within you both wisdom and stupidity, ugliness and beauty. Put faith in your strong will and your ability to influence your surroundings, trust the energy emanating from you. Accept the duality of the material world, becoming at one with the Tao. She was falling apart like a Jenga construction (when you remove elements from the bottom and place them at the top, it doesn't matter how tall a tower you’ve built, you lose your balance).
A superstructure over a hole as a survival philosophy. After all, it’s scary to return to the very bottom to repair deficiencies. She wrote poems about the missing element – there, at the bottom – of love, acceptance, about a lack of caresses, a lack of cuddling, about the eternal need to be loved. Every morning, supporting her left breast with her hand, she massaged the vicinity of her heart with warm sesame oil. She felt instinctively that everything would collapse like a Jenga if the wrong element were removed. It was close, she was preparing, not to fall but to fall apart. Overflowing and fullness, like overfilling a full moon, which would burst like a bubble. Over-stuffing one’s stomach from nervous overeating, as opposed to the satisfying fullness after a tasty meal. Consummation of love in the arms of a lover as opposed to compulsive masturbation. Sweet artistic fulfillment as opposed to toxic, unfulfilled silence.
What is life in a void, is there still life in the space left after an element is removed?

Does an empty space not contain a trace of the missing element?
When cells die, what remains of them, what traces do they leave behind?
Traces of dying cells?
And finally, is the void part of what was?
She knew that nature copes with loss,
so she affirmed: everything is temporary.
You already know it has to fall apart. You feel instinctively that unmitigated despair is coming. A bitch is
coming, like winter, not caring whether we are ready.
(…)