• My New Year's resolution is to believe that no obstacle is too great to get your tongue frozen to it and yelled at by the national guard.

    This Halloween I'm going as a normal human being. Because, like ghosts and goblins, they could be truly terrifying if they existed.

    Staple guns: because duct tape can't make that 'kaCHUNK' noise.

    You met me at a very strange time in my life.

    It's funny how one summer can change everything. It must be something about the heat and smell of the chlorine, fresh-cut grass and honeysuckle, asphalt sizzling after late-day thunderstorms, the steam rising while everything drips around it. Something about long, lazy days, and whirring air conditioners and bright plastic flip flops from the drugstore thwacking down the street. Something about fall being so close, another year, another Christmas, another beginning. So much in one summer, stirring up like the storms that crest at the end of each day, blowing out all the heat and dirt to leave everything gasping and cool. Everyone can reach back to one summer and lay a finger to it, finding that exact point when everything changed.

    Only because it's still so raw and real. Soon I'll just be a series of images that sometimes flash through your mind, when you least expect it. And after that, only a few will stay. Then, one. A memory of a memory.

    If it makes you laugh, if it makes you cry, if it rips out your heart, that's a good picture.

    As we grow up, we learn that even the one person that wasn't supposed to ever let us down, probably will. You'll have your heart broken and you'll break others' hearts. You'll fight with your best friend or maybe even fall in love with them, and you'll cry because time is flying by. So take too many pictures, laugh too much, forgive freely, and love like you've never been hurt. Life comes with no guarantees, no time outs, no second chances. You just have to live life to the fullest, tell someone they mean something to you and tell someone off, speak out, dance in the pouring rain, hold someone's hand, comfort a friend, fall asleep watching the sun come up, stay up, be a flirt, and smile until your face hurts. Don't be afriad to take chances or fall in love and most of all, live in the moment because every second you spend angry or upset is a second of happiness you can never get back.

    My heart stopped. It just stopped beating. And for the first time in my life, I had that feeling. You know, like the world is moving all around you, all beneath you, all inside you, and you're floating. Floating in midair. And the only thing keeping you from drifting away is the other person's eyes.

    The saddest people I've ever met in life are the ones who don't care deeply about anything at all. Passion and satisfaction go hand-in-hand, and without them, any happiness is only temporary, because there's nothing to make it last.

    The way to a man's heart is through his superior vena cava.

    Sure, hit a deer with your car and it's an accident, but hit a hitchhiker and all of a sudden it's "manslaughter."

    It's Halloween. Time for the newborns to be dressed as some form of produce.

    Some days are good, some days are bad, and some you can't tell until you check the TV listings.

    Springtime makes the world seem so full of possibility. Like, it's quite possible I'll kill those squirrels on my porch.

    "I'm not a fighter! I'm a pacifist!"
    "Well, I'm an ANGRYFIST!"

    No...Elderly android...We "meatmen" cannot consume your machine food.

    Naruto. Yeah, it's a cartoon. It's also a video game, a comic book, and possibly a trading card game, diet soft drink and fuel injector/carburetor cleaner.

    OMG PIXELS CLICK CLICK CREATIVE FUNFUN CLICKETY CLICK INSTANT GRATIFICATION GRADIENTS ALL UP IN YOUR BUSINESS PIXELY PIXEL-PANTS DROP SHADOW FUNTIME WEEEEEE!

    I've always been able to identify a cheese by its smell, texture, taste and packaging.

    I kind of have a love/hate relationship with pie, except without the hate.

    On Halloween, if you hear a creepy continual scratching at the window, it's probably just a branch. Zombies use them to reach the windows.

    There is a special place in heaven for the inventor of squirty cheese.

    That which does not kill me probably knows where I live and is biding its time.

    A dog is a friend who would eat you if you stopped feeding him.

    A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave. A soul mate's purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, and make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life.

    It's when I'm standing six feet away from you and not being able to find the words to tell you how much I love you and how much I miss you that I want to just scream to the whole room that I'm still in love with you. It's when I'm sitting alone with the phone in my hand dialing your number and hanging up that I would trade a thousand tomorrows for just one yesterday. Then I could just call you to tell you goodnight. It's when I am really sad about something and need someone to talk to that I realize you're then only one who really knew me at all. It's when I cry myself to sleep at night and it hits me how much I would give to hold you at that very moment. It's when I think about you that I realize no one else in the world is meant for me.

    I am not confident. I know I am smart, but not in the ways that count. I read people much better than books but I never have the words to explain my findings. I'm only as funny as I feel. And I do not think I'm pretty. I sometimes walk with my head down. My posture is terrible. I think horrible things about people and I let my emotions get the best of me. I'm really not as nice as I'd like to be, or as innocent as you'd think I am. I am a perfectionist. I'm a contradiction to everything I want to stand for. I'm a big dreamer with little motivation. I am really no good at all, on my own. But I am analytical with myself. And I don't understand how anyone could ever be cocky or proud when they are aware of all the disgusting things that they think and do, but no one knows. We're all broken enough to be humble.

    We're all walking around with these glossy eyes. "I'm just tired," we say. But you know what? It's bullshit. Yes, we are tired, but it's not all from lack of sleep. We are tired of waking up with nothing to look forward to, tired of going to bed exhausted after doing a million things we find no enjoyment in doing. We're tired of this void, this emptiness that looms over us even though our days are packed. We're tired of the loneliness that presses down on us even though we're surround by dozens of people. So why can't we just say it? Humans are so afraid to look in to each others eyes and say "I am unhappy, I am broken, I am hopeless and fallible." We've conditioned to associate pain with weakness, sadness with coldness, loneliness with unworthiness, difference with disease, as if these feelings are contagious, as if ambivalence is something not to be felt but to be feared. Well, I say screw all of that. Screw forced smiles and polite handshakes and I'm fine, thank yous. Screw the fear of crying in a public place, screw the fake chipper voice, screw the lies we spit out to cover up our problems. We are humans. We are menat to feel. To feel everything and to feel it all openly. We are not metal- we are flesh and bone. Our boiled blood courses through our cold, clammy hands. We are intricate and beautiful and we should never hide our human parts, because if we do, then what's left to show?

    And so, I wait because you have already left and my work here is done. I wait and wonder how my skin feels like it's made of love letters written a hundred years too soon (too late). I wonder at the mystery of life and how much of it can possibly remain. I wonder at pain and hurt and love and time and how much of each I held. I wonder at how I cannot remember anything in my life before I met you. I wonder at the tiniest of touches and try, desperately, to keep their memories alive. I wonder at loneliness. I wonder at how long it'll be, before I see you again. I wait. And I wonder.

    Here's to the nights that turned into the mornings, the friends that turned into family, the dreams that turned into reality, and the likes that turned into love.

    Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky is by no means a waste of time.

    It wasn't his warm breath in my ear, or his dark hair tickling my face, or his cold hand pulling at my arm, pulling me to his whisper almost desperately. No, it was like the thing itself, the three words walking into my brain like they owned the place, changing everything.

    You can never tell what people are thinking and feeling unless they tell you, and usually they lie. You ask them 'What's wrong?' and they say 'Nothing." You accept this because it's easier than digging for the truth. People smile when they want to cry, they laugh when they want to scream and shout. They pretend like nothing is wrong because they don't want to face the truth. Things aren't always rainbows and butterflies, sometimes you gotta scream and cry your anger and sadness to the world, because you can only hold it in for so long before something in you snaps. So when you want to cry, cry. When you want to scream, scream. Don't hide behind fake smiles, It's okay not to be alright.

    The most terrifying face about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death...our existence can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

    You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won't tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you've done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you're tired. You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and you're trying not to tell him that you love him, and you're trying to choke down the feeling, and you're trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you've discovered something that you didn't even have a name for.

    I miss you when something really good happens, because you are the one I want to share it with. I miss you when something is troubling me, because you are the one who understands me so well. I miss you when I laugh and cry because I know that you are the one that makes my laughter grow and my tears disappear. I miss you all the time, but I miss you most when I lay awake at night and think of all the wonderful times we spent with each other; for those were some of the best times of my life.

    I think everyone has a certain part of their lives where they truly wish they could freeze time. Whether it was three years ago, today, or still to come, whether it was just a moment, a whole day, or a whole summer. Everyone has a time in their life where they wish everything would just stop. The world would stop turning and people would stop changing because to them, at that time, everything was perfect.

    Right now, there are people all over the world who are just like you. They're lonely. They're missing somebody. They're in love with someone they probably shouldn't be in love with. They have secrets you wouldn't believe. They wish and they dream and they hope, and they look out the window whenever they're in the car or on a bus or a train and they watch the people on the streets and wonder what they've been through. They wonder if there are people out there like them. They're like you, and you could tell them everything and they would understand. And right now, they're sitting here reading these words, and I'm writing this for you so you don't feel alone anymore.

    You know, there's a place we all inhabit, but we don't much think about it, we're scarcely conscious of it, and it lasts for less than a minute a day. It's in the morning, for most of us. It's that time, those few seconds when we're coming out of sleep but we're not really awake yet. For those few seconds we're something more primitive than what we are about to become. We have just slept the sleep of our most distant ancestors, and something of them and their world still clings to us. For those few moments we are unformed, uncivilized. We are not the people we know as ourselves, but creatures more in tune with a tree than a keyboard. We are untitled, unnamed, natural, suspended between was and will be, the tadpole before the frog, the worm before the butterfly. We are, for a few brief moments, anything and everything we could be. And then we open our eyes and the day is before us and we become ourselves.

    Hey normal day! Let me be aware of the treasure you are, let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfecxt tomorrow. Let me hold you while I can for it may not always be so. One day, I will dig my nails into the Earth or bury my face in the pillow or stretch myself taut or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return.

    I want to fall between the creases inside your palms, or slip along the curve of your lips. And I don't mean this in a romantic way, I don't mean I want your lips on mine, I don't mean for you to touch me, I don't mean that I love you with every bit of myself. I just mean that you are something different, something strange; something new.

    He said he had read a great deal, and you could see from the books in the library that he had all the latest authors. He spoke about spiritual mysticism and the craze for drugs that was seeping over the land. He was a rich, successful man, and behind him was emptiness and the shallowness that can never be filled by books, by pictures, or by the knowledge of the trade. The sadness of Life is this - the emptiness that we try to fill with every conceivable trick of the mind. But that emptiness remains. Its sadness is the vain effort to possess. From this attempt comes domination and the assertion of the me, with its empty words and rich memories of things that are gone and never will come back. It is this emptiness and loneliness that isolating thought breeds and keeps nourished by the knowledge it has created. It is this sadness of vain effort that is destroying man.

    We've all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, heard damn poets urging us to seize the day. Still sometimes, we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today's possibility under tomorrow's rug until we can't anymore. Until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin really meant. That knowing is better than wondering, that waking is better than sleeping, and even the biggest failure, even the worst, beat the hell out of never trying.

    After a while you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul, and you learn that love doesn't mean leaning and company doesn't mean security, and you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts and presents aren't promises, and you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes open, with the grace of an adult, not the grief of a child, and you learn to build all your roads on today because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans. After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much. So plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers. And you learn that you really can endure... That you really are strong, and you really do have worth.

    Dear Diary,
    Today I let the mask slip just a little and all the villains come flooding in. While I don't expect you, as a book filled with lines, to understand my predicament, understand that I will be home late tonight. There will be blood on my costume. And the dishes will have to wait.

    I don't know what it is about you that makes me catch my breath every time you look at me. The nerves that make me shake. Being near your body gives mine this magnetic pull towards you. What is it about you? I've been in love. I've been hurt from it, and I've felt like floating on a cloud from it. I've been there. I've felt crazy feelings before. And I've had my share of "crushes"--but this, this is no childish crush. I never fall for anyone like this. I'm so guarded. Too guarded. With SO many expectations because I learned that's what will protect me. I don't know what it is about you. But I can't find a flaw. Because even your flows to others, just make you an even more beautiful person to me. You are such a REAL person. You have passion in your soul. So gentle and so powerful at the same time. Your humility is stunning. You are truly a man in every sense of the word. You are exactly the kind of person I want in my life. Is this what it is about you? Is that what it is that makes me want to knock down every wall I've created. I'll risk it all and never think twice. And God your eyes! The only thing that could make your eyes more perfect would be me inside of them, us together. But here comes reality. You have someone else. Although whenever we are together (innocently of course) you can't deny what we both know we feel. I don't need to ask if you feel the same because I already know you do. And out of whatever reason, if you feel she is what you want in your life, so be it. I can respect that. But please be honest with yourself, don't deny the truth. Don't be scared to lose the comfort and go out on this crazy limb with me. Maybe we'll fall flat on our asses, but the thought of what it very well could be is amazing and I would take that leap with you. I've never met such a perfect person for me. That's exactly what it is about you.