I have so many mirrors and friends and lovely people around me, and Amanda is absolutely, positively one of them. Amanda Krut, I love you. You’re a constant inspiration that I can always do more, be more, and have more should I only learn to compromise or try try try.

Someday I am going to show up on your doorstep, two tickets in hand. I will remind you that you said you would come along with me. “You’ve got one day to get your shit together and then we’re out of here for a week.” You’ll shrug and tell your job there’s not a lot you can do. You see, a promise is a promise and who really knows how long anything is going to last anyways, let alone a fucking restaurant? So, you reason with them, you have to get while the getting’s good.

We’ll pretend to pack. Me because let’s be honest…I will have nothing to pack, and you because let’s be honest…you love to procrastinate. Instead of packing we’ll go to the bar and remember that-time-when and possibly grab a pint of ice cream which will be eaten before you pack. When you do pack, it will be haphazard and later you will apologize because you forgot the toothpaste. I’ll laugh and tell you I can brush with whiskey. Once you’re sleeping I will walk down the street to the corner store which is predictably, perpetually open and I will get some toothpaste. You’ll wake up the next morning and argue with yourself over whether you should feel endeared or guilty. When you bring it up, I will kiss you and laugh. I couldn’t sleep anyways.

I never liked the city as an analogy for you and I. I don’t think of you as a vacation or anything to be spent and taken lightly. Therefore I would take our time very seriously. In the daylight, at least. These days, I know better than to fritter away hours and so my first goal would be to make it to the breakfast place. Taxi or no. Hell, for my money we could avoid the expense and stay near the breakfast place. Taxi into the city when necessary and taxi back out. Look, I understand that taxi cabs in the desert have a nasty connotation for the two of us but I’m over it. We need coffee in the morning, booze at night, and one another all along in between. It isn’t really so difficult I don’t think.

In the interim moments we’ll kiss and touch and sigh and laugh. You’ll understand that my goal is not, and has never been, singular in nature. I didn’t want sex. I didn’t want marriage. I didn’t want validation. I want many things. You play a role in that but you aren’t all of it. You never were and you never will be but the joy that we share is a significant piece of the puzzle. You’ll realize it over three am dinner while the lights are blinking and buzzers are sounding. A group of men joins us and starts up a conversation. They heckle you for not being my boyfriend. “What kind of idiot, effeminate man lets a woman play him like that,” they ask rhetorically. This after a full explanation has been proffered. They don’t want answers, they want affirmation. And the abstract, nonsensical setting serves to contrast against the solid logic of our agreement. “The things that we do might not make sense to everyone, but they make sense to us,” I whisper. And when I say “us” I mean many more people than you and I. I speak implicitly of a multitude of relationships built around the appreciation of the love people can have for one another. Limitless, timeless, and without artificial constructs to provide security.

When we go home, I won’t promise you a damned thing but I will say that I love you in front of everyone and I will mean it. And you will still have your job.

-By Amanda!

human relationships were strange. i mean you were with one person for a while, eating and sleeping and living with them, loving them, talking to them, going places together and then it stopped. then there was a short period when you weren’t with anybody, then another woman arrived, and you ate with her and you fucked her, and it all seemed so normal, as if you had been waiting just for her and she had been waiting for you. i never felt right being alone; sometimes it felt good but it never felt right.

nothing was ever in tune. people just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, beethoven, back, buddha, christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, new york city, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.

i wanted the whole world or nothing.

charles bukowski

“Decide what kind of person you want to be with, and then become that person. The only way your life will be cinematic, or even vaguely interesting, is if you run it the fuck down and make it happen. Yeah, all by yourself. And shit can get lonely. So, find your best friends. You have an obligation to be honest and rad to these people and expect the same. Figure out who and what makes you choke on laughs and makes your skin burn with joy, then take it (and them), and don’t apologize for it ever. And once in a while, cradle your beautiful teacup face in your hands, and remember that you’re perfect.”

- Kate Carraway
Read the whole article here.

The old writer, like all of the people in the world, had got, during his long fife, a great many notions in his head. He had once been quite handsome and a number of women had been in love with him. And then, of course, he had known people, many people, known them in a peculiarly intimate way that was different from the way in which you and I know people. At least that is what the writer thought and the thought pleased him. Why quarrel with an old man concerning his thoughts?

In the bed the writer had a dream that was not a dream. As he grew somewhat sleepy but was still conscious, figures began to appear before his eyes. He imagined the young indescribable thing within himself was driving a long procession of figures before his eyes.

You see the interest in all this lies in the figures that went before the eyes of the writer. They were all grotesques. All of the men and women the writer had ever known had become grotesques.

The grotesques were not all horrible. Some were amusing, some almost beautiful, and one, a woman all drawn out of shape, hurt the old man by her grotesqueness. When she passed he made a noise like a small dog whimpering. Had you come into the room you might have supposed the old man had unpleasant dreams or perhaps indigestion.

…in the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were the truths and they were all beautiful.

There was the truth of virginity and the truth of passion, the truth of wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of profligacy, of carelessness and abandon. Hundreds and hundreds were the truths and they were all beautiful.

And then the people came along. Each as he appeared snatched up one of the truths and some who were quite strong snatched up a dozen of them.

It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood.

-Sherwood Anderson, Winesberg, Ohio.

I’ve met hundreds of people in my life, and not a single one of them is intact. We are all broken; all carrying our faults on our backs and in our hearts: all of us consumed by the sneaking suspicion that we are terrible disappointments— that the people who say they like us are only saying that.
That we are tolerated at best, mocked at worst.

We are all wrong.
We are all extraordinary.

The quiet small heroism of humanity is something, which is always overlooked in favor of its failures; it’s cruelties. We choose hell every time because we think we deserve it.

- Alasdair Stuart, www.pesudopod.com