My stance on marriage hasn't changed much over the years, but has grown clearer as time moves on. It’s not something that has ever appealed to me. And I don’t intend to discourage those that believe in the structure of it. But I would love to articulate how I feel without alienating those readers, so I’m going to give it a shot.

No matter how many times we spoke about dying, there was a fire in us that brought us back to life.

I adore silence. Nature. The clacking of my keyboard. The spinning of my pen in between my fingers. Not speaking, or attempting to listen and be a part of another's conversation. Just me and my mind--which sometimes backfires--conjuring or conversing within itself.

The more of yourself you feel you have the ability to put into the words you intertwine, the clearer the liquor will be. Distill it. Soak the wooden pages in your voice. A detachment from brain to ink is extremely effortless to spot, and disingenuous phenomenology is a terribly tough chew.

I can still picture the face of ten-year-old Derrick Lamb, as our ignorantly despondent elementary school teacher informed him that his desire to reach the moon was a bit of a farfetched idea. It began a destructive conversation, that ultimately ended in Derrick changing his mind.

We've become accustomed to making decisions as individuals, based on the preconceived notions of our people as a collective. Dissolving the essence of each person as single entities in doing so.

Whether it's inspiration in the real world, or inspiration through someone else's creations, these flights of flattery, that we think another anything is good enough, neat enough, different enough, that we immediately want to create out of some sort of ritualistic sacrifice. Like an ode, or grave flower on the headstone of someone we probably don't even know.

When approached by a stranger, a reader, a friend, or loved one about my addiction to phenomenology, I lack the proper words to reach that point where one person understands the other. At an alarmingly sad average.

But here I sit, staring at three --  ... no... four now --  drafts just waiting to be published. And I am struck by a fear I haven't felt in a long time. That this isn't a safe place for me anymore. What could have caused it? Where did I go wrong? Fuck...

I am standing in the bathroom at work. My head is dizzy. My knees weak. I’m not sure why but there is no breath in my lungs. There’s a tick in the back of my mind that forces me to continue plodding along the current path I’m on, hoping — no, praying — that something comes along to free me from this cage I’ve gone and locked my own-damned-self in. 

Soon ... we all feel it. It is inevitable that we all come to the impasse in life which teaches us that we're not on this rock for an infinite amount of time. Soon ... we all feel it. It is inevitable that we all come to the impasse in life which teaches us that we're not on this rock for an infinite amount of time. 

Magical? No. That's too unreal. This was as real as it gets. Transcendent? No. I could feel my feet rooted into the ground, so that wasn't it. Prodigious. Shocking. Colossal. Marvelous. And beyond comprehension.

SO YOU'RE A SHITTY WRITER,

When I do happen to survive the war and reach my destination chair, I feel more haunted than normal. I sit blankly entranced by the blinking text marker, waiting to be beaten to a pulp by the inferior words I had just deleted. Depleted I press the lids of my eyes closed as hard as I can.