Go big or go home...

If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing friends, partners, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean incarceration. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery - isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.

Just pretend it isn't real...

The buttons of my coat were tangled in my hair,

in that awful lighting, I didn't tell you I was scared.

That was the first time we were there,

holy orange bottles, each night, I pray to you.

Desperate people find faith, 

so now I pray to God too, and I say to you - 

soon it will be better.

The first crack...

You are strong, tempered like steel in the fire and by the blows of the hammer of life. Nothing will break you again, only make you stronger and more whole. Perfection is the pride of those who have not lived, who know not these things in their arrogance. They remain the same - raw and without form. The hammer never touches them, and they lie on the shelf, gathering dust, slowly tarnishing and fading and crumbling. the blows of the hammer in the fire refine us into bright shining glory for the roles we play in life - until we are one with the anvil, becoming immune to the hammer's little knocks, and smile at it.

Something just like this...

Paralyzed in paradise...

There is a tonic strength, in the hour of sorrow and affliction, in escaping from the world and society and getting back to the simple duties and interests we have slighted and forgotten. Our world grows smaller, but it grows dearer and greater. Simple things have a new charm for us, and we suddenly realize that we have been renouncing all that is greatest and best, in our pursuit of some phantom that robbed us of all our time. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent.

Stress shortens your lifespan. There is an undeniable mind-body connection. You were not meant to live in a fever of anxiety; screaming yourself hoarse in a frenzy of dreadful, panicked fight-or-flight that leaves you exhausted and numb with grief. You were not meant to live like animals tearing one another to shreds. Don't turn your hair gray. Don't carve a roadmap of pain into the sweet wrinkles on your face. Don't lay in the quiet with your heart pounding like a trapped, frightened creature. For your own precious and beautiful life, and for those around you - seek help or get out before it is too late. This is your wake-up call.

Talk of growing old...

We make the rules...

Ladies and gentlemen, will you please stand?

With every writing pen scar on my hand,

I take this magnetic force to be my lover.

My heart's been borrowed and yours has been blue,

all's well that ends well to end up with you.

Swear to be overdramatic and true to my lover,

and you'll save all your dirtiest jokes for me -

and at every table, I'll save you a seat, lover.

A dazzling haze, a mysterious way...

Sometimes in life, from out of a myriad of prosaic decisions like what to eat and where to sleep and how to dress, a true crossroads is revealed. A fork in the road that stands out from the rest. That punches you in the gut and calls to be noticed. To be felt. To be experienced. In these moments, when the fog of relative irrelevancy lifts and fate rolls out a demand for free will, there is only left or right – no option of four-by-fouring into the underbrush between two paths, no negotiating with the choice that has been presented. You cannot turn back; only forward, forward always. You must answer the call and pick your way. And there is no reverse. There is no second chance.

I'll save you a seat, lover...

It feels as if I'm wasting...

All great beginnings start in the dark, when the moon greets you to a new day at midnight. For life has moments that feel as if the sun has blackened to tar and the entire world turned to ice. It feels as if vile demons have risen from the depths of hell solely for the purpose of banding to personally torture you, and that their genuine intent of mental, emotional, and spiritual anguish is tearing you to shreds. Your heart weighs as heavily as leaden legs which you would drag yourself forward with if not for the quicksand that pulls you down inch by inch, paralyzing your will and threatening oblivion. And all the while fire and brimstone pour from the sky, pelting only you. Truly, that is what it feels like. But that feeling is a trial that won't last forever. Never give up.

Low like the sun...

I am watching in disbelief as different parts of my life start shattering at the core, quietly and simultaneously. As if it has been in the works for years, hiding behind the rubble of the mundane everydays and the emotional turmoil that comes with them. I have always suspected such a time to come. When the odds are stacked greater than ever before; when the stakes are high in many different games, and somehow they all seem gravely important, capable of mass destruction if unattainable individually, and an unimaginable massacre if combined in failure. Come ruin or rapture, I once said, never knowing they were one and the same.

Break into two...

The hardest story I've ever told...

This is the way you left me,

I'm not pretending.

No hope, no love, no glory,

no happy ending.

This is the way that we love,

like its forever,

then live the rest of our life,

but not together.

Wake up in the morning,

stumble on my life,

can't get no love without sacrifice.

If anything should happen,

I guess I wish you well,

a little bit of heaven,

but a little bit of hell.

Flaws and all...

He did not care what the end would be, and in his lucid moments overvalued his indifference. The danger, when not seen, has the imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear grows shadowy; and imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion. And he thought, I shall go on blindly and secretly jumbling all these things together and making no sense of them as long as I live. Maybe every human creature carries some such inescapable burden. That is being human. A very weird affair.

Don't listen when I scream...

Throwing the dice...

If you have a special person in your life, but you find yourselves arguing, irritated and fighting out of the blue, you both need to try to step back and think of the other person, with no ego of your own. We are all dealing with our own tough issues. We may keep them to ourselves, but we all have struggles. If you both allow yourselves to step into each others shoes - to have the awareness and respect for each others issues and struggles. That will most likely allow the love that you have for each other to shine through at its brightest. There will be ups and downs; feelings of being under-appreciated for both. It will happen. But let that be the worst that happens. Unity through diversity. That's the greatest love. A selfless love. It's paradoxical, but you each would get back more than you give out. That's the love that conquers all things that's mentioned in religious texts. It will be challenging for both of you, but well worth it.