We are like butterflies
who flutter for a day
and think it is forever.

--Carl Sagan

I Wrote This For You.

If you knew how much trouble the universe went to for us to be here, now, standing in front of each other, you'd know we're going to have to be careful.

Plankton and plants and canals, a hundred suns, a thousand sailing ships, ten thousand civilizations, a million, million, million first kisses from all our mothers and fathers.

We owe it to them, to be careful.

9/16/09

There are only two types of women — goddesses and doormats.

Pablo Picasso

typewriterblues

Please know there are much better things
in life than being lonely or liked
or bitter or mean or self-concious.

We are all full of shit.

Go love someone just because,
I know your heart may be badly bruised,
or even the victim of numerous knifings
but it will always heal,
even if you don't want it to
it keeps going.

There are the most fantastic, beautiful
things and people out there,
I promise.

It is up to you
to find them.

"Those awful things are survivable, because we ARE as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. When adults say, 'Teenagers think they are invincible' with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, as so it cannot fail.

-Looking for Alaska, Peter Jenkins

luv

I love you <3

--an email from my mom, 10/19/08
(I was sitting across the room from her when she sent it)
There is so much beauty and love in simplicity!

"So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be."

-The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky

"When we said you could be anything,
we meant you could be a brain surgeon, or a district attorney.
We didn't mean you should become a poet."
But it was Dad that taught me that the call of my wild heart
rings as valid as any voice of reason,
and it was Mom who taught that
raging terror of where you're headed
is the surest sign you're traveling in the right direction.

-Marty McConnell

Dear Son,
I'm sorry I never came home.
For every lesson I failed to teach, hear these words:
Shave in one direction with strong deliberate strokes to avoid irritation.
Dribble the page with the brilliance of your ballpoint pen.
Walk like a god and your goddess will come to you.
No longer will I be there to knock on your door, so you must learn to knock for yourself.
Knock knock down doors of racism and poverty that I could not.
Knock knock on doors of opportunity for the lost brilliance of the black men who crowd these cells.
Knock knock with diligence for the sake of your children.
Knock knock for me, for as long as you are free, these prison gates cannot contain my spirit.
The best of me still lives in you.
Knock knock with the knowledge that you are my son, but you are not my choices.
Yes, we are our fathers' sons and daughters, but we are not their choices.
For despite their absences, we are still here, still alive, still breathing,
with the power to change this world one little boy and girl at a time.
Knock knock.Who's there?
We are.

-Daniel Beatty, "Knock Knock"