Welcome

“I’ve always found comfort in the impersonal sounds of human existence. Traffic through the cracked window when I’m alone in my apartment, four tires and an engine that anyone could be driving, horns honking and brakes squealing at the stoplight. Or that hum of fifteen overlapping conversations, indiscernible from one another, in a coffee shop while I’m sitting in the corner with a book and a latte, when I can’t identify a language or an emotion over the collective noise. Or the haunting sound of 20,000 voices singing along to a song at a concert, swaying bodies and iPhone flashlights under stars no one can see. It is things like this, the detached presence of a dozen, a hundred, a million other lives all occurring just inches from mine, that allow me to find such a strange happiness in existing in that moment alone.”

“I saw my earlier selves as different people, acquaintances I had outgrown. I wondered how I could ever have been some of them.”

“How long they choose to love you will never be your decision.”

“Outside, the trees do their witchy dance.”

“Nothing’s forever, at least that’s what I’m told, Puppies grow up, coffee gets cold, And people are different When they start getting old. But nothing can hurt us If we don’t give it the chance, Just because we’re older Doesn’t mean we cant dance. The people you know And the places you’ve been Are lists that keep growing Because good things may end, But they also begin. You can stop liking roses And have new favorite songs But maybe now you like lilacs And they last all year long. Change can be better, It’s just something we do. And just because you’re different, Doesn’t mean you’re not you.”

“I’m always soft for you, that’s the problem. You could come knocking on my door five years from now and I would open my arms wider and say ‘come here, it’s been too long, it felt like home with you.”

“And kid, you’ve got to love yourself. You’ve got wake up at four in the morning, brew black coffee, and stare at the birds drowning in the darkness of the dawn. You’ve got to sit next to the man at the train station who’s reading your favorite book and start a conversation. You’ve got to come home after a bad day and burn your skin from a shower. Then you’ve got to wash all your sheets until they smell of lemon detergent you bought for four dollars at the local grocery store. You’ve got to stop taking everything so goddam personally. You are not the moon kissing the black sky. You’ve got to compliment someones crooked brows at an art fair and tell them that their eyes remind you of green swimming pools in mid July. You’ve got to stop letting yourself get upset about things that won’t matter in two years. Sleep in on Saturday mornings and wake yourself up early on Sunday. You’ve got to stop worrying about what you’re going to tell her when she finds out. You’ve got to stop over thinking why he stopped caring about you over six months ago. You’ve got to stop asking everyone for their opinions. Fuck it. Love yourself, kiddo. You’ve got to love yourself.”

“Everyone’s fucked up. You’ve just gotta decide what kinda fucked up you’re into.”

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.