I have a bad feeling that the music is going to stop playing, and it's right after I figured out that life is all about pictures.  Our minds like things to be easy, and pictures are easy.

But they get faded, and the music gets dull.  I wish gravity didn't affect the human mind as well; we are always getting pulled back down to the obvious and mundane.  We are all so sleepy.

You cheat not only yourself but the world when you refuse to be who you are.  The world needs people who will live how they think best, and will shine gladly and forcefully.  It is a dull world; let us not melt into it.

For the world is in fact fascinating.  People who appreciate this fact are the people we like the most.  It is sad that those people are fascinating; they should be all of us.

I weep over drooping flowers as they fall from my hand to the ground.  Please save us from this storm, it could destroy everything.  I know that it makes everything grow really, but I just don't believe it.  I'm not connected with the truths of the world, for I stray far from your sure and steady hand.  I find myself more gladly skipping off to caves to hide in the dark, for I am just like gravity.

Guide our hearts, fill us with life and truth, for you are truth.  We await your overwhelming presence, for it is our deepest longing.  We are all so sleepy; please Lord, save us from ourselves.

Yesterday I saw bubble bath fluid in the store, but I didn't buy any.  Someday I think I will buy some as a celebration.  If nothing comes up to celebrate, then I will buy it in celebration of the fact that 'Today is the day I will buy bubble bath fluid'.

I imagine cricket comedians must have a hard time gauging audience reactions to their jokes.

If I were a police officer busting a college party, I would walk in the door with a balloon and then right after popping it with a needle yell, "OK people, party's over!"

I wish my shower was set up so that while the room was dark, it would lightning occasionally.  Then would come the soundtrack of thunder, and showering would become even more of a deeply existential experience.

My confidence as a musician was down, so I began scheduling concerts in venues with standing room only. Now I get standing ovations after every show.

You're either disemboweled or full of yourself.

Cynics are people who think Finding Nemo didn't actually happen. I am not a cynic.

In other news, today has never happened before either, so live loud and big.  Bye for now!

Last night a doorbell rang in my little sister's dream, so she woke up and went downstairs to see who was at the door.  That no one was there was her first and most powerful clue as to what had actually happened.  Later when she woke me up at 1 in the afternoon, I thought it was 7:30 in the morning. 

Our family is in general a very confused breed.

We went on a coffee outing, but Melody got cold from the frigid indoor temperatures of the Starbucks, so we went outside.  Once outside I felt like I was in a surrealist painting; all the tables looked like they were about to fall over.  The legs on some tables were several inches of the ground, giving the tables an incredible tilt.  I sat down at perhaps the only table that had all four legs on the ground, but Melody sat down somewhere else.  Having seated ourselves at different tables, we began our conversation.

"So, what's going on?" she began casually.

"Oh, not a whole lot," I responded without emphasis.

The ripples of our speech disappeared into the silence.

"Oh just come to this table over here!" I cried.

"No, you come over here!" she rejoined.

"That table is crooked, look at that leg! It's completely off the ground!"

"But this chair is amazing," she said with a voice full of drama.

"Well this table is amazing."

The battle's facetious intensity facilitated a steady rise in the tones of our voices, until we were practically shouting.

"Bring the table!" she said with determination.

"BRING THE CHAIR!" I cried out of common sense. 

At that very moment the line "I'll meet you halfway!" intruded loudly from the music playing overhead.

We both burst out laughing.  A few moments went by before we recovered, at which point I said, "I can't believe that just happened." 

"What?"

"The music," I said, thinking it obvious. "Didn't you hear the music?"

"Oh no, what did it say?"

"You said 'Bring the table!' and then I said 'Bring the chair!' and then at that very moment the girl sang 'I'll meet you halfway!'  It was completely in sync with our tone and everything.  What was it that you were laughing at?"

"I don't know, I was just laughing because you were laughing."

We are in general a very confused breed.  And it is true that while she wasn't laughing for the same reason, she was at least laughing. So I guess she did meet me halfway.

Depression is incredibly romanticized; we must not commit the grand fallacy: sadness for its own sake.

Being intelligent is not only a matter of what you know, for one can also be intelligent in what they choose to not know. 

More than the desire to be liked I have the desire to be conceived of as me.

The assumption behind pictures is 'this is what my body looks like', the assumption behind words is 'this is what my mind looks like'. 

Sometimes not understanding a concept is the fault of the listener, sometimes it is the fault of the speaker.  It can be hard to tell which is the case; we usually blame the listener. 

We learn that something is wrong when someone does it to us, but not when we do it to others.

'Forgive' he said.  'I don't want to!' I replied.  'Forgive' he said again.  This went on for several lifetimes, until I died in ignorance.

I meant to go to bed an hour and a half ago; and even then would have been late. Alas, good morning to you.

You stopped me in the middle of my dread
We thought you were more than a little dead
But there's so much wrong with my fickle head
I only believe when it trickles red

It is a prerequisite to travel for the world to disappear.

Home is the place where everything can disappear, and you can explore lands that are far away from here.  For it is only at home that we can ignore everything, while in new places we are always examining everything with wonder and care.  But to find the worlds that truly exist you must forget about this one. 

'Having a sense of reality' is an invented virtue, one which cannot imagine a purpose for the imagination.  But I can see the same thing you do in ten different ways; that's why we have our minds.  You stick to the facts and therefore discover nothing about the world. 

It is very easy to not be a person; all you have to do is wait.  Then you won't be a person.  A person is a thing that acts.

People won't believe you unless they saw you stay a kid.  And how unfair is that?  Why do all you people distrust me about who I am at my core?  When I saw the world, curiosity invaded, and it will never leave.  People assume everyone rolls into one, like everything was made to be boring and unanimous; variation, after all, would wipe out the control we pretend to have.  But the unexpected is what we remember; it is what makes for a good story.

The soul of the silly is quite simple.  It sees the world as hilarious; who could meet such a sight as the world with unflinching seriousness?  Let us laugh that we have legs, and roll around, because we became alive and found out that we could. 

The world is serious and silly
We are both grotesque and guilty
So play in the mud to be filthy
For nothing here could ever fill me

Words don't do enough; we wrap our arms around someone to say we love them.  Everyone wants there to be a home, a place where they can live in the world they dream about.  It's deep in the woods, with friends you left long ago; but you remember it, because it is home.  There everyone always hugs, with their smiles and laughter and love, and conversation lasts deep into the night because no one ever gets to bed.  It is home; who would want to?

Michael darted briskly across the floor toward the man waiting for his coffee.
"Hey you! You Gordon?" he asked sharply.
"Yes, that's me," replied Dr. Gordon, an oncologist and coronary surgeon at the local hospital just down the street.
"You've been seeing Vanessa, haven't you," Michael accused.
"Vanessa Banks? Why yes, I see her on Tuesdays and Thursdays."
"Ok, wow. You did not have to tell me that!" Michael replied hastily. He was extremely surprised by Gordon's candidness.  However, after adjusting to the idea that Gordon was open to talking about Vanessa, he scrunched his eyebrows and inquired in a serious tone, "So, what do you see in her?"
"Her heart," Dr. Gordon said dryly.
"C'mon, don't give me fluff," Michael responded acridly. "What is it you're really looking for in her?"
"I'm looking for anything that might cause problems, or that might develop into a problem," Dr. Gordon explained cursorily before adding, "Anything cancerous really."
"Oh so you're looking for problems?" Michael was suddenly defensive. "You know that is the exact way to get her hurt."
"Oh don't worry, she is asleep for all of it."
"WHAT?" Michael was taken aback by this comment. "Wait—she's asleep during . . . Wow.  How could you do that?  That is so wrong."
"I'm pretty sure she prefers it that way."
"She does? . . . Is there something wrong with your, uh, your equipment or something?"
"I will have you know I have the finest equipment there is," Dr. Gordon declared proudly.  "Nothing less than the best, so I can do what I need to, and Vanessa is perfectly satisfied." 
"Wow," Michael huffed, a bit indignant. "You know, you really ought to be careful."
"Oh trust me, it is very safe, blood loss is minimal."
"No, I mean in talking to me. I used to see Vanessa," Michael revealed as what he thought would be a bombsell in the conversation.
"Really?  You have a license?" Dr. Gordon said, surprised at this bombshell.
"Yeah. Duh. How do you think I'd be able to see her?" Michael said with an air of derisive common sense. "She lives clear across town," he added after a brief pause.
"She does live pretty far away," Dr. Gordon agreed. "Why did you stop seeing her?"
"I couldn't figure out what was wrong with her," Michael explained with a tone expressive of his confusion during the relationship. "One day it was one thing, the next it was another.  Eventually it became too much, and I just said 'Forget this!'"
"I see," Dr. Gordon said slowly, noting his colleague's unprofessional conduct. "What did you think of her heart?"
"Her heart?" Michael echoed, considering the prompt. ". . . you know, at first I thought 'Wow, she has such a big heart', you know, and it was very tender, very sensitive, but over time that went away."
"Swelling of the heart?" Dr. Gordon murmured to himself. "Interesting."
"Nothing swell about it.  She would always draw attention to that kind of stuff, and, you know, sometimes I really just wanted it to be about her body," Michael said frankly.  "What do you think of her breasts?"
"I checked those.  Nothing there."
"Yeah, I know what you mean.  Definitely some small problems there."
"No, I didn't find any problems."
"Oh," Michael said flatly. "Well I guess it depends on the guy."
"I suppose," said Dr. Gordon, now staring at Michael with a forceful look.
"Well," Michael began, becoming distraught, "I hope you find what you're looking for in her.  I know it just wasn't there for me."
"By all means, I hope there's nothing there," Dr. Gordon responded.
"Yeah, me too," sighed Michael wistfully.  And he walked off in a blaze.

There's always something in the world you don't know about, like lightning swirling around a giant plume of volcanic ash.  It's always good to encounter something that suprises us, because that means the world is a lot bigger than we had thought.  And who wants to live in a small world?

The ocean is such a liar, because if you look at him all he says is 'I'm huge and blue and that's it'.  But that's a lie because there are entire worlds underneath that deceptively placid blue surface.  Think of all the fish drama that must go on, the cafeteria stories at fish schools, broken fish relationships, fish love triangles, fish wars, fish businessmen all gathered around wondering where to invest their pearls.  So much happens under the sea that we don't know about; we think by seeing the top of it we know everything about the ocean, like guessing what a pie tastes like without even know what it's filled with. 

But I sit on the beach and see a dolphin jump out of the water; the ocean's poker face isn't quite perfect. And that's how I know he's a liar.

My stuffed animals don't always sleep with me, since sometimes they know I've had a rough night, so they'll sleep nearby.  But then I wake up and I see them, and we stare at each other.  Then I grin, and we all burst out laughing.  After that we'll head downstairs and have breakfast, where we'll try to spill each others' cereal.  It's a bit rainy, but a walk down to the pond to share our extra toast with the ducks seems like the best idea ever, just as it did the day before.  So we'll go down to the pond, and then they'll see the duck families and wish they had a family, but I pull them close and say, "Nah—we got each other."

My friend Saul says he likes mountains, because mountains hide things. And that means he can go exploring and discover things in them. 

And maybe people are like that too.  They are like mountains, or oceans, and some day we'll be talking to them and suddenly see a huge explosion of smoke come out of them with lightning wrapping around it like a double helix.  Here is something we didn't expect; for how long did they hide their relationships with their stuffed animals from us?  Their face lied to us by making us think we already knew everything about them, but then the dormant volcano awoke, and we discovered something new about them that we had never expected.

And surely we should try to include as many erupting volcanos with lightning clothing as we can in our lives, and have fun with them, for what else is there to do?  Who wants to live in a small world?

I hope one day there is a huge party where everyone who shows up is socially awkward.

To propose I am going to get on one knee and say, "Will you be the Lord of the One Ring, the One Ring to rule them all, the One Ring to find them, the One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them?" Then if she ensues to disappear from my life I can at least conclude, "I guess the One Ring really does make people vanish."

"I plead guilt—wait . . ." Mr. Nelson trailed off, thinking to himself and then looking briefly at his lawyer. "I mean not guilty," he corrected, now remembering. "Yes, not guilty."  He glanced over at the jury and grinned a little.  His murder trial had not started as well as he had hoped.

Speaking of the One Ring, does it have some kind of range, outside of which Sauron can't detect its presence?  It seems like that because they have to torture Gollem to find out that Bilbo has the One Ring in the Shire.  I can imagine an orc with the One Ring taking a few steps away from Mordor and then saying, "Can you feel my presence now? Good."  And then at the end it shows a bunch of orcs standing behind him as his "network" and a Nazgul on a winged beast above them, to represent the helicopter.

Let's say I was president and the economy and healthcare were in complete ruin, and several countries were threatening to invade the US shortly.  And it was right at that time that I had to give the State of the Union address.  No problem.  All I would have to do is leave a little dab of shaving cream on my cheek, and no one in the entire nation would focus on a single thing I said in the speech.  Political crisis averted.

I stroll out onto the balcony of my lakeside mansion and watch the children of my kingdom play and giggle on the beach. Looking to the horizon I think, "If pirates come, they'll be sorry for their lack of vigilance."

Fiction can be a good thing because it is entirely indirect; we'll listen to authors because we know they aren't writing about us.  They lived somewhere else, knew other people, lived other lives.  So they're not criticizing us.  We would be too stunned with offense to listen if that were the case.

And so we are open to noticing flaws in the character that we might then see in ourselves.  Our lives might be superimposed as the protagonist in the work, and we finally realize that we're an idiot.  From the third-person perspective we see our tragic flaws.  I have all the sense of entitlement possessed by Anthony Patch, and I jump to conclusions just as quickly as Briony Tallis.

Yet fiction also has the downside of feeding our narcissism; by there even being a protagonist we see our life as more and more a story all about ourselves.  Read A Portrait of the Artist or The Bell Jar—which have the assumption that everything is all about Stephen, or that everything is all about Esther—and you will become obsessed with your own perspective of life as naturally as a rabbit going stiff at the smallest hint of danger.  And as narcisissts we tend to judge other people more quickly, since it is our interpretation of things which is after all important.

That's why the Gospels are so great; the assumption while reading them is that it's not all about you.  The Gospels are filled with stories about how different individuals respond to Jesus; to one he says 'You have great faith!' yet another walks away sad, for he had great wealth.  And so which story do we imagine ourselves in?  Which character in the Gospels are we? 

But the great thing is that no matter who we imagine ourselves as in the Gospels, we are not the main character of the story.  For how depressing would it be to think that our own story is as good as it gets?  I'm just not big enough to be the main character of the universe.  There needs to be a bigger story than this.

For after all, humanity is a really big thing; isn't there a story that includes everybody in it?

We should feel no way in particular about the memory itself.  Sometimes it can spare us from the bad, but the good tends to fall out as well.  One brings a sigh of relief, the other morose and longing to know what has happened that was worth appreciating.  In a way we live in a weird medium in which we remember some of the past, partially comprehend the present, and are always looking the future; so where are we really?

It should be interesting whenever someone says a belief and is really excited about it. That means this person came across an idea and saw a whole lot in it.  What did they see?  We should be quite curious.  What's going on in their world?

Time just keeps on going.  Every second is a second gone.  I wish that sometimes we could turn on the news and hear, "And in other developments, time has stopped. We'll keep you up to date on that story, though experts predict it won't start up for at least a couple days."  In the intervening period, nothing would count, we could leave our stress to the world of temporality, and all relax and say to each other "It is so stressful and hard to be a human". And since everything would be off the record, people could all agree and say "I know". 

Death is a funny thing. We're always standing in relation to it. It doesn't move. It just sits there.  And yet it can seem so vague and unimportant. But we'll all change our minds about that someday.

Everything changes, like how rain invades the world.  No one could have predicted rain.  The first time it rained the appearance of everything changed. "What is happening?" people wondered. "This world is not what we thought."  When it is going to rain is a mystery; why it rains at all is not even touched by weathermen.  It is much too difficult.  I surely never thought this would happen.  And so suddenly the rain comes, and our minds have to keep moving with reality.  Everything changes.

It is the early morning and it just rained, so I am thinking about life and the first time it ever rained.  That must have been quite a surprise.  But I guess it rains for the first time in each human's life . . funny world we find ourselves in, isn't it?