#23

Inspiration is a being. It grabs hold of you, shakes you about until day is night, stars line the pavement, and ocean is sky. And then it holds you in one posiiton for far too long, making you believe that that violence is fact--and that's how you're inspired. You have to survive a tornado before you can write about it. you have to climb the mountain before you can sketch it, and you have to experience human compassion and radiance before you can, yourself, shine. Love and tenderness are not based in fact, but in hope and grace. Grace is not a fact, but a forgiveness for the hardness of life. Hope cannot be acute or obtuse like an angle, but it controls our perspective nonetheless. Hope gets me hope every night on the train. I hope it runs local, i hope i get an empty seat. i hope i can climb the 4 flights home, i hope the elevator's working, i hope my room's not too hot, i hope my roomate's already asleep, i hope i'm not cranky in the morning, i hope i remember to blog this.

And somehow, in all that grief and worry, hope is a positive radiance. Because it's based in my love of living. and love, no matter what storybooks or advice columnists or those little boxes of games and books you buy by the register at Borders say, love is subjective. Because love and hope go hand-in-hand. "For love is like a tree, it grows of its own accord, it puts down deep roots into our whole being, and often continues to put out leaves over a heart in ruins." --Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris, Book 8, Ch. 4...no matter what happens to you, somehow yo keep going, because as far as we know, tomorrow is on its way.

I hate writers who are not tender with their words. you have to be, or all worth inspiring will go to waste in the midst of elipses and poorly phrased fragments. inspiration does not come easy. I've been waiting for it for a long time. finally, i've got it.

That moment when you realize that your priorities are in place, and its everyone else's vision of necessity is skewed--that's enlightenment. Not everything is written with pen and paper. I don't do long goodbyes. Once it's done, there's no point in torturing myself further. Maybe that's why i hate funerals.