Dear you,
You with the blood-shot eyes. Perpetual purple bags.
This is for you.
You who tosses, turns, pops an Ambien, even resorts to counting sheep,
still no sleep comes.
Your body may be weary,
but your mind is wide awake and running, running, running,
back, forth, up the walls of your skull.
It’s tired or resting,
tired of creating grandiose Potemkin villages while Mr. Harris tells some witty story about growing up in rural Alabama instead of teaching,
tired of being confined to your brain,
tired of sitting still.
It wants to break free and run wildly to the very edge of thought.
It lusts, lusts, lust for knowledge and adventure,
but you keep the poor thing caged,
forever doomed to throw itself against its shackles until bloody, bruised, near hopeless.
You’re scared of where it might go if you set it free.
Would it be a good little mind and stay within the realm of socially acceptable?
Probably not.
Or would it run, run, run to where it’s green and fresh and new and lonely,
to where you can no longer relate to others,
to where you grow bloated, obese with yourself from lack of human connection?
Probably so.
If only you had someone to explore with you – a partner in crime.
You could run to the very edge of insanity together and it would be terribly poetic.
You’d hold hands the entire way, as not to get lost or left behind, and you’d come to the edge of a cliff, overlooking a cottage-cheese cloudy sky and you’d jump.
And you’d fall and you’d fall and you’d fall into the depths of insanity just to see what is there.
Dear you,
Stop waiting for someone to come along and set you free.
You won’t find them here.
Dear you,
Stop holding yourself back waiting for what could happen.
It won’t unless you make it happen.
Dear you,
Break free from you self imposed binds and set your mind loose in the magical world of knowledge.
Immerse yourself in intoxicating intellectualism, drown in it.
It was what your mind was meant for
To learn, to create, to explore, to think:
the essence of being human.1
Dear you,
What are you waiting for?
Why must you cloister yourself and off and shrink your world?
Are you afraid to discover just how ignorant you are,3
just how terribly, incredibly, wonderfully ignorant you are?
Scratch out of you dead skin, your pride, your pretentions- they dull you- and slither naked and new into the world;
Your final, endless frontier.
Explore your new land with awe and respect.
It holds so much more than your puny self can understand.
You are tiny, insignificant, in this beautiful, complex world we inhabit.
Don’t fear it- embrace it.
The shiny gymnasium city beckons you
‘come play’, ‘come play’.
Answer its call.
All of this knowledge, all of this life, this endless intellectual adventure – it’s all yours for the taking.
Gorge yourself with experiences, with information, with understanding and don’t worry about taking more than your fair share. There’s an endless supply.
With knowledge there is no gluttony.

Dear you,
You whose heart so longs to be stolen,
‘take me’, ‘take me’ it beats. it screams,
but no one bites.
So it remains safely nestled inside your rib-cage pristine, unscathed, and unbearably boring.
You’d like to let it feel, but you’re afraid,
afraid you may feel too much in a world that strives to be so numb.
It’d be okay if you had someone to feel with you.
You would love and hate and laugh and cry and leave the whole world behind.
You would feel with such an extremity that everything would bubble over and soil the valium world you live in.
But you wouldn’t care because his fingers would be wrapped around your and he likes your overstated emotions.
And the two of you would be banished to the edge of the world to a cliff, overlooking a cottage-cheese clouded sky
and you’d jump, hand in hand into the depths of insanity and you’d fall and you’d fall and you’d fall just to feel the danger and the excitement of it.
Just to feel the sting of cold wind on your faces,
hands still grasping firmly together, ready for anything.
Dear you,
Don’t waste your life waiting for someone to force you to feel.
It won’t happen that easily.
It’s okay to be venerable on your own;
you are supposed to be.
Hearts are meant to feel,
not to be squirreled away hidden from harm or happiness.
Dear you,
Seek out emotions like riches.
Gorge yourself on them and don’t worry about taking more than your fair share. There’s an endless supply.
With emotions there is no gluttony.

Dear you,
You with your thousand tube of wrinkle creams, night creams, firming creams, s***.
You who’s already fighting that vain battle against aging,
you who takes self preservation to the extreme.
Preservation?
Should you pump yourself full or Botox and MSG?
Should you turn to plastic or Joan Rivers or McDonalds and never break down, never decompose?
We were not meant to be forever preserved,
we are not meant to stay youthful and perfect.
We are meant to decay and enjoy it,
revel in it.
Are those crow’s feet about your eyes?
Embrace them it means you’ve smiled often.
Is that a grey hair I see?
Love it.
How many millions of Mediaeval surfs or starving African AIDS babies would kill to live to have one?
These little flaws, little signs of decay are lovely.
You are not meant to stay pristine
in mind body or soul.
It’s our imperfections that make us beautiful,4
Our scars, internal and external remind us that we are human and that we are meant to think and discover and feel and age and yes, occasionally f*** up and that’s okay.
If we were supposed to be perfect and humongous we would have been created as such and we would be boring.
Our flaws make us interesting, make us complicated.
Why try to hide them?
Dear you,
Please don’t.
Walk tall and proud and broken and bruised
And love people for their flaws and their bruised.
You may scare people,
But that’s okay – sometimes we need to be scared.
Dear you,
You are lucky.
You have the opportunities,
the world at your fingertips.
Don’t waste it,
seize opportunities like a half off pair of Manolo Blahnik’s.
Run to the edge of your world and find that cliff overlooking a cloudy sea and jump and fall and fall
and fall in love with the world.