"You can go on like this for a very long time, and no one will notice. You keep thinking you're going to hit some sort of bottom, but I'm here to tell you: There is no bottom."
-Dan Chaon 

Snow Day!

People have scars. In all sorts of unexpected places. Like secret road maps of their personal histories. Diagrams of all their old wounds. Most of our wounds heal, leaving nothing behind but a scar. But some of them don't. Some wounds we carry with us everywhere and though the cut is long gone, the pain still lingers.

Fear no more, says the heart.

On a summer's day waves collect, overbalance, and fall; collect and fall; and the whole world seems to be saying "that is all" more and more ponderously, until even the heart in the body which lies in the sun on the beach says too, That is all. Fear no more, says the heart. Fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall. And the body alone listens to the passing bee; the wave breaking; the dog barking, far away barking and barking.

Eccedentesiast.

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, and 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, and so it cannot fail.

Did you know that for pretty much the entire history of the human species, the average life span was less than thirty years? You could count on ten years or so of real adulthood, right? There was no planning for retirement, There was no planning for a career. There was no planning. No time for plannning. No time for a future. But then the life spans started getting longer, and people started having more and more future. And now life has become the future. Every moment of your life is lived for the future--you go to high school so you can go to college so you can get a good job so you can get a nice house so you can afford to send your kids to college so they can get a good job so they can get a nice house so they can afford to send their kids to college.

Did you know 35 people try to jump of the Brooklyn Bridge every year? Mostly because of broken hearts.

Date a girl who reads. A girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a lis of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was eight.

Find a girl who reads. You'll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She's the one lovingly looking over the shelvse in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in the second hand book shop? That's the reader. They can never resis smelling the pages, especially when they are yellowing.

She's the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on the top because she's already engrossed, lost in a world of the author's making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book. Buy her another cup of coffee, or better yet, tea.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce's Ulysses she's just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or would like to be Alice.

It's easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words in poetry, in song. Giver her Austen, Pound, Sexton, Wharton, Woolf. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she's going to try to make her life a little like her favourite book. It will never be your fault if she does. She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads know that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to an end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She'll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she's sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your hear hasn't burst and bled out over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to The Cat in the Hat, and Aslan, maybe even in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colourful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you're better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

I'm afraid I'll spend forever sitting alone in a coffee shop. Men don't want a girl who reads anymore.

Basorexia.

Stop telling people you are fine. You aren't fine. You haven't been fine since you were a kid; you haven't been fine since you started piecing the world together. It's all quite a mess isn't it? Everyone seems to have lost sight of their own humanity. You haven't been fine since that first day you felt powerless. You remember that day. You fell to the floor of your bedroom and cried for two days before anyone came looking for you. You were crying for the world that day and you were crying for the loss of your obliviousness. It is almost eight years since that day and you might finally be ready, ready to help mend this place that has lost its way. You will work everyday for the rest of your life, trying to be honest when you say, "I'm fine". There's a story behind every person. there's a reason they're the way they are. They aren't just like that because they want to. Something in the past created them, and sometimes it's impossible to fix them.