"Knowing you are alive is feeling the planet buck under you, rear, kick, and try to throw you; you hang onto the ring. It is riding the planet like a log downstream, whooping, or, conversely, you step aside from the dreaming fast loud routine and feel time as a stillness about you, and hear that silent air asking in so thin a voice, Have you noticed that you will die? Do you remember, remember, remember? Then you feel your life as a weekend, a weekend you cannot extend, a weekend in the country." - Annie Dillard, An American Childhood

If I thought I could get away with it I would fill this bit of space with qoutes and references to books I never finished, to hide myself, hide my fear. I suspect that's what we all are, terrified that everyone, much less, someone, will glimpse our true, dark and often silly existence. But that terror is bred out of our own self-loathing. We believe that others will run from us as far and as fast as we would, if we weren't so obviously attached. We expect this, but there's also hope that someone, or someone's, won't mind as much and maybe stick around, hopefully from a not too terrible distance. All that being said, allow me to qoute the great Dr. Seuss, "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." I give people too much credit. This is my escape from the different boxes I put myself in when I'm around people. This is also a grasp at sanity. As I am currently working the night shift as a janitor at a middle/elementary school, here in western pa., I am surrounded and battered by my own thoughts. This is my release of them. I have no idea what form they will take, how they will be expressed, etc. But that's the fun of this. Thanks to various inspirations.

jonathan

"Talking nonsense is man's only privilege that distinguishes him from all other organisms." - Fyodor Dostoevsky