Gandhi:

There exists in this world a gesture of endearment that leaves lovers neither staggering with sensuality nor grinning stupidly in the wake of newfound couplishness. This gesture is not so intimate so that the public passersby may shake their heads in disgust, nor so bland so that one would have to strain their eyes to see it an act of any sentiment.. instead, it entirely is and belongs to a category of its own, when appreciated by the right people of the non-sexridden mind.

It is not a single action of physical nature that can be limited to a deep kiss or a passionate embrace, but is an act of unspoken language that can be universally heard, yet is understood by so few: such a heartbreaking group of few.




The 90+ degree weather SoCal has sweated through since the beginning of the week has fallen to a steaming 68 degrees Fahrenheit in no more than three or four days. This cloudy greyness creates such marvelous conditions for letting my favorite pair of headphones kiss my ears and sing to me the weepy ballads of indie-folk songwriters loud enough that I may slowly slip away from this noisy place.
Normally, I'd hold the cooler weather in higher esteem. Today, though, the clouds in the sky seem to be blocking more than just the sun, and the moisture in the air seems to be dampening more than just the atmosphere.


..and for some reason, this weather seems to be a painful reminder that although I still remember it exists, that at one time it made my heart soar,

I've already forgotten what that gesture of such tenderly exchanged affection felt like.

"Hey beautiful,
I'm sorry I had to put you through all this darling. I'm truly sorry.

Just thought I'll leave you with a last few words.

All I wanna say is how much I loved you, and cared for you.

You are the apple of my eye, and I will be watching over you always.

Mary-Jane, Ian, Tom, Craig, Lee, thank you all for accepting me in to be able to care for your daughter/sister.

I will not forget how nice you have been to me!

Bet now my bloody lottery numbers will come up! Ha ha.

Jane I hope you have a wonderful and fulfilling life! Get married, have children, etc!

I will love you forever and will see you again when you're old and wrinkly!

I have told my parents to leave you some money out of my insurance so have fun bbz!

Ok...gonna go now beautiful.

Love you forever.

Tony xxx"

--Guardsman Neil "Tony" Downes, of the UK

last letter opened after his death

I don't know why I allow these things to get the better of me.

If you're reading this, wherever you are,
I'm sorry I'm too full of chickenshit to pick up the phone.

I've found that every day, I live for tomorrow.

I plan for tomorrow. I work for tomorrow. I hope for, wish for, expect for tomorrow.

Every day, most of us live for tomorrow.

There's nothing wrong with that, I believe. It doesn't hurt to live for tomorrow, to have it set, to make sure that you get by to live today for the next.

But it struck me today as so redundantly repetitive, because every tomorrow that I have will always be yet at least one more day from being substantiated, fulfilled as its own.


The Southern California heat has begun to die down, slightly.
I'm glad.

Would it not be an amazing honor to someday sit down and have the most profoundly esoteric conversation of one's lifetime with a celebrated author?

When someone confronts you with an issue, saying things that you wouldn't like to hear, you can easily walk away.

But when the time comes for you to accept a fact, or the only realistic path to follow that you wouldn't particularly want to, it's impossible to walk away from yourself.

Therefor, if the company you may not enjoy comes down to just you with you, then you might as well be nice to yourself, and simply enjoy being.

I was considering earlier how I was brought into this world with no real intention of my own. Reality being of course that birthing one's own would be an impossible feat, and that's an acceptable concept, but for people like myself that haven't quite got a God with answers or a divine being to answer to, a certain incertitude constantly prods the side of the head. If we weren't created of our own will, what gives us the right to be our own person?

The trouble with not being religious, or being incapable of placing faith in something that can't be justified with science or reason, is that there are no answers, and that's what I find most bothering.

Being selfish as I was when I was younger, when I received gifts on special occasions that didn't quite impress me to the standard I'd expect (like most spoiled children do), a festive blowout of dust collecting for the poor item would ensue in some untouched corner of my room. Probably disguised alongside a few books in my library or stashed behind a clothes cabinet where godknows what's crawled along there. That sounds like something I'd have done at that age.

Sometime over the last seven years, I've received at least two picture frames for my birthday, separately. I never much appreciated them, never had any use for them, and what became of them's beyond me, because little less than two years ago, I at last had a picture that I deemed necessary to be framed and those frames were nowhere to be found.

I went out to the nearest dollar store in town, paid for the nicest one out of the entire shelf, put the picture in, and every night before going to bed, I'd angle it slightly so that its front was in sight when I slept on my side facing the desk it stood on. An act of justifiable masochism from the heart.

And this continued nearly every night until the week of last Thanksgiving, when I crawled into bed one night and instead of angling the frame in my direction, set it face down, so that the leg it usually propped up against erected outward into the air.

Eventually the picture with the two smiling faces was removed and hidden, and remains so even until today. Now what's left is a plastic 4x6 picture frame painted a poorly reflective imitation-silver, and the uncertainty that if I so choose to hide this gaping reminder that I haven't got anything to fill it with, it won't disappear as I'd want it to like the other picture frames I once used to own.

Re-edited the template, looking at white was too much.
Now I'll have you look at too much black.

Chose to delete my previous six entries, because I felt like it.

..Took me long enough to slap something on here again, dinnit.