Helplessness Blues

I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes
Unique in each way you can see
And now after some thinking, I'd say I'd rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery
Serving something beyond me

But I don't know what that will be
I'll get back to you someday soon you will see

What's my name, what's my station
Just tell me what I should do
I don't need to be kind to the armies of night
That would do such injustice to you
Or bow down and be grateful
And say "Sure, take all that you see"
To the men who move only in dimly-lit halls
And determine my future for me

If I know only one thing, it's that everything that I see
Of the world outside is so inconceivable often I barely can speak
Yeah I'm tongue-tied and dizzy and I can't keep it to myself
What good is it to sing helplessness blues,
Why should I wait for anyone else?

If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm raw
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore
And you would wait tables and soon run the store

Gold hair in the sunlight, my light in the dawn
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore
If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore
Someday I'll be like the man on the screen

Fleet Foxes

Closet

I'm going to talk to you tonight about coming out of the closet. And not in the traditional sense, not just the "gay closet." I think we all have closets. Your closet may be telling someone you love her for the first time. Or telling someone that you're pregnant. Or telling someone you have cancer. Or any of the other hard conversations we have throughout our lives. All a closet is, is a hard conversation. And though our topics may vary tremendously, the experience of being in and coming out of the closet is universal. It is scary and we hate it and it needs to be done.

So like many of us, I lived in a few closets in my life and yeah, most often, my wall happens to be rainbow. But inside, in the dark, you can't tell what color the walls are. You just know what it feels like to live in a closet. So really, my closet is no different than yours or yours or yours. Sure, I'll give you a hundred reasons why coming out of my closet was harder than coming out of yours but here's the thing... hard is not relative; hard is hard. Who can tell me that explaining to someone you just declared bankruptcy is harder than telling someone you just cheated on them. Who can tell me that his coming out story is harder than telling your 5-year old you're getting a divorce. There is no harder, there is just hard. We need to stop ranking our hard against everyone else's hard to make us feel better or worse about our closets and just commiserate on the fact that we all have hard. At some point in our lives we all live in closets and they may feel safe. Or at least safer than what lies on the other side of that door. But I am here to tell you, no matter what your walls are made of, a closet is no place for a person to live.

Ash Beckham at TedxBoulder

Common Burn

Simple things like your overcoat
and your beauty

City of Glass

New York is an inexhaustible space, a labyrinth of endless steps, and no matter how far he walked, no matter how well he came to know its neighborhoods and streets, it always left him with the feeling of being lost. Lost, not only in the city, but within himself as well. Each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up to the movement of the streets, by reducing himself to a seeing eye, he was able to escape the obligation to think, and this, more than anything else, brought him a measure of peace, a salutary emptiness within. The world was outside of him, around him, before him, and the speed with which it kept changing made it impossible for him to dwell on any one thing for very long. Motion was of the essence, the act of putting one foot in front of the other and allowing himself to follow the drift of his own body. By wandering aimlessly, all places became equal, and it no longer mattered where he was. On his best walks, he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally, was all he ever asked of things: to be nowhere. New York was the nowhere he had built around himself, and he realized that he had no intention of ever leaving it again.

Paul Auster

I Have Never Loved Someone

I have never loved someone the way I love you
I have never seen a smile like yours
And if you grow up to be king or clown or pauper
I will say you are my favorite one in town

I have never held a hand so soft and sacred
When I hear your laugh I know heaven's key
And when I grow to be a poppy in the graveyard
I will send you all my love upon the breeze

And if the breeze won't blow your way, I will be the sun
And if the sun won't shine your way, I will be the rain
And if the rain won't wash away all your aches and pains
I will find some other way to tell you you're okay

my brightest diamond

Sideways

In that moment I realized that not only had we stopped growing together but that I no longer really knew her. The eight years we had spent together were now buried in our separate memories, passionlessly chronicled by photos and other now-meaningless memorabilia. Touching, talking intimately on a daily basis, sleeping together, were now so much confetti fluttering into the void. Someone once said that you only loved once in your life, and perhaps, instead of other women, I had filled the emptiness of Victoria's leaving with the more constant pleasure of wine. She could be a cruel mistress in the morning, but by evening she would always rise and greet me with a welcoming embrace. Bushwhacking my way through life companionless, and often rudderless, it was a relief to know that I, too, could feel desired by someone or something.

rex pickett