really, Lord, this wound.

it seems we all feel it, and we all suffer inside from it.

the sepatration, the feeling of individuality, though the desire within us is so strong, it keeps us lonely and afraid.

i have never met anyone who really is happy in this dark sadness of alone.

we all seek connection, don't we, this is, as they say, the human condition.

tonight, i laid in bed with my arms wrapped around myself, sure that my friend did not love me because of how ugly i am, on the inside and on the out.

and my mother called and though i felt so dead i answered the phone. and she told me i was beautiful and really, though i shouldn't have, i believed her, since i so desperately wanted to believe it was true.

and my friend, hearing that i was awake, knocked on my door and asked me to join him and a friend at the bar. and we walked in the cold to a bar and had many drinks and fine food. and we laughed and held hands during sad songs.

and then, i came back to the apt and my brother called and i had to run to my room and jump on my bed to answer, and there he was on the phone.

and we spent the next two hours talking about art and writing and what it means to feel alive.

and over whiskey and beer and many cigarettes i explained to him that though i dont begrudged anyone who finds satisfaction and release in what they do, whether it is banking or management or construction or sales, that if they feel passion and excitement for these things i am very happy and proud of them, that what he is doing and what i am doing and what niki is doing is far more dangerous.

because when has anyone ever read a book or look at a painting or a print or a photograph and if they didn't feel a bit of the artist exposed in it, if they didn't feel a bit of the person who created it, whether in investigation or hatred or some sort of painful and wholly disturbing purgatory in it...if the artist is not present somewhere in the work, well, who cares?

don't you feel that if the artist is not there in some capacity that the piece is dead?

so in the arts, in whatever fashion, there is danger, and fear.

and, i think, everything else that makes us feel alive.

so the artist, then is in danger at all times, laying themselves bare, if they are honest, in some capacity or other.

and in that, there is a chance for redemption.