you're spending all your nights growing old in your bed

there are so many people walking around like zombies, suffering the loss of Hollie and Laura Ashley. We are broken.

All my love to both families. I can't imagine.

Hollie, you were like a part of my family. Although I would go for stints without seeing you, you were ever present. I'm lucky to have known you. Your toughness and intimidation scared a lot of Rachel friends haha, but you were always there when you were needed. You fiercely protected your little sister Rachel. You loved your family so much. Please know Rachel has a lot of friends who are going to see her through this.

Listening to your unedited music at the visitation, I couldn't help but smile. It was fitting, you wouldn't have cared about our stuffy clothes or the solemn occasion, you would have said anything you felt like saying. I love you for that. The music illuminated your eternal youth and immortal personality.


gonna stay eighteen forever, so we can stay like this forever

there's too many half-ways-in-betweens

I am confusing artificial light for the moon.

here and now

it's been nearly a year since the SC primary. 1/26/08 changed my life and the course of history. that Saturday night victory rally sparked momentum that would carry Obama through the primaries and a momentum for my future. and here i am, a year later. I'm going to see the inauguration. I'm going to see DC for the first time. I'm going to burst with pride for my country, government, and fellow Americans.

why so soft, unresisting and yielding?

my plans never seem to work out. i just want to get away. i just want to be left alone. i'm wallowing in self-pity and it's disgusting. i can't believe my own jealousy. i don't feel in control anymore.





why so little fate in your glances?

fuck.

i am so stupid.

servants of one sovereign master

Two Treatises of Government
Section 6 of Chapter II 'Of the State of Nature'

"But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence: though man in that state have an uncontroulable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another's pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another's uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for our's. Every one, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station wilfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another."



i am my brother's keeper.
i am my brother's servant.
my life is not my own property.

checking tradition

For the first time during a religious discussion I haven't felt threatened, wrong, or unsure. I didn't respond in anger, frustration, or guilt. I was filled with a certainty that I've never felt. For the first time, I claimed aloud with no doubts to be an Atheist.



"Man must not check reason by tradition,
but contrariwise, must check tradition by reason." - Leo Tolstoy