"Took my hand and led me down to watch a papillion parade,
and we let the kittens lick our hair and drink our chalky lemonade,
you squeezed my hand and told me softly that I shouldn't be afraid, no, 'cause all the while your finger's resting... gently on the Master Fade..."
Andrew Bird, "Master Fade"

The Mysterious Production of Eggs brings back so many things for me. Oh God, it's deliciously painful, just like the way I still cannot type God without a capital. God is God, god is Zeus, Bacchus, Hera. The paint's peeling off my fingers in thick coats. Please stop going up. Sometimes my stomach cries out, because that's what a "heart" really feels like. I drank three beers tonight and three beers are enough. Dear Derek Mahon, I think maybe you'd listen to me; If I understood me, if I understood you, I think I might die of flattery, but is that true? It couldn't be possible, and still, a part of my tongue itches and burns, saying that I am palpable, that within me there is life. Yes, three beers, and then followed by water, so much water. I treat it like the beer, abuse it in order to derive pleasure from my consumption. Don't get me wrong, this is not how I treat all or even most things. This is only the way I treat things whose existence affects my body. I love my friends and will treat them with the most delicacy and love my human fallible nature will allow, but liquid, well, you've got to be kidding me. I drank the water until my little belly swelled, breathing through my nose, trying to get a whole liter or more in one swallow, watching it crumple as the plastic bottle imploded on its diminishing world. Oh, doesn't my liver love this? It's absurd how much water one's body can consume, how much water one is made of. Is it I true that I like feeling the slightest bit sick, the slightest bit out of control? Is it? I don't know. I also derive much pleasure out of knowing that I am the one making things in control or out of control. I get great pleasure out of controlling my own life. I'm not terribly interested in controlling others... influencing them, yes, but controlling? No. Being loved or even thought of as attractive is far more gratifying when someone makes that decision on their own. Ugh, Master Fade, ugh, Raymond and I discussing "Fake Palindromes," years and years and forever ago, with my awkward attraction to him there and far too shy and respectful to ever do anything about it, and yet, far too forward with others. What makes us this way? Is it the knowledge that there could be something real there, the fear of something real, vs. the understanding that some things are nothing and we should never fear nothing or what it results in? I don't know. I really don't. All I know is this album does this to me. That Bird will never compose anything that surpasses this in my memory, in my mind, during the most influential period in my life. I remember exactly what was on the side of the road. 4 AM rides. Falling asleep at the wheel. Yes, I literally fell asleep at the wheel once. So horrible, I know, but no one was hurt. My car wasn't even hurt. I was so lucky. But, Bird, you bring that back, and, suddenly, I find myself tearing my palette knife from the mixing platform and slashing a thickly painted comet into my city scene sky; honestly, I don't know if I like it or not, if it's good or bad. It's quite beautiful, for all the destruction it implies.

Oh, to be someone else and to live a life that made sense! But, stupidly, I must realize that everyone is like this inside. So silly to think that we're special. Well, you may, but whenever I do so aloud, I feel as though I'm robbing myself of the only secret I have left.