There's a serenity in realizing you won't live forever. The real change occurs when you realize forever might not be through the night; or that there is something waiting for you-- either a looming shadow, or a bright light-- and you're not certain when it's going to engulf you, but it lingers and lays low until you least expect it. I've planted a seed of hope inside of myself, and unfortunately there is a barricade of weeds-- dirty, abhorring acts of self-hatred that are strangling the seed of hope. Peacefully, the wind graces my face with a grazing gust of a breeze, and I feel peace and serene and dream of what I've done already in my time.

I went to chicago once, and drank myself into the saddest, sweetest memory. There are sometimes when a moment is too overwhelming to live in, and so you replace the present with a more tranquil, dulling momentum. A bus ride through the northeast into the midwest-- a train ride through the heart of the west to new mexico-- weeds waving straw and corn, whatever else was hidden from my hindsight. I was given the opportunity to see the most beautiful and decorated tragedies of American history; of a native way of life that no longer exists, except for show.

A plane brought me through the Phoenix sunrise, and again over the Phoenix sunrise, as I flew west to fly east. There was an array of pink and heat that woke me and nursed me back to sleep through the windows. "Du wiste wie eine blume en der wuste" or some sort of poem in German, the one sad phrase I can muster.

There were ordinary days, fire escapes and walks from Harlem to the Lower East Side, where I mistook friendship for love. It was love, just a different way of showing it.

I've fallen in love, and fallen out of love. I've gotten drunk-- laughing and crying and wondering why oh why me, all in the same minute.

I've created art, poetry, music, been apart of and been without. I've heard chords that still ring in my memory.

The point of death isn't as dreary and dreadful as we like to imagine. It happens when you've far surpassed your capabilities as an ordinary human. Every experience I will bring with me, and hopefully rather than feel the sun, or feel the quite under the power of the moon, I'll become apart of it, in energy, in love, in spirit. Every person, for better or worse, has become an infinite member of my life. And for which, I am eternally privileged.

Love Always,

Joe.