memories fade as quickly as dreams. the only dreams that linger are the extreme ones, the ones where you murder someone, the world collapses, you're in a field naked. the only memories that linger are the ones that are just as extreme, in a real, sensual way. the memories that ever so slightly reach into who you are.


looking up at the milky way on a clear night, the sand pushing between your toes, the waves crashing. running a hand through the hypnotic waves, seeing miniscule phosphorescent spots flash and fade. cutting through the night, listening to 60s pop and thinking that there were only two people on the planet, and that the two of us and the tides were the only things moving across a still earth.

the girl in geology who always wears a long-sleeve shirt. who you saw the first day, reading agatha christie twenty minutes before class. who you were too afraid to say anything to. and who you occasionally look at and wonder, what if i had said something. what if i were to sit next to her, introduce myself. would i be tolerable, would i creep her out by saying that her eyes are beautiful? the same girl who, when you turned around during a lab, was smiling at a joke someone else had made. a smile that ignited something in the heart.

a few guitar chords, a few characters to empathize with. a script that reaches beyond time, a performance that pulled the right strings and pushed the right buttons. "hey, ho, the wind and the rain."

a three-part harmony via audience participation, ben folds playing conductor to a coliseum chorus as the final song in his set comes to a close. arms in the air as the whole of the audience lets out the final "aah" to end a song about a man who tripped on acid, climbed a tree, and came down a born again christian.


images. brief moments. some things you'll never forget, some you think you'll never forget.

Gretchen: What if you could go back in time and take all those hours of pain and darkness and replace them with something better?

Donnie: Like images, or what?

Gretchen: Yeah, like a Hawaiian sunset or the Grand Canyon. Just things that remind you of how beautiful the world is.

without the bad, there's no good.

[i could write more on karma, but i'm tired and it wouldn't be very coherent or relevant.]