I’m sitting in a hotel lobby with Micah Ruelle, it’s about 5:00 in the morning, and the Egyptian gentleman on staff—Talaat B.—has been telling us about his life. And I sort of want to go home and cry and understand all of these things that I don’t understand. Is this because I’m exhausted, or because this stranger’s story has in some way changed me?

Thanks for everything, Talaat.

This is what happens when I stay up too late.

EDIT: No proper nouns.

The winners:
Ben Williams/John Layman - queue
Ben Williams - plateaued
Myself - onomatopoeia

While I was driving around on Saturday, I was thinking about whether or not people reach an event horizon of sorts in their romantic relationships. Once we cross a certain arbitrary threshold in our togetherness, does there come a time when we can no longer escape from the gravity created by our intimacy and we give in to its pull?

I am not referring to settling for someone. I think the settling process usually happens before a relationship ever progresses far enough to reach the event horizon. If you merely settle for your partner under the assertion that you probably won’t find anyone better, or that you don’t want to go through the difficulty of making yourself vulnerable to another human being, the intimacy in your relationship will never have gravity enough to really bring you to the point of no return.

I guess what I’m saying is that people get to a point in their relationships, and once this point is crossed, the way is shut behind them, and they are drawn by the gravitational pull of their accumulated intimacy toward whatever end.

I’m really tired. I wish this made more sense. Writing through this helped me clarify and understand my opinion. What does everyone else think?

I was wondering today if there was a connection between Slovenia and describing people as “slovenly”.

Google yields no answers, but how rude would be it be for a word describing someone/something as sloppy or not-well-looked-after to have been derived from your country of origin? Ouch.

Thanks for that, Google.

Shaving with a new razor is so much nicer than shaving with a dull one.

SO FRESH AND SO CLEAN CLEAN.

I was thinking today—we call people “sex offenders”. Offenders. Predators. Why don’t we call them what they are? Rapists—child rapists—molesters, pedophiles, monsters? I just feel like “sex offender” is far too tame a term.

I really like to write letters. I have a notebook solely for letter-writing, and I only use certain writing utensils. I like putting my thoughts and words and feelings onto a page for someone; sometimes carefully and intentionally, sometimes quickly and rambling. I get a different sense when writing a letter then when I write something for mass consumption or for myself.

I think that letters are more intimate than conversation. I’ll talk to darned-near anyone if I have to. I say word after insincere word to strangers all evening at work, and often at school as well, and I feel like my spoken words lose their potency and value. They’re commonplace. Humdrum. Diluted. I share them indiscriminately.

I don’t write a letter to just anyone. My written words are, I think, reserved for the people in my life that I care about the most. I differentiate, here, between written and typed word. Typing is a weird, mechanical process for me. Writing is an artful, conscious act. Then there’s the tangible aspect of a letter—spoken words sublimate into nothing once they reach the air.

We can feel their effect, but we can never hold those words. They are word-ghosts. If I mail you a letter, you can see me and touch me. You can read and reread my heart on the page; my written words grant me a sort of half-presence even in my absence. Years from now, if you’ve kept the things I’ve written for you, you’ll still have a piece of me crystallized at age 23.

Letters are intentional. I can hold a conversation without any effort or purpose, but I can’t accidentally drive to the post office at two in the afternoon and spend forty-four cents in dimes, nickels and pennies from the change in my car’s armrest to purchase a stamp to mail the letter that I did not just accidentally write.

I’d love to receive letters in the mail. How exciting is it to see someone’s familiar handwriting on an envelope? To see how they write my name? To know that, when I open up that envelope, there’s a piece of that person waiting to reveal itself to me?

My mouth tastes like a dentist’s office. Does that mean that this toothpaste is really good?