I know what this is all about: you're trying to psychoanalyze me, said the statue to the sculptor. You think that, because you've carved my face, you can also solidify my spirit. But my mind is not yours to shape at will; it is not a fixed essence for you to grasp.

I change with every passing day, no body of stone will ever be able to imprison me, and when you lie frozen in sleep, my shadow dances in the boulevards of your dreams. Deep inside, I know, you envy me, for I flirt with immortality in a way you can't even come close to...

When the moon painted its silver path on shimmering seas, she could only beg for silence. On warm summer nights, no one wants to go home. Yet home was where she felt safe. Protected. Where she didn't need to pretend. She'd spend a week exchanging promises with three different men, while secretly dreaming of a fourth one. She'd spent another week in utter solitude, seeking oblivion.

People climb high on the towers of your expectations, then they jump. Sex was an all-purpose currency, used to buy impressions of devotion; it was her ticket to places she wasn't meant to see; the means to prove her love or independence; tension release more intense than tension itself; a sound loud enough to drown the voices in her head; the fuel that fed her withering flame of self-worth.

She said, give me the strength to forsake all shapes of compromise. Sex was pleasure when it wasn't necessary. It wasn't necessary
when she didn't care. She didn't care only when it was pleasure.
She thought, how can we depend on something so vague, fleeting
and indescribable? If it's best when it involves the deepest core of
your mind, why does it feel better when the mind succumbs to
the raw force of the body?

"We work n the dark -we do what we can -we give what we have.
Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is
the madness of art."

Thus spoke Henry James. Quotes like this make you want to shut your mouth and never utter another word, for everything you say will be nothing more than banalities and unnecessary additions to already flawless meanings. Of course, by you I'm only referring to myself, here. If I can be you, why can't you be me?

Don't be so quick to dismiss vanity and the fear of dying as mere weaknesses, unacceptable obstacles on your path to Perfection. From these particularly human traits spring too many of this world's wonders- monuments, texts, paintings, the melodies you unconsciously hum when you feel small and scared and lonely...

How does love enter the equation? 'Tis our love for life that makes the thought of death abhorring; 'tis our love for our own bodies behind our fruitless attempts to defy mortality; 'tis the absence of love that pushes us higher, further onto its pursuit. We yearn to be loved so that our deaths won't be without witnesses. We become vain because we believe we are worthy of love.

How much more can I say without losing you? If only I could think of something you've never heard before, a phrase that would brand itself on your mind so you'd never be able to forget me. An exercise in vanity reinforced by the fear of dying.

See, these days I don't even have time for philosophizing. My scribblings are little more than unsuccessful experiments in tension release, rivers of emotions flowing unstoppable and beyond my control; they built up whilst I was struggling to focus on reality's choirs and now are threatening to overturn me.

What will you answer me? You're casually drifting away, teaching me what it feels like to be left behind. I used to not care; then I changed my mind, but couldn't bring myself to tell you. Don't you know it frightens me when you read between the lines?

If I let go, will you let go, too?

Her heart was like a blank cheque, offered to the least approachable by-passer under some hardly convincing excuse. Again and again she took that terrifyingly familiar path, seeking to be discovered, yet striving to remain forever lost, inventing new ways to make the same mistakes, though infinitely tired of repetition.

And when the days grew shorter, the moon would always find her alone on an autumn beach, carving expressions of aggression on impersonal masks, adding footnotes of indifference to manuscripts
of abandonment, wondering which deep-rooted need was pushing
her towards a life she never wished to live, before letting the waves wash it all away…

As time's embrace tightens, our dreams run out of oxygen.

If you were sinking, what would you let go of first, your dreams or your ideals? We learn to love. Then we learn to betray. We jump from alibi to alibi like those water-walking insects. It is because you detest decisions, the tyranny of choice. You’d rather have it all- and nothing. Freedom of un-choice.

You has a multitude of faces. They are almost impossible to separate. Call it a quest for completion, when it is only an attempt to bury your insecurities. So you cling to people, and sometimes people cling to you- their expectations clash with your needs, their needs clash with your expectations. You’d like to follow your own path without hurting or disappointing anyone; you end up hurt and disappointed and fed up with it all. Solitude smiles sardonically: welcome on board.  Am I ready to give you up?

Egocentrism is neither a philosophy nor a way of life. It is not necessarily synonymous with narcissism, though it always entails an aspect of self-examination, often to the point of obsession. Stick to what you have: could you ever really grasp something outside the boundaries of your mortal skin? Can you ever really know yourself?

Amazing, the things you can talk about with strangers, but wouldn't dare tell the people you know. A cathartic and frightening experience, as you summarise your life in a few sentences, barely pausing to blunt edges or brighten colours- the only choice you make is which details to leave out. It feels almost like an interview, a test you need to pass before you're allowed to move on to the next level.

Sometimes the conversation flows, as if you've met an old friend; other times it is broken by long, uncomfortable pauses and expressions of disguised disappointment. As you speak, you begin to see yourself as a stranger, too, filtering every word through invisible distorting glasses, projecting your conscience on the person sitting next to you, wondering "do I sound interesting, or like a psychotic self-absorbed sociopath?"

A face that stands out in the crowd. Exchanged glances. Curiosity turns to hope turns to excitement turns to fear. Then your insistence is rewarded with a smile, maybe even a hint of a chance. You start to notice the tiny footprints of coincidence wherever you go. Fear turns to excitement turns to hope turns to curiosity. A new beginning. Or another case of self-delusion. Don't we all live for these moments of effortless inspiration and agonizing doubt?