I waste my youth at the wrong places, I waste my dreams on the wrong people, I waste my strength in fleeting fantasies. My art will never be worthy of immortality, and my life...I'm helplessly watching it slip away.

Who are you and what do you want from me? Looking forward to something is enough to ensure its collapse, needing someone suffices to make them disappear- or fail you. Recurring themes threaten to overwhelm us; loneliness the most tenacious of them all.

Please, I screamed, take me away, give me a purpose to fight for, a reason to go on. The sound of silence echoed like evil laughter in my head. I didn't cry- no, I am too proud for tears, too focused on hiding my Achilles' heel, too busy building fences and preparing assaults.

Keep it all in, don't let your weakness rise to the surface, put up the perfect show of indifference and self-sufficiency. Then what? Explosions? Thunderstorms? Earthquakes? Or a slow demise that knows no cure, eternal apathy, a cancerous decay of the soul?

Why must excitement always be served glazed in fear? I wake up with a terrible headache and an even worse realization beginning to settle in my mind. Pleasure only comes at a price- are you willing to pay it?

Don't look at me, the answer isn't written in my eyes, yet your gaze is lingering. A year older, none the wiser- keep repeating the mistakes you know best. Can fallacies be improved to the point of perfection?

I feel dizzy, I watch the world spin outside my window, and don't you understand? Someone's about to get hurt here, but right now we're too busy examining each other's footprints on the sand for premonitions to have any effect.

Doesn't the world suddenly feel complete, when you've discovered a story? Not invented, not made up, just stumbled upon in the corridors of imagination. A plot, one character or many, a crisis and a final resolution. Hold on to what you've found- you're now a rich person.

Don't let anything limit you; the possibilities are endless. Open your mind and heart, embrace your latest companions: a man who only speaks in rhymes; a pig that hates getting dirty; a little girl with flowers growing on her head...anything can happen.

Us lonely freaks living at the brinks of reality, all we have left are these ethereal journeys. Exaggeration flashes like a mirror under the sun, droplets of sweat glistening above your eyebrow, clouds embarking on vicious assaults against weather-worn mountain peaks.

The music of nonsense brings little comfort to saturated ears,
but when silence threatens to annihilate you, it may become your only hope.

I've belatedly realized that sex and friendship are totally incompatible. The first always manages to spoil the latter- and
vice versa. Some people might be able to combine them, but on my planet it never seems to work. How can you be friendly towards someone you're truly attracted to? And if you're not, doesn't sex with them taste like cold soup or warm ice cream or just something purely and utterly wrong?

Of course, I still support the practice- on a theoretical level. In an ideal world, we would only have sex with our friends. The people
we trust and enjoy the company of; the people who have stood
beside us in our worst moments and would never let us down; the people we can laugh with, speak our minds to, get reassurance from, feel safe around.

Instead, we prefer to experiment with strangers, which- after the first few moments of excitement- usually leaves us tired, confused, disappointed, hurt or enraged. Now, you could say that even passionate love eventually evolves into a kind of companionship resembling friendship. No wonder so many married couples complain about their sex lives.

OK, I guess I got carried away. Enough with stereotypes. All I wanted to say is...I think I'm growing old. I'm tired of shallow games and painful compromises. I want to be who I am, nothing more, nothing less. And I'm done putting myself in situations that are meant to bring me down, just to prove I'm strong enough to handle them.

From Ask the Dust, by John Fante

"The greying east brightened, metamorphosed to pink, then red, and then the giant ball of fire rose out of the blackened hills. Across the desolation lay a supreme indifference, the casualness of night and another day, and yet the secret intimacy of those hills, their silent consoling wonder, made death a thing of no great importance. You could die, but the desert would hide the secret of your death, it would remain after you, to cover your memory with ageless wind and heat and cold."

Let us start our own philosophical movement- we'll call it Cynical Existentialism. Put Antithesis at its core, make Scepticism its main principle, add the imperatives of Individualistic Anarchy to the mix, sprinkle it with traces of Romanticism and just a hint of Nihilism.

Encourage euthanasia and suicide- no one should stay alive that doesn't truly wish to- but ban all forms of organised warfare and institutional violence. Children should grow up surrounded by love, not locked up in prisons of lies and parental ambitions. Fuck advanced technology- who fantasizes of sleeping with cyborgs?

Uncover the twisted roots of morality, attack the foundations of order, allow society to annihilate itself, so it might be reborn from pure necessity, let anyone who desires to break free of its web simply walk away. Shatter all mirrors, for are they anything more than a means to imposing conformity, the all-seeing eye of Others constantly attacking the kingdom of Solitude?

Now find the hidden weaknesses of this Utopia and blow it to bits. Then you'll understand what it means to abolish certainty; then you'll know the beauty and vastness and sorrow of persistent self-doubt.

Would you compromise freedom in the name of companionship? Would you sacrifice vulnerability in the name of indifference? Miracles do happen, if only to prove that they weren't miracles, after all. Is discontentment the disease of modern society, or merely an innate human trait?

What if death is the answer to all our questions? Keep afterlife for your humble servants; all I seek is eternal oblivion, I'd give up remembrance for the chance to forget. Do you think your feet leave permanent marks on every path you follow? Do you believe that your voice will echo forever in the halls of the universe? Dream on.