I’ll always have so much to figure out, always have emotions to sort through. Sometimes they’re going to be huge, maybe even insurmountable. Sometimes they’ll seem conquerable from the start. I know I’ll never be lacking in something to mull through or set straight in my dizzy brain. At least this is what I hope. This brain, it’s gotta have something to figure out, or else it starts to try and figure things that can’t be. If nothing else, my girl Kimya put it right: “Broken hearts hurt but they make us strong.” Sometimes mine starts to crack a little, maybe even chip away or kinda break. But you know, your heart muscles are among the strongest in your body, and putting a little stress on them makes it less likely they’ll freak out someday and quit working early. And I think your emotional heart is the same way: you have to know that the rotten things that happen to you, or to the world in general, aren’t there to be ignored – in your life, or in the world in general. They’re there to be worked through so you don’t have a wussy heart. Skirting things and ignoring emotions, I tried that for like twenty-one years. It worked alright until I started having to do harder things. Then I realized that I needed to let this thing, my heart, feel it all. Like training or conditioning or whatever. So at the end of the day, I might not be able to glide along the surface, moving smoothly over the barbed wire that sometimes snags at you. But when it comes down to it, on the days that are nasty and filled with small bad things, or days that are agonizing when life hits, I’m going to have a heart that can stay the course. Like, you know, my boy Michael Phelps. My heart will win eight golds, I’ll give them all to my mom, and I’ll walk away knowing that it’s only because I made myself keep pumping when I was tempted to just float.

PS: RAD NEWs…I’m spending a week in London this December with some AWESOMEEEEEEEEEEEEE girls and MAYBE STACEY?! UM….in LONDON?!?!??!?!??!?!?!!??!!??!?!? WHAT THE H…YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LAKDSAF;KSDJF;AJDSF!!!

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

-James Wright