Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

"The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot

"So what about [...], how is he doing?"
"And have you heard from [...]? Is she still working at that what's-it-called?"

"When was the last time you spoke to [...]? I heard he's having some problems with keeping his grade up?"

I have to admit I tune these questions out everytime I hear them... partially because I really have absolutely no idea how to respond, and partially because it strikes a nerve to realize I have absolutely no idea what goes on in the lives of people who once mattered so much to me. In case you haven't noticed before, stop and look at the lines creased across your forehead and lips. Your youth is slipping away into the folds, wrinkled into your face for all to see. People spit out words like "stereotype" and "cliche", writhing away from their nuances like cups of spoiled milk. They exist, these stereotypes and these cliches, and reason they've achieved their immortality is because we all fall victim to their wrath. "Time flies". Been said countless times? Yep. Been true in each and every incident? Yep, again. I remember waiting for Christmas. I remember when an hour felt like eternity. Now it seems there is no wait, everything becomes a member of the past in a "blink of an eye". We wait for college, we wait to graduate, we wait for careers, we wait for love, and we wait to finally step out into the world and prove ourselves. We search for our identities, as if mapping out the reality of one's existance could ever even actually happen. No one becomes who they'd like to be, or who they are. We play make-believe until fantasy and nightmares become the truth. We all transform into what we swore we'd never be...Carbon copies of our parents. Liars. Lushes. Cheaters. Republicans. Feeling guilty yet?

When did I leave my childhood? If I could TiVo my life, could I find the exact moment when nothing I believed in remained? Did my innocence die along with Santa Claus, or with the first episode of Jerry Springer I watched when my parents turned their backs? Perhaps it left the day I purchased my first training bra, or the day boys stopped having cooties? When my childhood died, it took my imagination along, buried six feet under. Now, I artificially produce it. I find it in fabricated realities, manipulated visions, self-induced musings. We pay so much money to escape from the world we've molded with our own hands. We bottle and prescribe the cures to the diseases we invented ourselves. We label sins with titles meant to imply something, making human actions ugly, bad, and dirty simply because. We love being unhappy. We can't be happy anymore unless we acheive the satisfaction of suffering the most, feeling the most pain, and eating and sleeping the lease. We bleed to remind ourselves we exist, remind ourselves our hearts still pump and pump within our chests. We throw things away solely to mourn their loss. We fear admitting to practicing the horrible acts of actually caring, or actually trying. Everything is no big deal, everything is whatever. If nothing means anything, it doesn't hurt when it leaves...

...except ...maybe it actually hurts a little...so then maybe we can chemically remedy our pain a little more. So we can carry bigger, heavier crosses. And increasingly pity ourselves. And then, and only then, will we be really living. Because life comes in transparent orange bottles, and facebook statuses, and fourth meals, and dime bags. Life comes in crying until we laugh and then laughing until we cry. Is it possible that something or someone exists that can justify life, or at least this single moment in time?

I am guilty of all seven deadly sins. I am guilty of all I most severly condemn. I am guilty of believing life is still good, even if it never quite manages to be fair.

Can the world ever really end if it never really began?

I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

-Kurt Vonnegut.

I'm in love with all my greatest fears. ^ sculpture by Damien Hirst, of course.

♥ Caroline