Smile, Darling. We’re all okay: so beautifully chaotic, so deliciously unwell.

Absolutely digging Cavashawn’s new EP.

And of course I’m teasing when I call this passive-aggressive, but this is just my passive-aggressive way of telling you how much I care

Indistinguishable from a fly on the wall, as comfortable as a chair, safe as the fire alarm hanging from the ceiling.

I uncap the little bottle of Visene I keep in the mesh pocket of my dark blue messenger bag: allergy relief. Holding it vertical, I make sure to pull my eyelid back with my fingertips, to prevent the natural reflex from occurring, to stop nature from protecting itself. I gently squeeze the bottle, and in lieu of tears a drop or two of the fluid falls into each eye. Dust and pollen aside, tetrahydrozoline hydrochloride does nothing to suppress the itching and burning of stardust trapped in bumps beneath the eyelid.

When we could be anything, why would we be a negative force in the universe, a force of darkness? While people may go on acting like people and choosing to run away and choosing to self-destruct, why would we choose to pull our weight like a black hole and pull the universe away from an energy fostering creativity and growth? Why would we use our talents and beauty to drive people to madness, to misery, or merely melancholy, when we can truly inspire, regenerate? People will go on being people…but why should we help them destroy themselves, destroy their families, destroy their lives, destroy our world? When we can be anything, why would we choose to be an agent of darkness?

If we feel we can’t be positive — at least be benign.

Sometimes the sunlight of late spring softens the harshness of my brow when I feel so compelled to express myself. In these fleeting moments I can only hope that you believe me, that you know I mean it.

As I wait in the street outside, I hear your voice soaring above the trees and piano keys through a curtained window, and I know you mean it.

And again I have to say that people who constantly seek activity, diversion, distraction, or action too miss the point…

Living in the moment doesn’t imply an expression of control over circumstance but rather a surrender to infinite awareness.

By worrying about our future or escaping the realities we face, we’d both live through delusion, predicated upon an assumption that there could be something better. Darling, I have to say, there is no life but this, there is no meaning beyond what we make for ourselves. This isn’t an audition or some fucking dress rehearsal: this is life. C’est la vie.

Don’t miss the point.

Waiting for the phone to ring. Wondering if I have reception?

Back when we were close, she used to playfully tug at the sleeve of my shirt in order to pull me closer. As our feet skipped over the cobblestone path, far beyond the point where our cell phones were disrupted by the curve of the earth and the canopy of trees overhead, she’d tell me about the ghosts in Russia.

It’s been a few years, now, and I doubt that she remembers this hazy memory of a day in the beginning of July. But I do; I’m no longer haunted by the ghosts from Russia. There are no ghosts, except when I seek them out—and I find them in hundreds of pages buried on my bookshelf like the cast of Amontillado.

There are no ghosts, no ghosts from Russia.