How do you do such great things?

Splitting an atom with a molecule. Writing books, giving lectures.

How do you survive?

Janis Joplin covers my desktop in a tiled setting, her hand pointing, mouth laughing at me. The Flobots’s “Handlebars” plays from Windows Media Player.

How do you manage to eat every night in a world like ours? How does anybody do it? I’m lucky to have the job that I do. I hate everything about it, but I’m lucky to have it.

My brother got expelled from school today. I want to warn him, somehow. Tell him why it is he can’t be himself. That he can’t do those things he dreams about. I don’t want to see him end up worse than me. With no way out.

I did mushrooms one weekend, my friends and I went camping out in a place called Enright Ridge. It was a safe haven. I spent the next few days wondering why I don’t live in a tent under the shelter of the woods.

I can’t ride a bike with no handlebars, unfortunately. I’m too busy, meeting demands. The demands of my parents, my teachers, my own stomach.

I watch the multiple Janis Joplins laugh and I know what is so damn funny.