I think ... I should go home soon. Mom and Luke are probably going nuts. What about youHe shrugged a casual lift of one shoulder. You tell me. When I left Nevernever I didnt have any plans other than being with you. If you want me around just say the word.

I have made a lot of mistakes falling in love and regrettedmost of them but never the potatoes that went with them.

The fight unfolded like background noise. White noise. In the foreground even with his ghastly pale face looking dead in my hands my fingers clenching his ragged hair all I could see was random images of Fang not dead.Fang telling me stupid fart jokes from the dog crate next to mine at the school trying to make me laugh.Fang asleep at Jebs old house and me jumping wildly on his bed to wake him up. Him pretending to be asleep. Me laughing when I accidentally kicked him where it counts. Him dumping me off the bed.Fang gagging on my first attempt at cooking dinner after Jeb disappeared. Him spitting out the mac and cheese. Me dumping the rest of the bowl on him in response.Fang on the beach that first time he was badly injured. Me realizing how I felt about him.Fang kissing me. So close I couldnt even see his dark eyes anymore. The first time. The second time. The third.I could always remember each and every one of them. Would always remember them.Fang.Not.Dead.

Love is scary it changes it can go away. Thats the part of the risk. I dont want to be scared anymore.

Long distance is hard. You have to trust that as you each change on your own your relationship will also change along with you. It takes hope good humor and idealism. It takes a massive dose of courage to protect the relationship at all odds. It is hard but worth it. Youll both be stronger as a result.

We are the ones who take this thing called music and line it up with this thing called time. We are the ticking we are the pulsing we are underneath every part of this moment. And by making the moment our own we are rendering it timeless. There is no audience. There are no instruments. There are only bodies and thoughts and murmurs and looks. Its the concert rush to end all concert rushes because this is what matters. When the heart races this is what its racing towards.

So I learned two things that night and the next day from him the perfection of a moment and the fleeting nature of it.

Dont let yourself die without knowing the wonder of fucking with love.

Productiveness is your acceptance of morality your recognition of the fact that you choose to live--that productive work is the process by which mans consciousness controls his existence a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit ones purpose of translating an idea into physical form of remaking the earth in the image of ones values--that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind and no work is creative if done by a blank who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from others--that your work is yours to choose and the choice is as wide as your mind that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human--that to cheat your way into a job bigger than your mind can handle is to become a fear-corroded ape on borrowed motions and borrowed time and to settle down into a job that requires less than your minds full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion decay--that your work is the process of achieving your values and to lose your ambition for values is to lose your ambition to live--that your body is a machine but your mind is its driver and you must drive as far as your mind will take you with achievement as the goal of your road--that the man who has no purpose is a machine that coasts downhill at the mercy of any boulder to crash in the first chance ditch that the man who stifles his mind is a stalled machine slowly going to rust that the man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap and the man who makes another man his goal is a hitchhiker no driver should ever pick up--that your work is the purpose of your life and you must speed past any killer who assumes the right to stop you that any value you might find outside your work any other loyalty or love can be only travelers you choose to share your journey and must be travelers going on their own power in the same direction.

Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness.