I think I’m pretty smart. I take accelerated classes, get all A’s in school, and I manage all my responsibility pretty well. I feel like a premier of the great society that is mankind. Then I come home and see my cat lounging in the sun, carefree, and I realize how stupid we all are.

You stand onstage, paper white in the spotlight. You can feel the energy all around you. The air is pregnant with electric anticipation. The audience waits, silent. It scares you for a second. But then that first word escapes your mouth, igniting all the energy in the air, and there is nowhere you’d rather be.

I don’t know how a soldier feels and I don’t know why they fight. I can’t imagine what could make me pull a trigger. It seems like fear and love compete with adrenaline, repressed by an essential calm. I know how soldiers make me feel, though. There is gratitude and sadness and an overwhelming “why?”

I find women confusing. They probably find me more so. If I had my first choice, I’d die with a woman I love. If I had my second choice, I’d die cursing that half of humanity. God must have a twisted sense of humor, confusing men like this. God has got to be a woman.

Why is birth hard, while dying is easy? Is it because life is hell or because life is better than anything? Can all of my questions be answered? Do all of my questions have answers? Are we supposed to suffer through this life for some reward? Is there a reward?
Maybe the reward is silence.