Observation 9/29

There are a lot of important elements to good literature, but the most important is the final image. Entice your readers with whomever and whatever you want at the beginning. Tantalize them with your intellectual genius and plot twists throughout the middle. Leave them gasping by the end.

But save your genius, your pain, your worry over word choice, for that last moment they will ever see through your eyes.

When it comes down to it, all we want to see in a poem or a story or a life is what it ends up as. The audience any writer writes for is the one who sticks through 'til the end. Every writer writes for the reader who cannot pull away, who values the relationship between the writer and himself enough to trust the writer until the end.

Anyone who does not wait for the final image--the couple kissing for the last time at the station while the train plumes behind them, the girl sprawled in the alley with rain spattering her beaten face, the limping son shuffling up the drive to the last place he calls home, the lost dog finally bounding over the last hill while the little boy's face lights up with all the joy of a new sun--is unworthy of the story.

And anyone who denies his reader of that ultimate, most important moment is no writer at all.

Observation 9/28

There is a lot of genius out there that goes unnoticed by too many people. Take the Australian girl Kate Miller Heidke who opened for Ben Folds last night. I'm willing to bet no one in the audience had ever heard of her before she took the stage, but by the time she was done, half the theater stormed out into the lobby to buy her CD. She's too talented to be opening for anyone, that's for sure.

How many other amazing people are we missing out on? And how do we find them?

Observation 9/25

It's not so difficult to be a good person. You needn't ever go out of your way, to consciously spend hours trying to figure out how to save the world.

If an act of kindness occurs to you, all you have to do is do it.

If you do, by the sheer nature of kindness, more such acts will occur to you.

And if you simply do each of them as best you can as they occur to you, then soon you shall BE kind.

Observation 9/23

Sometimes, the kindest saints' greatest miracle is as simple as a well-timed bottle of water.

Observation 9/22

I don't know what's more maddening: being unable to remember a moment of recalled brilliance, or never knowing if that moment was truly brilliant, rather than just self-indulgent.

Observation 9/21

House is the coolest drug addict ever.

Observation 9/20

Getting angry is fun. Getting angry in groups is even more fun. Getting angry in a group at someone or a group of someones without fear of retribution is the most fun.

This is why televised professional sports are so popular.

Observation 9/17

You have never really heard the Batman theme until you have heard it "nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-BATMAN!!!!!"d by a middle-aged Italian man.