The Survival Guide I Discovered While Inside

1. Carry this with you everywhere you go

2. Follow the instructions on every page

3. Order is not important

4. Instructions are open to interpretation

5. Experiment

(work against your better judgement)

Don’t just be repaired.

Be reborn.

Don’t just exist.

Live.

Don’t just talk.

Speak.

Stand Here.

(wipe your feet, jump up and down)

Weep. Go ahead & weep & weep & weep.

But, don’t forget to wipe the tears or the color will run and then oh what to do when the blues bleed through…

Swing wildly

Let it hit the walls.

Pick up the journal

Write.

Climb up high.

They’ll never know I was here

But I hope they know I was there…

Breathing more & more

With

Anarchic orchestras & subversive symphonies

For devils to dance to…

Don’t just need love.

Want.

With enough time anyone can fall asleep with the lights on,

But when the sun is out my eyes are open

& when the night comes to howl

I’ll be awake.

This is not an important piece of writing. The author of this work is writing with the intention of creating a body of text that has little or no meaning. It is merely a texture of sorts that the reader will view as a canvas. Hopefully it will simulate a book that is embedded in your memory, a book you had in your childhood, the one that you secretly wrote in with your crayons. Maybe you were scolded for this by someone.

I could be your first textbook, which you defaced with your pen, prompted by the previous writer’s little scrawlings. It was not your fault. Textbooks are destined to be defaced, it is a part of their nature. You are not to be blamed. Anything as boring as a textbook deserves everything it gets.

Are you reading this? You are supposed to be defacing this page. Please stop reading at once! This is your chance to deface something.