Janet Fitch

"You ask me about regret? Let me tell you a few things about regret. There is no end to it. You cannot find the beginning of the chain that brought me from there to here. Should I regret the whole chain, and the air in between, or each link separately, as if I could uncouple them? Do I regret the beginning which ended so badly, or just the ending itself? I've given more thought to this question than you could begin to imagine."

Janet Fitch

Libba Bray

"We all do things we desperately wish we could undo. Those regrets just become part of who we are, along with everything else. To spend time trying to change that, well, it's like chasing clouds."

Libba Bray

Laurell K. Hamilton

"There comes a point when you either embrace who and what you are, or condemn yourself to be miserable all your days. Other people make you miserable; don't help them by doing the job yourself."

Laurell K. Hamilton

Laurie Halse Anderson

"Another page turns on the calendar, May now, not April. I am spinning the silk threads of my story, weaving the fabric of my world. I spin and weave and knit my words until a life starts to take shape. There is no magic cure, no making it all go away. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore. I am thawing."

Laurie Halse Anderson (Wintergirls)

Stephen King

"I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up DOES rejoice. Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend."

Stephen King (Different Seasons)

Scott Dunlop

" People talk about old age as the sunset of your life. Maybe in terms of the cycle of life- sure, you only get one sunrise. But. For all the blue skies and cotton wool clouds of the afternoons that you experience, how glorious is the unpredictable spread of purples and pinks that comes in the end? Something to look forward to.

Risks are just that. An actuary or statistician can analyse and predict based on probability, but can they predict the variables that seem to drop in on situations that make things seem worthwhile. OK- they probably can and do, but you get the point. Being paralysed by fear of maybes and what ifs is no way to live life. Unless they are the kind of maybes and what ifs that goad you into experiencing more, stepping out of yourself, being stretched. It can be a little painful, disorientating, but when you look back and see the winding path you have taken, you can start to understand that for all your lack of control over consequences, life can be amazing.

It doesn’t happen every day, but sometimes I feel like taking an Acapulco plunge off a cliff face and feeling the rush of the cool sea air as I hurtle towards an ocean of new experience."

Scott Dunlop

Scott Dunlop

"So I feel a bit bi-polar- so fucking what? Everybody has poles, they just aren’t always exaggerated to the point of seeming all-encompassing. The wretched gaiety, the bruised joys of interaction and intervention can flail you and leave you naked, your arteries, veins and nerve-endings exposed to the relentless elements. Imagine a sterile homogeneous world where everything is not just vanilla, it is sugar-flavour-excitement-free, totally devoid of the sinister and blissful vagaries that season the dish. It is fucking hard to deal with raw emotions: Picture the slaughter, the cleaning of the beast, the preparation of the cuts of meat- that’s raw emotion. Nothing like the golden fucking ratio of a medallion fillet served as haute cuisine. So emotions tend to leak and spill, and shriek and cower, and resist taming at all costs. They spew into corners and coat the freshly laundered linen hanging on the washing line with grime and industrial fallout. They come with their corers, gouging and splitting the flesh, dividing the heart from the marrow. Yeah, we reel into the pathways of oncoming trucks knowing that the coup de grace is imminent, yet powerless to resist ..."

Scott Dunlop

Scott Dunlop

Its standard police procedure (I’m assuming it is- I’m an expert on it having watched police programs from Kojak to Dexter), to ask the surviving relatives if the stiff, or the vic, had any enemies, so that they can ID the perp.

This is a useful debriefing procedure when you are interrogating yourself in the wee hours. One of you sits hunched in a chair, hollow-eyed and jonesin’ for a coffee or a smoke, while the other circles you. No good cop, bad cop, but rather just a mean lying rat-assed bastard of an inquisitor, second guessing everything you thought was true, but now have lost your bearings with. The lack of sleep and the constant revisiting of scenes of crimes, real and imagined warp the timelines and coordinates of reality. Soon you are adding to your mild wrongdoings a list of heinous activities that is almost genocidal in its documented form. The endless questioning has you longing for the stark comfort of your cell, where the fears and memories are contained and almost disarmed.

So what you need to do is ask what or who your enemies are. For some it maybe the guy at work who shamelessly takes credit for your labours but belittles you in meetings. It could be a family member with whom you refuse to share space at family events. Could be an actual enemy, who has genuinely threatened you. But don’t forget to add yourself to the list of suspects. Yup. Who knows better about how to mess with your head than you? Who can flick your buttons and twist your screws? Who knows that the worst kind of enemy is one from whom you cannot hide?

It’s not a death sentence. You can separate the fictions from the realities, and parse the evil from the good. The best defense against an inner enemy is an inner ally. It helps to surround yourself with people who will tell you the truth, and provide reinforcements of encouragement and love. Thank you for doing that.

Scott Dunlop

Scott Dunlop

Sometimes I am the angry indication of an accidental fire, blanketing the innocents around me.
Sometimes I am a jet stream, a memory of power, of surging to a destination.
Sometimes I am just a wisp, a series of horse tails flicking at the cool outer reaches of the atmosphere, remote.
Sometimes I am the big-bellied pregnant mother of the skies, threatening to break water over needy landscapes.
Sometimes, I am a gallery of surreal portraits, none remaining constant- I can’t stay still.
Sometimes I am the accessories drawer to the sun, my purples and pinks and oranges there to show off her beauty.
Sometimes I am a magician, with my pockets full of rainbows.
Sometimes I am an artist, my palette and my canvas full of blank promise.
Sometimes I like to lean on mountains for support- they never shift.
Sometimes I wait for the evening to descend, and in the morning, like an afterthought, I lift.
Sometimes I lift the hems of my cloak, to display my hoarded silver.
Sometimes I seem as full-bodied as the earth, and
Sometimes I am merely an echo of breath on a cool morning.
Sometimes I am as small as a man’s hand, cupped over the horizon, and
Sometimes I dominate, a shadow-parent adopting all of mankind.

Scott Dunlop

Re-posted with permission.

Scott Dunlop

"Somewhere in the rough and tumbles, the Lego dinosaurs, the funny-voiced bedtime stories, the kidding and joking and dancing and hugs and tickling, fatherhood takes place."

Scott Dunlop