"Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today."

When I was born, I unsettled the natural balance of things, a stubborn stain, on society, that could not be scrubbed off into nothingness again. Society desires citizens who conform and comply, who abide to the principles of behavior; not I.



Not I, a rebel, a restless runner; a spirited, sensitive, strong willed soul, who shrugs off scholarly institutions, who casts aside cooperate careers, and frowns in face of fundamentals, all in favor, of the unlikely life. Not I, the daughter of a preacher man, daughter who perplexes her mother, not I, most afraid of being controlled, of being caged, and tamed; of being spoon fed society's propaganda, until I swallow, and accept.

Little dreamer, I won't give in, to the wind, and the whip of the skeptics. Little dreamer, I am, going for broke. I took a backpack, and traipsed across the Atlantic, arrived in Europe, frolicked around in Africa, hinged it all on a whim. I'll go again.

I feel so deeply, intensely, that I fret I'll become but bone dust and fragmented flesh, wreckage of these emotions, of ecstasy, and enchantment, of sympathy, and sorrow. I habitually say a prayer, when I hear the screech of sirens announcing ambulances. I believe in dreams, and destiny.



I take the staircase, two steps at a time. I like tipis and tree houses, kaleidoscopes, and the crackle of record players; pressing my nose into books, for the scent of the pages, and licking leftover cake batter from the mixer. I murmur in falsified foreign tongues, playact that I am an espionage agent, and inconspicuously consult my mirrors, when barreling down blacktop, in Gimli, my hand-me-down sedan.

Society shakes a finger, and says, "Grow up!" Though, adults are simply complex children, with wishes still, to have an happy ending, fore death comes to claim us, 'till death do us part. And this world needs dreamers to kindle cold hearts back to feeling, to extinguish limitations, to blaze trails, to see the magic, the miracles, of the everyday; to evolve.

Thus, go and cut your dreams down, from the suffocating noose of doubt. Withdraw from days, ensuing days, of wasting away. Fear is but a venomous viper, that strikes the crux of your dreams, its fangs starving your faith. Don't compromise yourself, for society; forsake the constraints that chain your spirit.



And relentlessly remember, you are the only soul who can keep your dreams from coming true.



Title Quote: James Dean
Photo Credits: Olivia Bee, Paolo Roversi, Sita Maria, John Atherton, Tanya, and Cassie Kammerzell.