I want to throw someone in the water and watch him float away.

I want to dance naked and crazy around a bankfire,

spitting and singing like a child.

I want the freedom of leaves and I want to be branchless,

throwing myself to and from the wind and smoke.

I want life, raw and untempered,

inside me.

I want to scream.

I want to touch everything,

Kick down doors and burn bridges,

Butterfly every lock

And feast on every key.

I want to suck the blood out of something,

Give it a crimson grin

Right before it dies

And then spit onto a canvas,

Make some modern bloody art.

I'm a terrible photographer. Absolutely awful. And the true irony of my life is that I absolutely love to collect photos. I hoard pictures so much, in fact, that I've exhausted the memory of my phone, laptop, and external hard drive. This has started to become a real issue for me, actually, because I'm inherently distrustful of new technologies, and it seems that ambiguously intimidating "cloud" services are my only option.

In any case, in an attempt to replenish some of the memory not controlled by an omnipresent cloud, I've begun to go through old photographs to see if there's any that I don't absolutely need to keep. But one thing led to another, and instead of deleting photos I began going through them. I found myself slowly pressing the right arrow key, and allowed myself to be washed in the faces and landscapes on my computer screen. Nostalgic smiles and bubbles of sadness floated though me pretty harmlessly as I sank into the memories these photos provide me with. I felt little stabs of awareness about the passage of time, like pin pricks in my fingers − I was skinnier in this one, I was happier in that one. Life is different now. I have changed. It's not a bad feeling, really. But there's something to be said for the harrowing experience of physically witnessing yourself grow up. And I think everyone probably has a picture or two that really cuts to the core of it. A picture (or series of pictures) that tosses all the bullshit smiles away, and makes your stomach twist into a bittersweet knot.

For me, this picture pretty unassuming. It's me in the nighttime, 20 years old, god-awful red hair (it may or may not have been box-dyed by yours truly), sitting on a park bench. The picture was taken from my left side, and the streetlights illuminating me are cut into shadows by the beer can I'm pressing against my lips. My hair is thrown back, unbrushed, and my eyes look young and full. It's easy to tell that instead of sipping the beer, I'm just laughing into it. My lips are curling up around the metal tab, kissing it with a frozen giggle. I'm washed in the yellow glow that seems to be unique to cities in the nighttime, the yellow glow that for some reason makes everything seem fake, like you're watching it happen as a secondary observer of the world. Behind me is a tall, gray-bricked building with ornate buttresses and gothic brickwork spiraling into the sky. There are lights below the building, pointing up from the grass and sending hues of soft purple cascading upwards, creeping up over the bricks and dissolving into moonlit charcoal. An iron-wrought fence with swooping metalwork and sharp pikes surrounds it, ending just behind me, and the two structures work together as if to say, "Ah, the Romance."

All in all, it's a pretty normal picture for a college student to have. Pretty buildings, cheap beer, crappy hair. I'm not exactly in the minority for having pictures like this. But when I look at that picture, I see something more; I feel something more. I'm washed in the memory of that photo being taken; the emotions and turbulence surrounding that day, the gut-wrenching need for adventure, the thirst for some kind of marrow I hadn't discovered yet.

I remember walking 20 miles with my best friend because we were too poor to afford a train. We dragged our feet behind us from dawn until midnight, refusing to allow exhaustion and blisters to keep us from a world we were going to conquer. I'm still not sure if we chose to sit down, or if our legs just gave out, but either way, the bench in the picture became our new and welcome home, if only for a few hours.

I remember the relief when, without a word, she pulled out a beer from her backpack and handed it to me, cracking open one of her own. The can felt like ice in the January frost, but my bones were too tired to shiver. We stayed like that for a while, drinking beer and looking out on the night. The flurry of cars, red and yellow and black, blurred together in my bleary eyes, and I fancied that I was beginning to understand impressionism The people, too, lent their color to the scene, adding touches of skin, fabric, and hair, and we watched them as they came and went. From the confines of the bench the city felt alive, an ongoing tapestry of sound and events, but to us it was silent as we sunk into the honking horns and the lilting voices, letting them carry us to a peaceful meditation.

After a while, I started to notice passer-bys started to give us "the eye." A realization broke in my mind that maybe I was being rude by taking up a bench with no intent to leave. My friend must've had the same realization, and turning our heads, we shared a simultaneous look. I studied her; her wildly curly hair was sprawling around her in a way that was somehow dreamy and intimidating at the same time; her coat was torn and frayed, faded and too worn-in from months of blatant abuse; her duct-taped shoes and ripped jeans that looked like they were desperately trying to fall apart; her 30oz. beer can completing her definition of Gutter Chic in a part of the city that would always be too fancy for us. She looked ridiculous. So did I. She started smiling. I reciprocated. Then we were giggling, and pointing at each other, and then laughing, hunched over, gut-bursting laughter, dying at the sight of each other. So ridiculous, so out of place, and yet here we were. We sat up, tears streaming down our faces, smiling fearlessly from exhaustion and elation. I threw my hair behind me, tilted my head back, and just as my lips touched the can, she took a picture of me.

We laughed some more, and spent an hour longer on that bench, downing cans of can after can and throwing our excited voices into the fray.

My photo is a photo of me, young and tipsy, it the middle of a foreign city. It's a photo of me claiming a park bench as my home. It's a photo of the choice to find beauty in the brutally personal instead of the universally admired. In that moment, I needed nothing else in the world. My coat could remain faded and thin, my shoes could have holes, my wallet could be empty, so long as I was there, on that park bench in winter, drinking beer and laughing.

That's why I could never get rid of my "bad" photographs, and why I would never encourage someone else to. The photos I've collected in my lifetime represent more than just people and places; they are moments, intrinsically and personified. They matter more than the moments we try to capture purposefully. These pictures are reminders that happiness can be found in exhaustion and empty wallets, and they inspire me to continue on my quest to find more moments. The only quest that matters, really.

I spent a summer as a receptionist

At his company.

I didn't do anything, really

Except stare outside

And think about beer.

I hated that job,

Spending the precious summer months

Locked away 9-5

Next to a window

So that I could see exactly what I was missing.

Then he came in.

I watched him walk from his car to the door,

And I understood

Why he'd retired the year before.

It took so long

To walk,

To open the door,

Even to wave hello.

His body was weighed down,

Like the air around him was thick,

And he was forcing his way through the haze,

Carving a path out of mud

That kept melting back into his footsteps.

He took my hand,

Clasped it, damp and shaking

Asked me,

How's school?

You still play basketball?

What about the trumpet?

I said fine, no, no

Like I had every time I saw him

For 19 years.

I watched him smile,

Hobbling away after saying goodbye.

The closest thing I'd ever have

To a grandfather.

I didn't know

He was walking through cancer.

Tripping and stumbling

Over his own body.

I didn't know cancer could do that −

Seep into footsteps,

Turn bones sour and rotten.

When he died

I didn't cry,

Even though I wanted to.

Instead, all I could think about

Was finding my trumpet.

Language was created just to fuck everyone over. Or at least, modern language. I'm sure the first person to think, "Hey, maybe we should use the noises we can make as a basis of communication" was a great person, and didn't mean any harm; S/he probably just wanted a more efficient berry-picking team or something. I mean, s/he definitely changed caveman-hood forever, and consequently altered the entire paradigm of socialization. No, when I say, "language was created just to fuck everyone over," I am referring to the very vague words that we use to communicate incredibly specific things.

For instance, if I were to say to you, "I am happy," you would ask me why (supposing you are not rude, and a terrible conversation partner). And after you asked why, I could respond in an infinite number of ways, all of which would make sense within the confines of the claim "I am happy." I might tell you that I just got engaged, or that I've meditated to the point of transcendence, or that I found a penny on the ground outside. And, despite the fact that these are all vastly different experiences, you would think something to the effect of, "Ah yes, what a happy thing." Of course, you would think other things as well, and each of my hypothetical statements would probably launch us into 3 very, very different conversations. We might discuss napkin colors for my wedding, or how it feels to achieve enlightenment in a world shaped by the macabre, or the sorry state of my bank account causing me to get excited over a penny. But all of these exchanges revolve around one word: Happy. This word (and many others like it) is so vague, so pointless, that I can use it to start virtually any conversation I want to have; We have nurtured our language into an abyss of ultimately meaningless vocabulary.

Of course, there are those among us who consider themselves advocates of the complexities of human language. One such person might turn their nose up and say, "Ever heard of a thesaurus, Gina?" (I also picture this person in a red armchair and drinking pricy coffee, if this helps with your visualization). By this snarky quip, this person is trying to say, "There are many words besides 'happy' that one can use to convey their emotions. English is really a very vast and lovely language, and thesauruses are guidebooks in helping us use it to its full potential." To which I say, fuck thesauruses! Nothing is more annoying than needing a dictionary every time you talk to someone. If I were to say to you, "I feel very convivial today! Let's party!" You would probably simultaneously take a shot with me and resent my obnoxious use of a distant synonym for 'happy.'

Alas, I digress. Language was only invented to fuck us all over insofar as we insist there's a 'proper' way to use it: Those who use vague words are insufficient English speakers, and those who use specific words are pretentious bookworms.

My dad told me,

"You can't have adventures without good shoes."

And so on the first day of college,

I traded in my old pair

For sturdy,

Trust-worthy,

Brand new

Adventure boots.

My adventure boots and I,

We've conquered a small piece of the world together.

Slivers of mountains, plains, and oceans,

Won and forfeited within the past four years.

We've danced along car park rooftops,

Tracing the edge with our toes and skirting away when

The wind was tempted to blow us over,

Watching trains go by in perfect silence.

We've dipped our souls into the Danube,

Laughing and splashing Jordan who,

Drinking liters of beer in the sunshine

Thought only of scaling the graffiti mountains.

We spun recklessly down grassy hills,

Breathless scary delight when we read the sign,

"The cliffs are subject to random mudslides,

Please beware."

We clambered desperately down Wisconsin Avenue

4am, hopelessly drunk,

Fearlessly claiming our newfound world,

Shouting to the lights that we were ready.

We fell in love in Cedarburg,

And the golden leaves and bonfire smoke

Stood still around us,

And followed like a friendly shadow.

We cried a lot,

On planes, in cars, at the ends of long nights

At the stop and start of adventures,

Because the unknown is never broken in.

But most importantly,

We learned what it means to live,

How to make a planet a universe,

How to find treasure in a home.

Adventure doesn't begin with a map;

But with a great windows, ready to break

Free and wild, begging:

Lace up your boots.

Twisted repugnant vomit.

Vile demented discharge.

Shameful plastic shit,

Slipping off the Teacher's teeth

Did you know they fucked the Greats?

Stuffed themselves with Dickens, sucked off Socrates and Jacked Kerouac

Thinking the mess was something beautiful,

Smearing into the ooze,

"I understand."

They couldn't explain passion or pain or unholiness

If you stuck it inside them and let it vibrate.

Beyond the waste of broad, muddy fields

I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet

Otherwise

I can't stand my own mind

What in me he was, and who

We are, I am, you are

You made me want to be a saint

And there is no one

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see

Would let their wisdom be the whole of love

And when we meet at any time again

I refuse to give up my obsession.

[poems used: Allen Ginsberg - 'America', William Carlos Williams - 'Spring and All', Wallace Stevens - 'The Idea of Order at Key West', Denise Levertov - 'Uncertain Oneiromancy', Adrienne Rich - 'Diving into the Wreck', James Merill - 'The World and the Child', William Shakespeare - 'Sonnet 18', Michael Drayton - 'Farewell to Love']