A tree becomes a branch somewhere in the first inch coming out of the ground.

Intending only up to the sun. No matter how many other branches reach out from it with the same tireless hope, those first few inches close to the ground will never serve to carry their weight, but instead share entirely the lightness, the reach, and the heart of every subsequent branch and twig.

Leaves, however, luxuriate slothfully and exhibit themselves pruriently in all directions until they simply fall off, expired and inebriated by the uncontained indulgence of the sunlight the struggling branches have devoted the whole of their existence to providing. Leaves, playful, green and unruly, live short, colorful, float-in-the-wind, often semi-transparent lives, turgid, moist, pulsing and elated from their obscene unfoldings until the moment of their crumbling falling obsolescence (which, show-offs that they are, can even be more hedonistically colorful.

Don't stop to fight setbacks, just keep going.

Existence is suspect.

Be on the lookout.

The truth is very often as unintriguing and uninspiring as it is unexpected.

And unless we are alone when we hear it we very much prefer to hear a story that we're sure most of the people we know would easily understand.

Pride is what you have instead of will power.

Will power is just so much more flattering. It's something easily imagined and you can always find ready gratification in observing it as absent in others. It's lack is so pervasive that it leaves you convinced that it therefore must exist if you can see the empty spaces where it isn't, and can be engaged with essentially, the removal of contemplation altogether in your own self and then committing simple, "chosen" actions. But...then what?

Confidence is insecurity's last, most desperate urge to deny what it simply does not yet understand.

Certainty is surrender.

It's always good if it's been a while.

When you think you've seen it before is when blindness sets in.