Yellowed pages stained by cigarette smoke, broken spine from laying open face down, curled corners and smudged fingerprints throughout, the book settled into my hand for reading just as I settled in most nights; alone, in bed, curled up to wait for sleep to come.
Reading along, the book made no sense. It wasn't poetry, it wasn't a story; just a few paragraphs per thought, I suppose, and none seemed connected. I supposed that this, what I was reading, was what was called "prose," though I couldn't be sure. Seventeen or 18 pages in, I turned the page:
"Fuck it."
The opposing page was blank. I turned the page to find another blank page, and on the opposing page was:
"Fuck it."
In that moment, reading those few pages, everything changed. Everything. The world changed, life changed, I changed. I wasn't confused, frightened, afraid, happy or sad; I was just changed. The veil was dropped, my eyes opened, and from that moment, that profoundly blank moment, I began. I began to live.
It was a moment of waking up, of discovery, of discovering that there was truth and discovering that truth had to be discovered. And that was beautiful. And beauty was everywhere. Beauty was everything. All you needed to do was blow the dust off, dig it out and open your eyes to see it. Beauty was everywhere and everything. Without beauty, there is only
Fuck it.
