Ah! Hell EC, hope everyone is well. I don't get a chance to post on here much, but I do browse through the threads and whatnot often, and I am glad you are here. I have no one to share this with, but it would be a foolish thing of me not to share with you all. Truly, I have friends, but this is more a rant, probably of interest to few of you, but read on. You may enjoy, or learn, or feel something. I'm a relatively young man from the US, East-coast born and raised. I am from this little Pennsylvania Dutch town, so it was characteristically German. There is one factory in town that keeps us around, but for the most part, people are born, raised and stay there. I couldn't do that. I couldn't STAND it. I left, fleeing West to attend a prestigious University, studying philosophy, reading volumes of classical literature, modern literature, pretty much any book I can get my hands on that seems worth it. I had missed something in my education. Quickly I realized it had more to do with the heart, than with the head. I was missing out on how to live, how to think, how to feel. I write this under inspiration, admittedly, of the classic Russian novel Anna Karenina. There's something about these Russians. They dive deep into existence and rip it wide open, extraordinarily poetically, creating a torrent of emotion, philosophical questions, all the while appealing to the innermost part of mankind. I literally am without feeling at this moment. I am not in love, I am not full of despair. I am touching who I am, who we are. I am seeing that life is, at it's most base level, a romance. Romance does not mean, however, that each moment is joy, or pain. It means that it is real. It is a battle one moment, then indistinguishably mechanical, followed by an intense sense of the REAL. The MAN. The WOMAN. All-in-all, I wish in my heart of hearts that one day I could be so real, so alive and in love. To those who long for this, push on. Live on in spite of the pain. To those who have tasted this or are living this, I walk beside you. "All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow." - Stepan Arkadyevich Oblonsky in Anna Karenina