Dear Dave Eggers,

I read it once, but not like this, no not like this…so I was flipping through the pages and I kept seeing the words all jumbled together in this furious anger and it was cool, dude, it was just cool, imagine me saying that and having a clove in my fingers or something, and nodding all soft, maybe with my eyes closed cause I really understand, cause that's what people do when they really understand, like you got me there, you got us all, there it is, effin brilliant. I kept reading it and feeling it like I was sucking down espressos and popping pills or something, shaking my heartbeat off the metronome and stuff, but not shaking my legs—only insecure people shake their legs—and I felt it too, my fast, ugly youth, a disease spreading its branches, infecting everyone, oh it went out and out, man you should have seen it go. I too wanted to shout to adoring throngs, look at me, you just look at me, I exist, I’m amazing, I’m wonderful, I'll live forever if I want, I’m young and it’s terrible, just like you in 1993, but see that’s me right now, and because of the fact that I’m living now, right now, you’re right…

I don’t appreciate it, I didn’t appreciate 21 and I won’t appreciate 23, 25, 28 and isn’t that just the entire point? Me and you and everyone we know, our shitty apartments, our shitty lives, our rage and our pain, it’s all been done, so done before, I’m nearly gagging on the clichés over here, believe me, I’m not so self-absorbed that I don’t see the pure tedium of it all, come on, I see it. But I was talking about youth, and its profound unimportance, and everyone says it sucks getting old cause your body starts to go…forget it, I’ll move on, there’s nothing to add to that except twists of fashion, spinning this old record, your lattice metaphor, going bald, new Sprite commercials, whatever.

I’m just saying, I think I understand. And I'm behind the solution. Let’s bare our faux-souls on the net and get the adoration we need, that look at me, look at me, I’m here, I’m running and it’s amazing, this outside love, an undulating wave, multiple hands, I'll jump on it and be carried out to see, all of it, it’s good, it’s for us, it’s clear it will fix what’s wrong, cause we can’t for ourselves, we won’t cause we don’t have to, not when there’s insta-fame and insta-friends. Us on a blue-green wave, or driving fast through corn fields, that sonic boom, that wake we leave and everyone shaking their heads like what was that? Did you see that? This is us, man, and I’ll say man cause I can, I'm in my twenties, it's a law that I can say man or dude in front of everything half-important I glean, this journaling, this chronicling is not for naught. Oh no, not for naught, it’s here because we’re shells but we’re open shells, leaning, like reeds, bend at the middle, swaying to you, you can fix us, yes you can, if you just look, look, look at us, you’ll make us important, all our stupid crap, you’ll make it important if you just turn your head, over here, envy us, you’ll heal us with that one glace, I promise, and then you can stop, but just look once to take it all back, please, you can, you will, you will, yes you will...

An old exercise revisited...but does angst become my style?