Thank you.

To everyone who's ever written a book,

Thank you.

To every author who's ever fancied her pen a wand
and picked it up and cast a spell on the back of a napkin
and captivated the world,

Thank you.

To every librarian
and every teacher
and every friend
who's ever handed on a book and said
"Read this. I promise, you'll love it,"

Thank you.

To every director who's ever picked up that book
and called up a producer
and said "Let's do it!"

Thank you.

To every costumer who's sewn a robe
and every make-up artist who's painted a scar
and every set designer who's built a castle
or a forest
or a yellow brick road
and every actor who's given up themselves to make a character live instead
even just for an hour or two,

Thank you.

And to every other fan
everyone else who's laughed with me
cried with me
screamed at a character in a book with me
waited in lines at 11:59 with striped scarves and lightning-bolt scars with me
and spent their 11th birthday watching the sky for an owl with a letter,

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

For letting us all believe in magic, just this once. 

Dear society

hi. I'm lynn.

and i do not appreciate today's society.

i don't appreciate the fact that Asher Brown was found by his own mother.

i do not appreciate that in the fourth grade was when it started for Seth Walsh. He also had to be found by his mother. 

i don't appreciate a lot of things today.

[in the words of Joel burns,

you will get out of the household

you will get away from those who don't agree.]

i like to read six billion secrets

and pretend, hey.

i could know someone who posted one of these

i could help them with this. i should help them with this

i will help them with this

and i don't

because i cannot.

i like to pretend,

that hey.

my sister is incorrect.

there is no danger in the surgery

and that for the love of god

will you have some faith in modern-day medical technology?

he will survive

there will be no complications

our family will not lose a member.

he is going to be perfectly fine.

and i pretend that some nights i don't cry myself to sleep because in the back of my head i believe my sister. 

everyone gets sad sometimes

some people act on it

some people don't

if you ever think you're going to act on it

please

think of your mother.

if there are two things i want to keep from my childhood until when im old

are these two items.

one if a bear, with a little noise-maker inside i've had since i was a baby.

it's tattered and old, but it's mine.

and another is this quilt my mother made me.

you know that feeling when your heart pulls itself out of your chest

and the back of your throat burns?

love can be painful sometimes.

remember the power rangers?

the blue one was gay.

people think i write for some crazy reason.

i want to get noticed. i want to get famous. i want to make money.

want want want want want.

this isn't a strip club.

i don't want anything.

i write because i like to think of things that are better or worse

--lynn

Inaugural

There's nothing more exciting than something new.


It comes in a box, and you rip it open. You dig through foam peanuts. You unwrap tissue paper. You throw the wrappings on the floor, ripping and tearing and unraveling, and suddenly there it is.


You pick it up and admire it, oohing, aahing, feeling its weight in your hand. It feels good there in your hand. It's shiny. It's symmetrical. And it smells fantastic.


You're lost for hours in it-- reading every word on the back, flipping through it endlessly, fiddling with it, figuring out what it can do. You assemble. You adjust. You personalize. And after enough hours of tinkering and fidgeting and boring everyone to death with "Look! It can do THIS!", it goes from being new to being ...yours.


And thus this blog.


The concept isn't new, really. It started, as most things do these days, on Facebook. Nobody remembers who or when, but one day somebody wrote a note. It was emotional, it was messy, it was raw. And then somebody noticed it was well-written. And they said, please write more. So there were more. Other notes, other writers, other ideas written all kinds of other ways. Rhetoric, profanity, eloquence, simplicity, fiction, confession, poetry, prose. Pretty soon, notes started popping up every day-- every couple of hours.


Soon we decided, like so many before us, to write a blog.


 Maybe this blog won't get anywhere. Maybe nobody will read it outside of those who read notes already. And maybe it'll slowly die off. But who has the right to say we shouldn't give it a try? Maybe this blog WILL go somewhere. It's already getting our words somewhere, our thoughts, our ideas. What else runs the world?


So, if you're reading this, welcome. Rip open the box. Dig through the peanuts, unwrap the tissue paper. Unravel our words and get into our minds. Inside you'll find everything we stand for. Maybe you'll find something of yourself as well.


Given with love,
The Cult.


--Patti