today i realized the reason why i do everything: i feel invisible most of the time. and have felt, since i was very young. completely. and so i labor to make what is inside of me--the art and the beauty and the ugly--visible. and most of the time i fail at this and remain invisible. and so i keep trying, hoping that a book or a film or a something will survive me, remain visible when i am deep below the ground; a monument to life, to all the invisible little girls with so much beauty and art and love to give. the hardest part about it is the unbearable silence. the waiting and wondering whether even i, one day, will stop being able to see myself, lost in the shuffle of everything else, so many bright and pretty things. already it happens sometimes and i float around lost until i find myself again. --AL.