AnyaHard.com's Anthology of Inspiration

I have snuck into an abandoned iron yard at 4 a.m. to take pictures of the dawn.

I have poured cream all over Shane Berand's head.

I have sat for hours drinking black coffee on school nights with all my other seventeen year-old coffee house/philosopher/freak-a-zoid friends who gathered in the smoking section.

I have worked the graveyard shift at an all-night, Midwest truck stop/big top diner called The Carnival.

I have sat alone in the rundown project playground of my youth, staring at my broken, red, fiberglass horse, Firestar, and longed for the days of high adventure.

I have danced in the sewer-flooded streets of my hometown when the summer storms stayed just a day too long.

I have spun without mercy on the top of my dented, spray-painted '64 Chevy (Deluxe Edition) Super-Nova parked on the highest peak of Evercrest Cemetery at midnight.

I have bounded out the Factory doors, cut and bleeding in the blinding Sunday Manhattan sun; and, yes, Club Children, I still managed to make it down to the pier afterward (along with all the others) in fur-covered platforms to carry-on.

I have fainted from dancing too hard and too long.

I have come to live by the phrase 'everything in moderation'.

I have planted kisses upon many a strange club go-er's stomach.

I have teased, taunted and laughed my best AnyaHard purr in their ears, still ...

I have yet (even after all that shenanigans) been bold enough to let just one of them bring me home after the ugly lights have been turned on.

I have mooned, embraced and even re-drawn Obsession ads to tape all over my teenage bathroom walls.

I have rolled amuck in the dewy morning mud of the ripe strawberry patch, howling as loud as I could along with the rest of my grandmother's cats and dogs.

I have dared the Missouri River, only to discover I was unable to drown.

I have perched myself upon the blackened tar roof of my mother's HUD housing shack and blared the feedback of industrial music at the stars.

I have, with tears rolling down my face, sat on that same roof imagining the glittering skyline of an urban terrain.

I have cooked, cleaned and catered to a suburban family of four to pay my way through Silber's over-priced, over-hyped school.

I have surprised myself by coming to love two soccer-playing children whose parents' careers couldn't help but to ignore.

I have hosted A-list parties at nightclubs all over Beantown.

I have nearly twisted my ankle dancing to raise money for AIDS because my heart and soul told me to wear His white platforms while spiraling upon an eight-foot high platform surrounded by teens bused in by the thousands.

I have gritted my teeth and kicked those Frederick's of Hollywoods high above my head, all the while knowing, that if He were still here, that's exactly what He would have done.

I have been submerged in four feet of something really brown at the Palladium while promoting 'A T-Shirt Product of Artistic Social Wit' by two evil, drunk, leather-clad body boys.

I have dreamt I was a raven to a rock star in a place/space/universe so divine.

I have also had to wake up and face the truth -- head on -- that I actually do have the power to make my each and every one of my fantasies come alive.

And, I have, at twenty-one, really, only just begun to write.