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Who says there has to be a right way to meditate?

Who says you have to just watch your thoughts pass by as if in some brook?

Why not welcome our thoughts?

What if they’re the first sentence in a story we haven’t heard yet?

Who says we can’t stroll our bodies like libraries, browsing for the information that might give us clues for how we arrived at being the person we call ourselves?

We’re not alone in our bodies after all.

There’s younger selves in here and ancestors and livers and spleens…

And they’ve all got stuff to say.

Important stuff.

We all go sit in a chair to watch someone else’s adventure to find the holy grail, while our own is sitting inside us waiting to be discovered.

Why not explore our depths? Discover where the gold is?

Have you ever tried to communicate with someone and they say, “Wow, I’m not at all absorbing what you’re saying! I’m watching your words and thoughts pass by in the river of my mind!”

You might want to slug them.

In fact, that might very well be your last conversation with them.

Why not listen carefully and respond to the voices inside ourselves?

We don’t need to let them take us where we don’t want to go, but why not ask them the reason for wanting to take us there?

Some of those voices might be the confused voices of upset younger versions of ourselves who internalized a lot of negative stuff.

Why not take the time to listen to their concerns, and show them a new direction?

Or if we’re feeling damaged, instead of watching our damaged parts float down the river, why not appoint ourselves our own doctor or triage nurse and tend to our own damaged parts?

We store our pain in our bodies. So if we pay attention and scan our bodies for which parts of us are having an emergency, we can hurry to their proverbial bedside and soothe their wounds.

‘Oh boy. Someone rang the nurse’s bell from the lower left leg of the hospital! Stat!’

‘Uh oh. There’s someone who needs immediate assistance in the heart of the hospital! I’m on my way!”

The point is, meditation can be a time to heal ourselves, and healing can actually be really interesting and even fun.

And as long as you’re not attached to any particular way to meditate, it can be made up, like any recipe, to suit your particular appetite, your particular set of ingredients, and your nutritional needs.

Sure, I still carve out the time to focus on my breath. And I’m grateful that my breath is always here, as the most reliable anchor to ground me.

But when there’s a feisty negative thought, I don’t let it go… I go toward it, and I ask where it came from and why the big upset. And each time I really listen, the same thing happens. I wind up understanding where that upset came from, and that upset thought turns into an insight, and all I'm left with is empathy and love.

To me, the purpose of meditation is to discover what I'm made of, and to give each part of myself my attention, understanding and love. And as far as I know, there’s no right way to do this.

But because this relationship with myself is the longest term relationship of my life—I figure I better make the process of getting to know myself as fulfilling as possible.

-JLK

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When I have pain or discomfort, it seems so natural to want to flee or avoid it.

But from what I've noticed, that never works.

What works is to go toward my pain and discomfort and give it support, as if it were a crying person I stumbled upon in the street.

Every upset is calling out for love and understanding.

Even when that upset is yours.

When you are the one with the upset, then you are the person who needs the support of your own love and understanding.

-JLK

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I made up a word—Lessergized: When you get a momentary boost from connecting with someone by pretending you’re less than you are.

I thought of the word because this used to happen to me a lot. And sometimes, when I’m tired or feeling vulnerable, it still happens, though mostly when I'm talking with someone from my family of origin.

It happens when they kind of criticize something about my life without really meaning to criticize it.

Maybe they just can't understand the context of my life, but they feel like they want to make a difference in it, because not understanding to them, means there must be something wrong, which to them means an opportunity to offer some guidance.

But instead of explaining my truth in response to this unasked for out-of-context guidance, I get a boost of connection, because—how nice that they even have a moment to talk with me!

And I just kind of thank them for their wisdom because I do feel a connection with them, even though their 'wisdom' has next to nothing to do with my existence.

And though I could have used my voice to share my truth with them, so they'd get to know more about what’s real for me, I chose instead to lessergize myself.

I think it comes from the longing to connect deeply with people, but fearing at the same time that who I really am will be criticized or dismissed, instead of received.

It’s the result of that old shaky foundation that so many of us were built on—those of us who weren’t fortified with validation in our developmental years.

Those of us who missed the milestone of internalizing that gift of validation, and so we continued looking for it, without realizing that the job to validate ourselves was going to be ours alone.

There’s a mourning that comes with this truth, before it’s worn like a privilege.

It took me until I had a child, and saw those little eyes looking for me to create who he was, before I truly got that I had the strength to do this for us both.

These days, when I have a moment of pretending and people pleasing, it feels like a crack in my self-built foundation.

I can literally feel my sense of myself trickling out.

Because pretending and people-pleasing is fear-based instead of values-based. And my foundation was self-created through values I chose myself.

Still, I try not to punish myself when it happens, but to repair by lifting myself up and reminding myself that central to my values is compassion—for myself and others. My body is a punishment-free zone.

My self-built foundation is pretty strong these days.

Strong enough to carry all my weight pretty comfortably—my mistakes and my victories—without it all feeling like an overwhelming burden.

These days, instead of worrying so much how I’ll be received, and laboring to figure out the most digestible way to express myself, I try to remember to spend that energy figuring out what’s real for me, so that when I do share myself, I know I’m being the most authentic version of myself.

And that way, if someone doesn’t receive me, or appreciate what I’ve communicated, I know it’s out of my hands, because there’s really no one else I can be, but me.

And if someone should receive me, and tell me I’m having a blind spot, instead of feeling shamed, I can thank them for giving me the opportunity to see something new I hadn’t noticed before.

The goal is not to be perfect. Just to be the best version of who I am, as often as I’m able to, no matter who it is I’m speaking to, including myself.

-JLK

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I think the opposite of ‘being’ is the drive to be recognized.

Maybe it’s a primal thing. A territorial thing. ‘I am here! See me here!’ that’s been domesticated into this thing we call ‘success.’

‘I am here! See my credentials that validate this!’

Yet I’ve noticed, when I feel compelled to upgrade myself to something ‘better than’ or ‘more than‘ the being I naturally inhabit, it feels like a battle, like there’s something I need to conquer or overcome before I’m able to get where I think I need to go.

Even the innocent languaging of it reeks of conquest:

‘She certainly never set the world on fire.’

Or, ‘He’s killing it!’

But the efforts to catapult myself from regular-being to the gold-standard-of-being-recognized causes so much anxiety.

Because what does ‘becoming recognized’ really mean to my own experience of being? Not much. Being recognized is really something I need others to do for me. Which puts me in a constant state of needing to abandon being with myself to find this validation elsewhere.

From what I’ve noticed, the drive to be recognized seems like the ignition of all conflict.

Because someone ‘better than’ creates someone ‘less than.’

And someone ‘less than’ is inevitably going to feel like they’d better make more of an effort to look better, to avoid being devalued or dismissed.

And this gives birth to shame, resentment, revenge, and their coping mechanisms: avoidance and distraction— all of which gets in the way of a person’s relationship to their own intrinsic experience of being, which then gets in the way of being present to build meaningful relationships with the people in our lives.

I think my drive to be recognized came from my childhood. Because while I was little and perfectly content to just be, the adults in my life were too busy trying to get somewhere better to notice, or if they were home, they were too busy distracting themselves from the exhaustion of the day’s endeavors.

I often felt neglected, and took their lack of being with me to mean I wasn’t worth their attention.

And at some point, I figured if I wanted their attention, I’d better become someone bigger and better than who I was.

So I began to work extra hard to become someone more recognizable, someone more worthy of connecting with, hoping that if I succeeded, I’d be catapulted into the kind of environment I longed for—where people were present, happy where they were, and ready to connect.

But the work of getting recognized is grueling. And every time I failed in my endeavors, I felt I still wasn’t worth what I longed for, so I settled into one toxic environment after the next, where people continued to be unavailable, reactive; trying themselves to get someplace better or to distract themselves from where they were.

It’s so hard not to get trapped in this race to become something ‘more than’ who we are.

It’s so hard to find environments where people are present to the gift of just being who we are, where we are.

And it doesn’t help that we’re constantly being bombarded by messages from screen to shining screen that invite and even urge us to work harder to be not just somebody, but ‘a somebody’—to be worth the space we take up on this planet.

I find it interesting that I’m rarely bombarded by the reminder that I am already blessed with being who I am.

This blessing is saved for greeting cards or memes, or from people hoping to enroll me in such and such course or workshop.

Maybe this is why so many people are devoted to Jesus. He’s just about the only guy in town who loves a person for who they actually already are. Of course, people even fight about who deserves his love.

So I wonder, how do we learn the skills to be able to retain our ‘being’ in this world, that is so obsessed with ‘being recognized’?

How can we cultivate our being’s purpose and share our gifts and connect with each other as we are, instead of tripping over each other or inadvertently disregarding each other on our way to becoming recognized for what we believe we should be more of?

I personally have to catch myself with every thought I think, to remind myself the distinction between sharing and connecting, verses that old drive to be recognized, in order to get me out of my hell hole and into a better place.

I have to constantly remind myself that this land I’m often in, that feels so barren and isolated, like a ghost land, is the way it is because it’s missing the only vital nutrient that can’t be bought or earned or acquired—it’s our being, and the nurturing of our being with each other’s awareness of it.

Maybe it’s as simple as a shifting of our languaging:

Instead of, ‘She never set the world on fire,’ how about: ‘Her presence always lights up the space she’s in and warms the hearts of those near to her.’

Or, instead of ‘He’s killing it.’ How about: ‘He put his efforts into pushing his best qualities out into the world, past all his conditioning, to connect meaningfully with the people in his vicinity.’

I certainly don’t have any answers. But before I share anything or speak anything, I try to remember to check in with my motivation first, to make sure my intention is aligned with my values—to connect and to be a contribution—instead of aligned with those old beliefs that tell me who I am right now is not yet good enough to share.

To shift from that desperate longing for what I don’t have, to work on healing my life from the space of being, this being that’s always been here, under my circumstances, waiting to nourish where I already am, so that my environment can grow into a place where I actually want to be, where I can be myself, and invite others to do the same.

-JLK

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Only you get to say when your creative self will be born

Sometimes, I feel a kicking inside myself. It's this wilder truer version of myself that I keep under wraps, wanting to get out. This part of myself that doesn’t second and third and fourth guess herself, but takes more chances to be who she is, instead of who she isn’t.

I think the world needs more from these truest versions of ourselves. Time to do what it takes to push them out of ourselves and into the world.

-JLK

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The Problem. (Something I made for young adults who feel stuck, but who also feel reluctant to take the time to understand why.)

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I imagine that the moment before war

Some people are already fighting

Or crying

Or need a break

Their partners pissed them off

Or their kids had too many needs

For a tired mother to meet

There were already aches and pains

From previous illnesses

And bills that had yet to be paid

And then suddenly planes overhead

And bombs exploding

And people have to gather what they can of these already broken pieces

And savor every edge

to protect them from being further broken

Because what we’ve got is all we have

And it’s all so sacred.

And all of us over here

so far away

Wondering what will bludgeon us

When we least expect it

Trying so hard

To transform our own broken pieces

Into something beautiful enough to go on

Living for.

If I could

If there weren’t so many barriers

between all our broken pieces

I’d swoop them all up and devote my life

to gluing them all together

with whatever glue I could find.

So many broken pieces

scattered so far away.

-JLK

#prayforukraine

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A story about a land where grown-ups never grew up, from Feed It to the Worms, a collection of very short illustrated stories for small children and their grown-ups.

The Land of the Grown-Ups that Never Grew Up

I went on a field trip to this land where grown-ups never grow up.

They still look big and hairy and run banks and drive cars and make phone calls but trust me, nothing else about them is normal.

As soon as we got there, 10 or 15 of them surrounded the bus. They were climbing through the windows and shouting, “What did you bring us??!!”

My teacher smiled politely and told our class to get in a single file line and we headed into town.

We visited the gift shop and the owner was having a meltdown at the counter. He was pulling his hair and crying because we were touching his merchandise. “Don’t touch that candy,” he kept yelling.

“But I was going to buy some,” I said.

“It’s mine,” he cried. “NOT YOURS!”

“But… I thought this was a store!”

He stomped his foot and another grown-up ran out full force and I thought she was going to straighten this whole mess out but instead she tried to bite me!

“Stay away from my friend or I’ll cage you!”

“But . . . I was just trying to buy some candy!”

“Stop talking!” she screamed, and then she put her fingers deep in her ears.

That’s when my teacher whispered to me, “Don’t forget, sweetie. We’re in the Land where grown-ups never grow up.”

“Oh yeah!” I said, and I laughed.

When it was time to head back to school, a bunch of the grown-ups wouldn’t get off our bus. A few of them were pretending to steer the wheel and one was smearing the bus driver’s face with what might have been paint.

My teacher didn’t know what to do.

Thankfully, I had some pennies in my pocket so I said, “Hey guys! Who wants a penny?”

They all raised their hands and shouted, “Me me me!”

And so I tossed the pennies out the bus door and as soon as the grown-ups ran for them, our bus driver stepped on it and we zoomed home.

“I don’t think I ever want to go there again,” I said to my friend.

“That makes two of us,” he said.

The End.

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As a kid I was told to close all spaces leading in and out.

Close your legs

Close your mouth

Close your mind

Close your door

Don’t let anything in or out unless appropriate to do so. Failure to adhere will result in us having no choice but to show you the error of your ways using our most sophisticated technology: shame.

This strategy involves holding up what you mistakenly thought was valuable so that you can see it the way we see it, as not valuable at all.

We will not stop until shame has you crawl back inside the turtleneck of yourself so you can do the right thing for the team without being such a nuisance.

Being grounded so deep inside myself felt like a punishment so inhumane, that I began the art of escaping. Out the window, down the street, down the gullet, anyplace to avoid the cell of my insides all alone.

But after enough times running from such a dismal fate, I became too weary. Too dismayed. And so I waved the white flag. “Fine,” I said. “I give up. You win. I’m staying down here.”

But once I gave up escaping, and settled deep down inside myself, I heard a funny voice. “Welcome,” it chuckled. “Have a seat. You’re a busy one. We didn’t expect you’d ever stay long enough for tea.”

“Well, the world grounded me,” I explained. “Sent me here as punishment. And I’ve finally accepted my punishment.”

The voice laughed. “Cretins. They’re like the worst kind of furniture. They know nothing beyond functionality. Let me tell you something: Who you are is impossible to punish. And even more impossible to contain. In their unknowing, they sent you to a world larger than any continent, with depths too deep to fully delve.

There are beings here who have traveled through your blood from the earliest beginnings. And we are your comrades. Your sisters and brothers on the other side.

And be assured, there is nothing here to be ashamed of. Only your thoughts, ideas and dreams, the longing to share them, and the memories of all your attempts to do so.

But you mustn’t give up. It’s your purpose to share these things. In fact, they’re the only ingredients in existence that can create the relationships and the circumstances that match who it is you are for yourself.

When you allow shame to keep yourself to yourself, you do everyone a disservice. You allow yourself to be who others expect you to be, whether it represents your true self or not.

But when you emerge from your depths as who you are down in here, it is an invitation for others to do the same.

And those pieces of furniture who are always trying to contain everything so that it’s easy enough to fit in their pocket—have no idea of any journey other than the one they take to deposit what they’ve pocketed directly into their savings account.

They won’t acknowledge any other journey unless it’s bound or notarized or promises an eternity with all the stuff they worked so hard to secure.

But have no doubt: Your journey is yours. And your task is to learn the ancient art of believing that your magic is real. Not hocus-pocus magic, but the magic of a seed’s journey to blossom.

And once you believe in your magic, and you realize it’s your right to open up and share the fruits of who you’ve become, you will do so—and you will paw the earth with your magic between your teeth and a glint in your eye, and you will drop it at the feet of the furniture on the other side, who will recline in their easy chairs and laugh.

And they’ll reach down to pick it up, and they’ll look at it in their particular way, so that its majesty immediately turns flaccid, and they’ll laugh. ‘Must we remind you what happens when you don’t see things they way we see things?’ And you’ll be tempted to turtleneck back down into your punishment.

But fear not—you will know now that there is no punishment here. They don’t know these lands, my friend. These lands are where the punished go. And those who punish are not welcome. They’ll never realize that through these cracks is where the flowers bloom.

They don’t understand that if you visit here enough times, these blossoms grow wilder and wilder and they begin to find their way through the cracks and out into the world where they spiral over and under and past those who shamed you, and out into the rest of the world, until these pieces of furniture are no longer able to deny the value of your ingredients…

And finally, instead of trying to shame you back home inside yourself, these pieces of furniture will ask for a bouquet… just something modest enough to set upon their mantel. And you will gladly oblige, because really, inadvertently, it was they who led you to this most wonderful place there is.

From our depths we share a common space that’s beyond the politics of shame, where we can blossom together till our gardens are no longer contained, but joined as one, so that we can celebrate the magic of our growth and water our seeds together.

-JLK

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One day, a little boy found out that grown-ups didn’t know how to listen to anything except stop signs, so he decided to paste what he had to say to the one at the end of his street.

And some of the grown-ups actually listened.

At least until it was time for them to vroom again.

The End.

-from Feed It to the Worms, a collection of very short stories for small children.

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I remember one night, I was in such a bad space.

Each negative thought was a ladder deeper down into this pit, where I couldn’t see anything of value about myself to be proud of.

In that space I dwelled on all the painful things that had happened and all the stupid things I said and did, and felt like I should just stay hidden inside myself instead of taking up any more space out there in the world.

And at some point, I heard this kind voice, a voice I often hear deep inside myself, that comforts me when I’ve lost the ability to comfort myself.

And the voice said, "My dear, would you like to know the most warped thing I’ve ever seen?”

And I said, “What.”

And the voice said, "The image you have of your own self. You’re allowed to feel down. But please don't forget to separate your circumstances from the incredible living, breathing being that you are."

And those words elevated me. And I carry them with me now.

So if you’re feeling bad about yourself, please remember, the image of yourself that you’re imagining is you, is not at all a clear picture of what’s real.

What’s real is that who you are, is an incredible living breathing being, full of gifts to share.

-JLK

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I’ve done a lot of work reframing my upsets and understanding the origins of my reactions and internal conflicts, and figuring out how to self-soothe rather than making it my career to enroll others into doing that job for me.

But even so, there’s this little luminous egg within me that feels so toxic, and in it are all the core reasons why I still don’t deserve to be free of my constraints and thrive inside a life that feels like a match for who I am.

It’s like a container of concentrated hurt and disappointment and low self-esteem. A serum of pain that’s been distilled over decades through understanding and awareness, but what remains is still so powerful that I can’t seem to figure out what to do with it other than be hurt by it.

It’s like a storage of radioactive waste from a power source that used to fuel me, and even though I am now fueled by a new more sustainable source, I must learn to coexist with this waste and be careful not to get too close to it.

I honestly can’t imagine there’s any more I can do about it except to treat that area tenderly. To plant hearty flowers around it. And put up signs that read Caution. Do Not Open. And keep my world going in the deliberate direction I’ve set out on.

Not everything can be fixed. Sometimes we have to live with the waste of old toxic experiences. But if we can identify these ingredients and keep them disposed of properly, over time, I believe they will lose their toxicity and become harmless.

-JLK

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Thinking about all the women who have the courage to share their wisdom and their truths and their love, no matter what.

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This illustration is about the unresolved issues that the mothers and daughters in my family uploaded to each other over generations. I hope it’s not too disturbing! Definitely not a piece for kids lol. But I wanted to share this story because it’s meaningful to me, and also in case it makes a difference to anyone else.

The Mother Wound

We all have voices that aren't ours that we've internalized from those who came before us.

I come from a family of women who passed their unresolved upsets to their children.

The upsets took on different forms—mostly shame and criticism—but I think they all stemmed from a similar source—women who were stuck inside themselves, traumatized, overburdened, overwhelmed and unavailable.

I’d say my mother had the hardest life of them all.

Mostly because she, more than any of them, wanted to live differently—to leave behind the rules and regulations of her predecessors and be free to be herself, on her own terms.

Well this did not go well.

Not because she was unqualified to have the right to be herself, but because this society isn’t built for people to be themselves, unless they‘ve had the privilege of being raised by those who told them they could, or unless they didn’t get too damaged from being raised by people who insisted they couldn’t.

My mother tried so hard to live life on her own terms, but there was always a problem in her way.

And there’s only so many problems a person can confront before they start believing they deserve them all.

Yet because my mother still believed she was entitled to live her best life, she coped with the feeling of defeat a bit differently.

She assumed all those toxic voices she’d inherited from her predecessors must have been implanted there in her brain by the government. There was simply no other explanation she could think of—because in her heart, she knew that those inflexible, critical, demeaning voices couldn’t have been her own.

And though she wasn’t able to process it clearly, I believe I understand what was going on—my mother was shedding that collective criticism of all the women who had come before her, those women who had silenced their own voices after being told by other toxic people that their voices weren't viable enough to be heard, and who in turn silenced the voices of their offspring because the sound of their freedom brought too much resentment.

Throughout her life, my mother was deemed not much more than mentally ill by her family, by people unequipped to see life through the lens of one’s mythology—through the lens of one’s spiritual journey.

But even so, my mother never gave up on herself and she fought these voices to her death.

And I am grateful that I was able to understand what she was doing—that she was carving out a new chapter. My mother never got to live in that new chapter she worked so hard to create—but I feel lucky that I have been able to step into it, knowing all that went in to creating it.

I know now in my bones how important it is to stay true to what calls to my heart and soul. And I will never live a life that’s perpetually burdened by all those voices that keep us so small, so punished, and so privately miserable.

And I’m so proud of my warrior mother for finding so much courage in the face of generations of dysfunction, and for being so honest with me about every step of her journey.

I’m not saying it was easy growing up with my mother. It was very difficult.

But I’d rather have had that, than be like the women who came before her, whose fires burned a hole on their insides because they were too afraid to ever let it out.

—JLK

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Peace

Little children are not self-centered at all. They are present-centered.

Whatever’s happening right now is what they’re centered in. If they’re angry right now, they’ll be angry. Hungry right now, they’ll be hungry. Need your attention right now, they will get it.

They’re ok with however they are.

And maybe this is what the old folks meant in the bible – be as little children. They have no self-judging-self yet. They’re able to experience first hand what’s happening without filtering it through judgment, without filtering it through the fear of being such and such or not being such and such, or the fear of someone else being such and such or not being such and such.

Little children are free in this way. They don’t sit around and talk about what moments are like for them, or what moments were like for them, or what moments are hopefully going to be like for them.

They are experiencing what is happening right now. And because of this, most grown ups cannot stand being around little children for too long.

Most grown ups need to call someone on the phone and say, I need a vacation or a drink or a fucking loaf of bread.

The little children never do this. They make things happen. They build something up or knock it down, they kick or they hug. But they don’t talk about what’s not happening right now. Not until a grown up drags them back to a time that already happened or drags them to look forward to some future that hasn’t happened.

But the grown ups can’t help it. The grown ups need to distract the children from the present moment because the grown ups need a way to get the fuck out of the playroom.

The grown ups can’t stand to be with the little children for too long because they can’t bear for their ideas of themselves to get lost in the moment. It makes them feel so uncomfortable, like they’re actually dying a little too fast or living a little too long—whatever it is, it’s excruciating.

And sometimes they look at their little children and look forward to the time when their little children will be able to leave their present moments and join them in reflection. And it will happen.

In time, the little children will leave their present moments. They’ll really have no choice. They’ll get sent off to the larger world and they’ll have to leave their moments just to figure out how to understand themselves around all these other people.

But hopefully they’ll still have a place to go home to that gives them peace. Maybe where their parents are, or to some beautiful new place they’ll create, or maybe back to the moment they’ll somehow remember they’re still part of, the one that’s always been right there, that’s still right there, where there’s nothing to worry about and nowhere to go and no one better to be.

-JLK

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When you gloss things over with yourself... when you don’t spend the proper time to understand what‘s happened to you, the mind can become very slippery.

You may find you can’t have more than a few thoughts in a row without losing your focus. They’ve already slipped by.

You may find you feel like a ball of reactions with no through-line.

I think this is because our relationship to our upsets is the same as our relationship to our thoughts, and ultimately to ourselves.

If there’s no solid connection to our experiences, how can there be a solid connection to ourselves as the experiencer?

For those who gloss over their own upsets, you may feel like you’re not entirely in your life. Just kind of floating out in orbit. Waiting for something to pull you in and ground you.

It took me quite a long time to turn toward my upsets, to take the time to understand why I was upset and to then offer myself the support and understanding I craved.

And each time I did, it felt like weight was added to my being. Not heaviness, but the kind of weight that made me begin to feel more solid and more grounded in my life, with my own perspective as my anchor.

-JLK

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He Carried His Love on the Top of His Head

There was once a man who carried his love on the top his head.

For the most part there were no problems.

But sometimes if he wasn’t paying attention, his love would fall off. And in those moments, when his love was lost, he was not so nice to be around.

He’d get down on his hands and knees and yell at everyone, “Get out of my way! I’m looking for my love! Don’t touch it or I’ll destroy you!”

But as soon as he found it, and placed it back on the top of his head, he was himself again.

The end.

-from my book Feed It to the Worms, a collection of very short stories for small children.