erasing

"Sometimes I try to erase myself. I imagine a big pink soft soap eraser, and it's going back and forth, back and forth, and it starts down at my toes, back and forth, back and forth, and there they go--poof!--my toes are gone. And then my feet. And then my ankles. But that's the easy part. The hard part is erasing my senses--my eyes, my ears, my my nose, my tongue. And last to go is my brain. My thoughts, memories, all the voices inside my head. That's the hardest, erasing my thoughts. And then, if I've done a good job, I'm erased. I'm gone. I'm nothing. And then the world is free to flow into me like water into an empty bowl."

"And...I see. I hear. But not with eyes and ears. I'm not outside my world anymore, and I'm not really inside it either. The thing is, there's no difference anymore between me and the universe. The boundary is gone. I am it and it is me."

-Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

I read this book when I was 13 years old.
Nearly seven years later, I find myself pulling out that giant pink eraser, and I let it remove every inch of me, until nothing of myself remains.