reading this feels like sitting in a quiet corner with a trusted friend, having a conversation that affirms your faith in yourself and the world. Halle has taken the big, scary concept of fear and crafted a beautiful, personal yet universal love letter to it, made all the more beautiful by her ethereal yet down to earth beautiful pictures. Halle is the real deal: philosopher, poet, artist, and emotion driven intellectual. It can be so easy to let your fears rule your life without even noticing it, and so hard to figure out how to stop doing it. Incredibly, this simple, beautiful writing offers a real remedy. Halle does more than just lay out a problem and a solution. She takes you by the hand and helps you closer and closer to a life where you can finally breathe clearly, and freely. She lets you experience the world the way you were born to do. When you're done reading this, somehow the whole world will feel so much more exciting, and welcoming. I love reading this so much it hurts. You find certain people, and certain people find you. Consider this your special person. Halle makes fear that kid you thought was too cool to be your friend but turned out to be more like you than you imagined. My friend fear is a beautiful, visual journey into your mind and heart with a very gentle and generous creator. Halle has this ability to take us through some of our deepest and darkest feelings, so we emerge on the other end feeling full and at peace. When Halle writes about fear, she does it in a way that feels like a warm hug, a silent nod from a friend, a soft whisper that she's been there too. and a jubilant shout that she's here for you now and always. For my fear, who stays with me like moonlight in the darkness and always leads me to the magic. Fear invites the impossible to happen. This is all about fear. It's a writing about longing and loneliness and the way we hide our inner selves from the world. Reluctant to look inside, frightened about what we may find. This is about unlikely friendships, and how to forge the truest relationship you'll ever have the chance to build. The one that connects your heart to your body and mind. You will spend your entire life nurturing this relationship, and there is no better way to spend your time. This is about you, and it's also about me. This is a window that allows us to see each other. It's a writing that has been in my heart years before I found the courage to write it all down. It's a writing that stayed in my mind and haunted my body for years while I grew up. It's a writing that came to be in a spacious room somewhere in northern Illinois and was recited aloud no one in an underground Williamsburg apartment. It's a writing that was written on warm Miami beaches, painted in a small, loving studio in East Nashville, Tennessee, and shaped by a sixteen-bedroom Victorian commune in Barkley, California. It's a writing that was born from a year of complete heartbreak and loneliness in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. This is a writing that asks you to look in the mirror without flinching. You won't always like what you see. That's okay. Look anyway. This is a writing that wants to be read. These words are filled with honesty, and I hope, some grace. My greatest wish is that you will find them useful. This writing admits that everything changes. There's no use in holding onto sunshine or sorrow, with time. One melts into the other. Like you, both can be reborn. This was written to remind you of one thing. First, say to yourself what you would be, & then do what you have to do. Like everyone, I came into this world without fear. I was built with no concepts of desire or consequence. Only a deep hunger for newness and all five senses intact, to see, smell, hear, touch, taste, to experience as many things as possible in the hours after my eyes open and before they again, close. This morning sun is warm and makes me feel alive. It feels like a soft blanket that follows me through the day. In the afternoon it burns brighter and more fiercely still, and I wonder how much closer it's gotten to earth. I'm hot and a bit uncomfortable, but I want to know how much I can endure. I test my physical and emotional boundaries and push them to expand. If my curiosity has a limit, it has never presented itself to me, and I've never once asked to see it. I like to explore. In the evening, I see stars slowly come out and wonder how these little stones can be so far and still leave such a deep wonder inside me. I want to know how the moon carves into itself night after night until there is nothing left. Constellations connect themselves behind my eyes, and I feel that there is meaning after every movement happening around me. In my dreams, I ask the world, Is this the magic? Have I finally found it? When I'm very young, the questions are large. What happens in the time I'm asleep? When I close my eyes, where do I go? Is each day a new life or just a different story on a different line on the same page in the book? How many pages does it have? I have to go to bed each night hoping the book is very long. I'm in constant awe of the simple fact that there is a game called life, and I was given the chance to play it. Maybe this is the magic. When I'm a little older, the questions change slightly. By now, I've discovered myself. Why do I look the way I do and why do I look different than everyone else does? Why doesn't Caitlin at school want to drop me? Why am I the only one at school that speaks two languages? The answers are too complicated for my 21-year-old brain, but my native tongue moves, and words tumble out before I get to consider them. They make the right sounds anyway. I marvel at my own ability to speak, think, and listen. I move like water; my hand rises before it has fully given the command, before the answer is even in my mouth, because I trust that my thoughts will get the answer before I even get called on. Everything feels so connected. My brain is an athlete. Lightning fast, and powerful, capable of anything. I can do anything.
