Destiny and Rebirth

I’d like to begin by saying Shanah tovah to all my readers! This past Wednesday began Rosh HaShanah, the celebration of the Jewish new year and one of the most important holidays in the Jewish year. The ten days following until Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) next Saturday are referred to as the Days of Awe and are a time to seek forgiveness and make amends for the coming year.

Today, however, my focus is still on the Pirkei Avot.

2.20 Rabbi Tarfon taught:

The day is short, the task is great;
the workers indolent, the reward bountiful,
and the Master insistent!

What is this, a piece of poetry? Though I’m apt to adore art, I must wonder what is meant by this, what lesson was intended, what pupils were at his feet when he spoke these words….

An Open Letter to the People of North Carolina

To My Fellow North Carolinians;

I am writing to you in concern of the upcoming Special Session on Monday, September 12, 2011, to vote on Senate Bill 106 and House Bill 777, both entitled Defense of Marriage, which seek to amend our state constitution so that marriages between one man and one woman are the only legally recognized domestic relationship in North Carolina.

It is my belief, however, that these bills should not be passed.

Highway Unicorn

For AW.

Putting the pedal to the metal was an understatement, Sarah thought, but it didn’t do her much good with how far she’d gotten before her crimson ’67 Chevy Impala had come to a stop. The car had been her beauty throughout her last two years of high school and all six years of college before finishing her Master’s in Anthropology, but now it was nothing more than a smoking mess on the side of an asphalt road in the middle of nowhere.

The sun was beginning to set in the distance, sending waves of vermillion and royal shades of purple and blue rolling across the heavens.

It’s too far to walk tonight, she thought, crossing her arms as she thought back three, four, or maybe five miles to the last rest stop she’d passed, not to mention twice as far to the nearest gas station, and she wasn’t even sure if that rundown blotch on the horizon in her rearview was even still working let alone reliable to any stretch of the imagination.

The Plight of Paper People

Have you ever seen the future crashing down before you?

Notice I have not said crashing down around you. That would imply an imminent end is becoming, slips of predictions passing into the permanence of the present moment. Instead I am speaking of the future itself, that which we can dream of and look toward but can never touch, can never taste, can never truly understand.

Have you ever seen that come crashing down?

My Deepest Dreams (Part Two): To Fly Away

When I wrote Part One, I meant every word of it and there was never any intention of following with a part two. If you can’t tell things have changed since then, if merely by the inference of there now being a distinction between two parts, this may not be the best blog for you to be reading. I mean that humorously, but if you take it seriously, it’s just reinforcement of the statement itself. I shall not sequester your free will, but merely inform you of my opinions.

Mathematicians: Always going off on tangents.

Things have changed, but I still mean every word I said. Things change. Things need improvement, additions, clarification. Articles needs retractions and updates; constitutions need amendments; and today’s need tomorrow’s. Scientists call this evolution. Astrologers, progression. Educators, growth, and the general populace, any other term they wish to imply. Nothing is static except things already in equilibrium. People are never there, try as we might to get there. So we keep going. Things do change. I’ll share with you everything.

Under the Tide: The Tragic and Comedic Tale of How I Danced With a Monkey and Had a Baby in My Sleep

I was skeptical, but I was also intrigued. Here I was last night, at the Phi Theta Kappa Carolinas Region Regional Conference: After our first general session and dinner, there was a presentation on…HYPNOTISM!

Like I said: Skeptical, but intrigued.

Soliloquy for the Storm

I wrote Sojourn a week ago, but school kept me from posting it any sooner. Reading it over, proofreading my mind to open it to others, reminded me exactly of all the things I was feeling when I wrote it. (My most meager hope is that something even slightly similar was stirred somewhere inside my readers’ souls.)

Today I’m distracted. Not namely by those feelings, but by ones greater. (In Toy Story, Woody made the comment that Buzz wasn’t flying, he was falling with style. Well let’s face this: I’m not falling. I’m flying.) And it’s kept a perpetual fire burning inside me, an eternal light, a hearth to never die down, always tended if oft unseen.

Then came the winds.

Since They Say Size Doesn’t Matter

Years ago I heard about the miniWORDS competition, which was (and might still be, I’m not sure) a competition to write super-short flash fiction to win large prizes of money, recognition, and fame! I entered, but never won. Nonetheless, some small words are worth digging up and sharing, aren’t they? Little bits to think about, a moment in time to take another’s breath away.

So let’s get going, shall we? Size doesn’t matter, or so they say, but is it really true? Why don’t you tell me!

Concerto in Spe et Somnis

For JMC.

Alessandro faced the mirror. Rich, ebony curls framed his face, his flesh a fresh olive tone nearer to divinity than to daily doings. He smiled, grinned, flexed his lips in all manners of purses and pouts until he was certain all was perfect. He leaned back from the porcelain sink hung to the poorly tiled wall and frowned; right on his baby blue silk shirt, where it had touched the side of the sink, was a small wet blotch. He flicked it uselessly. Then he smudged his thumb across it in an attempt to dry the stain, but in effect only made it more noticeable.

His pout deepened a notch, and then a notch more as he stared, and almost one more notch before the door burst open and he flashed his most dashing smile and bared his moon-white teeth to the passerby who took no notice of him walked his way to the stall.

Alessandro just glared at the empty space left behind.

He huffed a shallow sigh, re-gathering his composition, and then strode out of the bathroom with a steadfast look somewhere between confidence and criticism from the obvious insult of being ignored.

He was Alessandro! How could he be ignored?

He passed a red-headed girl with glasses, who in trying not to drop her textbooks, looked up at him; and he smiled, mostly at his reflection in her two lenses, and kept walking. Someone of her status might perhaps admire someone of his, and fantasize, and dream, but he had no doubt in his mind that if ever they should meet once more, in ten years, it would be she sweeping the stage before he walked out to the curtains and sang away the souls of all who heard him.

A Sixtieth of Death

Yesterday (by which I still mean Thursday) was the first Thursday SOAR of the year. In case I’ve failed to mention, SOAR stands for Student Orientation and Registration, and in case I’ve failed to mention yet again, as a Student Ambassador at Guilford Tech, I’m obligated to assist with check-in and registration. Sometimes it’s frustrating (like when I tried to explain that the line should wrap around the stairs and for some reason, they failed to understand what I thought I was communicating clearly), but usually it’s quite rewarding (such as when one woman complimented me on how organised we all were, or when I helped another register for her classes and then watched her repeat the process all on her own), but whether it’s frustrating or rewarding, it’s all the time fun. And full of people. And for an introvert like me, that equates fun in this context with exhausting.

And yesterday I was exhausted.

After I did some school work, after I ate dinner, after I did some more school work and treated myself to some time on Facebook, I curled up in bed, read for a bit, and promptly went to sleep. I was thankful for that (and forgetful that it was still Thursday).

4. Sleep

Sleep’s awesome. Sleep’s so awesome, I let myself sleep in till noon today. I mean, I woke up on occasion before that, but knowing I’d gone to bed late the past few nights, and knowing that I didn’t have school this morning (but not yet knowing how busy a day I’d have before), I decided it was worth sleeping a little bit longer. And it was!

I used to equate sleep with dreaming. Dreaming is fascinating, yet we know so little about it. There’s a theory for every dream a man has, if not more than that, but the majestic prospect of dreams on their own is awesome enough. They’re a glance inside our consciousness, into a world of meaning and symbols, aiding memory and leading us to fantasies both new and old…. Such as that one time when I saw a face in my dream and knew it was someone special (I won’t name names) or that time when I returned to a place I’ve only dreamed of, as if momentarily stepping into a parallel lifetime: I know this world, but it is not my own.

Not to mention the inspiration! I could elaborate, but if you’ve ever had a fantastic dream, or ever even heard the words Alice and Wonderland spoken in the same breath, you can get a semblance of what I’m talking about.

And for a time I associated sleep with escape. During my darkest days (that blotch of blackness upon my personal timeline between the years of fifteen and seventeen, approximately), I feared sleep for the want of not waking up, yet I reveled in the glory of it when morning came and I had no desire to wake up to yet another day. It was a subtle escape and one of my greatest memories of the time is being able to write right before I reached that point of exhaustion where the body demands its sleep by force, wherein the mind is boundless, consciousness calloused, and all the greatest wonders seem to pour out straight through the dreams of a wakened mind ready for darkness behind the eyelids.

Now I see sleep as merely sleep. General Psychology can do that to a man. But now, too, I understand sleep (in a way I have for a long time, but being taught it in class seems to make a difference, seems to make it more real now, more genuine somehow). Sleep is a time when our bodies consolidate information and restore the broken bonds formed throughout the day. It’s when our minds turn off for a time to recharge the circuits. It’s a time when we taste one sixtieth of death, according to Kabbalists, and I like that thought, too. But what I’m most thankful for is that I have sleep at all. Not everyone does, and that’s a shame.

I remember when I didn’t, and that was hell. I was anxious. I was irritated. I was constantly exhausted, but still unable to sleep. I sometimes try to think what changed, but too many things have changed to know which to credit. In my mind it shall always be my newfound openness, where once I stopped hiding I became found to myself, but correlation does not prove causation. That I’ve learned, too.

A hundred seems a mighty large number, now that I’ve reached the fourth thing on my list for which I’m thankful, but I suppose, with how many things there are in the world, finding ninety-six more to be thankful for shan’t be a problem. And if ever it should be, well, I’ll just have to sleep on it.