Day 6: Waxing Rhapsodical

 Untitled, so far.

Thank you, Friend.

For the times you’ve kept me humble.

What are friends for, If not beating their friends down from small hills

With a jeer, a quip, a barbed tongue.

Before the friend can climb to heights from which the fall would shatter them.

Thank you, Friend.

For the times you’ve held me back.

For never letting me believe that I am anything more than the ordinary lot that I am.

Tethering me safely to the ground before my wildest fantasies come true,

And whisk me away to insanity and beyond.

Thank you, Friend.

For the times you’ve kept me from trying.

If Icarus had a friend like you, he would have never melted his wings

And died a mythical death in the arms of foolish glory.

Which would forever be immortalized in fable.

Thank you, Friend.

For the times you’ve withheld respect.

My betterment, of course, it was for. Dipping my feet into cold-hardening lead.

I would never leave you, for my benefit, of course.

What mad lunacy I would do to myself If you were to let me.

Thank you, Friend.

Now get behind me.

I will climb and I will fall, I will dream and I will delude, I will fly and I will fail.

Or maybe, God’s hand on mine, I will grasp the sun in my trembling fingers.

Tame the wild Lion, Best the Elephant in boxing, Raise Atlantis, maybe…

Or not…

But keep me not from risk, for without it, we would all wither and fade.

Day 5: The Gap

To all 14 people who've looked at this page, don't worry. I'm not forgetful enough to completely abandon a fledgling project before it's learned to write itself. (And please, someone let me know when that technology becomes possible. I'd like to buy some shares.) And for the population of the literate world minus 14, please forgive my continuation of this page.

Now, I'd like to take a bit of time to talk about the essential survival tips that revolve around college life and the transition into the world formerly known as "Real". The most important thing to do, obviously, is join the Occupy Wall Street movement. This will effectively postpone any real responsibility, productivity, or responsibility. More or less, you just camp out in whatever city you are currently in and make up your own form of sign language which is less complex than that used by budding toddlers until someone feeds you.

Versus

 

Until OWS comes to a definitive decision on the proper hand signals for Horse, Cookie, and No Touch, they shall receive less respect from me than I have for 14 month olds. If you decide that you're above living in a tent and smoking anything you can roll between some newspaper, ask your parents if they have enough money to put you through Grad school towards your philosophy degree.

Moving on, one of the primary things necessary to obtain before and/or after leaving the college of your youth is a steady income. And through researching Google images for 37 seconds, I have concluded that the answer is: Coffee.

Due to the fact that tea is basically hot water with plant juice in it, (and secondarily as an act of rebellion) the early Colonists opted to adopt a new heated beverage. At this time, it was being discovered that a certain bean could be crushed in order to obtain a chemical that would enhance clarity, focus, and energy while at the same time tasting like burnt.....burnt. The European world had just begun to explore what could be the new imbibing craze of the century. The Colonies immediately jumped on this exciting and exotic concoction as a way to distinguish themselves from the British Empire.

Whether it was complete ignorance or forced, the Colonials overlooked the fact that this same bean was the one used by these guys

for centuries as a way to get their warriors so "hopped up" that their sense of fear would be replaced with absolute anarchy in the Central Nervous System, making them effective soldiers up until their fine motor skills became non-existent and their hearts ruptured. Also, it was used by these guys

during their practice of the Sufism branch of Islam in order to reach a ethereal state of hysterical worship. Also, their hearts probably ruptured.

AAAAaanyways, the early Americans brought this little bean back to it's shores and began ingesting it, and the culture of coffee began. This small history effectively sets up the post-college grad with an incredible opportunity to enter the job market with almost no difficulty.

Buy People Coffee.

I have no idea how this is not in some kind of self-help book by now. If you want to move up the ladder in any venue, supply the people in charge with the drug they (more or less) cannot go a day without. This can also work with finding a spouse, only one may want to find out a little bit about them before becoming their main source of caffeine, as once that step is made, they will be hounding you for a free "hit" (cleverly disguised as a "chat") for months or years to come.

Secondly, ask your friends and friends parents if they know anyone who needs a metaphorical hand in doing whatever it is they do for a paycheck. The simplest thing to do is take your friends to coffee, then take your friends parents to coffee, then take your friend's parent's friends to coffee, then (if you haven't gotten to someone with hiring authority yet) take your friend's parent's friend's employer a coffee as you just happened to be wandering around their isolated warehouse which is located 3 valleys over from the edge of any reasonable citizens daily jogging route. This individual may hire you on the spot or your body will be found at the river mouth. This leads us into our third point...

Take some risks. This is your small window of opportunity to completely destroy your life without repercussions to whatever family you decide to start. If you are like me, then you'll have only yourself to worry about, and a 50/50 chance is great odds when the stakes are making it big or eating moss off the side of a rain gutter. There are actually some kinds of moss which are edible! Such great news! Also, in retrospect, point number two and one can be fused together, seeing as the second paragraph is almost completely redundant.

Anyways, my bladder is rapidly reaching the point where it may need medical attention if left for another 3 minutes, my attention span cannot allow for any break from typing, and my roommate is upstairs slowly....ever so slowly.... filling up the bathtub, or at least that's what it sounds like. So I'll boil down the other points necessary for success: Make a Family, and Make a huge difference in the world. It should also be known that, as I have not graduated college yet, all of these are purely theoretical and I know absolutely nothing about actually surviving in the outside world. Holy cow, it's still dripping. Ok, bye.

Day 4: On foods and origins

As I looked through my meagre supply of edibles, I began to wonder how exactly the founders of differing nations and ethnic backgrounds managed to take the flora and fauna around them and create such interesting and complex meals. Dinners that require several hours worth of pre-cooking and several hundred ways to completely destroy the dish beyond edibility.

While stirring my bizarre concoction of hamburger, apples, potatoes, and whatever assorted spices and other nasty things I found in my pantry, I fervently hoped that some poor historical chump with a similar tact for recipe creating as mine one day broke out of culinary obscurity with a meal so other-worldly that people claimed it as genius. Not saying that what I made was genius, because if it is, I do not feel like eating any more "genius" for quite some time.

I realize now that what I really need to do if I ever want to break into the world of high class eatery is not make something incredibly complicated or sophisticated, all I have to do is create a new delicacy. Webster defines a delicacy as "Something pleasing to eat that is considered rare or luxurious". But by comparing that definition to popular delicacies such as Escargot (raw snail) or Caviar (salted fish eggs), I will make the assumption that this new delicacy simply has to be one of the things that all of us were dared to eat as kids.

Ice melt, any root dug up, parts of trees, and eggplant. These could all be candidates, except for the first one's tendency to do fairly rough organ damage, the second one's 50/50 chance of being lethal, the third's almost 100% chance of being inedible, and the fourth one's classification as a berry but having no good qualities of berries. The only thing left to do is to find a willing food snob and then begin to feed him parts of dead animals (or whole dead animals, if small enough) that no one else will possibly want until he decides that he has found something worthy to be called a delicacy, he calls it quits on account of liver failure, or dies.

I will keep you posted in case I do end up being the new food sensations so that you will know what not to order for your next fancy gala.

Day 3: The Placeholder

Today consisted of jet fumes, missing hours, and airport bathrooms. Right now, my heart is left in the ashes of the woodstove back in alaska, and my brain and other vital organs are somewhere over Arizona. So I don't plan on writing anything earth-rumbling. Rather, I will let this be a greasy napkin left between the pages of day 2 and 4. Nothing to see here, move along.

Day 2: The Embarkment (College and the Real World.)

(This is meant for those in college, but it is acceptable that anyone read.)
It's a little bit nerve-wracking, leaving for college for the final time. On the one hand, I know that my journey through the realm post-secondary education is nearly traveled. But on the other, I can see the protective barrier of false-reality that is the college atmosphere quickly dissipating, leaving the stark and barren salt-flats of untested and unforgiving adulthood.

It's not so much that I fear adulthood and all that it entails, I've been active in seeking out experiences that will most likely exceed the daily demands of a 9 to 5. I know that I have the capability to handle myself in this new wasteland, I've seen Man vs. Wild. I know what's essential. Water, Body temperature, Shelter and Food.

But these things are only that which is necessary to Survive. And if I were to leave college with only that goal in mind, I doubt that I would have this much apprehension building inside where my heart and other internal organs should be. No, what really daunts me is the challenge to Excel. This means so much more than using a pigs organs to make a bowstring or gathering water from bamboo shoots. This means that we (all of us College students) must have come to the full understanding of our inner workings and hidden desires in order to know which path to place our money on when we spin the roulette wheel of the job market.

Who are you? What soil do you thrive in? Will you adapt or shatter? Are you ever supposed to know beforehand? The questions that the world silently asks hang heavy over my being, though I know that the world cares far less than I do. For all of us, in whatever walk we step forward into, know that there Is a Purpose and a Plan and a Potter, all working as one to create in us the person needed for the part to be played. There is a good deal of comfort in that.

Thanks for reading.

Day One: The Incident

I'm a simple man. And simply put, I enjoy venting my daily musings and confusion through black words on a digital medium. But i've sometimes been told that others enjoy the small pieces of half-witticisms that I throw out every once in a while. So I have come up with a two prong plan: I write to please myself, and anyone who finds this can read to please themselves. From my limited perspective, it's foolproof.

I cannot promise to capture the readers attention with every ill-turned phrase or questionably timed quip, but what I can promise is that I will consistently add small pieces of poetic drivel, longer and less poetic pieces of drivel, and occasionally a piece of all-natural, organic, no-preservatives or pesticides, grass-fed, free-trade, Splenda-free drivel.

To set the standard, I will now make up some sort of semi-rhyming prose for the purpose of my enjoyment (I'm no good at sudoku, this will have to do) and your entertainment.


Slow circles and sleepy descent,
A view from heaven, white to white.
From clouded sky, a tiny present,
And millions more, falling tight.

They lace the ground with grace and form,
And join hands with their neighbor.
The fortunate part of this snowy morn,
Is that the billions of tiny snowflakes will eventually form a thick enough blanket to obscure from public view the obscene word that a disgruntled junior-high student decided to spray paint onto the sidewalk because his parents disallowed him from going to a friend's house.


The moral of this poem is probably something about graffiti. Anyways, I hope that this is the beginning of a uplifting and symbiotic relationship.

Thank you for reading.