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It's a comfortable smile
And faded blue jeans
A walk to nowhere
Serenaded by the chirping of crickets

It's risking being caught
For the best view of the stars
And knowing whatever happens
Will be an adventure

It's nobody else for miles around
And my feet out the window
Of a beat up Chevy truck
Driving just to escape the world

It's closing my eyes
And seeing
If only for an instant
The dirt road to the creek
Wheat fields
The smell of Alfalfa
Bill bailing our hay

It's pillow fights
And laughing until I collapse
Gaining breath to begin all over again

It's an unexpected kiss in the moonlight
And wondering where it might lead
Feeling strong arms
Refusing to think any further than right now

It's a trip to ice cream alley
After a day at the lake
And rambling in the mountains
Because we've nothing better to do

It's about those moments
When I don't have to long for freedom
Because I'm living it

Seasons of Life

"It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power."

- Alan Cohen

The world was meant for change, and with it growth. Seasons come and go - dispensing with the old life and creating new, budding life. With every season there is beauty: snow glittering in the full moon, the smell of summer on your skin, the enticing mystery of fall, and the new intoxication of spring.

Life is this way as well. The seasons of life, however short or long, have beauty within themselves, though they at many times do not feel beautiful. I am only in the first season of my life, when I look at the long run. 23 years is not a long time to roam this earth. There are many lessons I have left to learn, but this is the season of learning.

The college season is the time we set out on our own. We discover ourselves, how strong we can be and how weak we really are. We discover our true loves and our true hates. We discover the people we are supposed to be.

The season of love - new love - is much like spring. It is intoxicating. Consuming the entirety of our lives. Every moment is spent with that person. Every moment away is like a century. Everything he says is romantic, funny, or sweet. There are deep conversations that last long into the midnight - and the masks are taken away from our faces as we endeavor to reveal our true selves to this special person.

The season of breakup is equally full of feeling. The kind of feeling you wish didn't exist. Change. Fear. You take back up the mask - simply for survival's sake and continue on with a false stregnth. You see him - he's picked up the mask as well and you both see through the facades, though neither of you wishes to point out the falsity of the encounter.

Time moves on. Hurts vanish. Love fades. And you become stronger for them.

Society is Brainwashed

George Bernard Shaw wrote:

People will stand anything as soon as they are matured enough and cultivated enough to be suscepitable to the appeal of the particular form of art.

Shaw was speaking about theater, which in his day and age was changing rapidly from the traditional well made play to the more serious problem play. However, I wish to direct my thoughts toward society. Society shapes our perceptions of life. It shapes our expectations of life. It taints everything we see with either rose or black or clear. And just as Shaw states, as soon as people are matured enough (or brainwashed enough) they will stand anything.

You see a man walking down the street. He is dressed in rags, pushing a grocery cart with a towel wrapped around his head like a turbine. He mutters to himself and beggs change from you as you walk out of the gas station. You see a threat. A man who is different from you, probably wanting money for booze. Society has taught you that.

If you have ever been homeless or been friends with the homeless, however, you know that this man is simply in need of love. You can look past society's tint and see the reality of his need. Then and only then can you meet his need and be love to him.

Society tells us so many things about right and wrong, dirty and clean, acceptable and unacceptable, success and failure.

A professor recently asked us, "if marajuana were legal in the United States, would you use it?" It got me thinking - What makes it wrong? We use caffine to alter our states of mind. Or anything for that matter... how much do we let society dictate our thoughts and opinions about things?

Perhaps George Bernard Shaw's statement could be altered in this way to describe society:

People will stand for anything as soon as they are informed with enough propoganda, persuaded long enough and finally brainwashed enough to accept a certain point of view.

When Pigs Fly..or at least their Livers

Pigs and their kin have been worshiped, despised, and otherwise referred to throughout human history. Some societies have set them upon a high and decorated pedistol, while others preferred to hurl them deep within the bowels of the earth to keep their master company.

The Jews regarded them as unclean and were forbidden to eath them. The Celts had a god of swine dubbed Moccus, who in Roman mytholigy was entitled Mercury. In Germany, they were known as good luck charms. In England, they were said to be the bringers of bad luck.

Odysseus' crew was turned into pigs in The Oddesy. Soviet leaders are represented as pigs in Animail Farm. Pigs were used as symbols of the dark side of human nature in Saw and it's following sequels.

"When Pigs Fly"
"You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig."
"Sweating like a pig"
"In a pig's eye."
Economical sausage-makers were said to use "everything but the squeal."

Presently, many people make their living from pigs. Pigs are kept as pets, sold for meat, and taken to the fair. And you may be asking yourself about now: Why this random dialogue on pigs? The answer, my friends, is that I picked up fresh pig livers from the butcher yesterday for my mom to make liversausage. The butcher cut them out of the pig, put them in a bag and then we took them to the house to soak in our sink for several hours. I do not envy the nose that must smell that stench.