Natta Me

Natta thing I can find
With which to fill my
Time; I scamper, scurry,
Surf, and stream, but not
A thing I do is getting
Me closer to my dream;
So much time is wasted, in
technological glory, but
I really just need to sit down,
and start writing my story.

Hubble Telescope

Enthrall and enchant me,
Don't drop me as you walk away;
You got me from the first time
I saw you sitting there.
Angels, flowers, purest
Sunsets, there are no words that
begin to describe your beauty;
New inventions, new language,
New words in a million years
Never will touch your beauty,
It exists not in this world,
Not even in Heaven, but a
World yet undiscovered, yet
Uninterpreted, yet to be
Understood.

Summit Life in Twists and Turns

“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.” So says Edmund Hillary, the first man to have reached the summit of Mt. Everest, 29,029 ft. into the heavens.
Last night I decided that I needed to get some more exercise in, after having a torn muscle that has plagued me for the past 2 months. So, yay, yes, I made it to the top. That is not what I want to talk about.
Turns marked the way up the trail. Each turn was a switchback, effectively changing the direction you are walking, yet ascending higher up the mountain with each turn. This makes the hike bearable, and doable, by just about anyone. Each new turn presented a new opportunity, a new possibility. Each new turn led to new and changing terrain, in fact, when you look closely at any mountain trail, it is easy to see that each new step provides a new opportunity and changing terrain.
At that moment, I decided that the word FAILURE does not exist in my vocabulary. For every failure rather is a turn in the road; presenting me with a new direction, a challenge to get back up, to go again, to finish what I started but perhaps from a different approach. To summit the mountains of my life, and ultimately THE mountain of my life, I have but to look to the summit, realize that my way may not be my destined way, the best way for me, and certainly not the only way. At the end, I will look down from the summit, I will look back on my life, and be able to say, "I conquered no such thing as life, but I conquered myself."

Geoff, Will, and John—Dreams and Opportunities

Not too impressed? I hardly am. Names you’ve seen a hundred times and heard a thousand more; television, newspapers, your best friends, roll call during class, the list goes on. Guaranteed you know, or have personally met a guy who has one of these three names as their first name. Interesting that a man’s, or a woman’s, first name is not the name which brings them their glory, honor, and legacy. A first name wastes away as much as the word seed wastes away in name to grow into an oak, a fir, a maple. The name that lasts is the last name, it is the name that gives us honor, puts us on a pedestal of glory, and memorializes our legacy through all time and eternity.
Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton might be the names you are more familiar with that bring a flood of impressions, mostly those of respect and awe. Family names. Like Malcolm Gladwell spoke of in his book Outliers, successful people are largely successful due to the opportunities they were offered due to their family circumstances. If you are reading this, take stock into what your last name has offered you by way of opportunities. Hardly has the world seen a person dig themselves up from the dregs of society and find themselves on the pinnacle of greatness. There is almost always an opportunity involved.
So don’t worry if your last name isn’t Carnegie, Gates, Shakespeare, Chaucer, or Van Gogh. Worry only that you take the opportunity when it comes to you. It may only come once, quickly, forcefully, or fearfully. You will imprint your name on the books of history as you take that one opportunity that is given to all great people. We make our opportunities, we fight for them, we live for them, and they raise our spirits and our hopes. Never let opportunity pass you by. Instead grasp it and snatch it from the world that dreams are made of, our dreams, hopes, and ambitions.

Tao of Pooh

Taoism is a thought culture that explicates the physical relation our mind, body, and spirit hold to the physical world. In the book, the Tao of Pooh, Benjamin Hoff shows how Taoist Winnie the Pooh is. One of the metaphors he explicates is that of a boulder in a river to the peace of mind and conscious that comes as we become one with the problems challenges around us.
He writes of a large boulder that falls in the river. The water when it encounters the boulder is too weak to break the outside shell, let alone the core of the rock. Instead of the water trying to go through the rock, it flows around the rock.
When Winnie the Pooh encounters problems he doesn't go head on with them, he always himself to solve them by going with the flow so to speak. None of us are powerful or strong enough to break through boulders in our lives, but we can become aware enough to flow through and around our problems, turning our problems into opportunities of new and exciting growth and change. Remember Winnie the Pooh next time you have a major challenge in your life and see it as a way to discover a new path and a new opportunity.

Better Dayz

Ain't it the life though? Shoot, standing here in my kitchen, cooking spaghetti, listening to Tupac's Better Dayz, watching the sun go down out my window, preparing for a night of karaoke on the town with good people I love. Ain't it the life? I don't remember any better dayz than the one I'm livin' in right now. Give me a torn muscle that hasn't healed in a month and a half, take away the sport that is one of very few things in life that gives me happiness, but give me a plate of spaghetti with shredded parmesan cheese on it, and I'm livin' the life; the good life. My crushed heel, my torn peroneus longus, my three cracked ribs, my pulled hamstrings and groin, sciatica down the left side of my body for months and years, potential carpal tunnel syndrome in my wrist from a hit I took at practice, it's all taught me what I love most about my life and what is most important in any person's life; people. But people are only masses of emotion, flesh, and blood without the relationship we can have with them. And just as I'm finishing up my thoughts, my spaghetti is done and I'm ready to eat.

Live the good life baby.

The Sun

What in life is sown in death,
Can have but nothing but regret
The tears and pain of a billion
Worlds, wishing, wondering, what if.
Do not join the pool that wanders,
That floats amid dreary dread.
Live now, live full, live right
For when you die, you’re dead.

Suddenly

Walking down the sidewalk, I looked down,
my eyes glazed, heel-toe, heel-toe,
then I heard you
call my name, I didn't look up
immediately, my glazed eyes
subverting my mind.
As the wind rushed past my
eardrums, my mind heard a
swoosh, then a faint whistle.
I looked up, away from my feet,
straight ahead at the horizon,
suddenly I turned, piercing the
source of your voice; now I
waited, waited for you to call
again; it didn't take but a
moment, it couldn't have lasted
longer, I wished it would never
stop. You were not there,
nothing was there, nothing but
a new, no a different horizon; the
same horizon I first looked ahead to,
the same, nothing there but sky.