White to Black

sometimes a song gets stuck
playing round and round inside your
head down to the place
where you began to walk when you saw
visions of this place
were never what they ever seemed to be
come innocence:
a better you than what you're used to.


CHORUS:
take me down, take me down
illusions are not reality
not everything they used to be
take me down, take me down
take down my postit off the wall
hold it in your hands and fold it
's fine, it's time to be ok,
you can go i understand it
's logical to say,
it's going to be ok.
it's going to be


ok, at one point we were young
but everyone gets old within the
fading is not so bad
it makes the change from white to black
ok, yeah i get the point
me down in the right direction
s are sometimes mistakes
are never quite as bad as they seem.


CHORUS:
take me down, take me down
illusions are not reality
not everything they used to be
take me down, take me down
take down my postit off the wall
hold it in your hands and fold it
's fine, it's time to be ok,
you can go i understand it
's logical to say,
it's going to be ok.
it's going to be


ok, talking to yourself
gets the thoughts you need to say out
loud tones make you deaf
so you can't hear the sounds that argue
ments are made to burn
then someone says that you will be
ok, yeah i get the point
the only one you'll ever trust is

me, yeah, what's my name
s are a personal illusion
or just a slight of hands
are made to hold and not be broken
pieces, pick them up
you never know when you might need them
hold on for your life
is just a passing moment and it's gone.

CHORUS: x 2
take me down, take me down
illusions are not reality
not everything they used to be
take me down, take me down
take down my postit off the wall
hold it in your hands and fold it
's fine, it's time to be ok,
you can go i understand it
's logical to say,
it's going to be ok.
it's going to be

ok, it's finally time for me to say
all the things i wanted to
break apart at the seams
when everyone tries to disagree
ments are the last resort i see
me coming to the end.

what you do from this point on
time just don't be late or bend to
yesterday was wrong
but tomorrow might not come to say
it's going to be ok for you to go on
to a new beginning
's are better than the endings suck
real life's different than the readings.

if they don't tell the truth to you
remember this, this song today,
when i tell you from my heart
what I know when i say,

it's going to be ok.

Wings to Fly

And do you know what it feels like,
to have the winds of change pass you by and say,
"Hello, goodbye".

Well that's ok, no I don't mind,
I did not get these wings to fly,
I did not get these wings to fly,
I did not get these wings to fly.

And time will change a man, but still
when you're sitting beneath the window sill
this time you feel no change around,
this time it's time to change around.

And when a second chance drips down your face,
to tease your lips with sweet embrace,
you hollar back into the sky,
"I did not get these wings to fly!"

~ ~ ~

And do you know what it feels like,
to have the winds of change pass you by and say,
"Hello, goodbye".

And night sets in, the black so bland,
you hold your face in front of your hand
and watched them as a passerby,
then watched them as a passerby.

Then the clock will take its toll until,
you find you're sitting beneath the window sill
you're waiting for the change around,
just waiting for the change around.

And when a last chance drip right down your face
to tease your lips with sweet embrace,
you hollar back into the sky,
"I do not have the wings to fly!"
I do not have the wings to fly,
I do not have the wings to fly,
I do not have the wings to fly..,
I do not have the wings to fly.

And so the story goes...

...Not quite as expected. There's an important lesson to be learned while here at the University. It's not a lesson specific to what kind of university you attend. You might attend Harvard, Yale, Purdue, Ohio State, University of Wisconsin - Madison, or little ol' Bemidji State University in the "arctic of Minnesota". This is the lesson of remembering what you were for and can't quite seem to remember, where your metaphors are as mixed as you can make them like your days that link together. If you're at the here doing the work, you are here to change.

You are here to grow, and the piece of paper that is handed to you on stage at the end of the show (usually saying you will receive the actual piece of paper saying "Good Job" at a later date) is nothing more than saying, "Time's up! If you didn't change yet, you've got some bumpy roads ahead! Caution!"


I am 22 years old, born and raised in Minnesota, in love with the lakes of the north, content in a deep relationship with my family, and I am doing absolutely horribly in my studies. However, this is just one stage of the game. From what I can discern, I have gained something unintended during my time here. I will return home for a time, find whatever work I can, do my absolute professional, hard-working best, and breath for a while.

If you play this game at the University for too long you can grow tired. It's those that come to the institution of learning and quickly adapt to not playing a game, but living through their studies as they would with any other part of their lives that are quickly successful.

Do not mistake me for being one of defeat. I will return with a new light, new hope, new focus, and a new foundation of living life in the current moment. More often than not, it is our own words that are most difficult to hear, and the things we fear most in others are those things that we see in ourselves and spur denial, doubt, and disbelief.

In the words of Burt Munro, "A man is like a blade of grass. He grows up in the spring, strong and healthy and green. And, then he reaches middle age and he ripens, as it were. And, in the autumn, he finishes, he fades away and never comes back…I think that when you’re dead, you’re dead."

Spring Break and Happy St. Patty's Day

Spring Break: It's the hype of the semester's middle from day 3.42. Exactly. It's definitely not on everybody's mind on day 1. Perhaps it's crossed a couple minds on your campus during day 2, because since day 1 those minds didn't want to be on campus and it took until day 2 to realize that Spring Break would be the nearest escape (not vacation, but we'll get to this shortly). It's not at the beginning of day 3 that Spring Break crosses everybody's mind, and not quite half way through. It's right before halfway through day three (which is almost halfway through week 1), when it finally hits you:

"God...how much longer until Spring Break??!"

This subconscious awareness makes itself known directly at the almost halfway point in week 1 because the fact is, it will be 7 MORE WEEKS until you get a breather. A little devil is on your left shoulder with the shotgun shooting the angel on your right while screaming in your ear, "Yes, this is going to be fun! Oh shit! Not again!" all at the same time. A little psychotic? Yes. Undergraduate collegiate reality? Oh yes.

The second most important point about Spring Break: it is NOT a VACATION. It's an escape - yet barely that. Regardless of where you go, the inculcated behavior of undergraduate life will haunt you - the power of which will only begin to fade on the plane or car ride back to school - just in time for your rhythm to hiccup a lugie into the back of your throat (metaphorically speaking). Whether you're in Destin, Naples, Orlando, Miami, Tampa, Tallahassee, Ft. Lauderdale, Clearwater, Jacksonville, St. Augustine, Sarasota, Daytona, or the Everglades (yes, everybody goes to Florida...and if you don't, you suck…(I suck)…), you'll be lying on a beach (or if you're in the Everglades, on the back of a Crocodile) and something will seem just a little bit off, and you won't realize quite what it is...

Let me inform you. It's the same thing that will make you think while on Spring Break that in your sleep, the beautiful, natural, peaceful sounds of birds chirping in the morning is your alarm clock, as you blast your covers off the bed and jump up like it's Pearl Harbor outside shouting something to the tune of (while still in that halfway asleep mode), "Shit! Only 5 minutes until the dune buggy talks! I've gotta get my froops on and get my ass down to the shorts!" (which translates as: "Oh, blast, not again. I have 5 minutes ‘till lecture starts. I better get my ass down to class."

It is this same anxiety that haunts you in the morning (unless you're in the habit of simply rolling over and slapping the thin air to turn off the chirping birds) that will have you lying on the beach (or the back of a crocodile) wondering what just isn’t quite right.

It is for this single reason that Spring Break will remain an escape. It is and will be an escape from which you’re trying to escape the entire time until finally you do. And as you do, you find yourself right back where you started with half of the semester left, no idea what you're doing, where you’re going, groggy, tired, and ready for the weekend as ever (of which you just spent 14 hours traveling), wondering when the summer will finally arrive: 7 more weeks.

And by the way, HAPPY ST. PATTY'S DAY!

Getting Sick (SNIIFF!)s

The last thing that, as a college student, you can really afford to do with your time is get sick (ill...though this is somewhat of an accurate statement for other meanings of "sick," we will focus, for now, on this one).

It's really sick, too, the way that feeling sick just sort of creeps up on you – in a very sickening sort of way. At one point, you'll be sitting at your desk, the kitchen table, or a coffee shop doing one of the activities associated with one of the above-mentioned places, and all-of-a-sudden, it smacks you upside the head (as your drop your coffee):

"Well..." SNIFFFF..."NO.....no, no no....no good..."...SNIIIIFFF...."No, no good. Won't have anything to do with i-SNIIIIFFBLASTFU#@#@#!!"

And suddenly, your speech, sinuses, throat, and throbbing head collude into one thought of:

"Oh hell…sick.”

…which actually turns out to be more of a sort of a question, really, which is then promptly answered by an immediately urgent need for you to visit the john - for whatever reason.

The uncanny thing about being sick is its relationship with memory. Every one of us has been sick and (hopefully) in a state of wellness. But the results are really quite interesting when you ask yourself if you remember what being sick actually feels like. The answer to this question is usually something along the lines of, “Well,…..huh…not quite sure what it felt like. I know it wasn’t good, though.”

In spite of this phenomenon, people generally believe that they can relate their own experiences of being sick with others, which, in an interaction between two people, often takes place something like this:

"Not feeling so good today, eh?"
"DnO."
"Coming down with something?"
"DES."
"Yes, it seems that's been going around. In fact, I had it last week."

First of all, we haven't even quite established what, exactly, it is yet. Secondly, how the devil do you think you can know what another chap has when first, he hasn't really told you, and second, the only thing that he knows at this point is that he's miserable, feels like hell, and could, perhaps, vomit all over your wool, blue sweater with little snowmen that your mother knit for you during Christmas at any moment.

Needless to say, being sick isn't great for getting anything done, either. Your brain will usually function at about half-capacity, whether you know it or not. If somebody acts strange with you today, it's probably because last night they called you on the phone, you answered, and instead of saying your usual, "Hey, kid, how’s it goin’?!", you, without knowing it, slipped something more along the lines of, "yeah!, garbled rocks and four!" followed by something entirely too personal like, "Oh, shit."

What your friend on the other of the phone didn't know, is that this...well, confusion...was caused by your attempt of studying your Calculus book just after an intermission of reading through a problem in your Applied Regression Analysis book concerning rock-climbers and the chances of the dashing themselves to pieces on the rocks in some ridiculous, contorted move. The “Oh shit,” if thought about, is quite self-explanatory.

With countless interactions like these throughout the day - most of which you are not aware - it is certainly no exaggeration to say that you are exhausted and don't quite know why. Further, yet, you end up fracturing your brain slightly as you crawl into bed trying to think of how you got sick in the first place and conclude with a shrug, another battle hole blown through a kleenex, and a shiver that runs from your neck down to your toes,

"Being sick SNIIFFFFs."

STAT 512: Applied Regression Analysis

I listened to a China woman today as she talked about clouds, swaying her hands through the air as though using the stale particles of dust and must floating through the room like some sort of canvas; to paint a picture of life and a model of the way things should be.

Sunlight filters through the sliced fog of filth, and morning light - according to everyone's faces - is not considered a gift at the moment. Those of us that are still awake and just beginning to see, squinting into understanding, frown at the picture being painted on the wall.

The China woman slows, and the lead brushstrokes come to a halt. What an aw-inspiring load of nonsense that finds its way towards reason through the painting of a picture in a foreign tongue. What a finger painting. It's a suitcase of rocks she forces herself to carry, weighing down her arms and vicariously through her decreasing energy slurs her speech to some dialect yet undiscovered.

Another curve, another line, another few last letters of the alphabet that she slaughters punctuated by even bigger dots that don’t belong.

I sleep.

The Science of Matter Fabrication

"Matter is commonly referred to as the substance of which physical objects are composed" (Wikipedia). It is also known as "a subject of concern, feeling, or action; trouble or difficulty," and still better yet, "something sent by mail" (Dictionary.com).

Furthermore, the Encycli-Wikipedia states that "Matter creation is process inverse to annihilation (total destruction, complete obliteration, absolute BOOM....etc.). It usually refers to pair creation, i.e., the conversion of photons into a fermion and antifermion pair (a bunch of little particles that busy themselves and their existence with lots, and lots of spinning)." What's more is that "since momentum conservation law prohibits the creation of a pair of fermions out of a single photon (emphasis added), pair creation (emphasis added again) involves at least two (...) photons (or a single photon and one or more fermions)."

What physicists didn't piece together (and what Einstein didn't want to tell us - which is why he locked himself up most of the time) is that people are made of matter, too; lots, and lots, and lots of it.

Within this matter are lots, and lots of photons converting into lots, and lots of fermions (usually found in white, American guys [here, it is of important note that, again, according to Wikipedia, "All elementary particles are either fermions or bosons (bō`zō)ns," which are very much related - for a better understanding of bosons, see the entry "bozo": a much more intergalactically accurate definition]) and antifermions (usually found in - well, everybody else, according to current theory).

With the infestant number of fermions and antifermions that populate the homo sapiens species there is enough matter creation taking place right behind our noses (and under them) to cause quite a few problems and beg the answers to a few questions. All of this matter creation lends itself to lots, and lots of spinning - lots of it.

In fact, there is so much matter-creation taking place from all this spinning of fermions and antifermions that there is strong belief in many scientific circles (of course, not located on this planet) of a connection between human matter-creation and the expansion of the universe and are close to finishing the proof, in fact, that this is the purpose of human existence (a lot like trees, plants, and all that extra green stuff are around to help regenerate oxygen for the humans). It is, therefore, quite easy to see why the origin of the human species had to begin with two people (biblically labeled as "Adam" and "Eve"), so that there could be enough of a supply of fermions and antifermions that could interact, collide, spin off from each other, and result the creation of more matter. One of the common methods of doing so was through the process of reproduction (kids), which in turn created even more problems, which created even more matter, etc. - the effects of which are exponential.

What's even stranger than this, is that human's (regardless of constantly complaining about not having the foggiest about "their purpose in life," "why am I here," and "who the hell is this 'God' frude anyway") seem to have an innate knowing of their matter-creation objective (MCO) in life keeping it in the foreground of their mind. This is easily observed in that one human can often be seen walking up to another human saying, "Something the matter," or, "What's the matter with you?", or after a long soliloquy of events, the patient person listening (all the while creating a matter of their own through checking their digital watches every five minutes) says, "Ahhh, so that's what was the matter." Depending on the ferocity of the fermions or antifermions at work, each of these observations can lead to be very entertaining ones.

Humans are very hard-working and innovative, too, concerning their MCO. Not only will they be curiouser and curiouser about "What the devil is the matter with you?", but they will then proceed to send you mail about the matter even when matter wasn't their to begin with, and now that it is, something must - of course - be the matter. They became so proficient at this process that a really ambitious group of MCO workaholics got together and picked a bunch of days when everybody should send everybody else some mail when nothing was even supposed to be the matter saying something to the order of, "Hi, heard it was your birthday today! What's the matter?", or, "Hey, heard you felt like hell and needed a reminder. By the way, what's the matter?"

Needless to say, with the increasing population, more pressure on philanthropic organizations, the falling prices of psychiatrists, and the increasing expediency of the postal service, the universe is expanding at rapid rates and may soon begin it's contraction. At this point, humans will have to rethink what the matter is with their objective, and what exactly to do about it. One of the current alternative plans for reinvesting humans is to stick them in the back-burner of Star-Trek's Enterprise space-ship (and other ships like it) as an ecologically-minded alternative to the first half of the matter-antimatter drive that propels the ship into space at warp speeds.

Ambition

Wake up.
sweat....SLAMsleep...
think....ponder...dreaJUMP in place,
throw back the covers!

adrenaline
AMBITION

cold - ice cold
feet
hands
face...

minutes pass
dress to travel
hours fly by
sunlight retires to the basement cellar
lamp light, musty books

sweat, caffeine, rush...
faster, FASTER!

think, add, calculate, posit, postulate, hypothesize, discuss, listen, feel, be silent, listen again, listen again, (re)focus, readagainandagainandagain...drift, FOCUS!

weights on the sails pull downward,
lead becomes heavy
bump,
shuffle,
THUD...
inner mumble, mixed thoughts, any chalk with your coffee?...
first....thing...
...tomorrow
...

Taken By A Friend

I think about you when i shouldn't; when i have books to read, homework to do, people to consider, and i consider you. You say you don't need the same, but what if i would give it. You never happen, but then you always do. I think sometimes, even though i try to send the message in a silent way, you don't get it. I've paid in blood before, with a bleeding heart and a mind that tries to hold on to some kind of sanity saying, 'mercy,' nothing but a fading film of black and white on a red background. Where i am, not only is it lonely, but it's cold. Surely somewhere else has to be at least as half as cold as me. Keep my secret well - even though i don't have one on purpose, but then again who ever does. But secrets should not be held in forever. Until then, all i can say, my friend, is that i'm going to be busy. Maybe in six months, may three, maybe a year from here i'll come back down again and breath - gasp - and one last time hold it in. But until then, again, i'm going to be busy.