Hans Zimmer's composes music that asks you, then instinctively forces you to feel. Anything and everything. Singing melodies of comfort, coupled with tension, it pulls at your skin. Palpating from the tiniest nerve in your fingertips, out the heel of your foot. It begins gradually, a crescendo into a symphony of musical texture, until Hans silences the noise and leaves you there. Alone. With nothing but your own thoughts.

He sat in his room, moppy hair as dark as the night sky falling in his face, playing quietly with his red fire truck. He thought to himself how one day he'd like to be a hero like them. Strong. Willful. Fearless. He'd save families from burning houses. Kids from the tallest trees. Old people when they couldn't help themselves. And as he pushed his truck across the hardwood floor he could hear the sirens of his life going off. He could hear the future.

That's not to say his mother didn't think he wasn't quite the monster at times. Terrorizing his older brother, a true testament to siblings ability to get under one another's skin. An outgoing, unmanageable young boy at times, his mother wondered if he'd ever settle down. If the adorable devilish smile that made her heart melt would always exist.

And I'm sure as she watched her baby boy get older, a handsomer version of her young 5 year old, she hoped he'd keep his gentle nature wrapped somewhere in the darkness of adolescence and young twenty-somethings. I'd imagine she sat home often hoping you were safe as you tested your will and strength in many aspects of your life. Like every mother, she worried her son would push the lines a bit too far.

She would be happy to know that to this day your smile leaves nothing to the imagination. It's the hug you unwillingly give, wrapping tightly around the chest in a comforting suffocation. And the devil still rests somewhere in its crease. Forgetting not why you are so engaging, your charm warrants a certain persona. Whether that is your natural self, or someone you've created over the years I'm not sure. The man with striking features; misty blue eyes that go far deeper than anyone knows, you embody an aura of mystery that entices strangers and friends a like.

But when the clock strikes 2am and you are alone in your bedroom, does the innocence return? Do red fire trucks speed across your floor in hopes of saving someone? I imagine it's when you let the world dissolve away. Or maybe it's when you let someone special in. A time when the weight is lifted from your chest and you remember why you're here and how you got there. And as you lay in your bed and let the days events fold into your sheets, I'd think that somewhere the little boy returns. If not only for a flicker of a moment. He'd dream of saving lives. And realize he's probably already done so.

And it's when you've finally let go. When the pain has settled somewhere in your chest positioned so you can no longer feel it; somewhere it no longer gathers at the edges of your heart - tugging a little too tightly. Its then that they come back. On their own agenda. Without your permission. They are searching for reckless abandonment and you're stuck in the middle of it. They will run through you like a tempest in a small town. Whispering comfort from the nape of your neck to your pathetic sympathy. You'll long to be close, just for a minute. And when it's all over. You're be back where you started. Standing in the shadows you just emerged from.

So begin the mending. Find that pocket in your chest where you hid them before. Because as soon as you think you've finally closed it for good....they'll be back for more.

It was 4:45am and the neighborhood was quiet. A lone car was driving out, maybe to get to work - maybe just coming home - but its lights bounced from house to house as it continued on to its destination. The sky was clear as the stars shone bright, and I had to wonder what the rest of the world was doing. In some places it was already tomorrow; in others, people were still sleeping, only dreaming of what today would bring.

And as I sat awake in bed, I couldn't help but be thankful for my world. Aside from being tired in that moment, I was warm, comfortable and fortunate. So I don't have a job currently (or at least a full-time one) and slowly but surely my frustrations are rising. But I do have enough to maintain a comfortable lifestyle. I don't have to worry about where my next meal will be or if it will be. The roof over my head is solid and strong; the house I live in filled with loving family.

Sometimes I forget just how much I have, only to forget just how little others do.

Love like your first time

There seems to be nothing more pure than the first time you fall in love. It’s raw. Guided only by sentiment set into motion as a result of unadulterated passion and trust. You question nothing; having full faith in the person you are and the person you’re with. It almost becomes a tangled web of delusion as you walk fine lines you’d never otherwise test. Loving passionately becomes easy. It's palpable and graceful, dancing mystically between two bodies. Loving with all your heart seems only the right answer.

Yet, when we lose that person – whether it ends well or not – we lose a part of that tenacity. We question the small things. Do they hold you the way you like, eat the food you like, fill the shoes you expect them to fit, find pleasure in the things you do, etc. We find fault in the small things, hoping to somehow find love in the things we’re comfortable with.

But the question becomes, I think, are we meant to love like it’s our first time – every time? Or are we supposed to let what was, remain? There is something to be said for the enthusiasm that I imagine we all escape to in those first moments, however, maybe that’s where they are supposed to remain….with your first love.

I will miss teaching.....

I will miss teaching....


As graduation commencement rapidly came to a close over a year ago, “real life” moving forward, sweeping itself between my feet and a very stable ground, I began to realize the importance of harmonizing my independence with the greater resources surrounding me. Since then I have taken a step into the world of professionalism, yet still have a thirst for graduate studies. I have come to understand that my proclamations of independence and intelligence are nothing but an outcome of various group efforts; of several individuals who have cleared a path for me.Throughout adolescence and young adulthood, there are teachers (all forms) that shape someone and make them every bit the person they are. I am fortunate enough to have a handful or so, some of whom still remain in my life, which filled this role for me. My goal is to offer such an experience for teenagers alike. I expect to bridge the gap between competition and camaraderie. There are bounties of benefits when students, professors, and professionals are willing to share with others what they have devoted their life to. Awarding a fellow student or professor the knowledge you have gained or worked hard towards is not a loss or waste of effort. Rather, it is to your advantage, often allowing for capitalization of something greater: your willingness to par-take is always two-fold.Therefore, by deciding to obtain my Teaching Certification, I understand that I am electing to do more than simply teach English Language Arts. I will be teaching adolescents about ambitions and struggles’, helping fellow colleagues with workloads or extra-curricular activities, collaborating with multiple groups of individuals to prepare fantastic programs – the list goes on and on. It will be difficult at times and frustrations will arise. Education is not just a chapter in your life, it is a steady current. Teaching and learning does not start and stop with books. Consequently, if three out of every thirty students places me in their handful of individuals who have cleared the path for them, I will say I’ve done my job.

I often wonder what it feels like to fly. How your arms spread wide to reach the ends of the sky. I would hope the breath is stolen from your lungs and replaced with nothing but bliss. You would gasp to catch it, but there would be nothing to fill it but laughter - laughter out of fear or more, laughter out of awe. And when your palms grazed the clouds some would be hot, others cold, dissolving gracefully between your fingertips.

But would you ever miss being grounded? Miss the grass beneath your bare feet and the sun on your face? Because under it all, isn't that what we want - to be grounded.

We want to breathe. We don't want to gasp for air, because it's easy to fall from that high. It's easy to let yourself not care, let your energy vanish. So isn't that it? Isn't remaining grounded the answer? When you literally can't breathe anymore, when your heart can not do it anymore, you just stop flying?

On a calm day, they blanket a world beneath them; pressing faith below as they shelter what lives within them. The surface may break and with it comes colors from a pallet so varied that even a trained artist wouldn’t know what to do with them. Nature’s talents are far greater than those man attempts to create.

Yet, on most days they aren’t calm. They tumble, plummet and roll generating an indescribable current. And as they wrap around the simplest of ankles or the bodies of many, in that moment they are the most harmless and most terrifying pieces of water imaginable. Waves build tunnels of hope, where the greatest surfers find serenity and poise – for when they are in them, riding the smooth surface below a crashing mass, there is nothing more exhilarating. It rocks their soul. Because no matter the time of day, a rising sun on the horizon of a shattered ocean or a sunset painting magical works on the canvas of open water, waves find their way to the shore.

Know that I love you like those waves. I will come and go, but regardless I will never crash and dissipate into oblivion. As the waves roll in and back out again, I will too. I know its different when I live here and you there, but I will blanket you when you need covers; I will ride the smooth surface with you when all you need is a partner to rock your soul for a day. So as we age like an ocean, continually move like the waves, I hope that we will be able to play on the shores every once and awhile. Stay true to the boy I met on a rainy night – one that may get lost in the crowd, but only because he’s dreaming of being somewhere else. And I hope that at the end of the day, you can say: “I saw the way a Hawaiian wave collides, how a Tahitian wave sails to it’s shore, how an Australian Aussie plummets down the stunning cascade, or how in the moment I find myself amongst the waves core, I find my serenity.”

Beneath the blank sheet, the loneliness we call

forgotten, I hope you find peace. Forgive me not,

for I don’t know what I’ve done wrong. Erase my past-

erase yours, we still end up under a physical attraction

between lines of tangled sheets and invisible boundaries. Soft

your lips may be, gentle your tongue inside my mouth,

but sinister the words spoken as they work

together. Trust is an astonishing antidote

when used correctly. Biting when taken out

of context. You don’t need, but rather want. Let

my hair collapse between your fingers,

rather than thrusting them in the cracks of disbelief. I

don’t know you. Much more, you don’t appreciate me.

Did you notice the moments I brushed my skin, removing

your hand from my face. The way I coiled

to my shoulder at times of vulgar statements. We are not

meant to lay body to body, nor touch hand to

hand. So walk your way and I’ll walk mine in hopes that our

paths will never lead us back to what I’ve forgotten.

He walked into the bar, eyes cast down towards his shoes, shadowing a face that's been tampered with by no sleep, failure to eat and a hole in his life too big to begin to fill. Jaw bones protrude out farther than normal creating a line no longer handsome, but homely. His body sits heavy on his figure. He breathes in the Jameson soaked air with a hope that today will be better, but an exhale too long, too deep tells me today is just as bad. And I wonder how I can help, because that's what I do. Help. If I could hold him I would, but he won't let me. So for now I'll just smile and he'll smile back on cue.

But what I'd really like to say to him is that he's so much better than this. That his inability to put himself first is the angel and devil that coexist so beautifully in his unencumbered life. Bend over that bar and flirt with that girl, but when you go home lonely at night it's not because there's no one to love you - I often think it's because you can't let yourself love them back. Loyal, yes indeed you are, but when does that loyalty end and the you begin. You have a passion for life unlike any other I've ever seen, but it's buried so deep beneath the haves and have nots that I'm not sure you remember it exists. Your humble and patient with those that come in and out of your life, leaving you with a raw talent for making them feel comfortable, lively and ever so accepted.

There was a time in your life when you used to breath in the sweetness of a salty ocean air instead of the cold, staleness of Chicago. I'm sure you found yourself warm beneath the rising sun and relaxed as it set above a mirage of waves. I just wish that if you can't have that - if you can't go back to the place that seems to be your freedom, then try and bring it here. Because in the end, the man I saw walk into the bar the other night is not the man he'd want to be.

"Life is like drawing without an eraser."

The human capacity to remember is unconditionally astonishing. The intricacies by which our brain allows details to seep deep into what we define as memory can only be a miracle of the most unconscious sort. Images of youth sprint past as if hoping to make the barrier before it disappears again. While thoughts of yesterday appear murky against years of forgetfulness.
What’s more, is that in that refreshment of time not only do we “see”, but we have the competence to feel. As if such memories were placed in our hands to explore.

Some things, like the very moment I knew I had fallen in love, are etched so permanently in my mind that I can sense each rush of emotion and the way his hand felt in mine. I can sit on any bench and welcome the exact moment he looked at me and said, "I think this is what it's supposed to feel like forever." Others remain at a distance, close enough to see, but not yet able to touch. Those, like childhood memories of binkies and warm Florida sand, sweep just past my fingertips. Laughter and tears drip slowly down the window panes of innocence, blurring the edge of youth and adulthood. And you have to wonder – how does your brain decide which ones are worthy of a certain remembrance?

I've never been good at drawing, painting or anything of the sort. But I imagine the brain creates a composition in much the same way artists do; or at least those artists that work without an eraser. Memories aren't removed from the paper on which they've been sketched; some become the darker lines to fill the spaces we'd rather forget. Others we attempt to wipe away with our finger tips until they eventually fade into the background. We don't start over. We can't start over. Instead we're asked to allow each mistake to become a piece of the harmony embedded in our memories architecture. Sometimes those aberrations will muddle the clarity of the image; but I tend to believe more often than not it matures. In the end, they fabricate the most beautiful parts of our painting.