My Mother's Brithday

Today is my angel mother's birthday. As she is the one that brought me into this world, i wrote her a poem to thank her for her love and care for me throughout the years, even when i wasn't the best son.

When as a child I knew only reliance.
You were my source for life, for living.
Even in time of greatest defiance,
You stood by always loving and giving.

With sweet adoration I now recall
Those childhood days of learning and growth.
Realizing your love strikes not small
On my heart, seeing love’s sacred oath.

Time has passed by, now I understanding,
A mother’s care having so long received.
She, never with force and never demanding,
Made me the man I am today perceived.

Now I wait for our roles to reverse,
When I care for you and love reimburse.

I love you Mom, and am so grateful for everything you have done for me!

Go Do

Back, almost 6 months ago, as the cold of winter was melting into springtime, i made a post titled “the Adventure.” it was about the song of the same title by Angels and Airwaves and how my life is an adventure that i want to make full and successful so that i can say at the end that “I am all used up.” To finish the summer i want to use another song. This one is by and Icelandic man by the name Jonsi of the band sigur ros. The song is called “Go Do” and it does nothing but inspire happiness.





Here are the lyrics:

Go sing, too loud
Make your voice break- Sing it out
Go scream, do shout
Make an earthquake...

You wish fire would die and turn colder
You wish young eyes could see you grow older
We should always know that we can do anything

Go drum, too proud
Make your hands ache - Play it out
Go march through crowds
Make your day break...

You wish silence released noisy drummers
You wish white noise surrendered to summers
We should always know that we can do everything

Go do, you'll know how to
Just let yourself, fall into landslide

Go do, you'll know how to
Just let yourself, give into flood tide

Go do!

Tie strings to clouds
Make your own lake - Let it flow
Throw seeds to sprout
Make your own break - Let them grow

Let them grow (Endless summers)
Let them grow (Endless summers)

(Go do endless summers)

You wish surprise would never stop wonders
You wish sunrise would never fall under

You wish surprise would never stop wonders
You wish sunrise would never fall under
We should always know that we can do anything

Go do!

The last few months have been some of the most wonderful of my life. Anyone keeping up with my blog will understand that this summer has been a tribute to the romantic image we all hold of childhood summers. It has been full of laughter, excitement, and discovery. Discovery not just of the world around me, but the world within me. I’ve learned a lot about myself, about what is really important to me, and what will make me happy in life. The summer represents opportunity laid before us, golden as the sun, and just as warm and inviting.

I was talking to a friend the other day about our attitudes towards life. A lot of times we aren’t willing to take the opportunities placed in front of us. We find ourselves petrified by fear. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, even the fear of settling. To such a paralyzing attitudes Shakespeare wrote “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune. Omitted, and all the voyage of their lives is bound in shallows and in miseries. Upon such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves or lose our ventures.”

In a matter of weeks school will begin again. My life will once again become busy, full of responsibility in work and study. The air will begin to cool, and the days will become shorter. The leaves will begin to change color, darkening, aging, yet adding more beauty and richness to the world that surrounds us. They will eventually fall and flutter from their branches, marking the season’s change. Yet despite the change in surrounding, our hearts will remain true to what we have learned, what we have experienced. We can do anything. We will find our new opportunities, and in that sense we extend the season of possibility, creating an endless summer, fighting off the cold of winter with the warmth we keep in our hearts.

That they might have Joy

Last Thursday I spent the entire day in Salt Lake participating in the ceremony of union between my friend and former roommate Jared, and his lovely wife Mindy. It was a magnificent day, filled to the trim with emotion and beauty as we watched these two lives come together as one.

The Morning began with the actual ceremony, taking place in the Salt Lake Temple. The room was filled to capacity with family and friends as we waited for Mindy and Jared to enter what the sealer described as “God’s family room.” I had known this day and moment would be coming for some time, but still it seemed unreal that an event of this magnitude was transpiring right in front of me, and that someone i knew so well was making this tremendous step forward in his life.

Throughout the ceremony i had a clear view of Mindy’s face over the side of Jared’s shoulder. Never have I seen someone so completely overcome with Joy. There is no other word or emotion i can think of to describe what i saw. It was a combination of elation, happiness, trust, and overwhelming excitement, but that description feels cheap compared to what was there. There was something more than this world offers there, something beyond what i personally have found so far in my life. Something so powerful and motivating that it commands that the highest promises of love and fidelity must be made to protect and preserve and nurture it. I think i what i saw was Love in its truest form. More on that later.

After the ceremony there was a luncheon. I had the opportunity to share a few words i had written about Jared and Mindy:

“I’ve lived with Jared for the past year, so I’ve seen his smiling face and bushy eyebrows every single day for quite a while now. However, last November i started seeing less and less of him around our place. We all had our various theories as to his whereabouts. Kendrick, having known him from Chicago immediately assumed it was gang related. Preston, not entirely sure how he knew Jared, didn’t really notice right away. And as for me, the most logical explanation was the weird smells coming from our kitchen.

Well, it turned out to be much more serious than any of us could have imagined. Jared had fallen in Love with and incredible young woman (and yes, when i say young i do realize that she is a grade older than him and i also realize that this may still be a touchy subject) and the reason that we hadn’t seen Jared is best summarized by the words Mark Twain’s Adam said of his Eve: “Wherever she was, there was Eden.” Mindy had become Jared’s piece of Paradise. In fact, in the days leading up to their engagement, Jared would struggle to sleep, not so much because he was nervous or stressed by the relationship, but because reality had become better than his dreams.

Mindy and Jared quickly became inseparable. Whether it was knocking each other over with kick balls or hitting each other on nose during every prayer, they were always together, and always with a glowing light in their eyes. With the clarity of hindsight, it difficult for us to know how we missed the signs prescient of this glorious union. It seems that Jared loved Mindy even before he had the privilege of dating her, calling every girl he met or went on dates with by the name “Mindy.”

Today we celebrate. We Celebrate friendship, we celebrate family, we celebrate relationships and Joy. We celebrate coming together and starting new, more brilliant lives. We celebrate Two souls with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one. We Celebrate all that is good and beautiful in this life. Love is the beauty of the soul. As Robert Browning said, “Take away love, and our earth is a tomb.”

Jared and Mindy, it has been such a privilege and honor to know both of you, to see the joy you are in each other’s lives. I’ll miss the long sessions of pillow talk and the council meetings to plan Jared’s next move. Our apartment really won’t be the same after today. But beyond any other emotion, I am simply overjoyed at the sight of your happiness.

And so i raise my glass in honor of you, in honor of the love you share. May happiness and joy ever reside within your home and within your hearts is my prayer and wish for you.”

In looking up quotes to use in this speech, i read one from the book “Captain Corelli's Mandolin.” It was too long to use in the speech, and hard to apply in a toast, but it was on my mind throughout the entire ceremony and the rest of the day:


“Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because that is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day... That is just being “in love”, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.”

It’s too easy to mistake being "in love" for real, true, pure Love. The former will slowly fade with time, while the latter grows stronger every day, with every moment spent together. Seeing the sparkle in Mindy’s eyes as she promised her eternal love for Jared sort of shook me, reminding me what it is that i want in my life. Motivating me and recommitting me to be the best person i can in hopes of one day finding my own piece of that same happiness.

On the next "Working Pen": Liz fumbles away her chance at being the next to be wed.

The Encounter

The following is a creative piece inspired by the opening lines of Walt Whitman's great work Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, and influenced by the observations of Eliot in his Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. The words have caused me to dwell on the nature of human interaction, the daily, even constant motion between individuals and the harmony of existence. I hope to continue to develop the idea, eventually breaking it from the prose format into something more poetic and expressive in nature.

FLOOD-TIDE below me! I watch you face to face;
Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I see you also face to face.

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes! how curious you are to me!
On the ferry-boats, the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose;


And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence, are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.

-Walt Whitman

Everyday I pass hundreds of faces. I see them and they see me, but what do they mean to me, and I to them? Every face has a story, and each story somehow intertwines into our story, my story. We are the sum of you and I, and the human race is the sum of all. We compile ourselves together and in so doing, we all affect one another. Each step I take will ultimately determine what steps you take, and in some inexplicable way, your steps will determine mine. All this happens in a seemingly invisible way. The changes in course can be so minute that we don’t even sense it happening at all. But what would it be like to see our steps? What if I could see how my steps mix and blend with yours to combine into a three-step waltz or a stumbling, awkward tango? Then we would have a fantastic array, an articulate display of the clockwork between human souls. Then we would truly see face to face.


Looking into the mirror, I see myself face to face; sometimes it feels as though I am yet a stranger, that i must look beyond the glass, slightly fogged as it is to glean some sense of identity. I look into the depths of blue, past the pale inklings of orange that add the depth and meaning of a sunrise to my stare. Through the black pits at the center I look, I search for what is to be, what this day can become. Some days it is hope that I find. Others bring something even more, a knowledge of sorts, and yet others disappoint, bringing only longing for the next. Out the door these same eyes glance, stare entranced, and with colorful perception always enhance what it is that surrounds me. They find you and meet you, incessant in their searching for some sort of contact, or intimacy. This is our intersection, footsteps winding in and out of sync and step: the crisis of moment, the crux of opportunity. Twisting and turning our steps criss-cross over cold, lifeless cement. Spinning and swirling they rise, graceful, gently touching, caressing for a moment then in half that, retreating behind the bat and blink of an eye.

A smile, a grin and nothing more. You have your direction and I mine. What those ways are we have yet to learn. Tomorrow again I will stare at my mirrored mirage and wonder. These eyes will remember the encounter, the thrill of flight, the excess of pounding deep within. Forever altered by perception, your dispersion and reception of light and color, these eyes will again seek, and again find that looming crisis of question, overwhelming, high over our heads as we walk throughout our days.