Learning and Teaching are My Anti-Drugs

Perhaps the ultimate goal of education is to learn how to govern yourself.

I was peer-reviewing a friend's paper just now. She is arguing for the "decriminalization" of marijuana. I'm not prepared to say I agree with her arguments, but what I am leaning towards is a system where the innocent aren't having to spend their hard-earned money to punish the guilty. Especially when the guilty are only harming themselves.

This reminds me of the movie Thank You For Smoking. Is it ethical for lobbyists and advertisers to fight for people's right to buy and entice people into buying tobacco, alcohol, or guns (all of which are legal but have killed many)? If you haven't seen the movie, it follows a tobacco lobbyist. He is good friends with a gun lobbyist and an alcohol lobbyist. They say that people have the right to choose.

This right to choose our vices makes me think of all the other things people choose for their lives. Do I have sex on the first date? Do I spend $50 a week on make up? Do I watch four hours of television a day? Do I curse in front of my grandmother? Do I eat whatever I want to and never work out?

None of the aforementioned things are against the law. None of them are beneficial to my life either. I have come to realize, since I've been at college, and since I've let go of religious dictates, that I am smart enough and I love myself enough to make good decisions about my behavior.

I think that when a person or an institution sets him/her/itself up as authority figure and begins setting down mandates, he/she/it runs the risk of losing the validity behind the rule of law. If the law is meant to protect us, perhaps part of that protection is making sure that we are capable of knowing how to protect ourselves.

I don't smoke weed. But based on the research that I saw laid out in my friend's paper, it's looking like that should be another right we give back to the people. If you are not hurting anyone outside your person, perhaps it is detrimental to the system to try and regulate your behavior.

I learn something new everyday.
Learning and teaching are my anti-drugs.

Conversations I've Been Having

Me: I've discovered what I'm missing in my life.
Frank: What?
Me: Here at OCU, we are all so damned busy trying to be the best at everything, trying to save the world, that we neglect the small things, like poems and artwork and laying by the pool having long conversations and cuddling and dancing. Life is not a meeting. And meetings don't change the world. But quality time can. Insightful conversations can. Y'know?
Frank: Yeah, I get it.


To Justin on Tuesday around 7 p.m.: I think there's a lot that comes the more life you live.
(i.e. age is more than a number. Damn it.)

Me on Monday around 9 a.m.: Today is the last Monday of junior year. That's crazy. I'm about to go to breakfast with my friend and then wash my sheets.
Clarence: You're growing up so fast!
Me: I know right. Getting through school, wrecking cars, having sex, washing sheets...I've come so far and yet I've got so far to go.
Clarence: Sounds like you're just livin' life to me.
Me: I am. It's a party. Gettin' tipsy, dancing, having meetings that are way too long. It's just life. Mi bella vida ("My beautiful life" in Spanish).

"This is my beautiful life.
The only thing certain is everything changes.
The lows and the highs and all those goodbyes:
As hard as it gets I know it's still amazing to be alive.
It's a beautiful life.

It hurts while it's happening.
I wanna feel everything.
How can you know 'til you try?"

"Mi Bella Vita" by Lindsay Lohan

Keeping the Balance?

I find myself forever questioning whether or not we are in control of our lives.

Do we make decisions that we want to make and the end result of our life is based on those decisions? Or are we puppets and playthings for a God who does with us what he/she wants?

I think the right answer is probably somewhere in the middle. I was telling a friend last night that I think "god" is a label we put on what we don't understand. I think the thing that we most often call God is really just the Force that sustains the Universe. This Force is sentient but it is not a person. It was not born, it does not live, and it cannot die. It simply is. The job of this Force seems to be that of balance-keeping. For each person who is born, a person dies. For each year that someone lives too long, someone else dies early. For each good deed there's a bad one. For each happy thing there's something sad.

I could be wrong, but it would make sense. "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." It's science, right?

And in my mind, this doesn't leave room for coincidences or mistakes. Everything happens for a reason.

On March 6, I totalled my car driving an hour and a half from a booty call. On April 27, a male friend of mine spent his evening in a hospital treating a severe burn when he thought he'd be spending his evening in my bed.

Is the Universe trying to counteract my inclination toward random sex?

I don't know.
It's just a thought.

I Will Never Be A Slam Poet

I will never be a slam poet.

This baffles me. When people read my writing, they tell me about the strength of my voice and the way the words "hit" them. But when I try to write poems for the stage, they always come out sounding too soft or lacking depth.

I thought the problem was in my performance, my delivery. So for an experiment I read a poem by Lauren Zuniga, a friend who is good at slam. I did well. If the poem had been memorized, it probably could've gotten me an 8. So it's not in the delivery.

I noticed last Wednesday at the slam finals for Oklahoma City's nationals team, that everyone who scored well (and even many who didn't) used their poem to tell a story or to call people to action. I realized that the poems I write do neither. I write prayers, introspections, ideas, questions. Sometimes I tell stories, but they are usually love stories or something else equally as boring. I "bleed" too much, feel too much, think too much.

I did an exposé on slam poetry for my nonfiction class at school and in the revision stage, I realized something else. My view of slam has changed over the last month. It used to be something I idealized, even idolized, something glitzy and glamorous and poignant that I wanted to grow into. I thought of slam poetry the same way I think of the competitors on America's Next Top Model, the same way I think of young, famous musicians, the same way I think of the editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine. Something beautiful, hard-to-reach, unnecessarily demanding, and ultimately not ME.

I put beauty and fame on a pedestal, but I was created for hard work. I put vapidity and cut-throat behavior on the list of things to be excused, but I was molded for love and nurture. I admire glitz and glamour, but I was made for wiping snotty noses and picking hearts up off the floor.

I'm coming to grips with this. I used to want to be a slam poet more than anything in the world, but I can't. I was meant to be different. Meant to write, not to perform. Meant to speak, not to recite. Meant to teach, not to compete.

It's a hard pill to swallow, but it never does any good to resist what the Universe has planned for you...unless you're willing to come away from it with a limp (cf. Jacob wrestling the angel and having his leg messed up in the book of Genesis).

15/30 - I Want To Kiss The World

Give me strength
I can already see the change I want to make
I know the steps I need to take
I'm doing it for the future's sake

Give me love
I'll need motivation to go beyond and above
It'll push me forward when competition's not enough
I'll hold me together when the times are too tough

Give me peace
when change is slow and things are futile as they seem
I'll need it when I lack the strength to swim upstream
May it be the image in my head when I can't stand what I see

Give me drive
That's what will keep me fighting for our lives
It's how I'll know that I'm among the strong who will survive
It'll keep me focused on my reason to be alive

Help me endure
I want to live for a cause that's right and pure
I want to continue forward when my mind just isn't sure
I want to kiss the world where no one's touched before

So show me how
I'm feeling ready; you can start the process now
Let the winds rage so I'll learn to stand and never bow
Show me the heights so I look to them and keep from falling down

Remind me why
Tattoo the dream to the backs of my eyes
Place a burden on my heart that makes me ache inside
And until the job is done, don't let me run or hide

MAKE ME GO
I'll need to watch you run when my feet are feeling slow
Don't let me bow out because of things I don't yet know
Promise me that my sacrifice will help them grow

Give me
Strength like rivers rushing
Love like a god dying
Peace like the wind shushing
Drive like warriors vying
Endurance like an athlete
Strategy like the end of days
Purpose until all's complete and
Force that can't be swayed
until I kiss the world.

14/30 - Make Me Better

I don't want you to save me.
I want you to pull the bravery out of me.
I don't want you to kiss my wounds.
Just remind me that the rest of the world has been wounded too.
Don't tell me it'll be okay.
Tell me to fix it myself if I want it my way.
Don't pamper or baby me.
Push me hard so I'll become the best that I can be.

But be there when I cry,
When it really gets too rough and I feel like I could die.
Hold my hand sometimes.
Just make sure my sadness doesn't make you tell me lies.
Pull me out of the muck and mire
Then remind that bravery is courage under fire.

13/30 - Invisible (title debateable)

She sits alone
not because she has no one,
but because she's old and no longer fun.

She hangs out with those half her age because they're the only ones around.
She lost her groove a long time ago and it has yet to be found.

She's enchanting because she's real,
not particularly attractive, but her eyes make you feel
and her voice has that appeal.

I wish I had seen her in her prime.
I bet she had a way of making folks laugh all the time.
I bet she had a great smile.

I hate that time can steal that away.
If only we never lost anything when we aged.
If only we always liked how we changed.

Now it's like she's invisible.
People look right through her.
All she wants is to be seen as real.

I feel sorry for her and the way she feels,
but then I remember that my own were invisible for hundreds of years.
This isn't a new tragedy.
Society must find someone to cast out
and they chose those that have aged like her
once they embraced the ones that look like me.

Perhaps we all pay our dues and take our turn
before the world decides we've earned
a place in their minds and eyes.
Then they transfer their blindness to those from other places and times.

I pray that the cycle is breaking
with the collective tolerant breaths we've been taking.
This world must begin changing,
lest this breathing become a massive suffocating.