EXTRA credit assignments

I see the picture on my language textbook and I realize now--a month later--what a fellow students remarked to me. Today, my head is not in the game. My three dearest friends in the whole world are all not themselves. I am not thinking about---let alone studying for this oral presentation I have to do in 40min. I am typing this rather than cramming.

Priorities.
People first.

Decidedly

Somewhere along "the line," I decided that to understand certain lives I would have to live them. At some point my ensuing decisions will be to continue living them and my own, go back to the life was I was living or incorporate them into one moving forward. Always forward, regardless of vision.

Breathtaking Brushstrokes

Of all the random, chance meetings over the years with men, boys, men who were boys and boys who thought they were men, this canvass that is my soul searching to share love, continues as a collaborative art endeavor. Some have added single, strident brushstrokes. Some strokes were structurally sustained over time. Some have passed so sensuously silent that their brush barely seemed to leave any tangible contact. Then I blink, or step back; maybe tilt my head a slightly different angle and glimpse how indelible that brush becomes in the collective combination of chaotic creativity. Varied perspectives shine and shade to provide different punctuations to this art piece. It has become a mosaic mural. Mine. I see bright smiles; haphazard, splattered gushes of pain; a labyrinth of langour, laudable lessons from lies; lunar landscapes where leaps of faith leveled the daily daunting mediocrity. As this art strives to become a masterpiece, I see so much love searching for sovereignty over sadistic silliness. I see a boy who has become a man...and the man whose soul will always cherish the boy who longs to love.