Gossamer Between (PB)

     In every chronicle, a Devine Arachnid has spun a web. A sublime gossamer that lies purposefully to separate. The light and the dark. The good and the evil. The protagonist and the antagonist. The truths and the lies. Separation is ultimately how the nature of life functions. But If it wasn't for the gossamer, we would be able to see and feel the hearts of our enemies. We would reach out to wounded competitor and sense what life is like beyond the separation. 

      the delicacy of the divider is impairing to any force that tries to breakthrough its restraining bounds. The delicacy inhibits people from experiencing life as a representative from both sides of the story. And thus we are forced to choose. Some are born for lustrousness, but the world turns them dark. Some are born for the night, but love makes them frolic in the sunlight. A side must be chosen a point in  human life and the finely spun wall blocks the other side completely. 

      But the one who breaks through the gossamer becomes both good and evil. Others view this person as strange and fickle, but they have broken through the thin fabric that separates a dividing shield, that many do not have the courage to even touch. Hands can poke through creating a mystical light that on lookers maybe afraid of and veer away. These hands create a hole in the barricade, an opening that allows for the two sides to inter mix. These hands create acceptance. These hands of versatility make it respectable to do both good deeds for others, and also be occasionally selfish. In the scheme of life, people need to find a balance between light and dark. We need to find the gray and live as the gossamer does. Live as a median because whether we are able to admit it or not, we all have a portion of virtue and a portion of foul.

A Grieved Transition (SSR)

The article this response is referring to.

     Teenagers across the county are faced daily with decisions that fall along the lines of choosing an outfit to wear, choosing to study for a test or choosing what to do after school. All of these choices are adolescent thoughts and innocent decisions. These choices are those of a simplistic, care free life of a teenager.A boy from Niles, Ohio Jacob Larosa, age fifteen, is accused of beating to death a ninety four year old, Marie Belcastro. The decision to trespass into another's home with the intention of robbing and killing the home owner, is an adult decision, despite the age of the perpetrator. 

      

      Jacob Larosa, fifteen years of age, made the gruesome decision of murder at an age where being a teenager should have been his only worry. But because of his choices made, he must accept the consequences that will be inflicted upon him. He can no long be considered a mere child after committing such an offense. Therefore, he can no longer be punished as a child. His innocence was given up at the expense of the murder of a ninety-four year old neighbor. Larosa entered into adulthood as soon the woman's heart ceased to beat any longer. 

     Larosa made the adult decision of committing a felony and the court should rule his punishment as one that any other killer would receive. To see him receive anything other than being treated like an adult would be a moral fault of the court. Even though  Larosa is only fifteen, the court needs to ignore the age involved in the case and needs to view the intensity of the crime committed. It is a terrible shame that a young boy must locked away for the rest of his life; nonetheless he made a mature enough decision to be tried as an adult.

      When a boy comes home to his mother covered in blood, her first concern is the safety of her child. This mother believes from the start of the occurrence that her child is an innocent victim. In this case the evil child was not the victim; the boy had given the burden to someone else. This life changing decision was that of an adult and the court should rule the punishment to be susceptible to the crime. For a child who has taken a life has made the choice to rid him self of an adolescent label, has made the the choice to become an adult.

Sympathy for A Deer (PB)

     A fawn is described purely by vulnerability. Flourishing expanses are only a temporary estate for the deer child. She waits hidden between the wild flowers and the great unknown. Her freckled camouflage shines in the light of day. She feels a great safety in the assurance that her mother watches vigilantly over her while the tranquility of their forest protects them and nurtures them both. Black berries are carefully picked from prickled vines and the trees protect the deer from lurking harm. The wind makes the fawns tail dance and her mother laughs accordingly. For now they know no menace; peril doesn't not knock on their front door. They drink from a pool of sustenance as night begins to fall and the sky's turn amber colored and soon will the forest be tenebrous. Stars fall over the trees to be framed within branches and the timber sings a gentle lullaby as it protects the fawn and her mother quietly until the first blush of dawn. This concludes the clandestine day of the Deer.

     But no sympathy is felt for a being that is at peace and relaxation. No. My sympathy comes from somewhere deep inside the human world. My father is a taxidermist and I've grown to know the art far too well. My sympathy comes from sights of Deer that I have seen very often. Disfigured bodies lay on the cement floor with eyes that plead for sympathy. Boxes filled to the brim with severed skullcaps with sets of antlers attached. Elevated Kiddie pools with furred hides to drain the blood from the husk. Bodies hang from the ceiling waiting to be scraped of their insides. Dead marbled eyes stare down from a coat that has since been filled with life and breath. Scenes from a horror film? Not exactly. Such scenes as these have been familiarized to my conscience and my brain hardly thinks the least when exposed to such repugnance. But in result of this exposure, my sympathy for the Deer has grown.

     I have known two faces of the animal. The face filled with misfortune and eyes of glass. And the face filled with breath and eyes of splendor. The latter of the two is a bewildering sight. Few instances in a human's life provides enough awe to bring a man to his knees. A man falls to the ground when he is faced with anguish and grief, but seldom does he fall when encountered by stupor. the sighting of a wild Deer provides a man with a glorious stupefaction only found through this manner. Dead eyes on the wall only provide a man with the wonder of not knowing how beautiful the animal once was.

    I will never understand the profession of my father, but have come to accept it. My sympathy for a Deer lies in the perplexity of innocent beings that are murdered for sport and displayed as trophies. One thousand words can be read in the eyes of a spry Odocoileus virginianus. If one is gentle enough to read them, a new world is unlocked. A world that doesn't know harm and strives to live as a deer does. Much can be learned from and animal as majestic as the Deer. 

     And when the Fawn wakes up, she feels the new day as one that will provide her with hopeful protection and will lead her into a serene and everlasting life.

A Comparison of Solitudes (SSR)

"From the solitude of the wood, [man] has passed to the more dreadful solitude of the heart." - Loren Eiseley 

When a man embarks on the endeavor of life, he is first woken by a solitude that will accompany him for the rest of his time on earth. When an infant is born, he is confined to a world that is in his own head.  His embryonic communication skills sway him to assume that he is alone and this assumption will haunt him for the rest of his life. This loneliness is carried inside of his heart throughout his childhood and into his adult life. Though he develops many means of communication with other beings, in our human world he still feels a forlorn presence that occupies part of his soul.

With this particular quote, Loren Eiseley speaks of two very different natures of solitude. The latter of the two mentioned by Eiseley, is more fatal to human happiness and prosperity. Although both are created by the individual himself, a solitude of the heart is what happens inside of oneself; whereas, solitude of the wood connotes to what is happening around oneself. 

Loneliness of heart is what a man is condemned with from his birth and it is his choice to let it flourish or fade. As we grow, we are able to make the choice of allowing others to enter our souls and touch in us, "love and passion, pain and pleasure, grief and comfort" (Daniel E. Gawthrop). Or we make the formidable decision of driving interaction out of our lives and relinquishing our life to the isolation of our own mind. Distance from happiness grows in a private life and a misanthropic sorrow takes the place of love and joy. This solitude, as Eiseley identifies, is one of dread, but even so, each generation becomes progressively more reclusive.

The solitude of wood is a life selected by one who is called out to by nature. A man chooses this life style to gain knowledge of the world around him. He becomes a recluse to find out why it is that his life depends on human interaction, or why it does not. This man does not become bitter toward his fellow earth dwellers; rather he embraces them and finds exuberance in every form of life. Although a seclusion from civilization is still a hiatus in the furors of human life, it is a thing not borne with a man, he can leave is type of solitude behind him and rejoin his brothers. He does not carry the ball and chain of forlorn eyes and hands that are parsimonious toward the men around him. He returns to his brothers with greater knowledge of the world and tells them of his troglodytic exploit.

How does one know the difference between the two genus' of solitude? One can evaluate his perception of desolation by his thoughts of humanity when he is alone. Does he feel bitter and cold toward his friends? Or rather does he feel reverent and more knowledge of the world around him? 

The Transcendental: A Student of Nature (CRR)

The sun, as he ascends into his mid-day home and transitions our world from a crepuscular and obfuscous night to a welcoming dawn, he feels a negligence. The same negligence that is felt by the admonishing moon as she stares down to her pupils who clamor around on the Earth below. This level of disregard is only shared between the sun and the moon. The two lovers weep for their children who, day by day, become more and more oblivious to the lessons that they perpetually attempt to teach. But a perpetual attempt is an attempt, nonetheless; a teacher can teach for hours and hours without cease, but if a student is unwilling to learn, then the lesson are no more than a endeavor.

Transcendentalism is a term that has, for centuries now, been hidden away and appears to be mainly taught in schools as a writing movement that occurred in the 1820s. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau are the advocates behind the ideologies of the Transcendental Movement. In their works regarding nature, they speak reverently of the lessons that the natural world has to offer the human world. Writers who expanded on the idea of transcendentalism, often spoke of individualism and encouraged readers to further understand the world through the study of nature.

Often times, the human world is a selfish one. The human world is an industrious one. The human world is a negligent one. Each man carries his own strifes. The human world has forced upon a man, the idea that occupation is the answer to the unsolvable question of life. Man in turn believes that he will find happiness in ideas such as money, popularity, and success. This world has created a selfish man; this man has created an industrious world. And together, the man and his world have become negligent to their natural beginnings. 

Transcendentalism ideologies work to yield an end to the heedlessness of our human world. It reveals that there lies ignored beauty and education in the simplicity of a wind-blown leaf. There lies ignored mystery and bewilderment in the reproductive cycle of a slug. How deeply we parallel these occurrences to our human lives depends on the intellect of the individual. This intellect is the type that realizes the necessity to forget everything taught in the human world. While not everyone can detect a buried meaning in the direction of the wind, every human can find peaceful aspects in the freedom of the wind to choose its direction. This transcendentalistic way of life encourages its followers to omit the strifes that they are seemingly presented with and open their mind and soul to the simplicity of nature's ever-changing and ever-stable temperament. 

The human world believes that everything is about money and competition. A human life is often spent in misery and sorrow due to their own perception of the world around them. Humans believe that intellect and knowledge is the algebraic formula to find success and happiness. But nature knows the real answers. Nature is aware that to know all you must forget all. Nature perpetually attempts to teach the human world of its lucid knowledge. 

And quietly, seldom, but repeatedly, a vigilant student is born; he becomes enticed by nature's simplicity and spends his whole life as a student at the mercy of natural world. He puts his whole trust in the lessons taught by the growth of a sapling and the feather on a bird's back. And it is often only he who is then able to spend his life in a great halcyon, cradled in the benevolent arms of his creator.

In Regards to Ralph Waldo Emerson's Education (CRR)

      In present day educational institutions, dust from pages of history and algebra books settle on eyelids of once eager souls and lay at rest, anchoring burnt out hearts that have since yearned for knowledge. Ralph Waldo Emerson speaks of truth in his criticism of modern American education. His ideologies parallel to those portrayed in dreams of the American student who longs for the freedom to study what they wish to acquire knowledge of. Also, they wish to obtain this knowledge at a pace that is suitable for them. In the words of his essay, he speaks of the wrongs that are inflicted upon a student who is forced to learn a premeditated curriculum and is restricted of his natural right to become versed in what he deems most fulfilling to his self-chosen purposes.

       In his work, Emerson describes his theory of Genius and Drill. The Genius of a student is described by his ability to nurse a thriving idea and expand his knowledge on the idea, such that it leads to the demonstration of said idea; thus leading him into the journey of executing the Drill that follows his said Genius. The escapade of the Drill does not exist without the growth of the Genius. And in similarity, the Genius cannot be proven without the demonstration of Drill. By day, Genius relies on Drill because without Drill, Genius has no language, knows no laws, and diminishes by way of the difficulty. Genius, without Drill, would be subservient and fade away quickly; thus, true Genius is not prevalent without it's executive brother. Emerson encourages teachers to understand that Genius and Drill do not grow from force, but flourish only when they are treated with a passive and accepting tone. Emerson infers that "Always genius seeks genius, desires nothing so much as to be a pupil and to find those who can lend aid to perfect itself." By this, he means that human intelligence longs for the opportunity to be taught and become student to those who have more intelligence to offer. Intelligence yearns to perfect it's self by seeking the help and guidance of enlightenment. 

      Another allegation that is discussed in Emerson's work is the parallel between a child's temperament towards education and the raw will of nature. Emerson wants educators to understand that a child's attitude toward his cultivation reflects the patterning found in wildlife. Such as in wildlife, a forceful and hastened hand cannot feed gentle and timid mouths. In time, force will only result in reluctance of will. The hand must be, rather, docile and quiescent in order to receive satisfaction from its pupil. Eagerness comes with the feeling of security in a scholar. Often it is forgotten that man, or rather child, himself, has originated from a natural world. It only deems a rational idea that a man's nature would mirror that of wildlife and the natural world.

       Though, Emerson argues that accuracy should not be pardoned when educating the student. A student still must understand "accurate perceptions" and "the difference between the similar and same." The mechanics of accuracy are crucial to the success and development of the learner. He must not accept to make mistakes, but must make a point to focus on blunt detail. 

     Emerson's ideologies are well thought out and throughly explained in his essay. But an important question to wonder is whether his ideas and explanations can be executed in today's society? Whether institutions and their faculty are willing to change their ways to better to a child's true nature? Whether is would be a plausible decision to make this change in our educational system?

In Our Book of Faces (SSR)

      From a humble, yet omnipotent force we have risen. A single subservient Earth has nurtured the every infinite whim or need of our humankind. And so forth, a myriad amount of souls will seek the nourishment that will be provided by this mothering planet for millennia to come. The Earth speaks to her abundance of children equally. She does not recognize race or gender. Age or intellect. Height or weight. Religion or social standings. She does not know the difference between beauty and beast. So, the question that is often posed asks why should we, as the Earth's children, should be subjected to such ridicule by one another?

      On the exterior we are all the same. We are one face in a Book of Faces strung together by the universe. Everyday we see faces. Some light, some dark, some flawless, some scarred. We add each face to our own Book of Faces. We flip through our book and see delight and sorrow. Contentment and hostility. And we, as the Earth's beloved children, can all relate to any emotion seen in our Book of Faces. 

      Every child, whether handsome or homely, has a face. Every child of the Earth has a life. Each life is, in many ways, different from the next one. Some lives require strength. Some lives require delicacy. Some require intelligence. Some require simplicity. 

      But if you were to take a step back and look on the unrobed surface, the lives and faces, they are all very similar as well. All lives require love. All lives require security. All require sustenance. All require happiness.

Ethiopian Girl.

 Village Headman in Malawi. 

 Happiness.

Kyoto, Japan.

Student of Political Sciences and Media.

Niece.

Dressed for Eid al-Adha Festival.

Deputy Sheriff in 1956.

Orphans.

Carnaval on Curacao.

Zoroastrain Iranian Girl.

Daydreamer.

Hindu Devotee.

Cousin.

Beautiful and Haunting.

      We can look at ourselves and wonder how many books our face belongs to. We can know that, after all of the faces have been seen, we are not just another face. Each of us represents something. Whether it be a country, an emotion, a family member, a friend, a time of year, a setting, etc., we cannot know. Each of us fills up a page in the universal Book of Faces. We can try our best to be perceived as we would like ourselves to be perceived, but the reality of the Book of Faces is that we can only ever write our own.

The Stop Sign on the Corner (SSR)

Caution: I'm not sure what goes on, I'm just writing what I have observed.

      On the corner of my street, there lives a stop sign. It roosts directly in the front lawn of a family that often crosses my mind. The stop sign is about 9 feet tall and reads "STOP". But the only thing special this particular stop sign is that it is a literal Red Herring.

      Forget, now, about the stop sign because that's not what this story is about. 

      This story is about the family that I mentioned earlier. This family is a bit unconventional. There is a mother and a father, and five female angels, aged from two to nine. Each angel had previously been an orphan.

      I hear my parents and neighbors talk about the family. Their blatant whispers say that the girls' adopted father is a drunk. This explains why he speaks in strings when he passes out candy on Halloween. The whispers cause me to wonder how a drunk man can take care of five angels. The whispers take pity on the angels. They wonder about what goes on inside the house. They think action should be taken to fix the situation, but do nothing nonetheless. The whispers focus on the fact that this man is a drunk, but they ignore the fact that he and his wife have agreed to adopt five orphans. Maybe he is a drunk, but maybe he is an honorable man, even so.

      Laughter resonates from the angels' lawn on sunlit days. Every time that I walk my dog past their house, they flock to us. Their faces light up at the sight of the dog. The girls scamper up to the dog, half tripping over their little legs. They laugh and giggle as the dog licks their faces. The littlest angel looks up at me with apple like cheeks burrowed in a wild mane of curls. She reminds me of myself as a child. Innocence is the only thing that she knows. She is unaware that the only father she knows is an alcoholic. She has no idea where she came from. She is blind to the fact that she is an angel. She only knows that she has no agenda but to play outside with her sisters. She only knows that she wants to pet the dog, so she does. 

      Some people might see these angels as unfortunate because of their circumstances. But these unfortunate angels giggle and frolic and shine. They are not broken considering their birth parents have past away and their new father is a drunk. They are the happiest creatures that I've ever come across. And I somewhat admire their persistence of happiness. I do not worry about the angels as many do. I can feel their mirthful heart beats as I watch them roam free while they play.

      The stop sign stands elegantly in their lawn. The stop sign tells you to stop. But the stop sign say something else too. It says "STOP, angels live here. Look at the angels and learn from them. Just stop for a minute and see beyond the surface of the situation." I taken the stop signs advice. The stop sign, I know, is much more than a Red Herring, or even a traffic regulation. The stop sign wants you to stop and consider that angels may be among you.

Defining Optimism (PB)

      Behind every lowly and dreary rain cloud there is an essence. It pours from the outer edge of its blockade of grey captors, seeking refuge in the eyes of souls down below. It creeps over ledges of clouds and into shadows on earth, aiming to touch the hopeless. It hums in the ears of those who will listen. It emits an aroma of all things euphoric, such as lavender and raindrops. It finds its way to the tongues, of the ones who haven't tasted in years. It is the hiatus between sorrow and glee. It is a crack. It is a break. 

      Many never truly understand the power behind this wild magic. Some try to define it by way of religion. And others by way of science. But this magic cannot be named. 

      The breath of a gloomy day cannot be inhaled by those who let this preeminent force enter their souls. This brilliance cannot be overtaken by the rigor of misery that engulfs the world on a somber day. With as much power as the ocean and stability as a mountain, it's reign lives on, unaffected by black thoughts that pollute the air beneath it. This is the frosted glow that can be seen behind every ashen cloud that has ever formed. This Glow! Force! Breach! It names its self as the Silver Lining.

       Few people ever notice the Silver Lining. These people are over powered by the mighty bitterness that follows them. Some people are haunted by a greedy and starving mist. But The Optimist ganders through the mist to see the everlasting and almighty Silver Lining. He hopes for it. Treasures it. Lives by it. He isn't blinded by the ghostly and solemn veil that seems to cover the earth. He sees the silver glow and is captivated by the opportunity of tomorrow, the promise of a sweet song, the bright future he knows lies ahead. His life becomes illuminated by the gap between sky and cloud. He revels in its radiance.

     The Silver Lining doesn't reveal its self to everyone. It can only be seen by those who accept it. It can only be seen by those who choose to see it. It can only be seen by those who long to dance in its light. For it can only be seen by The Optimist. True happiness can be achieved by the realization that the Silver Lining does exist. But exactly where it exists is unclear. Does the Silver Lining live trapped behind the clouds? Or does it flourish and grow within The Optimist's soul?