Yearly Archives: 2020

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A New Lease On Life

A word is a unit of language. Words are the way we communicate. Words have meaning however, words that say one thing can often mean another. There is the connotation and the denotation of a word, which is the difference in the way we associate the meaning of the word.

The denotation is the actual meaning of the word and the connotation of a word is the association of a word in addition to its actual meaning itself. I know what the word happy means to me. I know what sad means. I know what the word love means to me and adversely, I know what hate means.
I know what the word family means to me, and still, I remember a class of mine at the homeless shelter. I asked the classroom to give me their definition of the word “Family.”
A mumbled voice from the back of the room spoke out and said, “Broken promises” because this is what the word family meant to him.
See what I mean?

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Understanding Gravity

We understand the weight of something heavy when opposed to something light. For example, we know the difference between say, the weight of a feather and the weight of a brick.

Sometimes we expect something to be heavy until we lift it and we’re surprised that it’s light. And then we say to ourselves, “That wasn’t so bad.”
Sometimes, this goes the other way around, which means we understand the physical nature of gravity. But there’s a different kind of gravity.

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From Choices: Treat Life

Either way, there is truth on both sides. There is truth to the good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful. Either way, everything is open to interpretation. This is true, regardless to how we try to get our point across. Don’t believe me? 
See, we have this thing called bias. We have this thing called selective and hopeful hearing. We have a bias that hears what it wants and an agenda that only hears the highlights and misses the truth that focuses on the heart of the matter. People hear what they want to hear, which is nothing new. We have been this way since the beginning of time, I suppose.

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The Beach –

Before going forward, I would like to offer you the option of visualizing your best version of the beach. See it in a way you choose to and pick a memory that warms the heart, which coincides with what I’m about to say.

One of the reasons I love the ocean as much as I do is because the waves are perfectly anonymous. It is said the sea has no memory but I’m not sure if I agree.
I could stand and face the ocean for hours. I can walk up and down the beach and whisper my thoughts. I can tell my secrets to the outgoing tides and give my confession and feel cleansed, like the shoreline beneath my feet.

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Letters From A Son: 9/28/20

For now, the streets are wet. Everything is quiet this morning, as if there is something going on or as if something bigger than all of us is taking place. This is all happening, right here and right now. And I know what this is.
I know this is life, or at least this is a version of it. I know there are questions I have and things I’d like to know about.
And that’s fine.

For now the leaves are starting to change. Some have already fallen, which I can see from the window in my loft. The town recently repaved my road, which makes the wet blacktop glisten in front of my house. The yellow lines that split the road in half and the orange leaves that press flat on the ground are perfect in contrast against the blackness of the street. The colors of the trees are somehow comforting beneath the grayish morning in my small town. My road is country-like and peaceful, which this too is also fitting for now

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The Benefit of Optionality

I always had this thing about knowing shortcuts and backroads to the City. There was always something about knowing where you were and knowing the roads, just in case traffic hit. There was something about knowing a different route without having a hassle. I think the best part of knowing different ways to get somewhere is the comfort of optionality. 

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A Night In The Can

It is a late night passed midnight towards the end of August in the year 1989. The scene opens to a mainly empty processing room at the county’s holding facility. A large counter acts like an island with aged and natural wooded vertical slats appear on the outside and a white desk top. The counter is a separation between uniformed officers and the processed inmates.

The uniformed officers are behind computers and desks. Phones are ringing and there is talkative chatter with regular office noise in the background.
The processing facility is aged and outdated. There is the musty smell in the facility, which reeks from the stench of hoboes and the traffic of new arrests that arrive to be processed. After the processing is completed, the arrested person is escorted down to a holding cell until the time when they are ready to be arraigned before the judge. 

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The Funny Thing About The Old Days Is –

There comes a time in life where age happens. We grow older and then we look back. This happens in the different stages and in phases, which begin from childhood and grow with us until our final days. Old chapters close so new ones can begin.

Sometimes I am touched with a hint of nostalgia. Maybe it’s something in the air. Maybe it’s the change in the season and the cool winds that represent the mornings of early fall are a trigger for me. And then there are October sunsets, which appear golden as ever — or maybe it’s the way my thoughts narrate in my mind; as if to tell a story of me, reliving the old days, back when we were young and free to be crazy.

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Save Your Energy

There was a class I took a few years back about commercial energy conservation. The teacher was an older man, grayhaired, very kind, and with a voice that sounded like a grandpa reading a bedtime story. The class was boring as ever, which made it difficult to keep my eyes open, let alone pay attention and learn the material. 
I will say that some of the information was interesting. I understood the premises of the class. I understood the information but less than midway through the lesson, the teacher would go off on a tangent and laugh with his quiet little bedtime story laugh. He would talk about something that happened to him or his family and then just like that, half the class would start to nod and fall asleep.

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