Fall Is Upon Us

The horrendous heat wave has (hopefully) passed for good, fellow Oklahomans. Like a fine wine, the leaves on the trees will become more appealing with age. The bold, vibrant greens will slowly transition into a mellow array of oranges, yellows, and browns. The soft, fleshy texture will leave them and they will shrivel up. Detached from their life force, dead in the gutter, trampled underfoot and scattered to the four corners of the world, the once sought after shade in the summer will litter the ground like locusts in a plague.

The waves will swirl around your feet, drawing the heat out from your body. The goosebumps raise every hair on your skin as a northern wind rushes between the cracks in your fingers. The spring showers' work is slowly undone as everything around you reverts to a lifeless state. The nurturing sunshine that made your heart blossom seems farther away than ever.

Every year, month, day, hour, minute, second, decision, expectation, distrust, and promise you have ever made has led up to the moment you're living in right now. All of the moments in the past were made up of moments just like that one happening as we speak. Every grain of knowledge inside of you floats away like a mote into the cosmos.

She paved the way for the spring rain that grew the grass and the trees. She was lurking behind the sunshine that grew your love into a beautiful flower. She is the frigid north winds that make you shudder; the waves that draw your life away have a name, and that name is Autumn. Love will writhe in defeat as the seasons change like all things do, and the dead, cold hearts will be kicked aside. They will decompose, rot, and be forgotten as they slowly amalgamate into the earth.

Time will pass. Hipsters will take pictures of their pumpkin lattes and post them to Instagram. The snow will fall and melt, and the sun will shine again. The warm rains will seep into the ground, and the forgotten, dead, and rotten love from the year before will serve one final purpose and fertilize the new grass. The leaves will bud more bountifully than the year before. The sun will beam once more, and the memories that would keep you from repeating past mistakes are thrown into the ocean, only to rise again months later as an ironic souvenir, along with the numbing waves at your feet in what you hoped would be the distant future, but inevitably happened upon like wildfire, and without remorse.

Your footprints will be left behind you in the sand as you pace mournfully, only to be washed away with the cold winter waves. The tears you cry will be blow away by the chill winds, and for a time your hope will, like all things, die, only to be reborn with the new year, blossom in the spring and summer sun, and pass on once more.

Human beings are one with nature, and our behavior mimics each other. Whether we came first or nature did I don't know, but I do know that there is always hope in the future, as well as the knowledge of futility. Like the blades of grass and the leaves on the branches, our hope will spring to life and die just as swiftly, until all things pass. This is the sorrow of all men and women. This is our curse. This is our fall.

R.I.P Steve Jobs

You may have seen this picture circulating around the inter-webs recently. Let me begin by saying that I don't mean to lessen the death of Steve Jobs or the millions of adorable African and other third world babies. My family actually supports a little boy in Haiti. He's super cute. His name is Pierre.

With that being said, this comparison is like equating the death of Obi-Wan Kenobi to the deaths of the thousands, and possibly millions, of clones and rebel soldiers.

Steve Jobs was a world renowned icon for technological advancement and perseverance, and was, to many, a hero. Obi-Wan was the mentor of Luke Skywalker who trained him in the ways for the Force, and is, to many, a hero. (Nerd query: would "the Force" be considered a proper noun, thus needing capitalization? I did capitalize, just in case. I have no idea.) Those children are people we have never met, do not know the names of, and are dying every day. Clones and rebel soldiers are faceless, nameless, not really important at all, and drop like flies (not to mention their aim is atrocious).

It's like equating the death of Princess Diana to the deaths of the approximate 146,000 people by natural or unnatural causes every day.

It's like equating the death of Boromir to the death of the thousands of Gondorian soldiers that died in the second and third Lord of the Rings.

It's like equating the death of Tupac Shakur to the death of the hundreds of Chinese children every day from poor living conditions.

It's like saying that you should mourn the death of someone you passed on the street once just as much as you should mourn the death of a relative you saw all the time and knew and loved. It's just not the same.

I could go on.

You have to understand that people do care about those deaths. People die every day though, and if I had to be sad about every single one of them, I'd just be depressed and the the freaking time. There's a disconnect in the human brain that allows us to trudge on through life despite the fact that everywhere in the world the vulnerability of life and the proclivity towards death is being demonstrated.

Please excuse me while I pull a Forrest Gump; and that's all I have to say about that.

Things that make me want to cry.

Have you ever had one of those days where you just need to sit down and think? Well, that happens to me all the time. And for some inexplicable reason, these songs help me get the deeper, more tender part of my brain to start working. I don't have like, a written out list of things that make me weepy, but these music pieces I've compiled here are just a few of the great works that make me feel all mushy on the inside.

Is the answer "dust?" (reference to Kansas win?)

"How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?
How many seas must the white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes and how many times must the cannonballs fly before they're forever banned?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind. The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Yes and how many years can a mountain exist, before it is washed to the sea?
Yes and how many years can some people exist before they're allowed to be free?
Yes and how many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see?

The answer my friend, is blowin' in the wind. The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Yes and how many times must a man look up, before he can see the sky?
Yes and how many ears must a man have, before he can hear people cry?
Yes and how many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?

The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind. The answer is blowin' in the wind."

This is, in my opinion, one of the greatest, most inspirational songs ever writting. Bob Dylan is a genius. Simple as that.

Anyways, I really just wanted to share these lyrics with you. I'm not really sure if this is an emotional song for anybody else out there, and I don't exactly burst into tears or anything when I hear this, but it does hit me down deep, you know? These are words that really make you think. Im in the middle of compiling a list of videos and songs that make you all teary-eyed, and I'm always taking suggestions if you know of any good ones.

Fun fact! The first time I heard that song "Listen to Your Heart," I cried. I was like, twelve, but still... Haha.