A Memorable Day

Today was supposed to be a day of work.
Instead it was a day of family.
Of remembrance.
Of holiday cheer.

Today, despite monetary loses,
I gained something valuable.
I helped put up a Christmas tree.
I watched a blanket of white descend from the sky
While perched on a soft seat in a warm house.

Today, when I finally left that house,
I faced the wind and the cold
With a hat and a scarf.
I ate a late lunch with the people I love.
With the people that keep me warm.

Today was full of Doctor Who,
And mac and cheese balls,
And oversized containers of hard cider,
And delicious peppermint cookies mailed from a friend.

Today was pretty ordinary.
It was nothing extravagant.
But today was a day of good things
Which made today a memorable day.


I hope all your days are memorable ones.
-S

Grow Up With Me

"Grow up with me
Let’s run in fields and through the dark together.
Fall off swings, and burn special things, and both play outside in bad weather.

Let’s eat badly.
Let’s watch adults drink wine and laugh at their idiocy.
Let’s sit in the back of the car,
Making eye-contact with strangers driving past making them uncomfortable.

Not caring.
Not swearing. 
Don’t fuck.

Let’s both reclaim our superpowers;
The ones we will have and lose with our milk teeth.
The ability not to fear social awkwardness,
To panic when locked in the cellar;
Still sure there’s something down there.
And while picking through pillows each feather,
Let’s both stay away from the edge of the bed, forcing us closer together.

Let’s sit in public with ice-cream all over both our faces;
Sticking our tongues out at passers by.
Let’s cry.
Let’s swim.
Let’s everything.

Let’s not find it funny lest someone falls over.
Classical music is boring.
Poetry baffles us both.
There is nothing that’s said is what’s meant.
Plays are long tiresome, sullen and filled with hours that could have be spent rolling down hills
And grazing our knees on cement.

Let’s hear stories and both lose our innocence.
Learn about parents and forgiveness,
Death and morality,
Kindness and art,
Thus losing both of our innocent hearts,
But at least we won’t do it apart.

Grow up with me”

by Keaton Henson

I encourage everyone to check out Keaton Henson and his amazing musical talents. I haven't been able to stop listening to this poem all month.

-S

Bike Trip Motivational Thoughts

I told you guys I would post this... even though it's been a few weeks.

1. Biking 5 or 6 hours a day left a lot of room for thought. My dad would always say: it's more of a mental battle than a physical one.

2. I've mentioned it before but there's one motivational quote that I use to get me through every challenge in life. It's the last two lines from the poem Invictus: I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. To me this just means that I can do anything I set my mind to. I won't let anything stop me from achieving what I want to achieve. For a while I would just repeat this in my head over and over again, but then I started trying to remember the whole poem (which took a lot of thought and kept me distracted when I wanted to be).

3. The next motivational thing is the poem Pioneers! O Pioneers! by Walt Whitman. I sort of discovered and fell in love with this poem when it was on the Levi's commercial. I tried to remember and repeat the first few stanzas of this poem too. Eventually I had to look it up one night because I knew something was off and I couldn't seem to remember the end of the second/beginning of the third stanza. I had tried to memorize the poem in the past so I knew a little of it, but the poem is kind of long and I was never actually successful in memorizing the whole thing. The second stanza was really the part I kept repeating in my head as a sort of battle cry.
"For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!"

Of course everyone didn't depend on us to finish the bike ride but you get my drift... it was motivational.

4. Encouragements from the crowd. I was a little worried that I'd get really bored without any music to listen to, but for the most part we kept each other company. Since a lot of the roads we were on were pretty empty, we were able to ride side by side and talk. This made things seem to go by a bit faster.

5. When we rode on busy highways and had to ride behind one another my main motivation was to get off that road as quickly as possible. My dad always laughed when I would ride 15 mph all of the sudden instead of the steady 11 or 12 I was at for most of the trip (yeah I know I'm slow).

6. On the last day we started getting bored and tired and my dad began singing "99 bottles of beer on the wall." It went on for a bit too long so in my head (and eventually out loud) I started singing Stu's Song from the Hangover. Yup desperate times call for desperate measures and this was the first thing that popped up in my head (I have no idea why).