i love spinach.

There are best friends, and there are soulmates. You don't have to be dating your soulmate- you don't even have to find them physically attractive. But you do definitely need:

1. to understand each other without words.
2. to share tastes and interests in good books and movies.
   
3. to be able to fight to the point of violence and make up as easily.
4. to be willing to take a bullet for him/her- anywhere.
5. raise kittens or children or plants together (kittens being the hardest).
6. to go and see 'boring' movies together because all of your friends are dirty philistines with no artistic taste.
7. to sober each other up to the reality of your weaknesses, but moreover, your strengths.
8. to be able to wrestle whenever the situation calls for it.
9. to be able to get fucked up together on weeknights when you have shit to do the next day and still find a way home.
10. to wake the other up when they don't get up the next day.

So, with those requirements out of the way, I can say with some clarity that Casandra E. Smith is my soulmate, love of my life, best friend a person could have, mother of our kittens, and all around badass. Never will you meet a person more honest, caring, maternal, independent, intelligent, exciting, passionate, tenacious, cultured, resourceful, willing and wonderful.

Most people don't ever meet a person like this. Luckily, I met mine over 7 years ago. I've been through some horrible shit, and no matter WHAT it was, no matter how horrible, how unfair, I've had a one-woman family, following me around, applying band-aids and napkins (and dollars) and love wherever they were needed. If you don't know her, you're missing out. If you're not good to her, I'll kill you. She's a force.

For years we've shared everything. Our house, money, cats, food, music, movies, fun- everything. But if ever she goes away to Africa or some place remote and unreachable, I'll probably remember the poetry we shared more than anything. One of the most beautiful and important gifts that I ever got was from you, on March 8, 2003- Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni. The inside reads, 'Christopher, I bring you a book of love poems, because I LOVE you. You are my lighthouse and you are the best lighthouse EVAR. I love you and hope that lovey poems help make you not sick anymore.' You've continually had the cures to my sicknesses, then answers to my questions and the solutions to my problems. I think, as the years went on, it was you who became my lighthouse.

A Poem of Friendship
We are not lovers
because of the love
we make
but the love
we have

We are not friends
because of the laughs
we spend
but the tears
we save

I don't want to be near you
for the thoughts we share
but the words we never have
to speak

I will never miss you
because of what we do
but what we are
together

-Nikki Giovanni

You're my best friend in the whole world, and I don't know how I'll manage this year not being in the same town as you. Every cell of mine explodes with love for you.

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missing the war

I'm missing the war, all night.


If you've never been to a mental hospital, keep it that way. There is no place on earth where the bodies are more healthy but the minds are so burnt. So many people like you and me, people who are smart, intelligent, flawed, reasoning people who simply couldn't handle the weight of living.

I don't like being there. Sometimes I feel like I might belong with them, so I don't like being in the environment.

This whole ordeal is really taking its toll on my siblings. They're young, and they don't fully understanding the long term effects of gravity. Over time, things build and have to crash. If I never have to see tears like that again it'll be too soon.

Needless to say, I've got to remain focused on my own goals. Building my skills in this new job and prioritizing my ascent to leadership has got to stay at the forefront of my mind. After all, if I do my job well I'll be better able to look after my family the way they deserve to be looked after. No one's been able to do that, except my tired and stressed grandmother, who deserves a long break.

It seems like nobody hear learned how to take responsibility for their actions. People disappear from their duties- from their lives, people can't clean up their messes in their houses or their heads, people lie and expect pardon, people don't understand that the world spins madly on. I hope to be a sobering voice of reason in this crowd.

All that said, I'm very lonely. It would seem that someone like me, at this point in my life, would have no issue reaching out to others to help ease the gaping hole I feel having departed from the last five years so abruptly. I feel like I should have prepared myself better for all of this. Maybe I was/am too idealistic about it all. Maybe when you part, you actually do part. Maybe that chapter of my life is closed. Maybe the feeling of those experiences with those friends in those places has to die like everything else in the world. That's an awfully sad sentiment to hang on to, but I haven't felt the same. I miss my friends. I miss my people. I don't know that they can miss me the same, because they might all have already accepted the death of those times. I've never had anyone near me die. I don't know how to deal with the death of an ideal.

I'm no longer Prince Tigercat of NeverLand. I don't get to be the rich cartoon that I was before. Now, I'm actual.


So much time, so little to say.
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attitude dictates success, not the other way around

i have to be ambiguous about it all.

• i'm not as good as i should be. i'm not performing at the level i'm capable of, and i'm tortured by my inability to kick it up a notch. i'll give it until saturday before i'm forced to retreat to save my dignity and my self esteem.
• i have no one. i'm alone.
• my singing in the car is the best singing i've done ever. the catch is that no one ever hears it, and i don't forsee that changing anytime soon.
• i fixed his error and got what i needed. i didn't tell him that he nearly cost me the last five years, but he did. either way, i recovered. i suppose the punishment never ends, does it?
• it's hard being an afterthought. i guess starting over really, literally requires starting over.

here i am, i suppose.
this all fucking sucks.
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sheeee's coming

She's small but fierce, and she's on her way to me!!
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VPILF 2008

Hate her all you want (and I do hate the idea of her quite a bit), but this guy might have hit nail on the head... or something. I couldn't come up with a more overtly sexual double entendre.



Sarah Palin is a VPILF. Fo' rizzle.
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starting over...

is hard to do.


When you've got standards.
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love, love, love (love love)

Have I
ever told you before
I think you're beautiful when
you're sleeping?

(I have faith you watch me in
my slumber, too.)

If I'm
all that you're looking for,
tell me,

why is there a river streaming
down your face?

Sometimes makes me wonder
all about your
love.

After some time
it's something I find true.
Love's not a grave, it won't decay
on you.
Too many days I was afraid
of love.

What
if nothing is just that and
suffering's the only thing we're good
at?
Dreaming, picture that
a whole world in a slumber.
But don't get
too attached to the living,

even every single memory's
fleeting.

That's a fact, being torn
asunder.

But to my surprise, no reason
why, one day I woke
up and realized.

Give it to me,
love.

I'll keep you in my focus
with love and affection.

I could try and explain all this, but what good would it do, honestly? We're all better off figuring it out on our own, I suppose. I'm settled.

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toe woe

One can be musing about the vastness of the universe.

One can consider the individuality and colorful backgrounds of the strangers he meets.

One can ponder reality, and the meaning of existence.

I stubbed my toe tonight on concrete such that it's nearly broken, the nail is almost cracked off, and I took off a quarter size chunk of the flesh. I walked a few feet, then reached down and grabbed the foot because I realized it hurt more than I'd initially thought. I leaned in the car to check for my phone and smeared a bloody handprint all over the seat when I realized what I'd done to my toe.

Currently, its so swollen and bloody it wont fit in the dress shoes I need for a super important job interview tomorrow morning.

Anyway, one can think on love and its innate ability to heal and teach.

One can get drunk on memory, and contemplate the impossible intricacies of time.

One can stub one's toe and think about nothing else than how fucking shitty it can be to even have toes.
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'I haven't heard that man's name in a LOOONG time'

This afternoon, I asked my Mee-Maw (who's pretty young for a grandmother) if she thought that John McCain was too old to be president (he'd be 76 when his term ended!) and she said no. I mused out loud that it might not be such a wise idea to elect such an old guy, seeing as how Dick Cheney can't stay out of the hospital for very long.

She turned to me and said, "Well he dun't do anything anyway. Who'd know?"


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1968 = 2008

I watched a great deal of the Democratic National Convention last week, and became extremely excited about the possibilities for change in our nation that are right ahead of us. Not the idealistic notion of change that one talks about but never sees, but a sweeping, real-life shift of ideology that makes each of us as Americans more equal to our brothers and sisters and sets our children up for a more prosperous, worthwhile experience. Immediately after watching Senator Hillary Clinton's speech, I stumbled upon a History channel special called '1968'. It chronicled the year in American history and in doing so, touched a particularly important figure in American history, Robert Kennedy.

Because I've never been a history buff, a lot of what I learned about him was new and exciting to me, and as I watched the special, I began to feel more and more passionate about what he stood for, as if he was alive now, poised to take charge of this sycophantic, bureaucratic administration and revitalize the US into a nation synonymous with advancement, freedom and equality. I watched his speech that night at the Ambassador Hotel, and I watched in horror as they announced his assassination. I cried with my grandmother and grandfather, and with every other American who watched a huge beacon of hope pass. I cried and cried and cried. When I was done crying, done soaking in the reality of behavior like this, I felt inspired. And for this reason, I am now violently aware of the parallels in our time now. Exactly forty years later, our economic and social situations as a nation are very similar. We are engaged in a war that most of the country opposes. We're facing economic recession. The rights of gays and immigrants are being diminished. We need a leader to change all of that. It was one of the saddest things I've thought to imagine that Barack Obama might be taken away from us as Bobby Kennedy was- I don't mean to draw lofty parallels this early in the game, but nonetheless realize the reality of everyone's mortality. Needless to say, this election is special to me. It's pivotal. And I sincerely hope that my family, my sister, my mother, my friends- even people who say they don't care- will GET informed. Will read. Will decide, and will help elect a person that is committed to the kind of change we as a young generation have been waiting for.

I hope you actually read this, because it's incredible. If you'd rather hear him say it himself, go here:

"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballots to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs."

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.

I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

-Senator Robert F. Kennedy, On the Mindless Menace of Violence
City Club of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio April 5, 1968

The beauty of this nation is that there are people like this among us, wishing to be the change we all see in ourselves. We simply have to acknowledge them.
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