ALL SAINTS DAY

“Goodnight,“ was the simple word I said as I turned from him and began drifting off to my dreamland. I think he returned my closing remark but I wasn’t sure. I was to filled with joy that he was laying next to me after so many months of separation and all I wanted to do was relish in that joy. I wanted him there next to me forever so I knew I had to be focused on every moment that he was there, just a few inches from my own body. I created an image of him there laying next to me in my head. I could clearly see him there so very close to my own skin. It was like I was looking down on us from above, admiring our bodies so close together, wanting to reach out and unite us. The beauty of our friendship warmed me but there was something else there beyond our friendship that wanted to ravage us both. Moments before, I had turned off the light, and I noticed he was wearing his blue briefs as I quickly caught a glance and turned away before he caught me. In my mind, all I could see was him there in my bed with his blue briefs. I could feel my desire for him begin to spread through the blood vessels of my body as I laid there in the darkness dwelling in that very moment, carefully listening to his breathing. Inhale… Exhale… Inhale… Exhale… It was through his breathing that I felt his inner voice penetrate my own thought patterns. He was there, inside my head, trying to let me know something, wanting me to feel something., hoping that I would respond with something.
I felt like he had just told me a truth, but the echo of his voice was so far away that I didn’t quite make out what he had said. It was like I couldn’t hear his voice but I could feel his voice. It was a pure emotion that hovered deep in the core of my mind. I quickly opened my eyes and turned my head half way back towards him and asked him point blank, “What are you thinking about?”
“How did you know I was thinking about something?” was his coy, yet charming response. I could feel the smile on his face. I wanted to tell him right there that I could hear him in my mind and that in that very moment we were so connected that I could feel the tingles of his breathing down my spine. I knew clearly at this interaction what he wanted to do and I longed for his embracement as I turned from laying on my left side onto my back.
“I could almost hear you thinking.” was my only response to him as I stared up into the darkness of the room. Most people see darkness has an evil entity, the complete absence of light, but I’ve learned to embrace the darkness. It’s in that darkness that so many of us can be totally honest without the light shining down on us. We are able to open up and bare ourselves without the judgment of light. I don’t see light and darkness as opposites but rather as brothers, both created by our harmonic God. We need them both because they both give us our strengths.
A couple of breaths passed through his lips as he gathered his strength to make his one bold proclamation. “I was thinking about doing this…” were his words as I felt him raise his body over towards mine. I could see his loving face coming closer as our lips touched, sending a bolt of electricity through my entire body. Our lips began to caress one another as my heart attempted to break through my chest. Every nerve in my body was screaming out in excitement as I took in his soft lips. I felt my entire body being pulled towards him, his gravitational pull embracing every particle within my essence. After what seemed like several long moments, he slowly pulled away, and that was the end of the most perfect kiss.
I laid there like a stung, wide eyed, child trying desperately to regain control of my body. My fingers and toes were twitching, my heart beat had moved into my head, I could feel the pulse of my blood in the palm of my hands. The shockwaves of this one perfect kiss was a celebration throughout my body as I tried to catch my breath. I laughed out loud not knowing how he was taking my response but I just couldn’t contain the joy that he had given me. I was there… in joy. That is the only word that I can use to explain those moments… it was joy in my head… my hands… my legs… and my heart…
After a few minutes, while I waited for my body to recover from his shock and awe campaign, I turned to him and embraced him.. Laying my head on his chest while my fingers caressed his soft, silky skin. They followed a trail over his stomach and moved up towards his hard chest where I circled around down his side and began the same path again. I could feel his heart beating as his arm held me tightly. I felt so secure there in his arms, being one of the few times in my life that I’ve actually felt totally and completely safe. We held on to each other for the longest time, connecting in everyway we possibly could.
I began feeling the need to return the joy he had given me and my fingers began to make wider circles on his stomach as I played with the rim of his blue briefs. I could feel his manhood begin to rise in response to me and everything inside me began to light up. My only desire at this moment was to please him and I turned my face towards him as I climbed on top of him. We began kissing hard as our hands caressed each other. Nothing else in this reality existed at this point, we were both in our own perfect world, our own perfect universe, our own perfect love.
I reached down and pulled down his blue briefs and I pushed my own growing manhood hard into his. I took one last look into his eyes as I prepared to taste him. I wanted to show him everything that I could do for him, I wanted him to know how much I cared and loved him, I wanted him to know that there would be nothing but perfect trust and respect between us. Thus, began a journey that had been eight years in the making. A friendship that exploded into something that was so much more… Waking up the next morning in his arms I gave thanks to the saints on what was the first of November and I thanked God for sending me this lion.

HARD TO TRUST

I watched Me die,
Slowly I faded.
Oh simple lie,
Broken and jaded.
Hope leaking fast,
I hide Me from You.
Lessons from past,
Again Déjà vu.
Breaking my ways,
Lacking simple hope.
Eyes to dark days,
On high, I just cope.
Fuck stupid boy,
Worthless attention.
Fuck me the toy,
Lost in addiction.
Faith by the whore,
Caused only by me.
Blood on the floor,
Mary… let it be.
Betrayed by I,
This is my One sin.
Sometimes I die,
A man made of tin.
Leave me alone,
One fucking hour.
True to my tone,
A dying flower.
I will come back,
This always a must.
These things I lack,
I’m just hard to trust.

INTO THE GREEN FIELDS: PART ONE

Enduring a crisis of political identity stands hand to hand with anyone who has ever doubted their own faith. It’s a crisis that penetrates the very core of the individual and clouds the path to hope. To some extent, this is a common occurrence with the general mass and the result of this occurrence is a deep disinterest in the political system. Complaints such as: “I hate politics!”, “Only liars are in the political system”, “My vote doesn’t matter!”, “They don’t know anything about working people!”, are common phrases when an individual begins to question his or her political identity. In general, people fear the unknown and if they can detach themselves from the unknown by building up personal walls against it, then the problem is no longer in plain site. This is not a cure for the problem; for it will eventually manifest itself into hatred for anything political and these individuals will always have a distaste for political conversation and they will do anything to stay away from participating in those conversations.
Another problem that adds insult to injury is the mass media. The media would like for each of us to think that for any given situation there is either a “Solve A” or “Solve B”. They would like for us to think that when we are questioning our own political identity that we are either “Democrat” or “Republican”. Growing up in this social media gives us two options and usually there isn’t room for a third. We live in a society where we embrace absolutes; we were taught to see all things as either good or evil, right or left, full or empty.
So what if I say that not everything in our political system is an absolute? What if I am to say that the only thing that matters in this world is humanity, equality, democracy, and above all else, the protection of this Earth? Politics should be tool to help shape the direction of these important things; not a weapon to use against each other and to satisfy personal agendas that does not include the betterment of all in our society. Politics should be protecting every single citizen of this planet and that these citizens are and always will be equals. Politics should be a tool that spreads true democracy so that every individual has a voice and a choice. Politics should be about protecting the Earth’s natural resources and protecting the environment from the pollutants of ignorance. Politics is an action that is created by the individual and not an “either/or” that many would like us to believe.
This is a series about my journey to find another option to the many pearls that face this planet. It’s a story about my frustrations and doubts about politics and how I lost faith not only in myself but the direction that this country and this planet has taken over the past decade. It wasn’t until I started to look at what was happening to this planet from different perspectives that I actually started to see other options in the political field that best described the type of person that I was and where I wanted to be.
My journey to join the Green Party has been a long one in the making and one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make in my entire adult life. It meant breaking the bonds of childhood teachings and finding my own voice; it meant becoming an individual and stepping away from the loyalties that I felt towards the leaders of my established political party; and most importantly, it meant taking action against ignorance that had become a common threat to Earth and Humanity.
My mother would tell you that I wasn’t a normal child. I don’t think I could have prepared her for the normal boy that she most likely found in her second and third sons. Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy what most other normal boys enjoyed to do like riding bikes and watching Saturday morning cartoons but there was another part of me that wasn’t quite so normal. I remember being in the second grade and the only topic I could think about was the 1988 Presidential Election between Democrat Michael Dukakis and Republican George W. Bush. I had already declared my loyalty to Mr. Dukakis and I was an avid news junkie! I do remember a time or two at the dinner table that my mother would just be sick of hearing about the events of the world and Mr. Michael Dukakis and she would politely tell me to eat my green beans, which by the way, I detested.
I also remember that my bedtime was 10:00pm at this point and this situation would result in a prolong battle with my mother. I insisted that I was “old enough” and that my bedtime should not be until 10:30 so I could watch the 10 o’clock news and catch up on any new developments in the world. She would counter, “Your not staying up late cause you won’t get up for school and the dishes are still dirty!“ One thing my mother is good at is she knows a good deal when she sees one. There would be many times that her answer would be no but she would always leave a doorway open for us. Her telling me absolutely not, but throwing in the fact that the dishes were still dirty would give me motivation to keep those dishes clean in hopes that she would eventually change her answer. On nights that these chores were done I could usually push my bedtime to 10:15 to 10:20. I do remember bringing this argument back up over a period of time with her and most nights she would not relent without some motherly manipulation on her part. I do think however, over a period of time she grew tired of my constant nagging and at some point without any proclamation from her part my bedtime was extended to 10:30. I do think I was doing dishes a lot more at this point and I can‘t help but wonder how much she got out of the silent compromised deal. I always thought my mother would be great in politics even though she never really cared for it and she never understood how and why I dwelled within it. She would eventually become a village council member and a election judge even though it took a lot of arm twisting on the behalf of other people for her to take that step. At any rate, I was very impressed with the simple fact that she relented and dabbled a bit in public life.
A tradition that I have adopted that started the night of the 1988 election and has carried forward to this day is having a map of the United States in front of me while watching election night coverage on the networks. If the democrat candidate won a state then I would color that state blue and if a republican candidate won a state then I would color that state red. The 1988 election saw a lot more red than blue and the only solace I had from that night is the simple fact that red is my favorite color. I have continued this tradition into my adult life and it has come to a point where I will actually decorate my apartment with red and blue balloons and set out two stuffed animals on my television set… one of which is a donkey and the other an elephant. I am simply ecstatic to spend the evening with my friends on the cable news channels which includes the likes of Tom Brokaw, Chris Matthews, the late, Tim Russert, and most stylish, Anderson Cooper. I am just their viewer but I have learned most of what I know about election night from them and I put a lot of stock in their words. I credit Tim Russert in forcing me to examine every political candidate from every angle. Most people would consider my actions on election night to be that of a Class A Nerd… but I don’t care. I enjoy myself and I care to much about this country not to ignore history unfolding before my eyes.
I am an constant worrier. I threw myself into the everyday news making events as a child and I constantly worry about what is happening to our world. The Space Shuttle Challenger exploding on lift off, The Berlin Wall coming down, the genocide in Rwanda, AIDS ravaging parts of the world, people dying from starvation, earthquakes in California, polar bears drowning in the artic; all of these things are issues that I think about daily even has an adult. I constantly wonder why we as a society do not do more to help others and I constantly wonder why I’m not doing enough to help others. The only tactic that I have adopted over the years so everything doesn’t overwhelm me is to take each issue and do something about it, one step at a time. I constantly have to remind myself to lead my example even on the smallest of issues because others will do the same and eventually we will solve the problems that plague our planet and humanity.
I grew up being a Blue Democrat and even today I still have strong loyalties to individuals in the Democratic Party such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter. These individuals had the power to change the course of history and they inspired me as a child. They have my deepest gratitude and respect but they simply were not enough to keep my loyalty to the Democratic Party as a whole. There were several incidents that took place over a course of ten years that brought me to the point where I could no longer trust my own political party. It was these events that made me realize that nothing was black and white and the simple truths that I believe in was only going to be protected by finding a political identity that represented only me. This was the key… I could not be part of a political party… the political party had to be a part of me.

AN INTRUSIVE BITE

Let me make one clear statement: Hickeys are disgusting and vile! I will not entertain the notion of having a hickey anywhere on my body because I truly feel that it’s a violation upon my individuality. The last person to place a hickey on my body literally got punched. I can’t stand the thought of having someone else put THEIR teeth marks on MY skin. I see individuals around me that wear them like badges of honor and the conversations around them are usually fluttering with envy and delight at the sight of them. I simply can’t understand why anyone would want their blood vessels popping from unnecessary force. Just thinking about it now grosses me out.
I know I haven’t always been this way. When I was a teenager, I had my share of hickeys decorating my body like art in a museum but at some point I determined that hickeys were a childish play thing that we used as a tool to develop our rebellion against our own personal authority figures such as our parents. As time goes by and I began to put more confidence in the person that I was becoming, the need to have hickeys simply faded away; the time finally came for me to put away these childish things. I’m not sure when, but at some point thereafter, a hickey became a symbol of dominance and power over another individual and I, being the individualist, resist any type of dominance upon my body and soul. So I say rise up my brothers and sisters and keep control over your own body, it is the one thing that is truly ours and nobody as the power to claim our bodies as their own property. I beg each of you to respect yourselves because we can never really depend on another individual to do those things for us.

UNSENT

I’m writing this letter to you because I feel like I should have been a better role model for you. You came to me once and revealed who you were to me and I treated you like you were nothing more than a simple child. I didn’t see that you were a person trying to figure out who he was or what his place in this world should be. I didn’t listen to you when you tried to speak to me and I allowed so much time to pass before I realized that you were becoming a man. I was so focused on the life of your sibling that I didn’t see that you were reaching out to me because you felt we had something in common. You were right, we did have something in common, and we still do. So now I must start living up to my obligation to you and attempt to influence you towards a direction that is healthy and beneficial in your continued growth in this life. What I am going to tell you is going to hurt you… it will perhaps anger you, but it’s my hope that when you reach through these initial feelings that you will be able to see my perspective and perhaps you will have the ability to make the changes that you desire to make, changes that you need to make.
It simply breaks my heart to see that a person that I care about continue to fall into these cycles of failure. You have clearly become addicted to this lifestyle because I see you thrive to be in a position that creates unnecessary drama and ultimate failure. It saddens me that you have this voice of poetry and conviction but your words are empty and meaningless to those who know you the most. You have an aunt that cares so much about you that she has taken you into her home and she has given you a bed to sleep in and financial faith into your education. For months, all you talked about was going to school and how you were aiming to get your certified nursing certificate, which would begin your pathway to becoming a nurse. We both know that you have a deep desire to help other people and this would have been your opportunity to fulfill that need. However, you sat yourself up to failure. After your aunt paid for your schooling, you decided to sabotage this pathway to success because deep down you didn’t have the self confidence and faith in your own being. When the time came that you needed to take your TB test, you simply missed the test and rescheduled, only to miss it again because you were “too tired”. Convicted from the classroom, you dwelled from one day to the next without any goals and without any passion.
You abandoned a two year relationship because you claimed he treated you badly all the while you dangled yourself in the flirtation of cheating, hoping and praying, that this would allow you some attention from him. You continued to engaged in this back and forth with him and over a period of time it wore you both down so much that there was nothing left to do or say. It seems to those around you that your sole purpose are these childish games and your rewarded by the desires of men only to feel empty again. So here we are, your back together, the same ole, same ole and we both know your going to fuck up or he’s going to fuck up, just so you will have each other’s attention. The constant fighting and the display of daggers is the only thing that keeps you together and it’s the one thing that stands in the way of your happiness.
You told another individual that you were in love with him and that he meant everything to you, and days into the relationship you announced your engagement and started planning for the wedding. Again the cycle continues as you focus on the glitter and the glam and ignore the foundation of how a true relationship develops. You carelessly gave this man your heart and like a naïve rabbit, he allowed you to dangle yourself in front of him while you waited for the next “ordeal” to begin. In his loneliness and his despair, he grasped onto you, ignoring the brutal reality that was coming his way and choosing instead to focus with you on the glitter and the glam. These things however are so short lived and they can only keep your attention for a limited amount of time before you wake up. Then one morning, just a few short months later, when things were mellow and drama free, a switch was turned on inside of you and you told this boy goodbye… cya around… adios… You are now officially bored with this new boy and so you go back to your previous relationship because, like a drug, it keeps you high and more occupied. You would think that this would be a shocking turn of events but we all realized that this was typical you so none of us were surprised. This is just a thing that you do. So now, the new boy is back in the compounds of his loneliness, quietly wondering why all the glitter just suddenly faded away. I implore you not to play with the hearts of men because so many people can get hurt and I’m afraid we won’t know the ripple affects from your actions for quite some time. I will pray the damage is minimal and certain individuals will heal from the scars that you inflicted and I will also pray that you realize the side affects of the actions that you so suddenly jump into.
For so many years you talked about dreams and improving yourself in the light of day but the darkness in your heart controls the actions that simply don’t match what you say. Your priorities crumble as you yearn for a quick fix both emotionally and psychologically and yet you constantly wonder why your not getting anywhere in your life because these cycles keep you going back to the beginning of all of these unhealthy things. Your childhood sucked, that’s all I can say, and it’s not fair that you endured so many bad things, but I seriously think that you must forgive yourself because we both know that you haven’t. Did you hear me on this? You must forgive yourself because like the waters of a baptism, it cleanses the darkness from your heart. Forgiveness is letting go of your contentment as you beg and embrace that “something more”. You need to start focusing on yourself, you need to start being selfish, you need to get yourself from point A to point B because no one is going to be able to do these things for you. It’s okay to be selfish and self focused because I’m telling you right now that if you don’t start respecting yourself, having pride in yourself and most importantly loving yourself then your never going to find anybody that is going to do those same things for you. You can’t expect someone to take care of you if your unable to take care of yourself. I am begging you to look into that mirror, ever so darkly, but then face to face, and see for yourself the type of person that you can be.
I say these things to you not as a teacher and not even as a friend even though I hope that I am both of these things to you. I say these things to you without the thought that I am better than you but rather as your equal. I say these things to you because we simply have a common thread. You saw that one night a long time ago and I see it now. I have experience a lot of things that you have experienced and it took me a very long time to finally get to a point where I could forgive myself and I hope that my own light can offer you some guidance in your journey. We are here for you but only you can make the difference that you desire to make and I will continue to hope and pray that you do.

MILDRED SETTLES: 1932 - 2009

Mildred B. Settles, age 77 of White Hall died Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at the home of her daughter in White Hall. She was born October 13, 1932 in Eldred, the daughter of Arnold and Eva Wiser Schofield. She married William E. Settles in 1950, and he preceded her in death in 1992. She was also preceded in death by her long time companion, Loren Douglas in 2008. She is survived by two daughters, Brenda (Ron) Evans of Lebanon, Oregon, and Debra (Jack) Wahle of White Hall, and a son Stanley (Jeanette) Settles of Sweet Home, Oregon. There are ten grandchildren, Chad, Eric, Joshua, and Jennifer Evans, Tabitha Buhlig, Jackie Wahle, Jason Lee, Danny Cox, Chad Farmer, and Brandie Edgemand, and 13 great grandchildren. She is also survived by five sisters, Peggy Chapman of Nilwood, Shirley Ruyle of Eldred, Judy Beauchard of Greenville, Pauline Ruyle of N. Carolina, and Margaret McKinnon of Hardin, and two brothers, Dale Schofield of Missouri, and Ronald Schofield of Berdan. She was preceded in death by a sister, Ora Flamm, and a brother Frank Schofield. Mildred had been a cook at several restaurants in Grafton for many years. She enjoyed her grandchildren very much. She loved to travel with her sisters, and they vacationed all over the country. Funeral services will be held at 10:00 a.m. Saturday, November 7, 2009 at Airsman-Hires Funeral Home in White Hall with burial in White Hall Cemetery. Visitation will be from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday at the funeral home. Memorials are suggested to the charity of the donor’s choice.