On Losing Best Friends and Salsa Dancing

To say that I'm going to miss you terribly

will be the biggest understatement that has ever left my lips.

To say that I might cry when you leave

is the purest truth I've ever told. 

I wish you weren't moving so far away.

We met in a Salsa class;

I was introduced to you by your sister

who came to me imploring me to dance with you in proxy of someone who had to ditch for some reason.

From there it's all history.

From the moment we met you enchanted me

and I have to admit.

I totally had the biggest crush on you.

I couldn't help it.

You were just too beautiful.

But your interests were in someone else

so we settled into an instantaneous close friendship. 

For reasons I still don't quite understand

we've always clicked.

Always gotten it.

Always understood. 

You trusted me without knowing why

while I was still a stranger to you.

We told everything there was to know about ourselves

as if we were trying to make up for lost time

because we'd just always been best friends

and never knew it.

We could talk about absolutely everything

and absolutely nothing forever it seemed : )

And we laaaaaaaaauuuuuuugggghhhhhhhhheeeedddddddd.

Oh, did we laugh.

We laughed until

We couldn't stand

We couldn't cry anymore

We couldn't breathe anymore!

We haven't ever really stopped laughing

and to this day

there's no one I laugh with more.

Smiles and chuckles of every kind are never scarce whenever we speak.

Once we get started, there's no stopping us.

Our simultaneous laughter only makes the laughing harder

until it's a near impossibility that we'll find composure again.

I will miss going to your house. I will miss your family.

I will miss spontaneous hang out sessions

And your Puerto Rican slang lessons.

I will miss your honesty and your endearing eyes.

I will miss your quick wit and impersonations of the people you tell stories about

Most of all I will miss being in the presence of one who is willing to share all of the best and the worst moments of their life with me.

I can’t tell you how glad I am that we met that night

That warm night at CHS in the cafeteria.

I can’t explain just how much you mean to me.

You are one in 7 billion and I hope that we’re friends for as long as we live. 

Child’s Play

Child’s Play

“Play with your dolls nicely,” mommy says.

 “Don’t tear them up or you won’t get any new ones for Christmas,” she advises.

 “Santa doesn’t like it when you break things he worked hard on. How would you like it if I went around breaking the things that you made at school?”

My mommy always says that dolls are made to be pretty, but whatever happened to the toys belonging to me?

 After Santa gives them away, they aren’t his anymore.

I can do whatever I want with them.

 Santa’s probably too fat to catch me if I ran.

Even if Santa didn’t ever give me anything else ever again, I’d just get it from daddy. I break them, he buys them.

I love to play with my dolls, I rip their clothes and draw on them with markers I like using blue and pink and purple and green and red. I draw lots of different kinds of polka dots on them. 

Sometimes they’re big; sometimes they’re really small.

I run, hit, throw, and drag them. I scream and laugh and howl and spin around and mommy says I shouldn’t but I don’t listen to her cause daddy never does.

Sometimes when mommy’s not looking, I make marks on my dolls with the candles that make the house smell good.

After you pour wax in their hair though sometimes they don’t smell nice. I don’t know why when I pour stuff that smells good on something be pretty it makes such a bad smell.

Mommy yells at me when she finds my dolls. I don’t care though because daddy doesn’t care when mommy yells at him so I don’t care either.

I have so much fun! She always tries to ruin my fun. Her and daddy play all the time.

 Daddy calls mommy “baby doll” and “doll face.” Mommy always sends me to my room when they play though. I hear mommy and daddy laughing and screaming and having fun just like I do!

 

She says the reason I can’t play with them is because I have to go to sleep. I hate going to sleep. It’s no fun.

Last night I was tired because, at school, we went to the zoo for a field trip! We saw all kinds of animals and they said that the animals were from all over the world.

Mommy says I’m weird cause I like bugs and my favorite is the praying mantis.

We saw monkeys! They jumped around and made funny faces and loud noises and we all copied them and chanted, “Monkey see monkey do!” It was almost as much fun as playing with my dolls.

When I got home, I was so tired I couldn’t play. I took my bath and combed my hair and mommy tucked me in like she always does.

Mommy and daddy started playing again and they were really loud. I was so angry because they wouldn’t stop playing; so I went outside to tell them to stop yelling so loud so I could go back to sleep! I know that playing is fun, but even I know that you don’t play at night loud when people sleep!

I swung open my door and stomped all the way down the hallway. They must be having a lot of fun. There were handprints on the walls.

It made me mad cause Mommy won’t let me paint my walls. I stopped when I saw her.

She was crying. She held out her hand and screamed, “Stop! Go back upstairs Alexia!”

Daddy looked at me slowly and snarled like one of the jackals we saw at the zoo, but Daddy was much scarier than the jackals. “Look here doll face, what a nice surprise.”

I stared at Mommy not knowing what to do. She didn’t look like she used to; she looked like one of my raggedy dolls.

It scared me. I couldn’t see one of her eyes. I didn’t want to see Daddy’s eyes.

Daddy had Mommy by her hair. She kept reaching for me.

She was crying so hard that it made me cry too. I didn’t want her to cry. I thought her and Daddy were playing. I started to go to her, but Daddy was there and he knocked me down.

She jumped and cried out with pain when I hit the ground.

 I cried harder. I cried for Mommy, I cried for me too. Daddy let go of her hair and Mommy collapsed for a little while.

Daddy took a step toward me.

He called me baby doll. Mommy didn’t like that and screamed something I didn’t understand. I covered my eyes with my fingers and shrank.

The screaming stopped. The quiet felt bad.

Daddy picked me up. He threw me over his shoulder. He called my baby doll again.

He asked me if I wanted to go play.

 I didn’t.

I kicked and screamed. He wouldn’t drop me, I only made him mad.

He dropped me at the top of the stairs. Daddy grabbed my hair and pulled really hard.

Mommy got up and Daddy let me go. I didn’t want him to hurt Mommy so I ran to the table and grabbed one of the candle glasses. Mommy had lit them before dinner. I called, “Daddy” as loud as I could and threw the candle.

It hit him in the chest. The wax splashed all over his face and he fell down the stairs. The bad silence came back again. I ran to Mommy.

Mommy gave me the biggest hug I ever got. She squeezed me til I couldn’t breathe.

Daddy didn’t get up. Lots of people came to the house. They took Daddy away. Mommy held my hand. It hurt cause the candle I picked up was really hot.

Mommy had to get bandages put on my hands. I couldn’t play with my dolls for a while.

After Mommy took my bandages off she asked me what I wanted to do with my hands.

I went in my room, I gathered my dolls, and I threw them away.

To Those That Struggle Too

I reread the first and caught inspiration again. This one is a little more hard hitting than the first, though they start off the same. It's meant to strike a nerve. It's what I wish someone had said to me when I was going through a crucible.

To those that struggle with issues they have been afraid to come out of or acknowledge, now is the best time to go ahead and come out.

Saving what you can do today for tomorrow is just justification for your fear.

Your apprehension is your perpetual downfall.

Your hidden issues do nothing but eat at your heart like tape worms. They suck out all of the things that make your life healthy and good.

To all of those like me who have struggled with this faulty human flesh, face that thing that terrifies you and rise to your potential. You hinder yourself by keeping secrets. It’s just a matter of time before they come out despite your efforts or kill you.

You will unwillingly and subconsciously kill your relationships, your goals, break your own spirit and eventually self-destruct because you refuse to confront that skeleton in your closet that you’ve gotten so used to that you’ve learned to ignore it.

Your secret skeletons will kill you piece by piece until you are just another empty, emaciated skeleton waiting to be shoved into your loved ones’ closets for shame.

If they are the good kind of family they will never give up on you but they will suppress you nonetheless just as you suppressed your issues not because they are ashamed of you, but because they are ashamed that they couldn’t help you.

If they are foolish, they will not only suppress you into the dark corners of their minds but they will forget you completely for shame because they misinterpreted your struggle and your pain for being too lazy to pick yourself up and stop defacing the family name.

Come out and face your fears or risk slipping into dankness of cobwebbed gray matter with only calcified consciousness for conversation partners. Rage against the twilight your secrets are shrouded in.

Should you choose not to, a caveat is there to greet you at the door to the closet you’re about to be stuffed in. Her only job is to welcome you with a smile and an echoing,

“Congratulations, you failed before starting.” “Congratulations, you’re wasting everybody’s God given time because you’re taking up our head space and worrying us to death since we care so much for your wellbeing.” “Congratulations, welcome to the closet, smell that stagnated air borne by secrets.” “Take a deep breath, congratulations; you’re now breathing to death.”

To those that struggle, do not lose hope. I’ve been there.  The fact that you struggle means that you’re not someone else’s skeleton yet. So, clean the skeletons out of your own closet now, because when you do, like I did, you’ll discover that your fear of coming into light is a lot less daunting that your fear of staying in darkness.

You Know You're a Speechie When...

You know you're a speechie when...

1. You realize that you are apart of the unofficial fraternity of the coolest geeks on the planet.
2. You discover that the skills you've acquired have a potential shelf life of a thousand lifetimes.
3. You unconsciously begin to speak with a conviction that few have and find yourself no longer taking pleasure in trivial conversation.
4. You realize that the new found eloquence of your mind and your mouth will buy you more opportunity than all the money you can earn in the thousand life times of your skill set's shelf life combined.
5. You find your mind open and your heart receptive to all people, most concepts, more understanding, a little criticism, fewer judgments, and no tolerance policies for living in mediocrity.

This is how you know that you are a philosopher of the common era.

A lover of knowledge with an incessant thirst for wisdom: The discernment to know how and when to apply that knowledge to actions resulting in a life of purpose.

These are the tell tale signs of the movers and shakers

The civilly disobedient rule breakers

The individuals you put on your "people to watch" lists

The few that witness the awesome and instead of saying "I wish", make note of their awe stricken state, and let their hearts make manifest future success with a resounding, "I'll do that too one day."

An Unexpected Lesson, A Satisfying Day

With each day I attempt to glean a bit of wisdom or knowledge from something that happened in order to make it a day that I deem worthwhile. I want to take something away from all of my experiences and on days when I do not feel I've succeeded I feel as though I've wasted 24 hours of my precious, God given time. I almost consider days like this sinful because I only have a little time and I cannot get it back when wasted. 
Today was one of those wasted days until around 7 pm. I got a call from a friend asking a small favor. After courtesies I asked how she was doing and the conversation turned to talk of boredom and opportunity. She, being from the city, was incredibly bored with our lackluster surroundings. I was the opportunist. The city in which we currently live is small and has the cultural diversity of a sinkhole, but where there is lack of eventfulness and stimulation, opportunity arises. In cities like Chicago, there is incredible opportunity for entertainment and exchange/interaction of ideas. There is always mental stimulation. When that is taken away, there is a door opened that breathes whispers of change and chance for creation. Where there is lack, there is an occasion worth taking advantage of to fill a void with one's own ideas without competition or comparison. Just as in terrestrial drought, starvation of the mind is debilitating and can have long lasting side effects. Filling such a void through creative means not only makes for a much needed metaphysical precipitation, but it demands an instigation of novel and unique culture if the creative solution can remain in an atmosphere of maintenance. In such a case, the drought becomes insignificant in the wake of earnest minds bringing their own precipitation to water the sprouting idea.
 Having grown up in cultural desolation, I realized this truth beforehand, but what I gleaned from her contribution was that my depravity had become a pathogen of thought. It consumed the minds of the vast majority of people I interacted with and it had been in my system long enough to blind me. I attempt to be open and non-judgmental but my environment forbade me from recuperating from my disease. I felt convicted, realizing that I had committed a crime which most in my environment share guilt for. I so wish that my judgment had not been quick. She reminded me to be careful. She reminded me of something that I've said myself. Most people do the best they can with what they've been given: the actions they take, just manifestations of their personality and learned responses to external stimuli. Whether those responses are right or wrong is of little importance, the significance lies in the fact that most people feel that they have to behave in that certain way, they consciously or unconsciously expect a particular outcome because of their action, and they either believe they are correct in their justification without a shadow of doubt, or they see no other options. 
This reality hit me hard enough to take me aback and make my consciousness aware of my hypocrisy. I, who tell others not to judge, passed judgment too quickly and laughed at those who more than likely are doing the best they know how with the hand they've been dealt. Instead of ridicule, my reaction should have been to ask why. 
Why did they do what they did and what has happened in their lives to teach them that their rationale was sound? Ignorance is never a laughable subject in any context. React with intelligence and refrain from jest. Educate instead with the light of perspective and knowledge passed their ignorance taking into consideration that someone loved you enough to educate you in the same way. Let not knowledge be confused with intellect and become a denominator of people into groups of exclusivity. Erase your boundaries and realize that everyone has something that THEY can teach YOU.

I Think It's Funny

Life sometimes hands you an amalgamation of situations and you honestly have to sit back and reevaluate them with that 20/20 hindsight thing, that everyone desperately wishes were clairvoyance, and laugh. 

So, here's the beginning of a list of things (mostly events) that in retrospect make me laugh:

The final weeks of my junior year, I finally figured out that the chant (Call) P-I-R (Response) A-T-E together spells P-I-R-A-T-E lol. Took me 3 years to figure that out for some reason. I always thought that the PIR part of the chant stood for performance-in-the-round, a term that any self respecting speechie in the state of Illinois would recognize at the drop of a hat. (For those non speechies who are reading this, Performance-in-the-round is an IHSA group event performed at state series competition alongside the 14 Individual Events categories.)

Speaking of 14, the day before my 14th birthday my mother almost felt the compulsion to kill me :) I, being the occasionally impulsive person that I am, decided that it would be ok to disappear for about an hour without telling anyone that I was leaving the house. Of course this decision did not sit well with my parents. My mother was on the verge of calling the police when she called my dad at work. My  dad, being the ridiculously awesome person he is, advised my mom to check at my neighbor's house before calling the police. Of course that's where I was. I enjoy the conversations I have with my neighbors, what can I say?! Anyway, as I was walking out of my neighbor's front door exchanging final guffaws and chuckles with my friends , my mother was barreling across the street in a state of panic that can only be described as a justified, maternal worry induced panic attack from hell seeing as she had been clueless to my location for the passed hour or so. Being a good mother, she quickly assumed the ridiculous worst case scenario, that I was of course dead or kidnapped, to be the ONLY alternatives to my not being at my neighbor's house. Thus, the fact that she was about to go into a stress induced coma was completely reasonable. When our eyes met, I saw  her face soften. Soon after that, whatever that soft thing behind her eyes was snapped was snapped in half by a warmongering, bloodthirsty, she-hulk commando and  the death grimace of a mother feeling her 3 days of labor might all be in vain soon reared it's ugly head. I knew that my life was in danger. She lunged at me with the force of a 1000 remembered labor contractions propelling her hands straight at my head. I took of with the force of a thousand screaming little girls propelling me towards my room, where I could lock the door. On the way to my room I cut my legs in the thorn bush I ran through, but I made it in one piece. After my dad got home my parents isolated themselves in their room for the rest of the night. They were so mad they barely spoke to me. They were angry mostly because I had scared them so badly. I can't blame them for withholding my presents from me on my birthday or not holding back as much as they usually did for my birthday wake up spanking hahaha. I definitely learned my lesson.

Squirrel Hockey is probably one of the most intense sports unknown to most of mankind haha. A squirrel managed to break into our house one day through our chimney. He got the shock of his life  when my parents, my aunt and I resorted to trying to incrementally shoo the squirrel out the door by passing it from one person with a broom and or billiards cue stick to another like a hockey puck. We didn't succeed. The squirrel displayed his final act of defiance after over an hour of chasing by climbing up into the coils of our refrigerator and refusing to move. Feeling defeated, my mom, my aunt and I decided to give up. Then my dad picked up the refrigerator and put it outside for the night for the squirrel to take his time in climbing out triumphant.

These are just a few of the many humorous tales in the life and times of Josh Magee. More to come soon. 

America the Beautiful part 1/50

Traveling is like a good song on a bad day. 


I love driving through all of the states, watching how the land changes,


Feeling effervescent about making the transition of attitude between each one.

I haven't been to many out of the fifty, but each one has it's own separate personality yet and still they all have a subtle continuity that weaves them all together into the tapestry that is this country.


 I plan to visit every single one of them eventually. It may take me quite awhile to finish this series seeing as I plan on writing about all 50 states but eventually. It'll happen.


Circumstance has lead me to Wisconsin and I must comment on my perception of her persona. 


Wisconsin is so..... sweet.
Sweet,


Sweet like,


 The tiniest drop of honey on your tongue,


Like a cup of milk in the morning,


Like having a glass of water and feeling it travel all the way down and settle in your stomach, 


When your body is that fresh linen out of the dryer warm and the water is sooooooooo cool;


 Not ice cold, but just cool enough that your breath condenses and floats out of the glass while you drink.


There must grow fields of red poppies on the far side of some hill I couldn't see over 


Or they must be scattered throughout all the gardens there, 


Hidden among the brightest flowers so as no one will notice their hypnotic aura.


Wisconsin greets you kindly with a graceful smile and an extended hand. 


Her skin is soft and cool to the touch.


She glows with a translucence that allows one to observe her apparent vitality and undying loyalty to those who choose to befriend her.


I plan on visiting her often in the future.