Delirious Love

Love…the ultimate juxtaposition.

It’s reckless. It’s romantic. It’s a pain in the ass. It’s beautiful. It’s exciting. It’s life-changing.

It hurts. It heals. It lifts up and tears down. It builds and rebuilds. It alters your views of reality.

It is magic and momentum. It is a smoldering coal and a burning flame. It is nothing and it is everything.

…but what does all this mean?

Cynics will tell you that love is a farce, a folly of the mind, a drop in the bucket of life. When we are in love, we convince ourselves that it is the end all be all. When love ends, we convince ourselves that we don’t need it. We are reminded of things such as I Corinthians that tells us what real love looks like. We wonder, if love has ended, was it ever really love to begin with?

Love is perhaps one of the most philosophical, unanswerable questions of our existence.

Love is a mystery…an enigma…or is it?

What is at the root of love? What makes love tick? First we must establish what love IS. Is love a feeling? An emotion? A verb? A noun? An adjective?

I am of the belief that love, much like gravity, is a force. You can’t see love, but you can see the effects of love…you can’t see love but you can feel love. It is as much a law as any other natural, physical, energy producing force in the universe. It just exists…love just IS.

My personal belief is that love IS, because God IS. Whatever your concept of God, whether you view God as a person, a being, an entity, or as science itself, God is energy…an unstoppable force.

God IS love.

This is not only a Biblical concept, but it is also true if we are viewing love and God as “concepts” of the mind.

Love is both a noun and a verb. Is it something you feel and something you experience, but it is also something that you do.

Love is something that happens to you and acts upon your heart and soul without your permission. it does not wait until you are ready. It does not have perfect timing. It is not planned or prepared for.

That being said, love is also a choice you must make every single day. You must be upon to love. You must welcome it to receive it. You must choose to love to maintain love, even when it is inconvenient and undesirable.

If you search for love you often cannot find it, but love is all around us in the most obscure places.

Love is the ultimate juxtaposition of ideas and ideals…an oxymoron in its own right.

…and it is the most wonderfully and tragically beautiful of all human experiences.

 

Happy February…month of love.

 

❤ – C₆H₁₂O₆ CN-

 

And Parisewatch continues….

Day Two of the 2012 NHL Free Agent Frenzy is upon us.  On the first day of Free Agency, a total of 65 players signed new contracts.  This does not include players such as Sidney Crosby or Jordan Staal who signed contract extensions with their teams.  Some of the notable transactions from Day 1 include:

-Ray Whitney signing a two year deal with the Dallas Stars.

-Ottawa Senators trade Nick Foligno to the Columbus Blue Jackets in exchange for Defenseman Marc Methot.

-Montreal signs Colby Armstrong and Brandon Prust.  Prust received a 4 year deal worth $2.5 million each year.

– The New Jersey Devils stood pat, but the Islanders signed Matt Carkner, Brad Boyes, but lost P.A. Parenteau who signed a 4 year deal with the Colorado Avalanche.

– To replace Brandon Prust, the Rangers signed Arron Asham to a 2 year contract, which will…

View original post 1,189 more words

Fish Swim in Schools

Recently, I embarked on an adventure to a local Sushi haunt. I frequent this particular establishment with one Miss Kill M. Quickly, a spunky friend of mine with personality to spare. We had a wonderful lunch of freshly made Maki, which we, in the spirit of Oscar Wilde, lavishly over-ordered.  We spent time talking about, what else, but the local inspiration for the illustrious writers of the Jerry Springer Show.  

During our meeting, we also discussed the current job market for educators, as Miss Quickly happens to be such a professional. Part of the reason for this jump in conversation from tawdry to tactful is the fact that my lovely assistant, Mr. Doppelganger, is also such a professional and over the previous weekend, he and I strode arm in arm into the evil realm of constructing the teacher portfolio for the elusive teaching interview. We still continue to be skeptical that the creature known as the “Teaching Contract” actually exists; however, the rumours of sightings are so believable that we must continue our search. We plan on going to Dick’s sporting goods this weekend to get professional tracking equipment.

I don’t know what it was in particular that prompted me to make an inextricable connection between sushi and teaching, but I began to see teaching graduates as little fish….raw and beautiful. These individuals come swimming out of college bright eyed and shiny-scaled, with delusions of grandeur that they will pack up their little nets and with sheer ambition alone, will bump into a Teaching Contract in the pond, stick the net over the Teaching Contract’s head, beat it and drag it off to make a metaphorical dinner out of it. Guess again my little fishes.  In today’s market, the Teaching Contract is nearly a fairytale creature in rural and suburban America, slowly going the way of the Dodo and the Kakapo. Between enormous education cuts, the increase in cyber school enrollment, and the fact that if you are a teacher in certain states you experience the graying teacher phenomenon, where a teacher gets a job and holds onto it tighter than Joe Jonas’s pants, until the teacher is ready to retire. These combining issues = less teaching jobs available every school year, especially for small, rural and suburban school districts. These new teachers are raw and beautiful, full of excitement and fervor and ready to meet the teaching world with a fresh perspective, but when they are forced to endure countless interviews without ever spotting the elusive Teaching Contract, their little nets start to slink back and these fish go running to the local hardware store to get a bigger hammer and a stronger net (aka, graduate school). Now armed with what is sure to catch them the big one, the raw little fishes swim out into the pond and try again, only to find that the qualifying standards to enter the favored feeding area have changed during their time stocking up on high tech equipment, and that they are nowhere closer to finding that Teaching Contract than before, only now they have an enormous sack of debt dragging behind them.  Poor little fish. It is no wonder that some of these fish will call it quits and either move to a different pond in hopes of joining a pond community with a more abundant Teaching Contract supply, or will decide to try their fins at a lake, or an ocean, looking instead for the much sought after Security, using business radar, insurance nets, and sales scopes. Those fish that do decide to stick it out, such as Mr. Doppelganger and Miss Quickly, get mad props from all the other fish in the pond, for they are brave and courageous, and will ultimately succeed in their quest, eventually getting the intangible Teaching Contract in their nets and having a feast of mythic proportions.

Challenge for my readers:

Are any of you going through this same struggle to find that mysterious and obscure Teaching Contract in the muddied waters of education?

If you have found the Teaching Contract, do you have any advice for those little fish still swimming in their schools?

 

Also, please go enjoy some sushi today! I highly recommend Dynamite Roll 🙂

 

❤ – C₆H₁₂O₆ CN-

The Beautiful Eccentric

The Oxford English dictionary defines the word “eccentric” this way:

ec-cen-tric \ik-‘sen-trik, ek-\

Adjective – (of a person or their behaviour) unconventional and slightly strange: he notes her eccentric appearance.

• technical not placed centrally or not having its axis or other part placed centrally: a servo driving an eccentric cam

• (of a circle) not centred on the same point as another.
• (of an orbit) not circular

Noun

• a person of unconventional and slightly strange views or behaviour: he’s seen as a local eccentric

• a disc or wheel mounted eccentrically on a revolving shaft in order to transform rotation into backward-and-forward motion, e.g. a cam in an internal-combustion engine

(Don’t you just LOVE how Brits spell things? I know I do…thank you England, for being awesome)

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines it as this:

ec-cen-tric-

adj.\ik-‘sen-trik, -ek\ – deviating from an established pattern or from accepted usage or conduct

n. – an eccentric person

The Urban Dictionary has about 12 different definitions for the word, noting everything from insanity to being unique and everything in between, with thought to highlighting the interesting correlation between verbiage and monetary affluence. (ie…a poor person exhibiting similar behavior is crazy while a rich person is simply “eccentric”).

Currently I am sitting criss-cross applesauce on a delightfully cushy armchair in a dark corner of a coffeehouse, sipping my deliciously standard skim, double shot caramel latte, sans whipped cream and listening to my traditional eclectic mix of tunage, consisting of everything from Frank Sinatra to Better Than Ezra, Volbeat to Led Zeppelin, Coheed and Cambria to David Bowie, Rusted Root to Magnetic Man, with a nice helping of 90’s jock jams. Pump up the volume indeed.

As I sit here, I am transported to the realm of my personal reality that encourages me to relive the famous song by Corey Hart and lower my 80s-tastic wayfarer sunglasses over my eyes in the already dimly lit room, just because I can.

The accessory was originally built  for the sole purpose of shading the sensitive human eyes from the glare of the not so forgiving solar rays. For some, sunglasses have also become a fashion accessory which can even act as head-wear, much like a headband…ocular safety be dammed. However, for some, sunglasses are a shield. Whether that shield exists to protect the individual from the outside world or serves as an escape depends on the individual in question. In my case, I wear them when I write.

Why?

To me, they are an escape from the real world. Behind these glasses I can exist on my own mental island, immersed in the calm existence that allows me to be the most pure version of myself. I can sit criss-cross applesauce in my armchair, sipping my latte, whirring on the high of caffeine, music and thousands of perfect little black letters crawling across the blank page to form beautiful words. I feel like a secret architect, erecting awkward monuments of thoughts. Nothing can stop me or hinder my progress, nothing can interr-…oh, there’s my second latte…be right back.

Okay, now that’s out of the way, so let us return to the topic at hand…the word eccentric. I suppose that there are some that would look at me in passing and with their mental sharpie, write a nice little “eccentric” scrawl above my head as they go about their daily routine. Perhaps more likely would a be an odd look of disdain, shifting me off as some crazy coffeehouse nut job contributing to the downfall of modern society as they hurriedly grab their coffee on their way back to the office to submit their TPS reports.

There are two types of people in the world…those that disapprove of unconventional behavior, and those who appreciate it. I, for one, relish it. It adds spice to life. It takes what can slowly become soulsuckingly mundane and creates a lovely little sweet spot, guaranteed to create a curl at the corner of the most tightly pursed lips, even if it’s in mockery.

Some of the brightest contributions to modern society have been supplied by those who were considered by most to be slightly askew.

Thomas Alva Edison, inventor of modern uses of electricity, such as the light bulb, a man who changed the course of contemporary life and energy resources, ignored the need for sleep, food and many other human necessities due to a feeling of loss of productivity to lesser activities (Santillano, 2009).

Leonardo DiVinci, true renaissance man, painter of some of the most interesting, highly revered and highly debated works of art in the world (The Mona Lisa, The Last Supper) and the developer of the widely referenced Vitruvian Man, also refused sleep as well as being a devout vegetarian and fierce procrastinator (Santillano, 2009).

Ludwig van Beethoven, composer of hauntingly beautiful musical compositions which practically define synergy, had such an incredible temper that he could not keep house staff as a result of  throwing such frightening tantrums, and he regularly wore dirty clothes until they rotted away (Santillano, 2009).

Nikola Tesla, physicist and engineer responsible for the discovery and invention of nuclear power, robotics, and radar was a celibate in love with a Pigeon, and had severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, especially concerning numbers, so much so that he refused to stay in a hotel room that was not divisible by the number 3 (Bayne, 2008).

Pythagoras, a Greek mathematician of grand proportions, who fathered the discovery of mathematical patterns in nature, culminating in the creation of trigonometry and the Pythagorean theorem, as well as sparking the birth of physics, began his own religious sect based on the belief that beans (not metaphorical or metaphysical beans…but real, plant them in the ground and grow them beans) are evil (Bayne, 2008).

Tycho Brahe, a man renowned for his accuracy of celestial measurement, minus the helpful hand of modern astronomical telescopic technology. His measurement was so accurate that it facilitated the discovery of planetary motion along with his assistant Johannes Kepler. This same man, however, kept the full-time employment of a little person whom he dressed up as a clown and paid to sit, for no apparent reason other than personal appeal, underneath the table during dinner parties (Bayne, 2008).

*Note: As a bit of an eccentric myself, I have to, at the very least, respect his commitment to his own quirks; BUT as person who has a genuine fear and repulsion of clowns, what reason could you really have for that kind of nonsense? None.

Oscar Wilde, one of the most venerated authors of the Victorian era, writing such famous literary works as “The Importance of being Earnest” and “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, was a paramount of moral liberalism in a time of moral conservativism and a contemporary libertarian anarchist. Despite his contributions to the art of literature, he lived his life in flamboyance, being the very portrait of a libertine, who was often witnessed walking down the street with a lobster on a leash and was jailed for sodomy during a time when participating in a homosexual relationship was a considered a crime against the state (Frater, 2009).

Albert Einstein, probably one of the most prominent, renowned scientists of our time, preeminent in his contributions to modern physics including the theory of relativity (E=MC²), named Person of the Century in TIME magazine and winner of the Nobel Prize, his name has become synonymous with the word “genius”. He is also one of the most famous cases of assumed Asperger’s Syndrome, part of the Autism Spectrum. He had no social skills to speak of, regularly picked up cigarette butts off the ground to smoke, endlessly ranted about the mathematical properties of mundane objects such as soap bubbles, and would deliberately sail in windless weather “for the challenge”.

Along with these are many other mental and behavioral wonders of the world:

Stephen Hawking, Michelangelo di Lodovici Buonarrati Simoni, Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, Pablo Picaso, Salvidor Dali, Dennis Rodman, Edgar Allen Poe, John Lennon, John Nash, Kim Peek (better recognized as the inspiration for the character Raymond “Rainman” Babbitt), Max from Where the Wild Things Are, Lars from Lars and the Real Girl…

Artists, Writers, Musicians, Athletes,  Scientists, Mathematicians, Fictional Characters…you. Me.

Eccentricity has existed since the beginning of time, and its God’s little way of injecting some whimsy into the sometimes stagnant attitude of a society built around norms. After all, God is anything but normal. God defies all understanding. God is beautiful. An eccentricity in His and Her (since God is to sex and gender what Schrodinger’s cat is to life and death) own right, God dictates a world that deserves, nay demands some eccentricity, in order to display the true extent and beauty of creation.

 

Challenge for my readers:

Embrace a little eccentricity of your own today. Wear mismatching socks…hell, wear mismatching shoes. Wear some of the obnoxious blue eye shadow your grandma use to wear up to her eyebrows. Sing in the elevator…when you’re not alone. Walk down the sidewalk backwards. Speak in one word sentences for a day. Use a walking stick.

Whatever you choose to do, commit to it, if just for one day, and ENJOY it. You may feel silly, but hey, that’s the point isn’t it? 🙂

 

Leave me a comment to tell me what you did to embrace eccentricity today.

What makes YOU a beautiful eccentric?

 

❤ C₆H₁₂O₆ CN-

Greetings and salutations…

Hello. Seems rather trite, doesn’t it?

Be that as it may, this is my introductory post, so I might as well say hello, right? 🙂

Allow me to introduce myself. Here in the blogosphere, I will be known as Sugar Cyanide. Good to meet you.

As a spontaneous idealist, I revel in unpredictable, interesting twists and turns of the current of life. I rarely get a chance to be spontaneous or ideal in the real world, hence why I have ventured, finally and at the request of many, into the vivacious world of blogging. It is only here, in the online world, that I am able to release the words and thoughts continuously dancing on the tip of my tongue and in the recesses of my overly energetic neurons (They often have too much coffee for their own good). I, like many, have been forced to march to the beat of the real world, a square peg shaven down to fit in a round hole, out of necessity for survival (damn Darwin & progress to hell). I suppose I could rebel and all that hipster nonsense, however I am wise enough to realize that only works temporarily and at the end of that rope you are left in a rut of denial and grasping at proverbial straws to eek out some kind of meager existence. So I suppose there is the me that exists in the real world, a “realist’ that understands the necessity of “conformity” in order to traverse this world of agents, and then there’s the me that exists underneath, at the core of it all…the spontaneous idealist…running the show from behind the wizards curtain, undermining the system one sarcastic witticism at a time. 🙂

I plan on attempting to blog daily, or as often as possible, because the fact of the matter is: I love to write. Writing is my connection to my inner Indigo. Words are my zen, my muse, my outlet…they are my expression and my art. I plan on writing whatever pops into my cluttered head: observations, obsessions, analyses, opinions, and recommendations. I also plan on occasionally writing in themes, or series…according to my reader requests.

Disclaimers:

I AM a Lutheran, so there are times when I WILL post from a Christian perspective. This is not my way of preaching nor will this be a primarily religiously based blog, but will occasionally serve as a method of sharing my views and opinions concerning my religious life and underpinnings. I do want to state very clearly, however, that this religious label in no way dictates or restricts my writing and blogging, nor my topics. I also want to state that I WILL approach most posts from a generic stance, and WILL often approach things from several angles, simply because I love playing “devil’s advocate”. Some may call me a “fence-sitter”, but I prefer to look at it as having a lusciously open mind, which is a wonderfully healthy pacifist practice. Everyone should try it.

So, here I go, venturing in the world of blogging. Welcome to my spectacularly chaotic ramblings. Enjoy!

❤ C6H12O6 CN-