No Shave November in Ten Pictures

In order to properly document No Shave November, I've taken a picture every couple days to show the slow transition into The Land of the Beard.  Also (to avoid the comments I'll inevitably receive) you simply cannot smile when taking beard pictures.

November 1st:

November 4th:

November 8th:

November 12th:

November 15th:

November 17th:

November 19th:

November 22nd:

November 25th:

November 30th (the comparison):

Final Thoughts of a Dying Man

Spending day after day learning about medical conditions, diseases, infections, and the like it's extremely easy to become a hypochondriac.  I have a particularly bad case.  Several nights ago I had convinced myself that I was on the verge of a catastrophic cerebrovascular accident (stroke).  Sharp pain was shooting down my entire left side.  Normally, I can talk myself out of it.  I've become a seasoned pro at fighting my mind's natural urge to blast into full on freak out mode.  Rarely, I'm too convinced.  Unable to quell my worries with simple facts, the immune system of my psyche produced a hypersensitivity reaction of acute anxiety.  I laid down in bed, sure that it was my last night.

Laughable, I know.  For all of you "normal" people out there reading this, many others struggle self diagnosis like this.  (Practical advice for any other freaks like me: Google is not your friend...  Maybe I'll create a post on this later).  Either way, I was hooked.  I knew my blood pressure was through the roof.  I kept getting up to go to the bathroom, justified my choice with "I need more water" and checked for facial drooping, etc.  Eventually, I laid down for good.  "Maybe I'll just go in my sleep?"  I thought.  No one's going to be there to rush me to the emergency room when it happens.  I'm not going to be cognizant enough to wake Cody up.  (I hope that there's at least one out of ten people reading this are thinking "Hey, it's cool.  I do that too!" while the other nine laugh!)

So now I need you to put yourself in my shoes.  However ridiculous you find the circumstance.  I'm actually dying.

I gave it some serious thought.  Tonight would be my last night alive.  What do you even do?  I grabbed my phone and began typing a note.  What would I want my last words to be?  How would I want to be remembered?  I started by telling all the people I loved them that I did... and then I stopped.  Why do people do that?  You see it in movies all the time...  "Tell my family I love them."  You shouldn't have to do that.  You should tell them every day.  People that you truly love should already know that you do.  My brisk typing came to a sudden halt.  I stared at the screen.  "Are you sure you want to delete this note?"  Boom.  It was already gone.

What would I write?  Who would it be for?  What would everyone say.  Again the brisk typing commenced...  Frivolously fighting to pen the final footnote of my life.  And then I stopped again.  And like the first, it was gone.  Tomorrow I wouldn't reread this.  Tomorrow I wouldn't hear what everyone thought about it.  Tomorrow didn't exist.

People tend to venerate a person's last words.  Almost as if they had more meaning than everything else they said.  Forgetting the bad and remembering only the good, these people are held up as immovable and unblemished monuments pointing us toward ideals.  It inevitability happens.  It happens to everyone.  I wanted mine to be my last thoughts.  Flawed but, real.  I began to write my last thoughts.  They were for me.  No one else.  I put my phone down and the night blurred into darkness as I slipped off into sleep.

Sun beamed into my window.  I opened one eye and squinted into the glistening sunshine.  Tomorrow had come.  Grabbed my phone to see what time it was... and the words hit me right between the eyes:

I wish I invested more time on things that mattered.  Time is fleeting.  You can never get back.  It is invaluable but it but everyone spends it.  From some it slips away.  For others it craws. You can't catch it and it stops for no man.  Moments of clarity must be met with years of consistency to yield the fruit of success.  Don't waste your moments.  Don't waste your years.  No one knows how few they have until they're gone.

"It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will take it to heart." - Ecclesiastes 7:2

The City of the Sun

Sirens wail.  Horns honk.  A man is screaming a block down.  The thick smog of cigarette smoke pervades the air with fumes of public transportation rising above man's city.  Thousand upon thousands of people push past one another as the tall towers of human accomplishment rise above this iron fortress.  Made of metal, fast as lightning, loud as thunder, with air thickened by smoke, a glance in any direction is met with the mind of man.  Any direction but one.

I walk out of the deep and darkened cement tunnels of the subway and look up.  All of the accomplishments of humanity melt to nothing.  Free of man's mind, his failures, his shortcomings.  Far above.  Untouched.  Soaring seemingly infinitely above the tallest tower.  The sky is crystal blue.  I look North and the scene is poetic.  Like a plain paper highlighted gleaming bright, the east facing Market Street has been illuminated like a glowing red fire.  The other lights, man's lights are not paled in comparison, but seemingly absent.  They all stop speaking and stand silent in front of their king.  The Sun.

Many people have lived in this cement fortress for their whole lives never experiencing the escape from man.  I walk toward Market Street, stepping into this warm and true light.  My vision explodes gloriously white.  The tall towers of the city spring branches and the pavement becomes soft and green.  The bustle of the city fades into near silence as the crisp fall mountain air is clouded only by my breath in front of me.  A slight breeze haplessly tugs at the fire yellow leaves which silently fall to the forest floor.  A young doe moves along a whispering creek bed as I silently watch the symphony of the mountains.

All is still.  All is right.  Nothing defiled.  Not a man in sight.  For this is true beauty.  And it exists fully without him.

I step out of the sun.  A horn blasts and two men are yelling.  The sewer pours out polluted steam.  

I want to bring all these people to where they are not.  The city outside this metropolis.  A city which is vibrant.  A city full of life.  A city apart from man.  A city how it was suppose to be.  The true city.  The first city.  The City of the Sun.

Unseen but, binding thread of Noah's "Notebook"

In the world of movies, there is absolutely nothing that is worse intellectual junk food than romances and romantic comedies.  The rich and full romantic flavor is incredible to ingest but, like anything that tastes good, is awful for us.  Our emotional cardiovascular system is left weak and prone to heartbreak when real relationships prove to be less cliche, less romantic, less trustworthy, and more hurtful.  All this being said, I admittedly thoroughly enjoy watching these movies and have no intention of stopping any time in the near future.  Asked to write a blog post about "The Notebook", I thought I'd take this opportunity to point out a subtle but deeply moving thread that binds Noah's notebook together.

"The Notebook" is not a complicated story.  It's simple.  The entire plot can be summarized in three sentences (and is in the opening lines of the film), "I am nothing special; just a common man with common thoughts, and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who's ever lived: I've loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough."  Noah's undying love for Allie makes the movie worth watching.  From beginning to end, he never quits.  There is nothing too strong, nothing to awful, nothing that can get in the way of his faithful love.  Each moment is dense with meaningful quotes, not one word placed next another without a reason.

Keeping this in mind, one of the most memorable moments in the movie is when Noah and Allie go to the beach.  Allie runs into the water after a flock of seagulls and turning to Noah says, "Do you think in an another life, I could have been a bird?"  It seems like a weird question to ask.  At first it seems like she's just joking with him but, she starts repeating, "Say I'm a bird!" and runs into his arms.  Noah finally concedes, "You're a bird."
"Now say you're a bird too."
In this moment we can see Noah's heart.  "If you're a bird, I'm a bird."
The significance of these words are far more than they appear in this twenty second scene.  I'd like to go back to the beginning of the story and show you the deeper meaning.  The thread that strings Noah's notebook together.

Remember the opening scene of the movie.  A man, who we could assume to picture Noah, paddling out on a lake at sunrise.  As the sun dispels the darkness on the water, a group of white birds jump from the water and into the sky.  They soar over the man's head and climb up above the water toward the sun.  We see from behind them as their wings slowly lift them toward a window where their reflection reveals an aged Allie watching their morning flight.




If we continue through the movie, we next find the birds in the beach scene I already described:


"If you're a bird, I'm a bird."


Allie and Noah don't see each other for seven long years.  When Allie returns, she finds that Noah has built the house exactly as he had promised her.  Upon returning to the house at Noah's request, he says he has something to show her.


Noah brings Allie to see a group of swans.  Although the most memorable scene in the movie follows this, the conversation Noah has with Allie at the beautiful bird filled lake lays the perfect backdrop:

Allie: It's like a dream.
Noah: Do you want to feed them?
Allie: Yeah.  What are they all doing here?
Noah: I don't know.  They're suppose to migrate back down south.  
Allie: They won't stay here?
Noah: No.  They'll go back where they came from...

In another life, Allie was a bird.  All Noah ever wanted was to be with her.  These three scenes show us the heart of a man who spent many long hours missing a girl.  A man who wrote her every day for a year.  If she was a bird, he wanted to be a bird.  If she was gone, he wanted to be where the birds were.  Noah had realized his bird had returned but, didn't know why.  She wasn't suppose to be here.  He knew she, in all likelihood, wouldn't stay.  All he could do was enjoy the time he got to spend with her while he had the chance.

The story only begins where the movie leaves us.  Noah's bird doesn't go back to where she came from.  She stays with him.  We can assume they lived a happy and full life together.  The heartbreaking reality sets in at the end of their lives.  Allie is taken from Noah once again.  It is no longer money, time, and people that separate the two but, the fading memory of Allie.  She writes "The Notebook" as her parting gift to Noah.  "Read this, and I will return to you."  Just like the swans on Noah's lake.

Chronologically, Noah reads the timeless story of his love at the end of their lives.  The words he used to win her have proven steadfast and true through all of their years: "So it's not gonna be easy. It's going to be really hard; we're gonna have to work at this everyday, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, everyday. You and me... everyday."  And just like a bird making it's last trip home, Allie returns to Noah for the last time.  Neither has stopped loving the other with every fiber of their being.  Noah gets ready for her to fly away but, this time, she's not leaving alone.

Allie: Do you think our love, can take us away together?
Noah: I think our love can do anything we want it to.

The last scene of the movie stands apart from the rest.  A simple story but, a timeless one.  Allie had left and this time, Noah wasn't left behind.  We can see their birds fly off into the sunset.




"Summer romances begin for all kinds of reasons, but when all is said and done, they have one thing in common. They're shooting stars, a spectacular moment of light in the heavens, fleeting glimpse of eternity, and in a flash they're gone."

"This isn't flying. It's falling, with style."

Toy Story is one of my favorite movies.  Made for kids yet, bringing out the child in all of us, the movie makes us laugh, worry, and root for the characters as if we were there.  We can't help but relate to the talking toys, fully bringing us into our childhood years when "playing pretend" could take us anywhere.  From Woody to Mr. Potatohead, from Rex to Bo-peep, these unrealistic characters seem more easy to relate to than most people we meet on the streets.  Each individual presents us with a distinct personality, a blatant flaw, and an obstacle that needs to be over come.

The best example of this (and my favorite character in the movie) is Buzz Lightyear.  Strong, resilient, and dedicated to stopping intergalactic crime, Buzz is confronted with the bleak reality that his entire perspective on life is tragically flawed.  The valiant unstoppable hero is cut to the fiber of his being when he is told his true identity: that of a child's toy.  Unwilling to accept this as truth, Lightyear decides to show the world his identity through his ability to fly.  He stands on the top of an open stairwell, activates his wings, and jumps.  Moving forward through the air, his confident expression shows us he has never doubted himself.  Never once, until now.

Tragedy strikes.  Lightyear's flight quickly turns into a free fall as the hero plummets into the ravine of the stairwell.  The hero hits the ground, smashing not only his plastic exterior but, his hopes and his dreams.

In life, we all find ourselves in Buzz's position: confronted with monumental obstacles, overwhelmed, and disheartened.  Although they're not the dragons, monsters, and armies of stories books, the our challenges can be equally as fiery, scary, and daunting.

Buzz moved toward his challenge with complete confidence.  At no point did he expect to be dethroned as hero of the universe.  In many ways, we can all relate to Buzz in our failures.  Luckily for us, the story does not end there.

Lightyear comes to accept that he is a toy.  A simply toy at that, with wings that cannot make him fly, a laser that cannot kill enemies, and a helmet that cannot protect him.  The hope comes in his character development.  He will not live a life void of purpose.  Buzz can still do good, helping people, and be the friend the others need.

Often times when people create blogs like this, they act like they have some large contribution to offer.  Some thought, idea, or concept that other people haven't thought of before.  When coming up with a name for this blog, I considered tons of possibilities.  Stoic, epic names that couldn't possibly convey everything I was going to potentially post.  Pretty soon, I was questioning why I was blogging in the first place...  I don't have anything new to share that someone hasn't already said.  Everything's been said before.  Like Lightyear, I realized there was no ultimate cosmic significance to my blog.  And yet, here we are.

At the end of the movie, Woody is in disbelief.  Buzz is flying through the air and carrying him toward Andy's moving truck.  He yells, "Buzz!  You're flying!".   Buzz, knowingly smiles.  He's been here before.  Will he arrogantly accept his role as hero of the universe?  Not a chance.  He's living his life with what he has, doesn't have all the answers, and is taking life day by day.  I hope this blog will reflect the final words of Buzz Lightyear:

 "This isn't flying.  It's falling, with style."