Roses

…She loves me not,

    She loves me,

    She loves me not;

I always picked the biggest roses from the bunch

So she would last longer as I plucked her petals out.

I know now.

Don’t pluck them out

And she will last until we are both brown and shriveled.

    She loves me.

Wendell Mitchell Snow

Today,

The Torrential Rain,

A flighty, long haired, black eyed

Woman, poured herself violently out

Against the unyielding green bosom

of Appalachia.

Her lightening quick fists

Beat black bruises, burning brands

Into the strong, bared chest

of Mother Nature. 

But, as velvet night covered her

In a dark and elegant gown,

Rain demurred to a quiet drizzle

Sniffling childishly into the proffered sleeve.

Tomorrow,

Finding the Hills unmoved

By her cacophonous complaint,

Rain will move sullenly onward

Toward the Sea to vent her anger;

Into his softer, more understanding depths.

--Wendell Mitchell Snow

Ifs, Ands, and Buts

If I were a knight, my armor would gleam.

I would prove my might on glorious steed.

I would fight many men and show no fear;

Protect and defend what I most held dear.

And when fair maiden near’d who’s love I sought,

Would not be afeared nor greatly distraught

By what I should say and how I should act.

My nerves would not fray; my knees would not clack.

But I’m not a knight, I don’t have a horse;

Can’t put up a fight and my tongue is coarse.

Now, as she sits there, I cannot be brave.

I don’t even dare lift my hand to wave.

--Wendell Mithcell Snow

no•where [noh-hwair] –adverb: in or at no place; not anywhere

Nowhere is a very interesting concept.  It is a word that by its very in-existence proves that it does, indeed, exist.

This whole concept stemmed from a conversation that I had with some friends of mine during a long van ride.  We were discussing the fact that a rhinoceros and a tree cannot both be in the middle of nowhere at the same time because the one thing defines the location of the other.  A rhino cannot be in the middle of nowhere with a tree because then the rhino has a location: beside or near the tree.  And the same goes for the tree.  Therefore the presence of descriptors in nowhere cancels out the fact that the rhino or the tree are not in a defined location.  However, upon further discussion, we decided that there could not even be a middle of nowhere because the descriptor middle describes the location, not of nowhere, but of the location of middle.  The middle of nowhere is not nowhere because it is in the middle of nothing, which describes its location.  Upon further discussion, we concluded that there is really, no such thing as nowhere.

But upon further consideration, I have decided that because nowhere does not exist as a location, it cannot therefore be in a location, so nowhere is not to be found.  This is the very definition of the word nowhere.  So, in actual fact, nowhere is nowhere.  And therefore nowhere exists so that it can exist: proving by its in-existence that it exists.  Get it?

Wendell Mitchell Snow

I've Been Thinking and...

Women demand a lot of men.  This, at first glance seems like a very sexist statement, but after giving it some thought, I am convinced that it is a fact.  Take weddings for example.  For reasons I won’t go into, several of my friends were looking at dresses in a wedding magazine.  The conversation turned to traditions and it was said that a woman does not want her future husband to see her or her wedding dress or even her in her wedding dress before the ceremony.  Someone said that most women have picked out their dresses before they are even sure there is going to be a wedding, as in before there is even a potential husband on the horizon.  Then, a good friend of mine asked me what kind of dress I would like to marry, which is, in any language, a trick question.  If a man knows what kind of dress he will marry, what does that say about how he will pick the person that goes in it?  Certainly not by her strength of character or her personality but by how she will look on the wedding day.  Bad news indeed if a woman asks that question and a man answers in the wrong way.  So I told her that it was a trick question and that every man knows that the wedding day is the woman’s day and that she can have it however she likes it, which I thought was a very good answer, being that I am, in fact, a man and am, in fact, always wrong. 

But she said “That’s not good enough.  What if you don’t like, for example, strapless dresses and she picks a strapless dress.  Will you lie to her?”

And someone said that he would say that it didn’t do her justice and dodge the question that way.  Props for him!

But my friend was still not satisfied.  She told us that this is not what a woman wants.  She told us that a woman doesn’t want a lie, but a positive truth.  In other words she wants the man to genuinely like the dress, despite the fact that she has picked the gown years ago and he had no say in what it looked like to begin with. 

So the man has a choice between lying about it or hurting the woman’s feelings.  Unless, of course, he actually likes the dress, which is probably very likely since most dresses look nice to men when they adorn the woman he loves and has asked to marry him.  That she has agreed to marry him at all is beyond his wildest expectations.

But, on the off chance that he doesn’t like the dress, according to the woman, he has lost.  But my point is this:  The woman demands that she pick the dress alone, that she wear the dress without the man’s prior knowledge and she demands that the man like the dress without question.  She basically wants her cake and wants to eat it too.  But everyone knows that one cannot have one’s cake and eat it too, even on your wedding day. 

And that is just one example of the numerous ways that a woman demands the impossible from a man.  Not that I'm complaining, though.  Women are great.  I love women.  They're just ALL crazy!