"The School smells of Winter and Cigarettes."

I hope you are all enjoying the beginning of December. I sure am! I've been getting a lot of ideas for my writing. A few of my friends have also talked to me about getting Dungeons and Dragons up and rolling again, which is something I'm totally down for. I've been making a lot of music, too. My acoustic has never felt more natural in my hands. As far as reading goes, I'm revisiting the classics. I recommend  you all to do so, as well. It's great to look back into some aspects of history and glimpse into the culture of the time. I'm reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame right now, and Hugo's words (when it's not being drowned out by architectural history) are fluid, but strong, like a river.

School is going great! Thanks for asking. As you already know (or probably could have guess) I'm studying Chinese. It's a lot of bitch work, but it's fun nonetheless. The memorization of the characters is the hardest part, but it's still coming along great.

I'm going to share something with you today. Before you all jump to any conclusions, I DID NOT WRITE THIS. THIS IS AN ORIGINAL WORK WRITTEN BY MICHAEL MARTINEZ AND THEREFORE BELONGS ONLY TO HIM. I AM USING THIS BY PERMISSION.

I encouraged Mike to write this because writing is such a fantastic outlet, and it can help us realize things about ourselves and expand our understanding of the world around us. He asked for a topic to write about, and I gave him a single word: "Autumn". I'm going to feature 3 more writers later on, each having written something relating to a season. I hope you all enjoy reading these as much as I did. This great piece is what Mike responded with:

The leaves change from the brilliant bright green
The roses change from the velvet red
Becoming weak and brittle, they perish as if never there before
Time continues on
The marvelous blue ceiling above turns to the brown orange skies of deceit
Clouds shroud what is yet to be seen in the season to come
Speculations of past mistakes still taunt those that have yet to learn
The warmth of summer is long gone and only chill of winter to look forward too
And the transition begins
This small innocence of autumn is born
This small season between two opposites like love and hate, good and evil
This kind of limbo

I really enjoy this. Before just a short time ago, I had no idea Mike wrote like this. Talents can unearth themselves in some of the weirdest ways. If you're interested in writing something (a song, a poem, a rant, ANYTHING) and you want to be featured (it's lots of fun, I promise!), don't hesitate to hit me up any way you know how.

I acknowledge that sometimes I write pretty heavy stuff (today wasn't one of those days, I know) and it could take a little while to digest, so today I'm going to share something completely unlike all of those things.

For those readers who are unable to speak Swedish (I'm in that group, no worries), a translation is in order.
"This is a nice horse!"
"Horse-mathematics!"
"NICE HORSE and HAY and PATTING equals HAPPY HORSE."

Chew on that for a little while. Peace and love, thanks for reading.