Lyrically Speaking

" It remains a radical act to be fat and happy in America…Being publicly fat and happy is hard; being publicly, shamelessly, unshakably fat and happy is an act of both will and bravery. "– Melissa McEwan   I am getting ready to go visit my Aunt in metro Detroit for the Thanksgiving Holiday. I am flying and it’s not the flying part that gives me a panic attack. It’s the flying while fat part that really throws me off. Once I am seated and in the air, all is well. But the days prior to departure I spend an unhealthy amount of time trying to figure out how to reduce myself. Me in High School (Senior year?) with friends. I have always been fat, so I have never known a life other than an overweight life. I have been picked on, ridiculed, subject to prejudice and judgement merely for existing.  I know that I have broached this subject before when I discussed the Dim wit who thought that I should be considered attractive simply because he was not attracted to me. But I b...

"We inhabit a universe that is characterized by diversity."   - Desmond Tutu Cliff walk at the Pourville Claude Monet I often look at people and see an animal that they remind me of. It’s not always physical features, but also their personality and mannerisms. While discussing this older gentlemen in our office my co-worker made a comment about how if he were a painting he would be a painting of an office with browns and blacks. Leather-worn furniture, with a single cigarette burning in an ashtray. The line of smoke making its way up the middle of the painting with a single malt on the rocks glass on the table next it.  It got me thinking that what if we looked at everyone as if they were paintings or art? What would we see? What kind of painting would we assign to our selves? Would be something in nature? Or a figure in a room?  As I look at others and then to myself I find it hard to nail down one specific painting that really symbolizes who I am. ...