Alright, so I'm conceited.. I have an urge to post some pictures of myself on the blog except for the one infamous "Mark Looks to the Right" picture that I use all the time. That particular photograph was taken in Austin by roommate's wife; she is a brilliant photographer considering she can even make me look decent :P

At any rate, since I've been told that the picture you see here is "misleading" , as if it's not really me or something, I've decided to show some recent pictures.

Why am I doing this? Who knows. What I do know is that I'm not much in the mood for writing today and this is a cheap way to get my daily dose of our community blog. Just think of it as a French bath for blogging, if you will. For those of you who aren't aware of what a French bath is, basically it's the act of not actually showering while doing everything one can to appear as if one has showered. Copious amounts of perfume and/or cologne are signs that a French bath has occurred.

If you see a blog post where the blogger has simply posted some rather boring pictures of him or herself, you can safely assume that a French Blog has occurred.

This dutiful blogger is done with his attempt at being humorous; I just realized that I blew right past nap time and need to hit the pillow for awhile.

I'm very happy right now and very exhausted in the very best way. You know those points in your life that you know will never leave you? Well, this past week has been far too beautiful to forget. My brother got married to his lovely girlfriend of many years. She is the best sister I could hope for.. and I'm really looking forward to mingling with her a little more and getting to know her. I realized at the wedding that I had no idea who my brother was even marrying! Ok that is misleading. I knew of her since the day that he met her; he constantly would talk about her.. though at the time he was living in a different city and we had very different lives that only crossed paths occasionally. We had a bit of a professional relationship back in those days and we really only used to hang out at my place. He was very protective of his friends, for lack of better words. I think he really wanted to draw a line and just make a statement like "these are my friends and they are not your friends so don't even try."

So I didn't try.. I respected his wishes to have a life totally separate from mine, because growing up I think that a lot of my friends were his friends kind of my default. He enjoyed the older company because we could drive him around; we could show him a good time and take him to parties.. You know, normal things that no 15 year old boy should ever see. Hehe.. I jest; it wasn't all that bad.

I do admit that I regret not hanging out with him so much. He had a very nice college experience that I missed out on for various reasons.. all of them my fault. I never got to go live on the beautiful campus surrounded by interesting people. I was a pretender over at UT while he was a student at Texas State . Now I'm thinking I really should have been a pretender over on his side of the fench.. haha.. because I got to meet a few people that were very close to him and very much within his circle of friends and not mine.. a fine bunch. I was a little nervous about being at the wedding, surrounded by family members who hadn't seen me in years and a lot of people who I just plain didn't know at all. Family is always kind of embarrassing for me because I haven't had the best five years in terms of living and all those important things. It's pretty sad when the only compliment an uncle can muster is "So.. you're still alive! That's .. pleasantly surprising." Except take out "pleasantly."

 Though I was nervous and frankly uncomfortable to be around so many family members, everything was fine due to an unexpected surprise. That's a really redundant kind of phrase.. "unexpected surprise." I was about to type "the best surprises are unexpected" but I got scared that I might be elected President. So I held back.

So back to my original story about why the wedding was something i will never forget.. not in my entire life. It was one of those times that no matter how far back it happened, i can remember every single moment so vividly. You know they say that some things that happen in life can never be forgotten. My mom still remembers exactly where she was when she heard the news that Kennedy was assassinated, or like when Dick "the Dick" Cheney accidentally blew up the WTC on a goose hunt.

I introduced myself to someone that I've known my whole life but have never met. It makes sense if you are me, and if you aren't then.. yeah ok, that's just abstract. I will never, ever forget where I met this person, and not just because it was at a wedding or even because it was at my brother's wedding. I will always remember because the first time I saw her, suddenly everything so beautiful and idyllic about the wedding farm faded and I was replaced by this tunnel vision.

A kaleidescope of Roses replaced what was once chocolate fountains and vines on white fences. Rosy was alone and walking around admiring the scenery. As she walked , she followed her finger along the curves of the chairs to her left. She looked at the harp and then noticed me. I immediately turned around. I was feeling a bit light headed all of a sudden. When I looked back at her, she made eye contact with me and the corner of her lips raised to a smile. I was hooked and I didn't fight as she reeled me in. Ok, so I was reeling myself in but that's not the point. We talked for hours that night, sometimes so intense that I could hardly notice the party happening all around me. Our party was much cooler; the music was better ;)

As we sat down on a bench and discussed life, love, liberty, and disco, I began to understand that something so pure and important was taking place.. Yes, I know it's cliche, and I can only hope that millions of other people have had the chance to experience what can only be described as "friend at first sight." Or something not so unbearably lame.

The following week was an extension of the wedding. It's never stopped.. It is only the beginning of a story that will inevitably be filled with everything that makes life worth living - kindness, dreams, love, support, respect, and attraction.

Our story is a blank book that has always existed and is only now being filled with words, images, memories, experiences, excitement, pleasure, pain.. everything that makes life worth living ;) Everything worth repeating a second, third, hundredth time over. She will never cease to fascinate me. One might read this statement and wonder how I am so sure of myself. I can see our book. We have scarcely written a fraction of the introduction and there are many thousands of blank pages waiting to be filled; begging to be worded with the experiences to come.

In due time, those words will appear, and whatever may fill this great book not yet written will be exactly how it should. everything in its right place, as they say. search my deepest motivations, my most guarded secrets and my most perfect fantasies and you will find her there. that is all that matters to me.. her presence electric and her intentions pure and guided by her heart of hearts.

i am sleepy now.. more to come.


-mrk (i just realized that my intials spell my name. can i buy a vowel?)

Good morning, Victoria! I haven't been around lately to write blogs, but that's changing. You read that correctly - I'm going to start writing again! Oh! The grandeur!

And now --- THE NEWS::

Recent war efforts have turned the tide of the struggle of "Operation: Peace Through Violence" in the Middle East as President Bush's closest advisers caught wind of a dangerous catalog of books seemingly written by the mysterious terrorist-harboring cell known only as "Thompson." The books, found hidden deep within the confines of a public elementary school in an obvious terrorist plot to spread the disease of terrorism by teaching our youngest minds the horrors of terrorist propaganda such as "Social Studies" and "History", hinted at a nationwide plot to "educate" the majority of Americans on these dangerous topics.  DHS Agents on the scene took the opportunity to reveal a new secret operation to finally drive the final nail in the coffin of such freedom-hating ideologies as personal liberty and religious tolerance and announced the school and everything with an "acceptable radius" was due to be eliminated by one of America's finest unmanned flying weapons of mass destruction. The mission was called off as the books appeared to be "written in American!" as one DHS Agent exclaimed with a mixture of excitement and fear. Liberal, America-hating protest groups, comprised of dangerous middle-aged women in terrorist-harboring minivans, were already gathering at the site of the school begging to halt the destruction until later that afternoon when the children would be let out of the building and safely away from the event horizon. After careful consideration, DHS made us all proud and heroicly allowed the children to finish up their schoolday and be released before the surrounding area would be blown to "five kinds of hell, oorah!" , as one General worded it. A local festival, sponsered by Enron, was already being built one hundred yards away from the building so that the children could see first hand the shock and awe of America's military prowess while proudly eating democracy-dogs and freedom fries. As the books were analyzed back in Washington, a shadowy figure emerged as a focal point and declared a threat to national security. Known only as "Gandhi" , this freedom-hating terrorist, believed to be harbored six-feet underground in his concrete lair in India, has been pronounced by Bush as "America's most dangerous threat to freedom across the globe" and our "number one priority."

Mmmm, do you notice that smell? Is it the fairness, or the balance? Could be the freedom fries, which reminds this dutiful reporter of his obligations to fill his belly with some comfort food!

More to come.


-mark ryan kelly

I have a confession to make. When I set out to write a series of essays that dealt with trauma, pain, death, and everything else that’s bad in the world, I thought that the inspiration would come easily. I have my own traumatic story to tell, and I’m sure that anyone reading this does too. None of us are strangers to emotional pain. I imagine that most of us have experienced the pain of violence inflicted upon us, or the overwhelming guilt and shame that often accompanies sexual assault. When I set out to write a series of essays about traumatic experiences and the subsequent thoughts and behaviors that might follow, I didn’t think it was going to be this difficult to start. I am a rape victim, and I have experienced violence that I never knew could even exist, and for the past four years I erroneously felt that I had some kind of expertise in the subject, as if one could practice at suffering and get better at it. I knew that notion was ridiculous even as I still battle with it. The more I thought about writing this treatment, the more pretentious I felt.  How can I possibly tell someone else about what they may have felt? How can I offer advice and suggestions about dealing with trauma when I take anti-depressants and anxiety medications?  The drugs that have been prescribed to me have worked wonders, but not without side-effects that I live with day in and day out -–fatigue, lethargy, malaise; sometimes I wish I could just go back to having panic attacks than to take my meds.
In light of this, in light of the fact that I cannot possibly understand what anyone has gone through and that my own experiences with pain are just as different and unique as anyone elses. Soon after all of this silly guilt that I was feeling about writing a blog, my revelation struck me. It wasn’t expected, as most revelations aren’t. I wasn’t searching for an answer; it’s these times that the answers always seem to come. No, I was merely driving home after picking up my medication, sucking hard on a cigarette and listening to the ambience around me – the squeak of my windshield wipers, the woosh of passing cars, the birth-pangs of a thunderstorm off in the distance. It was a rather drab afternoon with a greyish white sky and some darker gray in the distance; it was a little chilly and rainy. I didn’t notice any of these things as negative though – they were just part of the place where I was at the moment. As my mind cleared, there it hit me. A flood of inspiration poured into my consciousness and for a short time I felt absolutely blissful, as if my car was floating aimlessly, peacefully down the road. Of course reality hit me and I had to come back down to earth. When my metaphorical feet hit the floor, I was deep in thought. If I was going to write a blog about trauma and violence, victimization and recovery, all I could do was marvel at the beauty of being alive and attempt to express that to anyone interested.
For so long have I felt to be the victim of a brutal event that happened to me half a decade ago. Those memories of being brutally assaulted stay with me today as if they happened last week; smells, sounds, and sights are always just around the corner in my head, waiting to spring forth and crash against my rationality as an angry mob throwing rocks and pushing ever closer.
For so long have I been a victim. Or so I thought. That moment of joy that I experienced put a thought into my head that grew into an entirely new concept of what it means to be the victim of violence. “When,” I thought to myself “do I quit being a victim and start being a survivor?” As if a self-help book had suddenly sprug forth into view, I merely caught the thoughts as they swirled around rather than consciously generating them. “Just by being alive, just by existing after going through someone so horrible, that’s what makes anyone a survivor.” Just by living and continuing on with life even when you feel like it’s no worth the effort; just by staying alive are we becoming victorious in our battles with depression, anxiety, post-trauma stress disorder, and any other number of vicious symptoms one gets when traumatized. By simply living, I have won the war. It was then the battles that had to be fought – addictions that had developed, painful memories that surfaced, understanding feelings like anger and shame; those battles had to be fought, but simply because I was alive was the war already won. It seemed to be some backwards kind of logic at first -–how can you win a war before the battles are won? – but then I knew that if I kept living, the opportunities to improve myself would always be there. By giving up and giving in, by skipping out and taking the route of complete self-destruction – that path ensured that I would have no opportunities to improve, grow, and become free of my suffering.
I then knew that all of this time I had been looking for answers as if the solution to all of my problems were like a set of keys misplaced. The answer had been in my hand the whole time; I just hadn’t thought to assume that I already had it. I could see a vision of myself working my way through life. I pictured myself as a sculpture. Everything that was good and beautiful about me was already in place, and as the layers of suffering and shame cut chisled down and cut off, my own image would become clearer and clearer to myself and everyone else.
There is nothing more I can write at this point. I’ve already repeated myself about a hundred times and I apologize to any readers who suffered through that. Thank you for reading; this is very personal stuff for me but it capitalizes on my passion for understanding through mutual communication, something I’ll touch on in a later post in this series.

You know, I'm really starting to dig this whole blog thing on the Victoria Advocate. It feels nice. It feels homey. For the first time in my life, I'm starting to feel closer to the town (city?) that I was born and raised in. Well, I was raised in Port Lavaca but as most of my fellow Port Lavacians can attest to, many of my activities took place here in Victoria. I attended middle school at Laurel Academy in PL and then moved to Victoria Christian Academy for the ninth grade. There were three of us enrolled; the entire high school division of Victoria Christian was myself and two other people. The school decided that their fledgling high school division was far from a monumental success and dismantled the whole thing (an easy task i'm sure); I wish that school the best of luck as I really had a good time there. If anyone who is reading this knows how Victoria Christian is doing these days, I'd love to hear about it. What I do know is the phenomenal success that is Faith Academy. Yes, I spent the next three years of high school there and had a very interesting time. My high school class was five times bigger here than it was at my previous school; which is to say that there were 15 very enthusiastic students. All of us looked the same; that was what the school wanted. Total conformity in appearance. Looking back , I realize that their intentions were good. By enforcing a strict dress code, the school could circumvent many problems associated with innapropriate clothes and the tendency for students to look down upon those who do not dress to the very different standards of fashion.

Alright.. enough about me, though I'd like to point out that I am not particularly religious nor was I ever. My parents are not overtly religious; we were "Christmas and Easter" type of family. I chose to attend these private schools to avoid the trappings of those giant, sprawling complexes that make up the public school systems. Let me be the first to say that it was purely a choice of preference; I think the quality of education at public school systems, while far from perfect, is enough to inspire students to attend college and perhaps even retain some of the knowledge they devoured in high school. Just because my greatest dream during that part of my life was to graduate as quickly as possible, I'm sure there are some students who can see the intrinsic joy that is the learning process.

It took me a long time to learn that learning is valuable. We don't have to be in school to learn things, but it certainly helps. Now days, I think that kids have many more tools available to find information they need; I think that sites such as Wikipedia are doing a great service to humanity by offering as much free knowledge as possible to the general population. It really wasn't until I discovered my passion for the study of human behavior that I started to find great pleasure in reading textbooks and discussing psychology with the other students in class. I even started sitting in the front row as opposed to the very back as I had my entire life. Discovering psychology changed me; it opened a door to a new world that I only had a passing knowledge of before I found it to be what I now regard as my calling in life.

So what does all of this have to do with anything? Well, I'm sure it's not much, but the reason I'm writing this blog is because I wanted to respond to the poll that was up on the VA homepage. The poll was this  - How much does poverty affect a child's education? The choices were "A little" , "A lot" , or "Depends on the parents." I found the results to be provocative - half of the people resonded with "A lot" and the other half responded with "Depends on the parents."

What do the results mean? Well, for starters it means that people feel strongly about poverty. The fact that no one chose "A little" and there wasn't even a choice for "Not at all" shows that poverty really is perceived to affect the quality of a child's education in a big way. One might conjecture that poverty might even affect a child's life in every way - and I would think that when a family barely has money to put food on the table, education becomes either a top priority or it takes a backseat to simply surviving. As with anything that I write about, I like to take examples from my own life and use them to make any kind of conclusion. The number one rule of writing is this - "Write about what you know and nothing else." It's a very common-sense rule; if you take a teenager and ask him to write a novel about the ups and downs of married life and how the birth of a child affects the dynamics of a husband and wife relationship, I'm sure the end result would be embarrassingly naive, much like this blog is turning out to be.

I have been blessed with a life in which I never had to wonder where my next meal would come from. My parents, however, grew up in extreme poverty. My father never finished high school; instead he opted out to work in the construction business. He took that and ran with it; starting his own company in 1972 and turning it into a six figure salary. My mother grew up in a similiar situation. She was raised by her grandmother and was living in such an unfortunate situation that her school clothes had to be sewn together and constructed from leftover material. She went on to get her Masters degree in education and has been teaching for thirty years; she's now a counselor after recently going back to school to get a new degree. So why did she succeed when all of her sisters still live in the conditions in which she was raised? Her answer is that her grandmother was an inspiration to her. She never gave up on my mom and always pushed her to continue improving and continue living as best she could. She was also instilled with a tenacious work ethic that continues to this day.

So here's the clincher. My aunts on my mother's side were raised the same way. Two of my mom's' sisters I have never met; the other is close to us and always will be. All four were raised in the same manner, and only two had the drive to really make it and really keep that drive to work three jobs and go to college at the same time. So where does the difference lie?

Life is not so black and white to say that poverty and education simply "depend on the parents." Some people work hard in life to achieve goals. Some people don't. While of course my great grandmother had a huge impact on my mother's life and the direction she took, it was really my mom's own initiative and drive that caused her to succeed and become liberated from the cruel master that is poverty.

The moral of all this blogging? Each of us can make the choice to either learn the lessons that others teach us or ignore them and simply wallow in the conditions in which they were born. To present to you a cliche - It's not the hand you were given that makes the difference, it's the way that you play your cards. As soon as we put the responsiblity for our actions were they belong - on ourselves - the sooner we can work to make our world better. Is that to say that we shouldn't help others who are in unfortunate circumstances? Absolutely not. Just because some people simply do not want to be taught doesn't mean that they should be given up on; to me it's a reason to try that much harder.

Alright, so it's not that late. But I'm really sleepy anyway... I didn't get much sleep last night; no, I wasn't out partying. I decided that I really needed to grow a spine and apologize to someone that I've been meaning to apologize to for a long time. I won't go into details unless someone REALLY wants to know about my private life, but suffice to say that I've been carrying a weight on my chest for a few years and really needed to explain things to someone that's only shown me kindness and respect. Sometimes you don't realize how much you hurt someone until the same is done to you.. That's something valuable I've learned from experiencing painful situations - they might hurt, and I might cry and moan, but in the end I realize that no matter how horrible the situation might be, there is still a lesson to be learned. Every situation we live through, every moment we take a breath is a decision we make to push onward and to live our lives with as much happiness as we can find. Sometimes it seems impossible, and yet we still push onward. I call that Optimism. So , if you are as downtrodden as I have been in the past few weeks, take heart.. this too shall pass , as the Good Book says. I think the Good Book says that.. a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. My momma told me that one.

Ok, moving along. I read a story about a kid that unfortunately had to have a foot amputated due to a severe infection. His parents are being held liable for not attending to their child sooner. My first reaction was one of horror. Where were the parents when the child was suffering? Why didn't they do anything sooner? The story was quick to point out that if the child had received *proper* medical intervention early on, something so drastic as an amputation could have been avoided.

Alright. So why don't we look at this from an objective point of view? The news is always quick to the point out the negative facts.. Reading the story, one can easily paint the parents to be complete monsters who don't care about children and in fact *wanted* to have a one-footed child! Ok , that was callous, but we must remember that the reason we love our country so much is because of the fundamental ideals that push democracy forward. One of those cornerstones is the right to be innocent until proven otherwise. I feel for the child. It's a horrible situation to be in. However, the story did not say anything about what the parents might have tried to do. Maybe they took the child to a doctor. Maybe they took him to three doctors and all three of them said "oh, it's just an infection. It will go away." To put matters in perspective, my father had a malignant tumor growing in a lymph node on his neck. This was a baseball size growth extending out of his neck. It was extremely obvious to everyone giving him even a passing glance. My father went through two hip surgerys and dental surgery with this tumor being completely visible to all the doctors and surgeons on staff. Every one of them ruled out cancer and said it was a reaction to the anasthetic drugs he was receiving during the procedures. "It's a common reaction." They assured him. So he let it go for awhile. Until it got bigger. Upon doing a biopsy of his growth, it was discovered that my dad had stage 4 non-hodgkin's lymphoma. Stage 4 is the last stage, the stage where death is imminent. I dont't believe in luck, but I'll just say that someone upstairs was looking out for my dad because he was able to *barely* get into an experimental trial of a drug called Rituxen. This treatment, along with a battery of other drugs commonly used to combat his disease, successfully put him into remission. The man didn't even stop working during his chemotherapy. I call that courageous.

The moral of that story? Doctors aren't always right, and the path to the truth is NOT paved with good intentions. It's paved with facts. That doesn't make much sense now that I wrote it.

Good night Victoria. I'll see you real soon.

Ok, so right now I'm experiencing that ultimate frustration that comes when you think you've written a long and detailed essay only to have it disappear in the junk of online space. I've always found that once I write something, it's useless to try and write it again; it won't ever be the same. But I will press on. I came here tonight with the determination to post my first blog on the Victoria Advocate site and dammit, that's what I'm going to do!

I must admit that if it weren't required for a class on blogging, I probably wouldn't be doing this. That isn't to say that I don't enjoy maintaining a blog; I've had an online profile since I was very young, moving from one big craze to the next. First it was IRC, now it's Myspace, Facebook, Livejournal, and too many other "Personal Profile" blogs to even mention.

I feel priviledged to have grown up and watched the internet grow from relative obscurity into a mainstay of popular culture in America. I can remember back in the mid-nineties when the "dot com boom" was going on and anyone with a small investment would set up a web site, all operating under shareholder money. Of course the movement imploded on itself; how can something that happened so fast become so satiated with content while the user base grows at a much more conservative rate? It really wasn't until the advent of the multimedia blog that people ranging from Grandma to the family dog would star their own personal profile. A site like Myspace is really an elaborate blog; ask anyone what Myspace is and I would bet the farm that there wouldn't be many people that hasn't ever heard of it. When even small cities such as Victoria have a robust online community such as this, it acts as a kind of litmus test for mainstream popularity.

So this is my introduction. I am blogging in the name of higher education, something that would have really shocked my father back in 1995 when he saw a Pepsi commercial on tv and was amazed. He thought for a minute and remarked "everyone must have a web page these days.." If only he knew how prophetic his words really were.