TRUTH TEA SPILLED

There is more than one way to convey truth. As a writer, I believe that the best way to spread truth is through language, literature, and writing.  

My name is Joe Heidenescher and I am a senior English major at the University of Toledo. On a daily basis I study literature, big and small, long and short, popular and less well known. Through novels, poetry, and stories humans have been expressing themselves for millennia. Through their expressions come many universal truths about the human experience; it just takes good reading skills and innovative thinking to explicate these truths and express them to a modern world. This is what I aim to do through literary studies. 

However, I am not only interested in literature. I have a strong passion for writing in all capacities, not only studying good writing academically. I also aim to produce top notch journalistic stories that reveal a truth to readers. Currently I am the Associate Community Editor at the Independent Collegian, where I write feature stories, investigative stories, and opinion columns. These pieces are intended to be concise, factual, and colorful accounts of what everyday life is like for ordinary and extraordinary people alike. As a journalist, I strongly believe that it is important to give each and every person a fair and accurate voice -- this is the only way a pluralistic democracy can exist. 

On a related note it is also important to uncover truths that are hidden in bureaucracy and propaganda. The only way to execute this mission is to passionately investigate the truth, to constantly stay vigilant, to observe, and to vigorously ask questions. 

In addition to my avid interrogation of the truth in journalism and literary studies, I also spend a fair amount of time searching for more personal truths through poetry. Poetry is the medium in which details, facts, and literal truth matters little, but emotional truth and introspective truth reigns firm. In this more mystical and imaginative land, we are all free to relate empathetically as human beings. We connect spirits in ways that we are called to action, we feel. 

Truth always has to be related to sensible feeling. That is why one sip of real truth tea, when brewed strong enough, will always cause us to immediately spill and cast truth, light, and justice on those around us. 

Without spilling some truth tea, our society will never have peace. 

Joe Heidenescher -- Writer, literary scholar, journalist, poet, advocate. 

E-Mail: jheidenescher@gmail.com