Reflection (LONG post)

This is it – the end of the year 2011. It’s odd to think of how far I have come this year, and this year alone. Just from last January to now, I’ve tried a lot of new things, and accomplished a great deal. I am proud of my own personal growth, and I am glad for everything that I have been through this year, because it all has helped in that growth.

At the beginning of the year, I was involved in a relationship that lasted a total of five and a half months – the longest and most serious relationship that I have had to date (no pun intended). This relationship started me on a road to step out of my comfort zone in ways I had never experienced before, having never been in as serious a relationship before. I was able to challenge myself emotionally, and that helped to foster healthy emotional growth.

As that relationship came to an end in late April, I was further able to drive myself to become a better person. I was hurt for a little while, but quickly came to realize the opportunity that I had in front of me. As a relationship comes to an end, there are three options that the person on the “broken-up-with” side can choose.

The first is to wallow in the hurt, refusing to move forward from the point that the other person left you on. This, obviously, is not the optimal choice, but the choice that most of us go through at the very beginning. It is an essential part of the processing of the information, but staying in this state for too long is not at all healthy.

The second option that we have is to get over it and move on. This choice is the most popular, particularly in books, movies, and television shows today. “Just get over him, move on with your life. He doesn’t deserve you, anyway,” has become the advice of the best friend, the meddling parent, and many other character stereotypes in the media. Though this option is much better than simply wallowing in the sadness of the break-up, there is a better choice.

The third option is by far my favorite. Rather than wallowing, or simply getting over the experience and moving forward with my life, I chose to grow. I allowed the experience to change me, and strove to take the first steps toward becoming the person that I prefer to be. I set out to broaden my horizons, to try new things, to meet new people, and, ultimately, to change for the better.

This golden opportunity came to me in the form of my summer job at camp. May rolled through, as did the beginning of June, and I found myself once again in the forested company of the Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center. This place (as I have mentioned many times throughout this blog) has been my summer home for a good portion of my life. I cannot imagine a summer without camp, and cannot wait to return again.

The Camp has a way of taking a person – campers and staff members alike – and giving them the atmosphere that they need for positive change. So many people have grown because of this amazing place –hundreds of staff members, thousands of campers – and each has their own story. I won’t prattle about my past years at camp (I’ve talked a great deal about those years in my second blog entry), but will instead say how camp this summer has helped me to grow.

The atmosphere at camp is peaceful. There is a beautiful setting, full of trees, fresh air, animals, and lots of growing things – plants and people alike. There is something to be said about the emotional cleansing that occurs with the daily swimming in the lake, or the burning of the heart that occurs with every campfire and candle-lit worship service. There is always someone around, reminding you that however lonely you may feel, you aren’t alone. There is always space for meditations of the mind, or of the heart, and a gentle breeze to waft through and remind you that things are always moving and changing.

Camp is an optimal place to let yourself change and grow. The people around you are as accepting and loving as any you’d meet, and each year I leave thinking that it’s been the best summer yet, the most cohesive staff yet, the most loving community yet, only to be completely blown away the next summer. It is difficult to think of how we become so like a family with fifty-odd other people in the course of two months, all while doing the job that was given to you of making smaller families with the campers with each new week, but somehow we manage to do it. This summer family of mine has helped my courage and my heart both to grow, and shown me how to reach out to others. I can care for others while still taking care of myself, and can reach out to people when I start to feel down.

My friends at school all took notice when I went back in the fall. Some mentioned to me how much they had seen I had grown, and how much happier I had become because of it. I was much happier. I made myself more social, while still focusing my time and energy on the schoolwork that mattered. I put myself out there again and, even after quite a few dramatic failures the previous semester, I auditioned for both Yorick’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Harlequin Musical Revue. I received parts in both, however small, but both of these reminded me why I loved performing so much.

These shows reminded me that it was not so much about the part you got, or the amount of lines you had, or how you looked in your costume. It wasn’t even about the show you picked, the quality of the production, or how well you knew your lines and cues (though each of those does help, in the end). Truly, the reason that I loved the theatre so much was because of the camaraderie that went along with it. The laughs and silly gestures during inappropriate lines during a read-through, the backstage giggles, the jokes that only someone involved in the show would understand…all of these were the main reason I got involved again. The adrenaline rush from being under the warm stage lights as someone other than myself was second to that feeling of camaraderie that can be had with a close-knit cast.

Now here it is, December 31st and counting down the time to the brand new year. What will 2012 bring? Happiness? Love? The destruction of the world? Only time will tell. But there is more personal growth to be had, more friends to make, more love to give, more people to make smile. I cannot wait.

Walk Like Royalty

In his book, The Sovereign Soul, Phillip Gowins describes a meditation exercise involving seeing others and oneself as royalty. He introduces the exercise by asking those meditating to imagine how a sovereign who takes responsibility for all it governs sees the world around them. He then asks us to see others as this sort of royalty, as well. He says, “You must glimpse the fundamental reality that you are a sovereign soul, royalty, a king or a queen. Then you will know how you should see others, and how others should see you. So, walk like a king. Walk like a queen. Walk like a sovereign soul.” What would occur in our world today if we started to regard one another with the same courtesy and respect, despite any differences we may have?

The first step would be for everyone to realize that they are indeed royalty. They must understand and accept that they are royalty, and therefore have immense power and responsibility. The power of the monarch is vast. The royalty, after all, is the figurehead of the state they govern. A royal is seen with high respect and reverence. At the same time, though, one must understand that the powers of a monarch have a distinct directive. Each individual has a responsibility to the world around them. A king or queen looking at their world realizes what it is that their lands need, and that it is their responsibility to provide that. A responsible sovereign settles disputes, provides for their governed, and regards their own non-essential desires as less important than the essential needs of those around them. This balance, I believe, would be the most difficult part to achieve.

The next step, once this is achieved, is for everyone to see each other as the sovereign that they are. As previously stated, a royal gains a certain amount of respect in the eyes of others. Therefore, if everyone is royalty, then everyone should be treated with that level of respect, and everyone should treat anybody they meet with that same level of respect. This somewhat emulates the “Golden Rule” that we are taught as children – treat others as you wish to be treated – to a higher degree. Rather, treat others better than we would wish to be treated and regard one another with a mutual respect and understanding.

Of course, achieving this mentality in everyone is virtually impossible. There will always be someone who prefers to see themselves as more important than others, as “higher” than others. There will be those who accept the power of the monarch without regarding the responsibility. There will even be those who can see the sovereign soul in others but cannot find it in themselves. But think of the world we could live in if this was a possibility. A world based on mutual respect for all, regardless of age, ethnicity, place of origin, or personal views sounds like a world that I would want to live in. If we take our own steps towards seeing the sovereign soul in ourselves and others, and pave the way for others to do the same, perhaps we can work toward this sort of world as a goal.

Frigid

Today I’m feeling heavy. It has been years since I’ve last had to perform a funeral rite for a fish, but at least with that fish I had adequate enough time to bond with him before his final end.

Less than 48 hours ago, two friends and I invaded our local Petco, just to look around. A friend of ours had been there the day previous, and told us how beautiful all the new betta fish looked. There were many new colors and shades – golds, blues, vibrant reds, and even pale purples. They had every type of betta imaginable, it seemed. Crowntail, half-moon, double-tail, delta tail…lots of little fish chilling out in their tiny carry-home cups. I was overcome by a desire for a companion. After much coaxing and pleading over text message, my mother agreed to let me get a fish, provided that I was the one to take care of him. I agreed.

I found a beautiful, feisty blue crowntail betta that stuck out, and knew his name already. I had picked out the name a year and a half before, intending to get a fish as soon as I got to school, but never having the chance until now. I had been waiting since then to use the name: Gygax. The little blue crowntail fit his name perfectly.

I brought him home and put him in a temporary tank, and obsessed over the cleanliness and warmth of the water. The very next day I bought him a permanent tank, complete with a water heater, and transferred him into his new home. I was pleased, and he seemed pleasantly amused with the tank. I didn’t feel like I had to worry much about him, but I continued to fuss anyhow. Was the light too bright, or too warm? Did he prefer the light off? Did he want the air filter on, or was the current from it too strong for him. He wasn’t swimming, was he just resting, or was he being sluggish? I spent more time fussing in that day than I fussed in my entire two years of owning my last betta.

Despite my fussing, Gygax did not survive the second night. Somehow his water heater had become unplugged, and the chill of the night swept in. He was not able to withstand the unearthly chill of the North Adams night, even with all windows closed and whatever heat the school was supplying flowing in vain through the room. Even I felt the air’s chill especially last night, and when I woke up in the morning, my Gygax had perished.

I gave him a “proper Viking funeral” – sans flame – between classes this morning, complete with the playing of “Eulogy Song” by SJ Tucker. I found it fitting…in part due to the title, but also in part because of the lyrics:
The skeleton inside insists that every step's a toy, a eulogy for a heavy metal boy … I feel a night flight coming on … the skeleton dance forces up all joy, one last hurrah with your heavy metal boy, skip all the graveyards stone by stone . All alone , and what are you thinking?

It is with a heart heavy with guilt and regret that I write this. Perhaps if I had double-checked before going to bed that he had his heater plugged in…perhaps if I had done this differently, or done that differently, maybe I’d still have him with me. I know that perhaps it seems silly to place so much on the death of a small fish I had only had for such a short period of time, and perhaps it really is silly. But at the same time, it reminds me that there is such mortality in all of us. Though I did my best to care for him as I saw his needs, in the end, he did not have the warmth to survive the night.

Maybe I am crazy to think in metaphors constantly, but this particular one resonates with me. People need warmth in all manners – temperature, emotion, closeness to others – and it is that much easier to perish in this world without it, even if all other needs are met. How often nowadays do those with cold and dejected hearts end things when they cannot seek out and do not have the ability to tell others about the warmth that they need?

Winter is coming. I can feel the chill already.

Big Heart, Fresh Start

Set the stage: summer, 2011, at the Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center. The day was June 20th, a short nine days after I and fifty-odd other young men and women had arrived at the camp to begin staff training for the summer. Get-to-know-you games and team-building activities were scattered freely across the schedule of training sessions, and my coworkers were already bonding fast. New friendships began to quickly form, old ones were being restored, and everyone was having a wonderful experience. Everyone, that is, except for me.

I loved playing the games, and learning new ones; that wasn’t a problem. The games would be optimized later in the summer by occupying our campers as they waited to be let into the dining hall before each meal at the Rock – Bob the Weasel, Germ and Doctor, Squirt, and Ninja Destruction were among the camp’s favorites. I knew the words and the little chants to each of them in turn, and knew all the little tricks to winning them.

I loved the songs, too; that wasn’t a problem, either. Singing the songs that had, in my several years at the camp, become part of my ever-expanding (and fittingly campy) repertoire of camp songs was a point of my pride. I could do the actions to each song in my sleep, if I so desired. I could sing the entire last verse of Rattlin Bog in a single breath, with hand motions, a feat that took several summers of practice: “And…the elephant on the amoeba, and the amoeba on the feather, and the feather on the wing, and the wing on the bird, and the bird in the egg, and the egg in the nest, and the nest on the leaf, and the leaf on the branch, and the branch on the limb, and the limb on the tree, and the tree in the stump, and the stump in the root, and the root in the bog, and the bog down in the valley-o!”

I even enjoyed all our training sessions. I loved learning all of the tools for a successful summer. I could apply an Epi-pen if I had to. I could keep a child from homesickness with encouraging words about events to come. I knew how to take an over-energized group of six nine- and ten-year-olds and turn them into a cooperative and loving family in the course of a week.

These were not the things that bothered me. On the contrary, these activities kept me involved in the staff dynamic. No, my problem was that, as each summer before had come to pass without fail, I curled up into myself as soon as the option came for me to interact with my peers. To this day I do not know whether this was out of a desire to avoid rejection, or out of simple shyness (though, who among my friends would call me shy?) but whatever the cause, the effect was the same each and every year.

This persisted for nearly the entirety of those nine days, to my dismay. I had managed to salvage my cordial and respectful rapport with the other returning counselors, and even managed to create a new friendship, but for some reason on that evening in late June, I sat in silence, dwelling on my shortcomings rather than my accomplishments.

It was the night of our second staff camp-out, and each small-group of counselors was assigned to an area of camp with their respective Team Leaders. My small-group was assigned with another to set up camp in a clearing just off of the lake trail. The site overlooked the water, and the grassy soil dropped off down into the shallow banks of Otter Lake just a few feet off the path. The path itself wound like a snake from the waterfront swim area and into the surrounding woods, joining with the narrower red and yellow hiking trails through the thicket of the camp as it twisted with the water’s edge. Also joining the trail, just before reaching the clearing where we would camp, was the site where Closing Campfire would be held at the end of each week, bringing about the symbolic end of each camp session.

This large, mulched clearing sat directly adjacent to the water’s edge, with Otter Lake threatening to tickle up against the tree stump that served as the marker to the invisible boundary of how close to the water’s edge one could get. Several rows of makeshift benches crudely fashioned out of the halves of large logs sat perpendicular to the water’s edge, three benches in each row. Two fire circles, built up with large stones found around camp in the renovations of the Closing Campfire site, sat at the ends of the aisles between the benches.

We had pitched our tents already and spent some time “bonding” with one another until we had one nice, big fire going in the farthest fire circle from the water. It was beginning to get dark, and the moon started to rise over the shimmering water. Stars blinked into existence as the group socialized in the burning orange glow, telling stories, laughing, and playing. All the while, I sat on the edge of the group, waiting for an invitation to be included. The one friend I had succeeded in making was off spending time with her new significant other, and so was nowhere to be found. I found myself not in the best of moods, on the outside looking in (again). After a good amount of time sitting in the shadow of the campfire, my invitation arrived.

Aiden was a young man with whom I never imagined myself getting along. I barely knew him; he gave off the air of the stereotypical jock upon first impression, and so I hadn’t bothered to try. He initially struck me as arrogant, immature, and not at all serious about the job we were meant to do that summer. How wrong I was…

Somehow, though my quietness and solitude was drowned out by all the fun and laughter going on around me, Aiden managed to find me. He sat right down beside me on the bench and began to talk to me. I was very surprised, as I had barely spoken to him before. He asked about how I was feeling, what was going on, and why I wasn’t joining in with everyone else. I sat in silence for a few moments, partially from shock and partially from uncertainty.

There was some inhibition within me that said opening up to him could have disastrous results. The last time that I had told someone how I felt in this regard was the year I was a Counselor in Training. I had brought myself to tears with the tale of my estrangement. Still I was met with disbelief and complete lack of support from the group that was meant to be my camp family. It had been two years since the debacle of my CIT year, and the scar left behind from it still ached within me.

There was something else in me, though, that pushed those feelings aside. I told him exactly what was on my mind. I felt left-out of things. I was alone. I didn’t feel like a part of the staff. Friendships were forming all around me, and I felt powerless to make my own. I couldn’t manage it all. I’d been the loner at the camp since I was a camper; I wanted to find a way to be involved this year. I sat and waited patiently, hoping that he would at least sympathize.

Aiden blew me away with his response. He opened up to me in return, telling me that there was no reason for me to feel left out, and that already he and others had thought so highly of me that I had, apparently, become the topic of positive conversation between him and his cabin-mates. “Someone in my cabin said that you have a big heart,” he told me, “and they’re right.” That strange admiration that I to this day don’t fully understand made me smile, and made my night so much more than I thought it could be.

I grew more as a person in that one summer than I had in my previous twelve summers of camp combined, and the seed to that growth was that one sentence. I would not have found my place at the camp, the confidence to make new friends, or the feeling of being part of something so much bigger than myself were it not for that brief moment at the Closing Campfire site. I could fully be myself, and never had the worry that my coworkers would condemn my outgoing and eccentric nature that had plagued me in summers past.

The very first camp session, I was paired with Aiden as my co-counselor. There was nobody else I would rather have worked with, and there is still nobody I’d rather have had that first group with. We had six phenomenal campers that week, and quickly became a family; I can’t remember in my several years as a counselor ever being so close to a group of kids, or to a co-counselor. No other small-group of mine had ever implemented nightly group hugs as part of our reflections on our day, or followed the rule sets so well that we could stop reminding them, “Stay in line, don’t run!” by the middle of Wednesday. If Aiden had not already proved my prejudgments completely false, that week was enough to shatter them to pieces, breaking away who I thought he’d be and showing the true shining individual underneath.

The conversation we shared at Closing Campfire was the stepping stone for my entire summer. It took me that first week of staff training to gather the courage enough to open up, and it became easier and easier as the summer went on. I connected more deeply with my peers at camp than I had any summer previous, and managed to make several new friends from both the United States and overseas. I cannot help but think that I would not have grown as much as a person from all of my summer experiences if Aiden had not taken that small step to keeping me included.

Home

Thanksgiving for me this year took place in the same home it always does: my own. I have been living at 24 Parish Road in Georgetown for the past ten and a half years. We moved into the house on July 9th, 2001, a mere six days after my sister Alivia was born.

I had never even seen the house before we moved in, so the driveway we arrived in and the brand new place that was going to be home from then on was a scary and exciting experience. I can still remember going around to the back door of the house and climbing up the basement stairs to the big, open kitchen. Up a half-flight of stairs from the kitchen was the enormous, practically empty family room, with a peaked ceiling that even the tallest ladder didn’t seem to be able to touch. The entire house seemed huge, enormous! Certainly more than enough room for a family of seven.

Nowadays, I’ve become quite used to the space. After ten years in the house, what else would one expect? The vast emptiness of the family room is now well-furnished with sofa, loveseat, recliner, and ottoman, and is cluttered with Barbie dolls, Webkinz stuffed animals, Pillow Pets, board games, books of all reading levels, and more DVDs than you could name. The peaked ceiling is still as high as it ever was, and the air above our heads is now the only empty space left in the room.

The room emulates our hold on the house; vast as it once appeared our living in it and spreading our space out has made the house seem much smaller than it originally was. Even so, the house has become home through ten years of living. Our four bedrooms and two-and-a-half baths, messy though they tend to be, absorb the love in the house. If walls could talk, I can only imagine what the walls of our house would say. Though there has been more arguing, fighting, and yelling in our house than one could sum up in words, there has been even more love. Ten Christmas mornings spent with one another, seventy birthdays and the joy that gets wrapped up in each gift, ten Mother’s Days and ten Father’s Days complete with breakfast in bed, ten years of success, failure, and working through troubles as a family.

Maresy Doats: A Nostalgia Trip

I can distinctly remember sitting in my car-seat in the back of my dad’s big van on the way to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. I couldn’t have been more than four years old; the adjacent seat was occupied by another car-seat, and that in turn was occupied by my younger sister, Alyssa. Dad sat in the driver’s seat, and Mom in the passenger’s seat, and the familiar scenery flew by the right-hand window of the van.

My mother sang to us both from the front seat, a song that we had both heard several hundred times before and had come to master: “Maresy doats, and dosey doats, and little lamsy divey, a kiddley divey too, wouldn’t you?” Alyssa, being about two or three herself at the time, probably didn’t quite understand the song, as I knew I hadn’t at her age. But I, oh, I was grown up, a full four years old, and knew that the words of the song were scrambled. I continued to sing with my mother the rest of the song. “If the words sound queer, and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey: mares eat oats, and does eat oats, and little lambs eat ivy!”

I felt so powerful singing that song, and the words felt so funny and strong on my tongue. I was manipulating where the words ended, and completely changing how the song went! The lyric flow of “Kiddley divey” rolled off my tongue like fire – warm and smooth – and was always my favorite part in the song. We sang the song, and others like it, all the way to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, and all the way back home. Though I loved to sing “I love you a bushel and a peck,” and (what I would discover later was my mom’s new take on a song from Bye Bye Birdie using our names) “We love you Manda/We love you Lyssa”, my favorite was always “Maresy Doats”.

Seeing Sparks

A 'character' portrait of a good friend of mine for a class this semester. Enjoy.


I unfold the letter for the thousandth time and look at the small, familiar, neatly-written print on the cream-colored lined paper. I can hear Caroline’s soft melodic voice as I read her words in my head, just as she’d have spoken them aloud:

“I’m lying on the couch with three dogs and two cats. It’s a rainy day in Florida, so we’re all enjoying down time. I miss you. We kicked the summer off together with ice cream, Walker’s house, Friendly’s, crashing Sparhawk, and getting lost on the road. When you left for camp, I waited for your first letter. There was a period when life went at a gentle pace and lulled New England into a sleepy daze. Your letter arrived and a few days later the world burst into life.”

Her letters were the thing that was sustaining our friendship for the time being. Being so far away from each other most of the year, visits were more or less out of the question, and I have known Caroline long enough to realize that expecting her to respond to text messages, phone calls, and the odd Facebook post would be pure fantasy. Becoming pen-pals with one another was the best way that each of us knew of to keep in contact. I opened the following letter and scanned for my favorite little chunk from it. The snippet was her closing, full of love and small inside jokes, as well as the colorful language I’ve come to expect from Caroline’s writing:

“Many flowers in Florida bloom in the fall and mimic the colors of the changing foliage in the North, so it’s beautiful here. I miss you very much. Fall reminds me of school and school is less exciting without your hugs and giggles. In fact, life in general is less exciting without you.

I wish you many safe car adventures, ample opportunity to boy scout, and spontaneous escapades that lead to friends gathered together and good tea. Take care of yourself and be well.

Love, Caroline.”

I glance out the window and I grin widely as I put the letters away. With a quick goodbye to my mother and sisters before leaving the house, I bolt out the door. The bronze BMW has finally pulled into the driveway; I’ve been ready to fly out to the familiar old car for a while now, since Caroline is always late picking me up. The still-new, shiny look of this tank of an SUV I’ve been in a thousand times is tribute to just how well-off the Sparks family is, but all I care about in that moment is seeing the driver. She has turned off the car and gotten out of it just in time to receive an enormous bear-hug I’ve been waiting ages to give. We both squeal a bit in our girlish way at the sight of one another. It has been several months since we have seen each other.

“How are you?” I ask her excitedly, releasing our embrace. She looks well – her wavy, medium-brown hair has been growing out again, and her healthy Florida tan is, of course, still quite intact. She’s wearing her usual loose t-shirt, jeans, and flip-flops in preparation for a casual day. She still exhibits her slim and simple – yet astounding – beauty (the kind that I’ve envied since I have known her), but still manages to maintain such an open and friendly air that it is of little consequence.

With an enormous grin she replies, “I’ve been great. There is so much we need to talk about!” Without any hesitation we both climb back into the SUV and begin our adventure for the day. “So, Friendly’s?”

“You know it!”

We drive off down the road, and after just a few minutes get onto the highway. As per usual for our car trips, we make an enormous deal out of merging lanes (an inside joke that has been alive for years now), and Caroline proves to me once again that the nickname “Screaming Frog” was incredibly fitting for her. Many drivers I know would not condone nearly as much playful shouting and jumping from their passengers as Caroline did, let alone follow through with the actions themselves. I fear no danger; I’d driven with her enough times to know that only spontaneous lakes and unexpected two-lane highways could dampen our fun, and that even these would become the subject of jokes later on.

We arrive at the Amesbury Friendly’s restaurant before long. A feeling of nostalgia comes over us both as we gush about how long it’s been since we’ve eaten in our Friendly’s. The amount of confessions, shenanigans, dancing, laughter, and accidental spying that those booths and tables had witnessed of us both is immeasurable. We sit in one of the back booths and continue to talk.

“So, how has life been? Things seemed to be going well from your letters,” I say to her as we sit down.

“Life has been good. I’ve been taking online classes, volunteering at the animal shelter, and working at Planned Parenthood on the island, as I’ve told you. Also been trying to keep things good with Mum. The divorce was rough on all of us, but it’s better now than the way things were.”

“How’re the animals?” I ask. “I still haven’t had the chance to meet Wyatt, you know. Plus I miss Luna and Mr. Darcy…and Zoe, too, even though that dog has a wild tongue.” I chuckle in remembrance of the many times I had stayed at Caroline’s, and found her mother’s small energy-ball of a dog furiously licking my ankle as I sat at the breakfast bar in the mornings.

Caroline smiles and nods, and gives me one of her signature flat-lipped grimaces. “Honestly, that dog…she’s a little honey badger or something…she just licks everything!” At that, our waitress comes over to get our drink orders. We both order chocolate Fribbles – our Friendly’s tradition. After a toast to dragons, dancing, and safe car adventures, we giggle and continue to chat. She shoots me several of her signature facial expressions throughout our discussion: a crinkled nose here, a furrowed brow there, sometimes eyes wide open, sometimes squinted in an inquisitive glance. Her unique facial expressions are part of what I missed most about her, and it makes me happy to see them again. We finally receive our food and, since I’ve gotten fish and chips, do our ceremonial “Seafood Requires Dancing” finger-jive and shoulder-shake.

“I really want you to meet my friend Alison,” I say to her. “At some point, I’d like you two to meet. I think you’d really like her.”

“I remember, you’ve told me about her in your letters. She’s the pagan reiki healer, right? The one with Pan.”

“Yes. That’s her,” I confirm. “She’s helped me through a lot this past year, and is part of the reason I’ve still kept with all that sort of thing. She’s gotten to be one of my best friends at school.”

“She sounds amazing. I’d like meeting her. And, it’s my obligation as your friend to do so, you know.”

“She reminds me of you talking about Rael and Mr. Wilburs when she talks about spirits,” I explain, “And she just oozes Brian and Mary when she talks about crystals.”

At this, Caroline bursts out laughing. It’s a full, loud belly-laugh, and is contagious enough that I begin to laugh, too. “Now I have to meet her!” she says amidst fits of giggles. I nod with a smile and assure that it will happen sometime in the future.

“She plays D&D now, too,” I add, putting more fuel into the fire.

“Are you sure you’re not replacing me?” Her tone of voice, the position of her eyebrows, and the smirk on her face all exude sarcasm.

I reply in all seriousness, “Caroline, really. How could I ever replace you?” I chuckle and add a joke. “After all, who else is going to have scooter races with me in the retirement home when we get old?”

“Very true!” she says, laughing again.

We continue our meal in this way for a while, revel in our Fribbles, and take our ice creams to go. We drive back to my house, and she leaves me with a promise of texting me later. Out of experience I don’t believe her, but promise her in turn that if she doesn’t, I’ll contact her for plans for the next day. I’m determined to make the most of the little time I have with her. “Not to mention,” I add, “we still need to sit down with Tara and Mary and tell them about what happened to you this summer…”

She shoots me a knowing glance and replies, “I can’t wait. Movie night sleepover at the Kelley’s, it’s going down.” We both laugh, and wave wildly to one another as the BMW backs out of the driveway and drifts away.

Interpersonal Conflict-Resolution

In his book The Sovereign Soul – Sufism: a Path for Today, Phillip Gowins talks on the subject of solving personal problems, particularly on those stemming from disagreements with others. His two steps to solving those problems are 1) to change your perspective by getting into the consciousness of the other person and understanding their point of view, and 2) to find the cause that produces the cause of the problem. Once one can accomplish both of these goals, the problem is more or less solved. Of course, the specifics of each problem in particular are a major impact on the complexities involved with solving the problem.

For example, one would take a very different approach in an argument with a loved one than in an argument with a teacher. With a loved one, it is far easier to see from their point of view. I know that I personally know my loved ones and what goes on in their lives far better than I know my teachers (life teachers, professors, or otherwise), making it far more easy for me to get into the consciousness of my loved ones to understand exactly what they are going through to cause their end of the argument. This ease, coupled with the given understanding with siblings, parents, and friends alike that we will argue at times, makes the resolution of these problems far simpler.

It is also far easier to see the causes behind the causes if an open mind is kept; considering all of the possibilities and solutions helps in any kind of problem solving, but particularly here. Because our minds tend to be so limited, opening them and broadening them is a necessity, and makes the solving of problems far easier. Novel ideas for solutions and compromises are the mark of a good and imaginative problem-solver in all other aspects of the world, so why should conflict-resolution be any different? Just imagine how different the world could be if its leaders could think of new and novel ideas for solving international conflicts other than war, weapons, and death! After all, international conflicts do seem to simply be interpersonal conflicts, just on a much larger scale. If we were to apply the same rules that we do to interpersonal conflicts to all the bigger conflicts in the world, imagine the compromises that could have come about! Of course, I do not expect any world leaders to come to such a conclusion anytime soon, for it is far too big an idea to ask all of them to consider the points of view of their “enemies.”

Perhaps we will someday get to that point, though I am certain it will not be for quite a while. Perhaps someday politics will become about benefitting the people, rather than simply benefitting the country, and perhaps someday international interactions will reflect the similar types of interpersonal reactions between family, friends, and acquaintances. Though, in truth, perhaps that is simply my naiveté speaking, and I put too much faith in other people to think such things. For now, I will stick to keeping these conflict-resolution guidelines myself, and will put them into action in my own life. With hope, there will be those that will follow this lead.

Amanda Avoiding Alcohol

In his essay “In Quest of Beer,” Frank O’Connor describes the different ways that alcohol affects the people that he spends time with, and the cultural aspects of alcohol in Ireland. Never having been a drinker myself (the only alcohol I’ve ever ingested is from Eucharist at church), these themes are a bit difficult to comment on. I am known amongst my friends as one of the “clean” ones; no drinking, no smoking, no drugs of any kind (not even prescription or over-the-counter, if I can help it). My personal philosophy on alcohol is mostly simple: I don’t really mind anyone else drinking, so long as they aren’t hurting themselves or others, but I won’t drink for three reasons.

The first of these reasons is that I am underage. This is probably the reason that least affects me, but it is one of my reasons nevertheless. For me to obtain alcohol would be illegal, and though that doesn't matter quite as much to some people, I like to be able to say that I have a clean record. I really don’t have any particular need or desire to drink at this stage of my life, so waiting until I am of legal age to do so is something of little consequence that happens to coincide with my other reasons.

The second reason that I have not to drink is that I really have no desire to. I do not know how the alcohol would affect me, and don’t particularly want to take any chances. My mother tells me that after getting my wisdom teeth taken out and still being a bit loopy from the medicine, I informed her, “If this is how it would feel, I don’t ever want to drink! I have no idea what I’m doing!” I tell this story with humor, and the sentiment I gave my mother does not surprise my friends in the slightest. In truth, knowing how little control I had over my actions in such a state of altered awareness makes me uneasy, and willing to wait for the comfort and safety of a calm evening in with my close friends or family to start drinking.

My third, and perhaps most compelling, reason not to start drinking is that I have seen instances and heard tales of times where the bottle has gotten out of hand, and lives have been changed because of it. The amount of abuse of the substance in this country is astounding (and to be perfectly honest, scary), and the amount of friends I know who have either turned to alcohol or have had loved ones turn to alcohol for “self-medication” is even more astounding. A particular friend of mine from years ago, who shall remain nameless, got herself into trouble after she began to drink. She got herself into more than one serious jam with guys who were supposed to be her friends, and even showed up to school drunk and hung-over more than once. She started a downhill descent that chills my bones to this day, began self-inflicting behaviors, dropped out of school and, eventually, off the face of the earth. I have not heard from her since then, but remembrance of what she and others like her have been through is the most significant reason for me to avoid alcohol.

I do not want to sound pretentious, or like I’m feeding out a load of bull by writing about all of this (as I’m sure perhaps I might), but I do want to convey my own opinion. Despite all of what I have said above, I am not opposed to alcohol in general. Moderation and responsibility are both key. As long as the drinker is safe to themselves and to those around them, any of the arguments I could have against them are void. Eat, drink, and be merry by all means, just be safe.

Brotherhood and Sisterhood

On Nancy Mairs' "Ron Her Son":

The amount of emotion that Nancy Mairs shows in “Ron Her Son” is monumental. I can also relate to the feeling of having someone not biologically related to you become part of your family. Though, in my case, the person is not legally a part of my family, either, and even has a biological family of their own still. Even despite all of this, I view him as my brother, and I love him just as much as I love my other siblings.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve lived under the impression that I should have grown up with an older brother. At age four, I asked my parents if they could give me one for Christmas, not fully understanding the impossibilities of the situation. My parents, being creative as they were, bought me a Cabbage Patch Kid doll that was modeled to look about five or six – certainly old enough to be a big brother – and named him Michael. In high school, now the oldest of five girls, I learned that my mother had been pregnant before me, but miscarried. She swears that the child she lost would have been her boy, had she carried it full-term. As it is, though, I was her firstborn, and that I oddly knew from that young an age, without actually knowing, that I might’ve had an older brother.

As it is, I began high school without that knowledge, and met the young man whom I would soon begin to consider my brother. I cannot for the life of me remember how it was that we were formally introduced, but I do remember that I was in three different classes with him that semester – Essentials of Literature, Essentials of Art, and Biology – and that he was the stage manager for the school show that season. We began to talk more and more, and had many of the same friends. The next semester we were in a play together and two or three classes the same. We were both also involved in the school’s gaming club (in truth, it was the prospect of spending more time with him that was the deciding factor in determining whether I’d join or not, though I’d never have admitted it).

It was not until my sophomore year that we really began to get close, and I came to the realization that he was more than simply a friend to me. Before you get any ideas, no, he was not anything romantic to me (that short-lived phase had long since passed). I did know that there was something more than I had with other friends in this particular friendship, though I did not exactly know what. I knew that I trusted him more than I trusted anyone else I was friends with, and felt like I could open up to him. I wanted to be that person for him, as well. We were not best friends, as we spent much of our time separate, but that same trust and openness was there. I realized after opening up to my biological sister that the relationship that I had with her was nearly the same as that which I had with Brian. Though much of our time was spent separate, there was a sort of understood love and openness between us that continues to this day.

I hesitate sometimes to call him my brother to other people, because I know that there are many who will not understand this connection that we share. I do know, however, that it is a real connection, and am (and will always be) an advocate for the sentiment that a person does not have to be related to you by blood or by law to be your family. Brian will always be my big brother, and I his little sister, just as Ron will always be Nancy Mairs’ son.

The Ladybug

I can hear the sound of the leaves rustling against each other in the strong autumnal breeze. I somehow picked just the right spot to sit and write that I can catch the wind face-on. It gently rushes past my ears, and I see more golden-yellow leaves slowly drop and nestle themselves into the ground. It is a sunny day, with enormous white clouds billowing through the clear blue sky. There is a slight bustle of students, on their way to their respective classes and various appointments, and their chatter mixes melodically with the breeze. As the quad empties out, I am left with the sun beating the tree behind me, and the easy shuffle of leaves dragging themselves along the pavement. The trees are all in various states of undress; some have only just begun to turn, while others have turned completely and lost nearly all of their summer leaves. A large gold maple leaf falls into my lap from above my head, and I smile at it as the breeze re-directs it to join its fellows. There is a slight nip in the air as the large clouds pass over the sun, and I shiver until the brightness shows itself again.

I switch my position against the tree to better absorb the fleeting sunlight, and find that a black-speckled yellow ladybug has found a home on my leg. I lift my finger out to it; it tickles as it crawls up my hand while I am writing. Upon looking closer at it, I find that its wings seem to be crushed beneath its bent-in exoskeleton. It flexes them several times in vain, attempting to fly. The thin, black, transparent silk of the wings now protrude from beneath its crumpled golden exoskeleton, and it begins to trek around my hand again for some miniscule morsels to munch on. I examine her even more closely. She has nine spots on either side of her exoskeleton, in a series of four rows. Going all the way across her back, the rows align themselves with four, six, six, and two spots. One side perfectly mirrors the other, even down to the dents in the dome of her exoskeleton.

She’s a peculiar little thing, crawling contentedly back and forth along my thumb as I type, occasionally attempting, in vain, to flex her wings again. She crawls along on her six spindly little legs, occasionally using one of them to scratch another, or wipe her face, or something of that sort. Her curiosity then overwhelms her, and she begins to investigate the rest of my hand, my wrist, my palm, my fingers, all the while flexing her wings from beneath her exoskeleton. She perches herself in the space between my left pointer and middle fingers, and investigates my fingertip as I type. Content with investigating my pointer, she continues on to my middle, and sits just above the bend underneath my first knuckle. She makes typing a bit more than difficult, but it is nice to have a companion. She nestles back down in the skin between my two fingers and uses her middle legs to scratch her hind ones.

I look up and see that the quad has emptied itself. The ladybug continues her quest up and down my hand again, and I wonder if any other person here would have let her crawl around on them for as long as I have. She’s a gentle little thing, the only living thing that I’ve noticed being around on the quad for as long as I have. She sniffs her black crown around on my palm after carefully searching my pinky, and seems to nestle there, upside down in the lines of my palm as I type. I wonder, not for the first time, how her exoskeleton managed to become so bent-in. I hold my palm up to my eyes and watch her gently clean her face with a front leg, in much the same fashion that a cat would do. She rubs her antennae softly, and continues about her business, becoming accustomed to my left hand. She uses her middle and hind legs to clean the rest of herself in much the same way that she cleaned her face, and crawls back up and down my thumb.

I’ve moved several times to face the sun more, but she has been content; though, I realize, this could be in part because no part of my left hand was touching the ground. She flexes her wings again, and I place my left hand on the ground, knowing that she will crawl off when she is content to do so. After some time, she doesn’t seem to be moving more than a few inches around my palm. I put my right pointer finger out to her, but she doesn’t climb onto it. Instead, she brushes against the tip of my fingernail several times in a row, almost nuzzling me, trying to fix her dented exoskeleton. I can almost hear her sigh as she continues to trek around my left hand, so I pick up a leaf, the same color as her, and put its tip next to her. She crawls upon it, and I place it gently on the grass next to me. I look to my computer screen for a brief moment, and when I look back to the leaf I placed her on, she is gone from sight.

I marvel at the short time I spent with her. I never would have expected any creature of nature to have been content with my presence for long, let alone made a temporary home on my hand. I also never would have imagined that I would ever have made such a connection to as miniscule an insect with as simple a mind as a ladybug. I am puzzled by how feline she acted, and enchanted by the strange metaphor of her flight troubles and her disappearance. This ladybug has left a profound and stirring effect on me, and will not be forgotten.

Accidental Adventure

On Katherine Anne Porter's "St. Augustine and the Bullfight"

Katherine Anne Porter talks much about adventure in “St Augustine and the Bullfight.” She discusses the difference between adventure and experience – adventure being “something you seek for pleasure, or even for profit…for the illusion of being more alive than ordinarily” and experience being “what really happens to you in the long run; the truth that finally overtakes you.” Porter describes several of her adventures, such as climbing a cliff face in Boulder, being carried away at a bounding gallop on a stallion of a horse, and watching bullfighting with friends. All of these adventures undertook her suddenly, and it wasn’t until later that she deemed them “adventures.”

Is it possible to actively seek adventure, and still come upon it? Some would say not, and might say that adventure is something that just happens, and cannot be planned in advance. I must say that, though I do believe this to be accurate, I also somewhat disagree. It is my opinion that, though the best adventures are the kinds that are complete surprises, you can specifically seek out adventure and still manage for it to find you in unexpected ways.

Some of my favorite adventures, for example, took place on days when friends and I got together and decided, “Today, we are going to go on an adventure.” My most recent adventure took place just after my nineteenth birthday, on a day that was planned as a final adventure with my friend Aaron before we both left for college this fall. I can remember the day perfectly, with the warm late-summer sun beating down on us, and the smell of excitement looming in the air. I got into the passenger seat of his Subaru Outback when he picked me up that morning, and the first words out of my mouth were, “So, what kind of adventure are we going to go on today?”

We wandered for a while, bouncing around the bustling, pedestrian-heavy streets of Newburyport, joking and laughing as we ran into old friends. It was a very calm day for adventure, it seemed, and though there was a twinge of excitement still in the air, it was disappearing quickly. Adventure, it seemed, would leave us alone for the day, content with letting us just have time to spend together before we parted ways for the entirety of autumn. The afternoon settled and became just another hang-out day, full of simple, open conversation and camaraderie. It wasn’t until we were on our way back that we found our adventure.

Taking Rt. 1 was the most direct way from Aaron’s home in Hamilton to mine in Georgetown, a trip of about a half an hour. In the car we discussed driving, and how much more fun it was when nobody else was on the road with us. We were driving behind an SUV with vanity plates that, if I recall correctly, spelled out “LXNDER,” or something similar of the sort, that told us that the driver’s name was Alexander. I took note of this (more out of sheer amusement than anything else) as the SUV was slowing down and putting their left directional on to make a turn. Aaron put his foot on the brake, slowing the Outback to let this Alexander and his SUV make their turn.

The next thing I knew, the sound of crunching metal and Aaron’s surprised shouting filled my ears as I felt myself jerk forwards and back again at least twice. I clenched my eyes shut against what was going on around me as a reflex, but had a strangely calm air. When I opened my eyes, I looked around to take everything in. The airbags had not deployed, so the accident must not have been too serious. Aaron was fine, just a bit shaken up, as was I. The worst thing that had happened was that his sunglasses and my hat found their way into the backseat, and the heel-caps of my boots had popped off to find a new home on the floor of the car. We pulled over to assess the damage. Apparently, the man who was driving in the car behind us had not noticed Aaron’s brake-lights, and did not touch his brakes until it was too late to stop the car. He had rear-ended us, propelling us forward to in turn rear-end the SUV before the driver had the chance to make his turn.

Nobody was injured, but the cars were literally bent out of shape. Alexander’s SUV escaped with barely a scratch, while the hood of Aaron’s Outback had crumpled. The same case seemed to be true of the back of Aaron’s car and the hood of the car behind us; barely a scratch on the Outback, but the other car’s hood was crumpled. We called the police to report the incident, and immediately afterwards called our parents. The cars had to be towed, so Aaron’s dad came to pick us both up. I remember marveling at how calm I had remained throughout the entire ordeal, even though I could feel the excited heart rate and slight airy head rush that went along with the adrenaline that coursed through my veins. After retelling our story countless times to police, EMTs, and parents alike, we were finally back on our way to take me home. I distinctly remember the final words of parting that Aaron left me with as I waved goodbye: “Amanda, I think that was way too much adventure for one day…”

Why I am an Optimist

There are plenty of people in this world who believe that pessimism, as a belief system, is the way to go. Their thought is that if one always expects the worst from everything, there’s no way to be unpleasantly surprised. Though this may be true, the way of the pessimist also means that you cannot have positive expectations from anything, or from anyone. I imagine that a pessimist always lives in a sense of fear, or hatred, or depression, caused by the way it is that they look at the world. The definition of pessimism is the tendency to see only bad or undesirable outcomes, the doctrine that the world is the worst possible of worlds and that everything tends toward wickedness, the belief that even goodness and happiness cannot compensate for all the evil and pain out there. This leaves the true pessimist with no room for joy, no room for hope, no room for goodness: a kind of “Eeyore complex,” as I like to think of it.

This doctrine, this radiation of negativity, this “Eeyore complex,” is such a downer, in my eyes. How can you expect me to see bad in everything, when there is so much good to be found? The glass, after all, is neither half-full nor half-empty; in the end, it is all-full: half-full of air, half-full of water (or whatever liquid happens to be residing in the glass). Most people tend to forget that air is matter, too, and not just empty space, just as they forget that there is always good in something, and not simply bad. No matter what the event is, no matter who the person is, there is always some good in it, somewhere. Any occurrence, given enough time, can grow into something good.

Yes, there is pain and suffering in this world, and much of it, but there has not been a case yet that I have seen no good come from. Even in situations of uttermost misery, there is gain in the personal growth that occurs, and in the knowledge of just how strong a person can be under strain. In the cases of people giving up, harming themselves, or even ending their own lives, it is my belief that these people were not able to see the good things there were to see for whatever reason. When the mind is clear, and brain chemistry is as it should be, there is absolutely no reason not to see the goodness, light, and joy that there is to be seen in this world.

I was once a pessimist, so I know just how it can feel. I never thought that anything positive would come to me, and always saw the bad things in anyone I wasn’t already friends with. I had a negative attitude about nearly everything I came across, and was overly wary of every situation I was put into. My trust levels were very low, and I had very little faith in humanity. I was miserable. I didn’t feel at home anywhere, I didn’t feel as though there was any love anywhere, because I didn’t feel there was anything in myself to love. The world was a bad and a scary place, and I had to live in it. It was as though I was trapped in the confines of a pitch-black room, blind to everything around me, eyes clamped tightly shut to block out the monsters. The only things I could feel were coldness, harshness, and emotional strain. I sat in my cold corner, arms wrapped tightly around my legs, bracing myself against the wickedness. All it seemed I needed, though, was for someone to simply turn on the light and get me to open my eyes.

I don’t quite know what it was, or who it was, that finally pushed me to see things differently. The realization that there were far more important things to be worrying about than my own negativity, though, certainly played a part. My friends were going through far rougher patches in their lives than I ever had, and there I was, brooding and complaining about my own life, oblivious to the fact that they needed someone to be their rock in an ocean of uncertainty, fear, sadness, and doubt. A wave of emotions washed over me, made of shame and remorse, telling me that something had to change. How could I help save them if I couldn’t even save myself? How was I supposed to show them the light and the goodness in themselves and the love that surrounded them if even I couldn’t even open my eyes to try to see it? Something in me turned on the light-switch in that dark room and stoked the dying fire in the hearth, telling me that it was all right to see, that the monsters in the dark had gone, that I was safe, warm, and at home, that I was needed elsewhere. I took a deep breath, and I opened my eyes.

Instantly I was filled with the warmth of that hearth-fire in myself, astounded by the brightness and goodness I was able to see. I saw the beauty in the laughter of my friends and in the hearts of all the people I met. I could see the suffering and the pain that lived in all of my loved ones and all the stress that they were going through from day to day, but I could also see the goodness, the strength, the happiness that their troubles would one day bring them. I knew that if they took the experiences and shaped the way that they changed because of them, they would turn out better at the end. If they let their experiences change them without any of their own input, there was no telling what sorts of negativity and bitterness would form around them, but if they took control, they could learn from their troubles and grow.

My positive attitude was a gift that I knew I was meant to have, and was meant to share with those who suffered. I became the rock that my friends so needed. So long as I kept myself above the water and solidly rooted to the ground, I could withstand any ocean they brought to me. If I could see the good in myself and the good in others, I could do my best to convince others that it was there; they just had to gain the courage to look. The hearth within me warmed my heart and kept them from freezing. I gave them my knowledge as it grew, telling them, “Look there. Look at all the good there is to see. Look at the beauty of even the cloudiest of days, and look at how the sun still shines behind the clouds, even if we can’t see it there right now. The sun is always there, even after the longest night, even past the darkest of storm-clouds. It will never stop rising, we just need to have the strength to wait out the storm, and keep things as well as we can in the mean time.”

I have become a much better person, in my eyes, since committing to optimism and positivity. I’ve learned to trust, and learned that not everyone in the world will hurt you if they get the chance. I’ve learned to love more deeply and more openly than I ever have before. Love comes in many types, many shapes, and many sizes, and all are welcome. Not to love your friends seems to me like doing them a disservice; they are there for you through thick and thin. You play together, laugh together, suffer together, and cry together. If you don’t feel that you love a person even after all of that, you have a colder heart than I could have imagined. I have learned to appreciate the little things for their untouched beauty and their simplicity. I have learned to open up to all the options and to broaden my mind to all opinions and beliefs. I have learned that there is no inborn tendency for evil, that “evil” people are nurtured to be the way that they are, and that doing bad things doesn’t make a person heartless.

It is my opinion that where there is strength, where there is knowledge, and where there is love, there is always a way to see all the good out there to be found. Every aspect of a person’s life is a chance to do something good or to find something positive. There is beauty in everything; we just have to look for it. When they say “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” we just need to make the realization that we are the beholder; it is up to us what is beautiful. It is up to us where the goodness is. It is up to us to decide to open our eyes and to see the goodness in everything.

On George Orwell's "Why I Write"

(This may give people some insight into how crazy I really am...)

Upon reading this selection by Orwell, I’ve been able to draw a good amount of parallels between us. Both he and I began to story-tell and to write from a very young age, and very few works are left over from that time period. We both have imagined our own lives as someone’s story, and begun to narrate it in our own minds as though we were writing it ourselves (which, it could be argued, I suppose we both were). Something that differentiates us, though, is that I have always known that I wanted to write, and never tried to deny the fact. Writing is something that has always come naturally to me, something that I have always cherished as a part of who I am. Writing itself has been a constant companion to me throughout my young life, and I anticipate will be for the rest of it.

There are many reasons that I write what I write, and the reason varies depending on the genre that I am writing. When I write my pieces of fiction, usually it is because some character or other has entered into my mind and walked around long enough to make a home there, thus inhabiting in my mind a space to set out their life, their background, their story. There is a particular room in my mind, painted a red-brown color with deep-stained bead-board on the walls, furnished with a simple rectangular table and a few wooden chairs. It is through the door and into this room that the characters enter and find their way around, so I’ve come to assume that they all come from whatever land of un-imagined lack-of-being lies beyond that door. Once they enter into my mind’s room, they exist, and it is my job to share who they are. So that their fictional biographies do not simply remain unshared and in my mind, I write them down, and try to piece together the things that the characters don’t remember, or will not share with me, to complete the puzzle that is their story.

When I write (as I am writing now) something short, personal, and explanatory, something that describes how I feel about whatever it is that I am feeling towards on that particular day, I usually write to vent that emotion (though, in this particular case, also due to the fact that it is a school assignment). When I feel overwhelmed by a strong case of emotion, I always get an undying desire to put my pen to paper or my fingers to a keyboard and to just sit and write. I write out my emotions in the same way that many composers take down emotions into their pieces of music, later to be played back and felt all over again, this time perhaps to be shared with many other people. My pieces such as those usually become blog entries or journal entries, the difference being whether I want others to read the composition of words and feel the symphony of the emotion or not. In both cases, I write from a deep desire that becomes a burning need to write, whether it be to share my own story or someone else’s story, my own life and emotions or those of my characters.

On Zora Neale Hurston's "How It Feels To Be Colored Me"

My very first thought upon reading this passage is to ask – “All right, now who am I?”

Hurston is, at different times, “Zora of Orange County” and “Cosmic Zora,” though she speaks specifically on the subject of being colored. She becomes a tribal dancer listening to jazz orchestras, and later becomes “the eternal feminine with its string of beads.” But, what am I? Who am I, and how can I find out?

I start from the beginning, building upward from the ground, brick by brick. At the foundation of the building that is me, I am a young woman. I am a daughter, a sister, a niece, a granddaughter. I am a friend. But what else is there? I continue to build upwards; I start with the vague things, the general things, the ordinary things. I am Caucasian, I’m 5’3” tall, I am nineteen years old, and I have blue eyes. I have four sisters, and two parents still married to one another. I am a student, and am a sophomore in college.

All these things are common, and do not all together make up the being that is me. I dig deeper into myself, searching for the bricks to lay down upon the foundation I have already set. What else am I? I’m an actress, and I’m a writer. I’m a Christian (Episcopalian, specifically) but I am very open-minded. I’m a nerd, a geek, a sci-fi/fantasy enthusiast, and an avid reader. I work as a summer camp counselor and I love my job. I’m the biggest mother hen that I know. I aspire to be a teacher, an author, and a community theatre director. These are the things that are plain to see about me, but I know that there’s a level to myself that’s deeper than that.

I cry at many things, and laugh at a hundred things more. I play Dungeons and Dragons, and have been for five years. I’m the oldest of five girls, and part of a very large extended family. I’m very loud, and I love to sing, much to the disappointment of many of my friends. I live by my emotions, and the instincts that they give me. I laugh with my whole self, and love the healthy, happy feeling I get when organic laughter overtakes me. I love with all my heart, and somehow still leave space for more love to form.

I don’t really care what others think about me. I live by the words of wisdom that I’ve accumulated over the years. Those who mind don’t matter, those who matter, don’t mind – Dr. Seuss. Love many, trust few, do wrong to no one – William Shakespeare. Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a great deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give – Eleanor Roosevelt.

Now, there are also parts of me that live within my imagination, solid parts of myself though they are, as Cosmic Zora is to Hurston. I am an earthly creature, running barefoot through a warm, primal forest. I am a lady knight, valiantly guarding the kingdom I've sworn to protect. I am a naiad, dancing to the music of the thunderstorm rolling through the sky above me. I am a bird, my wings surging as I soar through the air, oblivious to the troubles of the lives going on below me. I am myself, and I am complete.

On Otter Lake

A small piece I wrote this summer, meditating by Otter Lake at camp:

The surface of Otter Lake is alive today. The gentle breeze that sweeps over the water folds and waves the lake's face the way that air ripples beneath flowing fabric. The birds in the trees chirp joyously to each other, filling the air with a chorus of nature's music. The sounds on the lake create a gentle symphony, played by an orchestra of the man-made and the natural, harmonizing in this glorious space. The creak of the dock on the lake's surface beautifully complements the sound of the water kissing the pebbles on the shore. The wind through the leaves sounds like a long exhale, mirroring a soft and gentle chime. My heartbeat becomes the percussion, oddly in-sync with this melodious moment.

The peace I feel is monumental, gracious and warm as the sun's embrace is on my back. I know this spot is sacred. Its gentle knowledge relaxes me. This spot on the water has seen so many years of joy, thousands of different faces, all experiencing an unfathomable balance between man and nature, whether they realized it then or not.

It's times like this one that make me remember why I keep coming back here every year, why I always think of this place as my favorite place in the world. The wholeness of my self in this place, of everyone in this place, is why I keep coming back. My heart is full to almost bursting when I am here, and yet I know that the capacity is still there for more love. This space is sacred. That much I know to be true, always and forever.

The video doesn't quite capture all the sounds, but I think it does do the space justice.

Imaginary Worlds

Today is one of those especially nerdy blogging days. I've been spending a good amount of my time the past few weeks thinking a lot about some of the writing that I've been trying to get done. I have a 2" binder currently more than half full of writing, character bios, and ideas for the different stories that I've been working on lately, and have been working on for ages. I've become especially determined as of late to unearth my old "Adventuria" stories that have been lying around virtually untouched for years and years. What is Adventuria, you may ask? Well, I'll tell you.

It was in the fifth grade that my neighbor and best friend, Charlotte, and I decided to create our own world. We had just finished reading "Bridge to Terabithia" in school, and the idea struck us that we wanted our own world to go to. We became sisters that day, the princess and queen of a small, forested nation called Adventuria, so named because of the many adventures we were to have there. We transformed and became the daughters of the late King Statsatorn and Queen Elizabeth Royalle (called Stan and Liza by friends). Charlotte was the eldest daughter, Queen Terabith Liza Royalle, young archmage and ruler of the land. I became the younger daughter, Princess Senora Kit Royalle, Lady Knight and learning mage. Terabith ruled the land while Senora enforced things, playing off each other's strengths and hiding each other's weaknesses. That day, we found ourselves.

It was in Charlotte's backyard that we first played Adventuria. We ritualized the beginning of the game, needing to walk through the arch of shrubs and trees that allowed us to cross the threshold into our world, discarding our old selves and becoming the new. The cares and weights of ourselves in the real world did not exist in Adventuria, and  we were free to do as we would. It was not long until Charlotte's brother Sam showed himself, wanting to play with us, too. He wanted to be our dog, until Terabith realized that it was a spell that had made him what he was. Lo and behold, he wasn't a dog at all, but the lost prince of Adventuria, Terrier Stan Royalle, the youngest child of Stan and Liza, thought to have died with his mother.

We played in Adventuria every weekend for years. We made Senora's sword, Terabith's mage staff, Terrier's bow and arrows, and even made costumes to be our characters one year for Halloween. Naturally, nobody knew at all who we were. We didn't care, though, as long as we knew who we were. Our adventures became part of our lives. Eventually, our friends started to become curious as to what we were doing. They joined in on our fun, but it was never the same. They had their own personas, their own ideas for the world, and soon they became bored with the world.

Though its active part of our lives came to an end shortly after, Charlotte and I continued to write about our adventures. I began documenting the adventures of Senora, Terabith, and Terrier, and she wrote the story of Stan and Liza's adventures. Though our stories ended up abandoned, they were, at least for me, a springboard into the writing that I love to do to this day. I plan to unearth our old stories and edit them, hopefully making them readable and (perhaps in the future) ready to be published.

If you were ever wondering why for so long I acted like I was living in a fantasy world, now you know. :)

Well-wishes for JT

So, this summer, one of my community theatre friends, a man named JT, was in a motorcycle accident. I heard about the incident while at camp, and this is a little something I wrote in my spare time to assess what I was thinking.

*****

I turn my dice bag over in my hands. It relaxes me – the familiar clack of colliding dice, the soft feel of the fabric of the bag. Out of place as the sound is amongst the chatter of rock games here at camp (dice rolling seems not to fit in with Bob the Weasel and Doctor & Germ) it is a comfort to hear a sound I’ve come to love here in this place I’ve come to love.

The news has struck me completely. It overwhelms me and consumes my thoughts until nothing else is left. I cried in worship that night, harder than I ever had previously. My prayers and thoughts were all concerning the accident, and I just couldn't keep a counselor-face on anymore. I broke down. I kept hearing others telling me that everything would be all right, not to cry, to smile, but that just was not what I wanted to hear in the slightest. I wanted real news, real advice, real support. And, unknowingly to those who gave it, that is what I ended up receiving. The kind words, the prayers, the hugs I received in the next few days, were exactly what I needed. And, even more so, was the card. I found it on my bed (I knew that I was getting it, the sender told me so) and opened it gently.

The striking thing about the card was the coincidence of the words that were written. The sender had told me to remember to breathe, and given me a tidbit of biblical comfort within - "Gracious God, calm my heart." Breathe, the word being like a breath in itself, is one of my meditation words - I write it, I recite it, I sing it, I live it. And the biblical tidbit was the exact one that I had randomly received at worship circle with Krysta that night. The coincidence was too great for me to believe it was pure coincidence. Even the sender of the card herself hadn't realized just how she had done it. The card was exactly what I needed to keep moving, to keep on going, to know everything was in good hands.

*****

Everything is fine now, and JT is well on the road to recovery, but I wanted to share this piece of writing with all of you.

My home away from home - Barbara C. Harris Camp (pt. 2)

The Camp (this summer)

This summer, camp was wonderful. I left home on June 11th and arrived that day at camp, there to stay until August 6th.The first two weeks were Staff Training, where we learned all about the way that camp was to work, what our jobs and responsibilities were, and were given all the important tools we would need to succeed this summer. We also learned a lot about one another, and started to get to know each other on a personal level. I think that my favorite three events of staff training were our two camp-outs and our hike.

On our first camp-out, we were all still getting to know each other. We all picked partners to sleep in tents with, and we set them all up on the Upper Field. The weather was wonderful, the company was great, and it was an excellent bonding experience for us all. I shared a tent with one of my best friends that summer, and through the power of play and laughter, started on the road to making the close friendships that I did this summer. From sharing secrets to shaking tents, from running barefoot around the grassy, dewy carpet of the field to sitting and relaxing with one another, the first camp-out was an experience I'll never forget.

The second camp-out was smaller. We all broke up by our Small Groups and each small group camped out somewhere different. My small group camped out with another, at the site past Closing Campfire. We set up our tents in the big clearing at the end of the path, and set up fires in the fire circles at Closing. We all had some free time to hang out together and socialize, and that camp-out was such a good experience to foster the relationships I already had with the other staff members. They were very quickly becoming good friends of mine, and that night in particular I had such deep and meaningful conversations with people that I know that they will be my good friends for a very long time.

The staff hike was also an incredible experience, but for very different reasons. The staff hike becomes a sort of bonding experience, and it was very important for me to do it. I did the same hike with my group when I was a CIT, and again when I was a Junior Counselor. The staff last summer also went on the hike together, but I unfortunately had my freshman orientation for college when they had the hike, and had to miss out. This year, I was determined to make the hike, and to develop the sense of camaraderie that goes along with the excitement, hard work, and determination of the hike each and every year. We all work together to make it to the summit, and when we finally do, that sense of completion brings us so much closer together as a staff and as a family. The view at the top of that summit was beautiful, and we all got to share that together.

Barbara C. Harris Camp Staff 2011!

The rest of the summer flew by. Week one, I had Explorers for an age group. Our small group, Explorer A, was made up of myself, my co-counselor, Aiden, and six phenomenal campers (two girls, three boys). Arden, Kati, Marvin, Gabriel, Matt, and Ben were probably the best group of kids I could have asked for to start the summer with. Absolutely none of them misbehaved, and they got along with each other so well that by the end of the week, we were just having fun. We grew so close together that week, and became like our own little family. I miss every one of those kids, as well as my co-counselor and very good friend, Aiden. I could not have asked for a better week to start off with.

Week two was a bit more difficult, but was a good week all the same. Despite my late nights with stomach-achy campers, my girl-crazed Explorer boys, and my Explorer girls' miniscule hissy fits, I had a fun week. My co-counselor was Al, and for the week we also had six campers (three girls, three boys). Meghan, Grace, Rachael, Michael, Eli, and Caleb were a complete riot. I already knew Meghan and Michael from things previous (Meghan is the younger sister of two of my camp friends, and Michael's mom is the priest at my church). Eli and Caleb, two troublesome twins, had managed to become the stuff of Trouble Camper Lore by the time I had them, yet had calmed down enough that I grew to love them both by the end of the week. Grace and Rachael both were new campers to me, but were great additions to our group.

Week three, I was assigned to work with Day Camp. There were several other counselors doing so with me - Jess R, Becca, Frankie, Gracie, Andy, Kevin, Peter, and the day camp director, Karen. I may be missing people, but it was an enormous week! There were SO many kids, they needed us all! I think the grand total got to be 27 day campers. There are most certainly very memorable campers that week - Jack, Madelyn, Ty, Micah, Caroline, and Matthew, just to name a few. Juliette, an adorable toddler and daughter of one of the chaplains from that week, was the favorite of many of us, I think. I was incredibly impressed by the fact that she could form complete grammatically correct sentences at such an early age.

Week four, I had my first of three all-girls groups. Jess M was my co-counselor, and we had a small group of five Adventure age girls - Calista, Ava, Rossely, Cristal, and Alondra. This week of camp, a group of students from the Esperanza Academy came to attend camp. Rossely, Cristal, and Alondra were all part of that group, and so already knew each other previously. Calista and Ava also previously knew each other. They were best friends, and had been attending camp together for years. Ava's grandmother was one of the chaplains that week, and brought Calista along as she did each year. Due to the fact that so many of them already knew so many of the others, incorporating the two groups of girls together was pretty simple. The week was mostly relaxing, and plenty of fun.

Week five was the week that I had been waiting for the entire summer. Last summer, week five, I had gotten an all-girl's Challenge group that was my favorite of the summer. This year, miraculously, and to my great pleasure, four of those five girls were back, and they were all mine again. They had brought along a friend of theirs from their town, so again, I had an all-girls Challenge group of five girls. My co-counselor was a very close friend of mine Allie, and there is nobody else I would have rather had this group of girls with. I am so glad to have been able to share the experience with her, and knew from the beginning of the week that we were in for a wonderful one. Adriana, Abby O, Abi W, Katherine, and Molly were our girls for the week, and though we started out tough on them to show them we meant business, by the end of the week, the seven of us were as much friends as we were anything else. I could go on forever about the greatness of that week, but there is still another week to talk about, and this post has gone on for long enough already.

Week six I had another all-girls Challenge group, this time with a full eight girls in it. My co-counselor was Kim, a girl I've known since our CIT year. Our girls were Sé, Betsy, Lily, Sarah, Naomi, Emily, Kira, and Kaylie. This was my first and only full-size overnight group all summer. They were wonderful girls, even if they were rowdy, ridiculous, and crazy. Each and every one of them made me smile and laugh, and they were always up to something humorous.

In all, my summer was absolutely wonderful, and I could talk forever about it, but I think this summary is as much as I will talk about it for now. I can only imagine that there are very few people who have read this whole entry (shout out if you did!) and so I will stop rambling now and continue about my business. Barbara C. Harris Camp, thank you so much for all that you have done for me, and I hope to see you again next June.

My home away from home - Barbara C. Harris Camp (pt 1)

The Camp (past summers)

This summer, I was a counselor at the Barbara C. Harris Camp in Greenfield, New Hampshire. BCH is an Episcopalian Church Camp run by the Diocese of Massachusetts, and has been my summer home for the past seven summers in a row. I've gone to Episcopalian Church Camp for the past twelve summers in a row. My first five were at Bement Camp, a now-closed camp that my mom and uncles used to work at as counselors when they were about my age. I loved Bement dearly, and was sad to leave, but I am so glad that I moved on to such a wonderful place as BCH.

The way that age groups work at BCH are such:
Explorer - going into grades 4 & 5
Adventure- going into grades 6 & 7
Challenge - going into grades 8 & 9
Base - going into grades 10 & 11
Since it's a Church Camp, we had worship services twice a day (morning and evening) and Bible Study every day. We said grace before each meal, and sang fun Christian songs (as well as other crazy camp songs).

I spent three summers at BCH as a camper. My very first year, I was about to go into the eighth grade. I was in a small group called Challenge C, with counselors Tracey and Ara. I remember my week, and all the fun that I had. That summer, though, I didn't talk during Bible Study, and I didn't sing or dance in worship. It took me until my next summer, in Art Camp, to really start to open up. That next summer was my most memorable, as a camper. I had two international counselors, Petr and Iryna. I knew a few of the other campers already. I knew the songs from the previous year, started realizing that it was okay to be foolish and to dance around, and that being myself was what camp was all about. I made friends that year that I still have to this day, both in my fellow campers and in the director of the program, Erin Ferrell. My third year, in Base Camp, I feel was only a springboard into the world of becoming a part of what made BCH so great - its staff. Base Camp was a week that I only slightly remember, most likely due to the fact that no great transformation happened that year. I know that I had fun, but by the end of that summer I knew I was ready to take the next step in the process.

The summer that I was going into 11th grade, I spent three weeks of my summer doing the Counselor In Training program at BCH. For the price of one regular week of camp, my fellow CITs and I (we called ourselves the Frugaloots...that was our insanely original team name, and it stuck) spent our days learning what it meant to be on staff. We spent our first week basically as campers, getting to know each other and getting to know all the rules and regulations we would be expected to enforce. Our second week was spent doing more intensive training, more specific training. Our third week was spent shadowing groups, watching the counselors that we were working with put everything we were learning into action. It wasn't just some job to pass the time, it wasn't just something to do for the money. It was going to be some truly hard work on our part, but it would be some of the most rewarding work that we would ever do. I put my all into learning everything that I could, and into getting to know all of the other Frugaloots as well as I could. We were all psyched for the next summer, being Junior Counselors, and almost all of us returned.

The Junior Counselor program was six weeks long. We had gotten caught right in the middle of a program reformation, so ours was a very different experience from those who were JCs the previous year. Our first few weeks were spent just like our first two weeks as CITs. We went over everything again, and learned more about each other. Though there were a few Frugaloots missing from the Junior Counselor group we now had, there were a few additions, as well. One was a CIT the summer before we were, and had taken a summer off before returning. One was a Junior Counselor the summer previous, and was re-doing the program because of her age. Two were CITs in the second 3-week session of the previous summer. By the end of our Junior Counselor summer, almost all of us were put with a group as a full-fledged counselor.

Of all the Junior Counselors I worked with, there are four of us (other than myself) who were still working at the camp this summer. One has become a program staff member, one has become a team leader, and the other two, like me, have remained counselors. I am so grateful for them, and for the summers that I have spent with them. I care about each and every one of them in a way different than I do for anyone else, because we all spent all those weeks together in the past. In total, I think I have spent between 22 and 25 weeks total over the past four summers working with these fabulous people. The time truly adds up.

Last summer, my first year as a counselor, was absolutely amazing. I met so many new and wonderful people (all the fabulous and amazing staff), and really got the chance to make a difference in all those campers' lives. I went at it being myself completely, and I know that that has been my strength ever since then. I love being able to be the one to show them all that it is okay to be crazy, ridiculous, and a bit eccentric, that being you is all that matters at camp and you will be loved no matter what. I love making those connections with the kids, knowing that they'll go home and remember you and the things you did with them, and the things that you taught them. Some of the things that made me know that my time at camp was well spent were the notes and letters I received from them. One camper wrote letters to me during the school year. One simply wrote a note during an activity, and in it told me that I was one of his favorite counselors in his many years at the camp. The simple act of writing those notes made me realize just what an impact I had. I vowed to go back to camp for another summer. Though I may be home, for now, my mind and heart are at camp.

The Purpose of This Blog

So...basically, this is a blog. Obviously. We're on blogger.com here.

The blog knows that it's a blog. It also knows that it knows it's a blog. It's a metablog.

I don't know just yet what this blog will be used for, and I can't promise it will be entertaining (for anyone but me, anyway). I just want to see what happens, see where this goes. Perhaps this will become a good way for my friends to stay up to date on what's going on with me, perhaps I'll just use this as an outlet for my lame humor and general nerdiness. We shall see.

And yes. I purposefully titled my blog just so that the acronym would be ACRONYM.
A prime example of my lame humor right there. :)