Circular Conversations

I'm tired of conversations that circle around themselves like a lost Hansel and Gretel with no more bread crumbs.  I find that sometimes, sitting at the living room table, I feel myself transported back to some dusty memory in which the same words twist through the air in similar patterns. The same questions repeating themselves, the same daily actions replaying endlessly like the hands of a clock. And these fill our conversations, infiltrating them at every possible moment.

The circles are inescapable. 

I'm getting tired of it. I'm ready for something that goes ON, beyond those circles, that brings in new shapes and colors and words to create something entirely new, so that we can escape from the infinite loop. 

charity: water Birthday Campaign

Please visit my charity:water Birthday Campaign page to watch the video and read about how my charity will help water projects. http://mycharitywater.org/p/campaign/?campaign_id=21342 (The following is the commentary I wrote for that campaign page.)

I'm about to turn 15. Wow. With a birthday the day before Christmas, it's easy to get caught up in the comfort of the holidays and the excitement of giving and receiving gifts. With new, just released books lining the shelves of bookstores and cute outfits winking at me from store windows, it's easy to just sit back and forget about all the people in the world who are less fortunate than I, figuring, "I work hard. There are people who would buy all of those things without a thought. I deserve that stuff." 

And maybe I do. But what I've found is that I don't REALLY want it that much. When I compare it with the way my heart aches when I watch this video, my want is nothing. So this year, instead of asking for things, which will just crowd my room and give me more to be stressed about as I try to clean up, I'm asking for water for a family somewhere in Africa.

I've set my goal as $60, because at $20 per person, that is enough to provide a family of 3 - the same size as mine - with clean water. I do not ask you to give any more or any less than what you would usually spend on a birthday present for me. 

There has been many a time when I feel disgusted with the ease of life here, because I begin to feel that everything I live on is built upon some Jenga tower facade that could collapse at the slightest nudge. The water from my tap comes to me through other people's labor, and the food I eat, though it may be local, has still passed through many other's hands before mine. And this allows me to learn and grow every second of the day, because I do not have to worry about having clean water, food, or clothes. This opportunity has been lost for many women in sub-Saharan Africa, who spend more time every day collecting water than they do doing any other activity. We're not talking just a few families here, either: 1 billion people live this way every year.

If it cost $20 to provide you with clean water, would you give up that nice shirt you've been wanting? I bet you would. So donate to my campaign for charity:water, and change a life.

It's That Time of Year for...Noveling!

It is with much pride and disbelief that I announce (a few days late) the one-year anniversary of you, blog! It seems like it's been so much longer than a year, seeing as the world of words has really always been with me, but since it's only been one year with you, that just means there is so much more time left to spend with you!

There's a lot to catch up on, and so many things I could talk about that center around events. But I think I'd rather focus on ideas, because my appreciation for ideas pretty much surpasses that of anything else.

It's November. It's NaNoWriMo time. I knew, without a doubt, that I would participate in it again this year, and had been mulling over my idea for a couple of months; because this time, I am determined to actually finish a novel, something I did not accomplish last year. That was due to the fact that the idea I came up with was so complex and intriguing that I couldn't limit it to only one plot thread. NaNo became more of a novel-starter rather than something that actually made me finish one. Anyway, back to this year - I came up with an idea while at the zoo in Shanghai, China this summer. I made extensive character outlines, plot outlines, and developed a theme. I couldn't wait to start writing, and especially to see where my characters took me.

Yet on November 1st - the morning of which I forced myself to pull away from my computer and not start on my novel so that I could focus on my English and Biology Honors exam that day (!) - I walked out of my first exam at 12:00 a.m. and an entirely different idea hit me. I walked out of the doors to the gym, and saw the late morning sunlight streaming in through the windows, and I saw dust floating in it, and I heard the silence of an empty hallway, and I felt the release of all those thoughts and facts I'd just dealt with on the test from my brain. And I wondered...what if dust could take you to another time? Dust is, after all, the remains of something that existed in the past.

More later. I'll provide you with a full description. Right now, my novel is calling out to me, tugging at my heart and my fingers and my mind, but I've got to work on my English essay. Because I, unlike Ella (the main character) cannot let dust take me back in time. I have to deal with the present, where every second something changes, and if you don't grab onto that second with all your passion, it could be lost.

A Letter About Words & Rain

I stayed up late on Monday night because I wrote this...it was pretty fun. I submitted it to the Upper School Lit Mag...fingers crossed it gets in! But if it doesn't, the fun I had writing is an achievement all its own.

FROM:

Someone

Page 1,876

Webster’s Third New International Dictionary

Rainy, Big Fat World

A Rainy Day

TO:

                  Whomever

    Page Whichever

Webster’s Third New International Dictionary

Rainy, Big Fat World

A Rainy Day

To Whomever May Be Interested in Some Words and Rain,

I hope the puzzle pieces fit together.

Whoever thought up the idea of writing a dictionary deserves daily kudos for their ingenuity. The dictionary is like a mother or a soft bed or hot chocolate – it’s what you turn to when the puzzle pieces just don’t fit. Or when you’re lazy: “disliking physical or mental exertion.”

But look at this… After the definition of lazy in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, several phrases are listed in which it is commonly used: “lazy summer day,” “lazy weather,” “lazy chair.” Funny, that while reading the definition of such a motionless word, the tendrils of one’s mind begin to run out and away with the static recognition of familiar circumstances.

And then the puzzle pieces always fit, even if they fit in such a way that the history paper you were lost on suddenly makes sense and now you have to spend an hour changing your answer to reflect your newly acquired genius on the exact definition of some word like bureaucracy.

Dictionaries are the perfect supplement to a rainy day. On rainy days you often feel small, like all the clouds in the widening sky and the millions of raindrops and the sheer power of our planet’s weather could just swallow you up without anyone’s notice. J.D. Salinger says in Catcher in the Rye: “It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.” For someone who is often stopped short by the knowledge that there’s just so much knowledge and so many things in the world, those words express that sensation of insignificance when faced by the all-encompassing weather of the world.

Dictionaries are big, generally. You can have pocket dictionaries, or keychain dictionaries, but they generally have a “big” connotation in our minds. They’re big and fat, like the world, or like a “Love It” serving of ice cream from Coldstone Creamery. But unlike the world or ice cream, dictionaries are contained. They’re limited. They have a beginning and an end. They’re constant.

One of the definitions of rain that arises after the obvious ones is: “to occur in a multitudinous onset.” What a multitudinous (“existing in or consisting of innumerable forms, particles, elements, or aspects,” which in this case would be syllables) word multitudinous is, especially for a dictionary to use in a definition (“to determine, bring to an end, explain”). How, when I just looked up two words to comprehensively explain the meaning of another, can that bring the word rain “to an end?”

Anyway, back to rain: isn’t it true, though, that if this multitudinous onset is rain, that life equals rain? And maybe that’s why we feel so swallowed up every time it rains, because it’s like life is staring us in the eye saying, “You’re just another thing to be multitudinously onset upon?” Or is this multitudinous onset, as it exists in innumerable forms, another way of saying, “Wow, look at all the innumerable forms of things that can rain down on you? Isn’t this all so wonderful, this diversity of onsets?” Is there any way to really pin down what the multitudinous onset is and what it means for all of us, unless you were to look up every word in its definition…and still, would that bring you to an end? Eventually, maybe. But it would be more like bringing you back to a beginning.

Just like now, when all this looking up and interpreting and explaining  is leading me back to one, simply complicated conclusion: Life is a dictionary that eventually comes to an end by wandering off on courses affected by multitudinous onsets and invariably cycling back to the beginning.

I hope the puzzle pieces fit together to whomever may be interested in some words and rain.

Multitudinously yours,

Someone Who Is Interested in Some Words and Rain

P.S. Sometimes life gets complicated and doesn’t make sense; just like this wouldn’t have if I’d put it in one of the previous paragraphs. But this coincidence is just too awesome: one of the examples for the uses of multitudinous is, “urgent demand upon my attention made by the multitudinous world around me – Richard Church.” And another: “the long multitudinous rain – Carl Sandburg.” Just goes to show the interconnectedness of words.

P.P.S. As I am someone who is interested in some words and rain, and therefore am also a “whomever” who is interested in some words and rain, I hope just as much that the puzzle pieces fit together for me as well as for whomever else may be interested in some words and rain. Sometimes they don’t.

P.P.P.S. Thanks Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, you 2,662 page hunk of multitudinous-y life.

By Mollie G. Greenberg

The Quickest Way to Get From Hell to Heaven

Write an essay. (An assigned one, I mean, where you don't get to choose the topic, because those are always the type that seem impossible at first.) 

Read the question, look at all the different layers of verbs that it contains. Despair at the cryptic nature of it all, at the feeling that you're never going to be able to dig deep enough to decipher it. Then think about, and everything clears up. 

At least that's how the process goes for me. Except that, if the process of an essay were to be mapped out on a time line, the despairing part would take up such a small amount of space at the beginning that you'd have to use a microscope to see that part of the line. If printed out, the fibers in the paper of that "despairing" section would be countable. So, even though at first glance writing that essay might seem like hell, it really is the quickest way to get from hell to heaven. Because then, after I think about it even the slightest bit, there's this leap for joy inside of me, like I'm jumping all the way past the clouds. Because I know I'll learn from it. I'll learn from it like crazy. 

It got to the point sometime last year - maybe even 7th grade - that I learned what my reaction always was to essays and realized that there was no point in even having that despairing time at all, because I'd learned, from experience, that I always learned from writing essays. I actually have to pull reality in to tell me, when I'm first handed that essay assignment sheet, that it could be hard, that I have to start working on it, that I should treat it as something hard so that I don't blow it off (or else I could get all creative-y on it, and that's certainly not what a history paper should be). But I've discovered this magic with essays - no matter how put down I might feel at some point about them, no matter how much I struggle, they always come together in the end. And sometimes I don't even know how. It's just magic - the magic of words. 

And it's heaven when you realize something you didn't before because you had to write an essay analyzing, interpreting, or comparing it, or when you construct a perfect sentence, or use a perfect word, or it fits perfectly on the page. (Gosh, the smallest things can make me happy.)

I'm excited about finishing my Mid-Term Essay for World Civilizations. I might spend a considerable amount of my weekend on it, and I won't get a perfect grade on it (World Civ is like a second English class), but I'll learn from it, and that's what counts the most. 

Plus, who wouldn't want to just give Hell a quick little nudge that sometimes doesn't even touch, and then soar up into the heights of Heaven to stay a good while? 

Hmm, just realized that it's almost as if I'm saying you die when you write an essay...noo, that's not what I'm saying at all, because everything comes aLIVE when you write an essay.

Whew

First day of high school?

Let me just say - at one point I felt like a bush in a forest of tall trees, and once I also understood what its like for a mouse, being sooo much incredibly shorter than everything else that you can't see around them. And I'm really not that short.

It would've also been nice if people - this means kids, sophomore to senior, and all of the teachers as well - had made an effort to speak up in morning announcements. It was pretty easy to miss the fact that we were following Monday's schedule - with different timing and a switch between two periods - on a Tuesday. (And even with the schedules posted, how are we, as freshmen, to be sure that going to periods 1 2 3 4 5 etc, means to follow Monday's schedule, seeing as we're not used to our schedule changing everyday.)

The classes, the teachers, were great. Like WowI'mSoExcitedICan'tBelieveWe'reActuallyGoingToBeLearningAllOfThis great. (Plus the textbooks look genuinely interesting too, which is like a...farely rare phenomenon!)

I'll be okay, I know, but I did feel pretty overwhelmed. And since I woke up at 4:45 this morning (not on purpose) I was kind of more in the mood to lie down and take a nap than get a jump start on my homework. But I did do the homework.

Compared to the Chinese exchange student in our grade whom I helped along all day, my problems are extremely minimal. I think she would have been far beyond lost if she wouldn't have had anyone to help her out.

Mostly, I'm afraid that I'll forget something. Or neglect something. Actually, most of all, I suppose I'm afraid that I'll have to give something up that I love to keep my grades up to par (well, at least satisfactorily up to the par I've become accustomed to), which is something that I've never had to do. But I'll be okay. If I just keep telling myself that - and if I get some exceptionally awesome sleep - I'll be okay.

Oh, and if I remember who I am. But that won't be hard.

8th Grade Achievements

Recently, my dad helped me put up a bulletin board strip in my room, on which I promptly tacked some of the certificates/ribbons I am especially proud of on. I wanted this strip, not to show off what I've done or boast about it to anyone who visits, but to remind myself, at times when I may not be feeling fully up to par, what I've accomplished so far. Walking in and out of my room throughout the day, seeing those certificates on my wall, and tying up some loose ends from things I started during the year, I've been thinking about how much I did in my eighth grade year. And it's really quite a lot. It felt like a good year, a great year, but not a blazing-white-hot-with-accomplishments year...but it really was quite awesome. So, I've decided to make a list of the things I did/accomplished/feel great about in my eighth grade year so that I will never forget this past year. Hopefully, it's the first in a chain of great, successful years. We'll see. (I'd like to make a list of the things I accomplished in middle school too, so that I can go back and say, see, middle school wasn't as bad as everybody says it is. Actually, it was exceptionally great for me, thanks to great friends, great parents, great teachers, and a great school. And some great, gluten-free food at the end of it. Oh yum...)

Fall Term:

• played soccer and had a lot of fun. (Don't forget how much fun playing a team sport is, compared with something like track.) Scored two goals in one game! (They were headers, too, and yes, it was mainly the person who passed me the ball that scored the point...but I was still extremely proud of myself.) Played forward almost the whole season.
• took Speech and Debate, in which I made an informational speech about compost, and in which the compost program was kickstarted, and we decided to found what would later become ATAC. Quote from my teacher Ms. Carey's comment: "You entered class feeling comfortable in front of your peers, but I think you have gotten even more comfortable."

Winter Term:

• Started this blog!
• In November, I participated in NaNoWriMo and started a novel that I get increasingly excited and anxious about every time I think of it. (Meaning that I think this is "the one.")
• I turned 14! Had a great birthday party where everybody came out to Yellow Springs, took a hike, and saw the Clifton Lights. (That felt worth mentioning.)
• Participated in the Scale Ribbon Festival for piano, and got all blue ribbons! (You play scale-type stuff and a piece, people judge you and sort of grade you. Yahoo. It's not a big deal but I got super-duper-shaky nervous, so it was more about beating the nerves that I'm proud of.)
• Mrs. Kessler (Geometry teacher) said this on my grades: "I revel in your success." (Sweet!)
• Won a marathon school spelling bee.
• Played the March Hare in the school production of Alice in America-Land. That, I think, was my favorite role ever. (And my best friend Cora, who played the Mad Hatter, and I made perfect comedic accomplices.)
• Read Night, by Elie Weisel. Aahh...
• Played squash. Only played one actual match (and I didn't win, but I won one game).
• My Mandarin class placed second in the singing competition at Miami University. 
• Took the SAT for the second time, and got a score which I am...very proud of.
• Got to be a Student Ambassador for MVS (once, at the Open House, but hopefully that continues in high school).
• Got to talk to the author of The Tension of Opposites, Kristina McBride, who was truly AMAZING!
• A short essay I wrote for Chinese won Honorable Mention in a contest (I was pretty proud to get even that, since I hadn't really been expecting anything.) (Actually I'm really not sure which term that was in...but I figured that Winter term was equally close to the two others, so I wouldn't be far off ;).)

Spring Term:

• My Holocaust Window Project was completed, submitted, and won second place in the art portion of the contest.
• My essay for the Xenia Optimist Club on "How My Education is Key to a Successful Future" placed second.
• Cora and I collaborated on a high school TV drama (we got totally out of character) script for the April Script Frenzy (same company as NaNoWriMo).
• I got to shovel some dirt at the groundbreaking ceremony for the MVS greenhouse!
• Played lacrosse, loved it, and scored a goal almost every game!
• Over spring break, my parents and I went on our first big college trip! (To Oberlin and Kenyon.)
• Finished and turned in my first term paper, about Biosphere 2.
• Got A+'s for National Guild, at the state level. (Piano, once again, seven memorized things, five songs and two scales plus other scale-related things.)
• Took the ACT for the first time.
• Finished up all of my vaccines for China.
• Graduated the 8th Grade!

And that all goes without saying that I did very well in school, kept my grades up, studied, read books...and ya know, plenty of other things. (I'm sure there are some things I forgot to mention..so maybe I'll add a few in later or something..or not.)

As for what I did over the summer...that'll be another list. (One I should probably make soon seeing as school starts tomorrow...)