Reflections on Camp Joy

Today my whole grade went to Camp Joy, where we spent the day doing team-building exercises as well as personal strength-building ones. We did a trust walk where we were all blind-folded and we had to find our way across a field into a building, we had to work together to get everyone up and over what must have been a ten foot high wall, and we each got to take a "quantum leap" off of a very high ladder, with all of our peers helping to hold the ladder up with ropes and keeping it steady. We've been to Camp Joy three times in the past three years, and I think this was the best time yet, for everyone was really involved. Everyone wanted to solve the problems we were given, and everyone wanted to succeed. And the people who led us through the exercises asked us after each one what the activity could resemble in real life - so the challenges never ended. Here are some reflections from the day, which stem from some of the other activities we've done over freshman immersion (which is formally called Inward Bound, Outward Bound...you'll definitely hear more later).

Competition

Competition gets people external recognition and the admiration of others, which is natural, considering the lengths they must go to in order to be “the best.” We must admire them – it is, at the least, the cultural norm. However, many of these people find themselves aimless and unable to act without the pressure of competition, while others – who may not outperform others in a competition – are internally motivated. These people constantly carry motivation around in their hearts, and try as they might, it is impossible for them to dispel it.

Personal Achievements and Goals

I saw someone today climb a ladder in about seven minutes which it took almost everyone else in the room about one or two minutes to climb. She hesitated almost every step, babbling on and on every time she stopped about how she couldn’t go any farther. Yet, when her peers encouraged her to climb higher – to take just one more step – she eventually did. And slowly, steadily, step by step, she made her way to the top of the ladder.

While others climbed the ladder in seconds, slithering their way up like monkeys – a feat which was surely admirable and deserving of praise – I found her struggle even more endearing. We were able to see every difficult step clearly in front of us – every doubt, every fear, every misgiving and every inkling of bravery, blazoned clear in front of us. This process, and this accomplishment, was even more impressive to me than those who confidently raced their way up. She took her time, and there were so many times when she could have jumped off, but she waited, thought, and listened to the encouragement of her peers – and she truly stepped out of her comfort zone.

Cooperation

Many times today, I found myself in a leadership position. This happened because I wanted to get things done and I had ideas about how to do so. Apparently these must have been at least moderately good ideas, for people agreed with them. I like this feeling – leading and standing out in the group. But there are times when, for the sake of the group as a whole, you’ve got to back down and let someone else have control, otherwise there’s too much chaos. But this is no way means that you should tune out and consider your part over. I believe that the mark of a good leader is someone who knows when to listen and hang back, but pays attention the whole time so that they can step in when they’re really needed.

Bard Young Writers Workshop Application

*This is the piece I wrote for my application to Bard's Young Writers Workshop. (Note: I took parts of this from a previous blog post.*

And thank you Cora.

The assignment: In order to help us know more about your background and interests, we would like you to tell a personal story (i.e., non-fictional) of a time when words, whether written or spoken, sung or performed, have been meaningful for you. 

Didn’t Come Off

I could have used a regular pen, which would have been much quicker. But using this pen, I have to focus on every word, every letter, every line that I scratch into the paper.

The poem gradually makes its way across the tea-soaked, crinkly paper. The marks left are only footprints – footprints of meaning – for the words of the poem. The poem is only painting a feeling, an idea. The poem, like the window it speaks of, can only frame the emotions and the lessons of the Holocaust.

“Look through a window, and then open it.” That was the lesson I created for the Holocaust project we did in eighth grade. The words of the lesson were born from a poem – and the poem was born from a glance at a rain-soaked window – which I had written some months before. The poem was about looking through a window for the – sometimes difficult – truth, then trying to actually open the window and do something to change a bad situation. Upon receiving the project rubric from my teacher, as its neatly boxed-in possibilities jumped off the page at me, I remembered the poem, and so was able to subdue the overwhelming possibilities that ricocheted around inside my brain. One picture remained in my imagination – that of a window, adorned with quotes about the Holocaust and the four sub-lessons as assigned by my teacher represented on each of four window panes.

It was perfect. Little had I known, but the poem was indirectly about the Holocaust.

And little did I know, but that picture that I thought would remain only inside of my head – like so many other pictures – would come to life. My English teacher provided me with a real window to display the project on from her farm – an old one with its paint chipping away – and it was more than I could have asked for. It already told a story. The various components of the project – the hand-written poem, the window with pictures and quotes pasted on it, and two picture frames, one for each side of the window, each depicting a different side of the Holocaust atrocities – would come together, I knew, to create a story laden with meaning.

Usually I become impatient – preoccupied, even – about the final result of a project like this. But the process of making this one was, I believe, a large part of the project’s worth to me.

I bend down close to the paper, the shadow of my head blocking the lamplight which shyly permeates the room. I feel its rough spots under the splayed fingertips of my left hand. Every time my pen runs out of ink, I must lift my hand and let it fly silently above the landscape of the paper like a little bird, to take a bath of deep black ink. I put myself completely into this poem by etching its life into these pieces of paper.

And by doing so, I bring the poem to life.

The words swirl around and around in my head, like the water around a drain, as I take the long seconds to scratch each individual letter into the paper. And in this swirling vortex, a memory from earlier in the day, when I was just beginning to write out the poem, surfaces.

We were working on our projects in English class. I sat at a desk in the corner, and my friend had been sitting nearby, making handprints on her project board with red ink to look like blood. I didn’t notice her absence until she walked back into the room from washing her hands, made eye contact with me, and said quietly,

“It didn’t come off.”

The ink, that is.

I looked at her, and she looked at me, and for a moment her face looked stricken, stricken with the discovery that it just wouldn't come off. But somehow, I think she may have expected that – a pain like that, even just the representation of a pain so severe, could never wash away. Now here it was, right in front of her, looking like blood.

Never for one moment did I think she was simply complaining or making an observational comment. Between the time when the words left her lips and when they were transmitted to my brain, there was never a time when I didn't know what she really meant.

I started to turn away, and then I looked back again and narrowed my eyes just a little bit, to face her and to face the fact, to let it sink in. I turned quickly back to my own work, and it may have seemed like I didn't pay attention to what she said, didn't notice, but it hit me like a freight train. I felt winded. My hand was a dead weight, my eyes empty holes.

Looking back on it, I wonder if I should have said something in response. Did she think I didn’t care? With two words and ten letters left, I can feel worry begin to disturb my peace. Worry? With eight letters left, I realize how ridiculous it is for me to feel guilty about not responding to something that profound. I wouldn’t have known what to say. With six letters left, I remind myself that those were powerful words, words which both hurt and healed my day. They were words which needed respect, and that respect came that moment in silence. With four letters left, I feel the searing pain of what those words implied – that the pain, the hunger, the suffering, the grief, never go away. With two letters left, I am glad I decided to hand-write my poem so that I can treat it with the respect its subject deserves.

And with zero letters left, I begin to cry.

For once, I have no more words.

Ideas, Science, Pain, Ideas, Words, Who's Really Right?, Ideas, and Time

Yeah, so clearly I have a lot of ideas. And just saying, those things aren't in any particular order.

Too many sometimes, it feels like. Although I know that's really a gift, to have so many ideas. It's better than having a disease, or having sorrow, or having depression..or NOT having love, or a home, or food, or...sleep. But when you're in a place where people are constantly trying to show what's better or best about themselves - through their words, their clothes, shoes, faces, lunches, comebacks - there isn't enough time or space to record them all. I began thinking about this - well, really consciously thinking about this - while I was writing my NaNo novel (which I finished by the way, pas the 50,000 word count...did I mention that?): what if there was a way for each person to constantly record ideas so that they were never lost? A sort of net that catches them before they leave, and a Pandora's box to keep them stored until they could be released? (And this time, hopefully, most of the things would be positive.)

I try to write things down. Lately I've come to making sloppy recordings on my iPhone voice memos of spontaneous said-in-the-shower slam poetry, or of conversations between character slivers (usually with accents, after I've just finished watching a movie set in Britain), or even songs (like, suckish ones that are either completely pointless unless I explain it or really absolutely meaningless). But the poems are NEVER as good as they were in the shower, when the words were newly born. And sometimes your hand just can't MOVE fast enough to write them down.

Over the last week, as my shoulder pain has been unbearable and overtaking and frustrating, I've been watching the Harry Potter movies before I go to sleep. Since I know the layout of every scene and the motive of every character at this point, so the events of the story are no longer of central concern, I've come to notice a great deal more of symbolism in the story. Not that I could go back and recite to you everything now - but just little images, little gems, stick out, and I get it.

Now, if I could always have a small, portable version of Dumbledore's Pensieve (a device that stores and recount memories) with me, everything would be just right. If I could have some little box that resides beside my brain, picking up the ideas and the words and the pictures, so that they can be preserved there like frozen bananas until I need them...things would be just right. Unfortunately, the thought of having some sort of recording device constantly with us is a little too reminiscent of Orwell's Big Brother, and it's hard to say whether that would or would not be taken advantage of beyond the realm of private, personal endeavors.

Sometimes the world gets so stuck on politics, money, eating right, exercising enough, having enough stuff but not too much, getting good grades, having nice clothes, blah de blah de blah...that it forgets the importance, the value, of pure ideas. Ideas are the stuff of dreams coming true. Ideas are the seeds, and the roots, and the leaves - because they never stop, not really. You can start with one, and then that one sprouts more, and then you have an entire idea TREE, and it's super-duper strong.

I watched a documentary last night with my parents about the 2006 TED conference, where a bunch of people from all over the world got together to share their ideas, their achievements, their songs and their poetry. And out of those ideas were born projects that really help people.

Too often, I think, ideas are squandered for the convenience of time or physical barriers, or because someone just doesn't care enough or value anything enough to stop and look for a moment. Just a moment.

We also watched a short program done by Stephen Hawking on Discovery Channel about time travel. One of the things he said was that wormholes - little holes in the 4th dimension of time - were way too small to travel through, meaning they would have to be enlarged and then would be destroyed by their own radiation. Now here's an idea: what if WE could become smaller?

I know it sounds unrealistic, but plenty of other things do too. In fact, in the TED video, a man demonstrated a screen on which images could be controlled by multiple fingers and hands at once. You could hear overwhelming oooh's and aah's from the audience, but this was a presentation which didn't impress me compared to the others... Why? Because I've used an iPod and have an iPhone, so I do that everyday. What was a new idea then - what seemed so amazing and unthinkable - is just normal now.

That's not even getting into TVs or telephones or microwaves.

So yeah, I'm really interested in science. But I'm also really interested in words. And I'm interested in being something big, something remembered. But most of all, I'm interested in ideas - and ideas are involved in all of those things.

I just don't know which one to choose. I wish I was an inventor, like Violet Baudelaire, and I could come up with clever contraptions for getting things my way. But I can only do that with words and thoughts. I'm not so good with manipulating material things, unfortunately.

Yesterday, I experienced some rather brutal slandering of a piece of writing. I saw the credibility of the slanderer's statements - and I also tried not to dwell on it, seeing as this person was particularly well-known for her brutality. But I could also defend them - I could also say, as an artist, that what I did was perfectly fine, perfectly right, because that's how I meant it to be, in the interest of art.

Yes, one of the ideas which I definitely plan to implement - if only I had the time - is to create real pieces of art with my writing, 3D art so that people understand it's not supposed to be a story for entertainment. It's supposed to be for the appreciation you experience by seeing good art. (Not to say my writing is "good art" - I won't be nearly that precocious - but that's the intent. Everyone needs intentions.) So then I wonder - who's really right? Regarding art, I meant. There have been plenty of famous artists whose work people hated while they were alive. And I don't intend to be like that (once again, precociousness not intended). I'm just saying - in art, there's no right or wrong. I think, when it comes down to it, there's nothing more right than the piece of art itself - and therefore the artist can claim some correctness themselves. Yeah, an adverb can be taken out and a pronoun can be changed to make the piece better - but it wasn't wrong. I don't need to get myself down about it thinking that I'm wrong because someone didn't like it. She was only a kid. She wasn't necessarily totally right.

So here's an idea: a Pandora's Pensieve box to keep and record ideas, so that they aren't lost to a void of lost time and restlessness.

Oh..and first post of 2012!

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