and when it lives, it gives it all it's got

I just returned to Wyoming today from a weekend of family holiday festivities, if you want to call them that.  I guess I wouldn't necessarily say they were festive, but it was an altogether nice break from swimming and it's always nice to see my family.

It's weird because I usually only see my family about twice a year -- my mom's side more, because we go to Michigan a few times over the summer, but for my dad's side, we usually only see them on Thanksgiving and Christmas.  It doesn't feel like an entire year has passed since I've seen my family last, and we pick up pretty naturally where we left off, but it's so bizarre to pick up so naturally when 12 whole months have passed since the last time I've seen them.  It's like starting a conversation and then picking it back up as if it never ended, only to have had a change in perspective in the time between.

So much happens in a year -- it's been four years since my cousin Lindsay got married, and I remember so vividly the day in 8th grade when I played violin at her wedding, as if it were only a few weeks ago.  And this year, my cousin Tim has a new baby, Carson.  My other cousin, Erin, remarked that things were changing so much.  And it was weird, because I was just thinking about how five minutes ago I was playing violin at a wedding without a single thought of college or even high school in my head.

And now my cousin has a baby, most of them have graduated and have jobs, I am going to college next year, and some of my grandparents can't remember the question they asked me ten minutes earlier.  Am I even going to go out of town next year for Christmas and my birthday? Because if I only have a five day break where I can come home, I don't even know.

The mental state of my grandparents is startling.  I come back each year and it is here where I notice the most has changed.  My grandpa tells me stories over and over again; my other grandpa sometimes doesn't even remember my name because my sister and I are the only of his grandchildren that live far away.  It's weird how our brains start to deteriorate; how we start to rely on others more and more simply to survive.  It's ineloquent, but getting old scares the hell out of me.

I don't want to have kids who will grow up to think I am a technologically challenged embarrassment, who will push me away because they think they know better than me.  But more than that, I don't want to lose my ability to think, to write, to recognize the people that I love.  My dad's dad was an English teacher; he wrote so many poems that were cute and funny and beautiful.  And now I look at him and see a fragile old man -- I mean, I see more than that, because he is my grandfather, the father of my dad and four other kids, the beginning of my family -- but I speak to him and I can tell that his mind is leaving him, when he asks me how old I am now two times in a row, and I have to smile and nod and tell him that I am seventeen, while inside my heart is breaking.

I guess I can't really think of a resolution to this post besides the fact that I shouldn't really be afraid of getting old, because I still have so much life to live ahead of me.  And even if my brain starts to fail me, even if I start to forget the names of the people I love, I still have the chance to start something beautiful.

via julia carleton

seams (and apologies)

Since it has been 100000000 years since I last posted a blog entry, and my birthday is tomorrow, and I seriously need to update before midnight because it is shameful that I have waited even eight days to write a blog entry after my last one -- I am posting this essay that I wrote for English class last year that I might write a little more about tomorrow after I experience this birthday phenomenon again.  I wrote this a little less than a year ago, so quickly, before it loses relevance, I am posting it on my blog :) Hope all of you have not lost interest in the midst of my crazy busy life, swim practice, swim meets, and failure to do blog posts, and I am so sorry that I have been so bad at posting entries lately.

Seams

I wake up the morning of December 24, 2009, the pallid winter sun knocking on my eyelids, and I realize that I am sixteen years old.  Sixteen. I try on the number for size. It is made of different letters, but the fit is exactly the same as fifteen – which, when I think about it, had the same fit as fourteen, and thirteen, and every other number before it. But now, when I try these old numbers on, they squeeze and constrict in all the wrong places. How did I not feel myself getting bigger?

As I look back on my life as the sixteen-year-old that I now am, it strikes me how much I have changed. Not only have my arms and legs stretched like taffy, but somehow, I feel much bigger, in another way. It is as if with the passing of time, layers upon layers of paint have been applied to my surface, and eventually I begin to look different. But just like the stretching of my limbs, it is impossible for me to make note of these changes as they happen – never have I woke up feeling distinctivelynot-me, not even on a birthday like today.

The closest I have ever gotten to feeling different, older, on any Christmas Eve is simply feeling that I ought to feel such things. After all, a birthday is nothing but a landmark in the grand scheme of things, but it is not a landmark at which I can pause and take a breath. I will wake up tomorrow in the same way that I did today, and I will be sixteen-plus-one-day, and I will feel the same that I do right now.

When I look back at my life with from my sixteen-year-old perspective, it strikes me how many layers of paint have been applied since the days of my past – and as every reminiscence gets closer and closer to right now, to today, to December 24, 2009, I fit inside each Celia I regard better and better. I am not sure when the seams of myself start to pull and tear when I try to fit, but by the time I reach fourteen, I am already trying to force myself into something that is, simply put, far too small to contain me.

But when I imagine occurrences and events that happened when I was smaller, suddenly I can slip into each and every version of myself as if I have not grown one inch. In my memory, I fit. I fit. I shrink; I am not sixteen. I am fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve; I am six, I am four. I am any number, every number. I am transported back to the very moment that I remember; I am reliving it. And I fit.

I wake up the morning of December 24, 2009, the bright winter sunshine filtering through my translucent eyelids, awakening my consciousness and memory, and I realize that I am the very same Celia that was born sixteen Christmas Eves ago. I feel like that same Celia. And though my limbs have stretched; though layers upon layers of paint have been applied every single day for the past sixteen years; though I am a work in progress, I will always be Celia, the same Celia, and in my memory, each version of myself will forever fit me like a glove.

once the vessel cracks open

 "...But we’re not different sprouts from the same plant. I can’t be you; you can’t be me. You can imagine another well, but never quite perfectly, you know?"

For a week in the middle of the summer I traipsed through the hallways of a Navajo boarding school, through the red dirt roads of the Arizona desert, through conversation after conversation with highschooler and adult alike.  Each day I woke up early, drenched myself in icy water spitting from a faucet that scarcely came up to my shoulderblades, dressed myself in outdated jeans and a t-shirt, and walked into the cafeteria where dozens of little Navajo children ate breakfast each morning of the school year.  Each day, a hundred large brown paper bags, the type you use to pack lunch for not just one person, but three, covered the entire wall to my left.

Each bore the name of one person on our trip, some decorated simply, elaborately, intricately, humorously.  Some featured cacti with their arms outstretched, suns dancing across the brown canvas, rock formations sprouting happily from the earth.  Some made mention of a silly nom de plume, others reminded me to whom they belonged with a simple handwritten first name.

I found myself observing this wall every time I entered the cafeteria.  Each bag was so different; each told a story about the person who created it, just like the notes we would write to each other would.  Our task was simple: write kind words that would make someone feel warm and fuzzy, the feelings after which these notes came to be called.  We would write these warm and fuzzies throughout the week and deliver them to their respective paper bag homes.  At the end of our trip, we would untape our bag from the wall, dump out the pile of notes that had accumulated, and learn about ourselves through the words that others had written about us.

Throughout the week, I contemplated my notes to others.  More so than the two years before, I found myself realizing that writing these warm and fuzzies was truly the method of communication at which I could excel.  I found thoughts about people pouring into my brain from all directions, nice things to say accumulating with incredible speed.

Although I did not have a momentous event in my life to reveal to the group during our nighttime devotions, although I did not have a secret that I didn't even realize I was itching to reveal, more than anything else on the trip, I found myself obsessing over these written notes.  What I certainly could have thought of as a simple way to uplift someone's spirits by telling them that they had a lovely personality turned into this incredible project for me to undertake, propelled forth by this sudden desire, this sudden hunger to make people feel this warmth, this fuzziness using all the power that I had -- words.

I guess it's something that I always come back to, but it's true: the greatest power that I possessed was my ability to use words to dictate my thoughts.  I imagined the feeling that would overcome me if I received a note detailing the ways in which I had affected somebody's life, the tiny things they admired about me that I didn't even notice in myself.  From this imagination sprung my insatiable hunger to make people feel those same emotions.

I wrote and I wrote, about everything I loved and admired in people, about the ways in which they changed my life.  I put so much painstaking effort into trying to ensure that each person I wrote to understood the value and importance of their life in my own and in others', and I guess I didn't realize that the entire time I did so, I was hoping, praying that someone would write the same kind of note for me.  Selfish as it was, I suppose it was true -- I told people the things that I would appreciate hearing more than anything in the world, poured every one of my thoughts out in order to show each person exactly the things I would have liked to hear.

photo via grace brown ;)

Among my own warm and fuzzies, I received only a few that reached the level of personal depth that I attempted to put into the ones I wrote for others.  I would certainly not call it disappointment that filled me -- hearing any nice thing about yourself is enough to warm your stomach -- but I don't know how else to describe it. I wasn't disappointed because of what people had said about me, I was disappointed because of what people hadn't said.  I guess I just wanted to know that my existence made somebody, anybody, feel something.  But then something else was happening, something that made me feel warmer and fuzzier than any of the notes to me did.  A few people approached me after reading my notes, thanking me for putting so much thought into them -- and I wanted to leap for joy.

I have been thinking about it recently, and I have realized that I am not the type of person who would be able to approach someone to thank them for a handwritten note -- I am the person who would write this elaborate thank-you.  I have realized that words are the realm in which I know I am comfortable, and that others use other means to show other people their thoughts, like their actions or their voices.

Mostly, though, I have had to realize and accept that not everybody is me.  Not everybody communicates in the same way that I do, and not everybody will even be able to appreciate this method in the way that I hope they do.  I suppose what all of this really means is that I need to do things the way I can, show people how I feel using the tools that I am given, and accept with open arms the different ways in which others communicate.  We can never truly be one another, but we should try our best to understand in whichever way we know how.

i'm feeling so much righter now

"A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us.
To live is to be slowly born."

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Last night, instead of blogging, I sat with my parents on their bed and watched myself grow up.  Two heavy photo albums sat at the foot of the bed as I hungrily turned the pages of whichever third one remained sitting in my lap.  The first one chronicled my life from the womb to my first birthday, the second lasted until Daria was born, and the third the first few years of my life with a sister.

As I turned each page, experienced the first months of my existence, I watched my parents.  In the beginning, when my dark-haired dad would wear UC baseball caps and t-shirts, I saw in him these flashes of unparalleled youth -- he was practically a college student, a baby.  Perhaps it was just his youth juxtaposed next to seventeen years later, but I found myself realizing that I am closer to my parents' age when they had me than they are now.

I thought about the seamlessness with which I have grown.  I turned the pages of each photo album, and I went from a squishy, nondescript newborn to a little bald infant with blue eyes that would soon turn green.  My body slowly grew to match the size of my head, which had sprouted white-blond hair, and I lost some of the baby fat that padded the falls that I soon would learn to eliminate from my everyday toddling.  But in none of the pictures did I see a dramatic leap from one stage of my life to the other.  Only when I flipped backwards a few pages at a time did I even witness a noticeable change.

I guess it's the same with picking out the pictures from middle school that will go in our end-of-the-year senior video.  I look at my seventh grade self, awkward and gangly, with dirty blond hair, long and limp, and an overbite that seemed only to exist to accentuate my awkwardness.  I look at these pictures, and I can scarcely believe how immature, how lame I was.  And yet I remember in vivid detail the first day I hung out with my best friend, our eighth grade trip to Chicago, my sixth grade overnight trip to Camp Kern.  I remember being this person, and I remember doing things, and I remember thinking that I was as mature as I could possibly be.  And yet every year, I would look back on the year before, thinking about how weird I was, about how I lacked the social graces that everyone seemed to possess.

Perhaps becoming mature isn't being all-knowing and understanding social situations and not embarrassing yourself.  Perhaps being mature is simply accepting the fact that there is always, always somewhere to go.  Even if things are bad, they will get better.  And even if I am feeling like I could not be cooler, I will probably look back on myself in two years and realize that I am far from it.  Maybe I should focus less on maturity now, and focus more on being the person that I am constantly becoming.

"Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself."

when the light pressed up against your shoulderblade

I didn't post yesterday again, but I almost had a reason for that -- after school, I had swimming until 5:30, then lifted until 6:30, then did calculus and made my mom a birthday card and wrapped her present while she and my dad were at my sister's concert, then hung out with my parents.

I found myself kicking myself when I remembered that I had forgotten to write again yesterday, but then I gave it some thought.  Maybe my isearch isn't about forcing myself to do something -- maybe it is about learning to develop new habits.  And I think that on certain days, if I can't get around to writing because I am spending time with my family, that is not necessarily a bad thing.  I have been thinking a lot lately and I am going to be leaving the house soon -- I am going to be alone, on my own.  Because I will be seventeen when I graduate, I don't have that extra year of life within the walls of my parents' home.  I ought to spend time with my parents because honestly, this is the last December 9th I will ever probably be home for.

I am exhausted and I have dryland, swim practice, and a swim meet tomorrow.  The amount of swimming in my life is nothing less than excessive, but I keep getting yelled at by my coach, who asks me if I am going to "complain about swimming when I'm in college".  But I don't think it's really me being lazy -- it's more just me being burnt out and ready to move on.  And I am -- I'm ready to move on.  I want to succeed this season, but I'm ready for some new scenery (and not to mention never swimming in that god damn pool ever again).

This is an awful post completely void of insight so I am going to keep it short and go read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao for the second time.  I think forgetting novels is a lovely thing -- if you wait long enough in between the times that you read them, you can almost forget the little details and nuances that made you fall in love with it.  And then you can fall in love all over again.

Goodnight!

locomotion

I have been going to bed at not-so-obscene hours lately, yet I have still been struggling against the incredible urge to dismiss my alarm clock and go back to sleep every morning this week.  It's weird, I have gotten so good at waking up on my own, but this week, I have regressed so much.  Maybe it's because it's so cold outside and my bed is so warm, or because it is pitch black outside at 6:15 in the morning as if it were like, 2 AM or something, or maybe it's just because the wear and tear of school and swimming has started to really take hold on me.

I can only hope that I am not running out of steam exactly one week before exams... I know that I need a break, but I can't afford to take one yet! And even when winter break starts, it's not like I'm going to have an easy life by any means... Christmas training is looming overhead, and the thought of practicing in that minuscule pool where the air is thick and hard to breathe and there are waves like the ocean frankly makes me wish that school would continue over the holidays.  That, my friends, is how difficult my winter break is.

But I digress.  I can't be losing steam right now because I truly do need it to do well on my exams.  The last high school exams I will ever take... And I need to get good grades because I can't let my first semester senior year unflatter me... mehhhh.

I guess I thought that this post was going to be somewhat better than my one this morning, but I have been doing a lot of conversing and thinking as opposed to writing today, and I am feeling particularly ineloquent (perhaps I have wasted my writing innovation on the remains of my college essays..?).  So these are boring posts with no audience in mind, which believe me, I hate to do.  Today I was writing down things that I have observed since starting my blog, like a little progress report for my isearch paper, and I actually thought of a lot of things to write down.  Hopefully this kind of post doesn't turn people off from reading this, because I will need your help if you have ever at any point read my blog!

My calculus answers are submitted to blackboard, my gov vocab quiz is going to remain un-studied for, and I am managing to squeeze by in every class by turning in work slightly late.  Holding on by the skin of my teeth, but what else is new...? It is time for me to sleep, so that overwhelming urge to dismiss my alarm as the boy who cried Wolf does not hit me so hard when I wake up.

P.S. Because I don't like to submit posts without images, more senior pictures by Julia ! Yay!

photo by julia carleton

a whole team

Forgot to post again last night... I am a terrible person.  As punishment, I am making myself write twice today even though I have a busy day ahead of me -- but Wednesday nights always get me thinking, so who knows if that will even be difficult.

Yesterday was my first high school swim meet of the season.  We were up against two very small teams, so it wasn't a great opportunity to see the big competition for the year, but I still had fun nonetheless.  I found myself sitting on the bleachers next to a freshman and realizing that I knew everybody on the team because they were all younger than me.  Well, that is not entirely true, seeing as I don't know personally every one of the class of 2014 (and I am still sixteen and therefore half of the junior class is older than me), but in theory, I know everybody.  And in theory, everybody knows me.

It was weird.  Because I remember the relationship I had with my senior class when I was a freshman, and it was certainly less than personal (with the exception of a few kids on my club team).  It was more of an admiration from afar, but I was even a club swimmer, doing well in meets, so I shouldn't have even been flying so far under the radar.  I stayed out of sight and out of mind, basically, save for maybe the few people who traveled to districts and state.

I know I keep saying stuff like this, but I don't want to be that.  I want to know these people.  I want to, for the first time in my life, feel a connection with my high school team that is not only there because there are people from my club team also on the team.  I suppose I can't say that I have been doing anything to change this in years past; as a junior I probably should have stepped up and fostered inter-team bonding, but it's difficult.  I want to feel like a team, a whole team, and judging by the first meet, I think we are on our way to doing that.  I am excited about our agenda (the swimming seniors had a double lunch meeting last Tuesday to plan for the season!) and our leadership, and I am excited to use the fact that I know everybody to help this along.

I love being a senior!

See you tonight...

i go to seek a Great Perhaps

"It's so hard to leave -- until you leave.  And then it's the easiest goddamn thing in the world."

- John Green, Paper Towns

It's weird to think about leaving.  While a year ago the only leaving I contemplated was the leaving of a few friends who were going to college, now it is my own of which I so frequently think.  Leaving.  Like, going off on my own.  It sounds funny to say; it feels weird to type.  Doesn't taste right in my mouth.  And yet the word is so full of promise, so full of excitement, that I can't help but welcome it even as I cower in fear.

Aside from the fact that I have no idea what I am going to be doing with my life one year from now, or where I will be, leaving is scary because for the first time in my life, I will be truly independent.  I will make my own decisions.  No more stupid 11pm curfews when I get in trouble, no more being grounded.  No more lectures and no more nagging about my grades.  Yes, these things keep me on my toes, and yes, I am scared of having to keep track of all of the things in my life on my own, but at the same time, I will be responsible for making good decisions and trusting myself.  It's weird that I won't have a pair of parents constantly threatening to relinquish their trust in me.

"Here's to all the places we went. And all the places we'll go."

- An Abundance of Katherines

I don't know where I am going, but I am excited.  I am excited for what I will do and who I will become.  Though I tremble in fear at the thought of the future, I also welcome it with open arms and an open mind.

"Francois Rabelais. He was a poet. And his last words were 'I go to seek a Great Perhaps.' That's why I'm going. So I don't have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps." 

- Looking for Alaska

in other news: i got a 91 percent on my bc calc test today, which makes me want to cry of happiness.  and i clearly love john green, but what else is new....

mais surtout, vive la différence

PLEASE NOTE: I am going to Nashville this weekend for a swim meet, so I probably won't have access to the internet to post blog stuff.  I am going to try to write out blog entries each day, but we will see if that actually happens (swimming is a busy life.)  If I don't get to write anything, know that I am thinking of you!

I just got back from a Wednesday night discussion, for the first time at the Hills' house (I suppose if you aren't a part of my youth group, I suppose this won't mean that much to you), and I must say that I am profoundly impressed.  The atmosphere was just so, so, good for fostering discussion and I felt like a lot of people who are not normally very engaged were making great, thought-provoking contributions.  It is very refreshing to hear these new perspectives, and this is probably the first Wednesday night that I have really been pushed to think about what the discussion means to me and what my opinions are when pitted next to the opinions of others.

But I was really moved by the fact that a few freshmen that don't normally talk spoke up and made a contribution.  As a freshman in youth group, I attended these Wednesday nights every single week, and I would always sit in awe, listening to the upperclassmen discuss profound matters, thoughts spinning through my head at a million miles per hour.  I would leave these discussions deep in thought, and it was these discussions that really made my freshman year infinitely more fulfilling and a much greater learning experience than it ever could have been otherwise.  The comments that the upperclassmen would make would put into words either ideas that I had never been able to dictate, or ideas that had never before crossed my mind.  Either way, the effect was profound.

Gradually I gained the ability to form my own opinions on what was discussed, but these thoughts stayed sealed up inside my head.  I have no shame in admitting that I got C's on every one of my speeches in my oral comm class, simply because I am so much more of a writer than I am a speaker.  I am the kind of person that, while eloquent in text, inadvertently adds ums and uhs to her sentences when speaking candidly; the kind of person that stumbles over the words that sound so perfect in her head.  I don't think I ever spoke up once during a Wednesday night discussion my freshman year, in part because I was intimidated by the profound older kids, but also because of my discomfort with my own opinions and with going about their verbalization.

I figured that by my junior year, I would be confident enough to share my thoughts with the group.  And while that was not entirely true, because my Wednesday night attendance wavered during that year because of the amount of schoolwork I had, I suppose I spent my sophomore and junior year preparing for what would come my senior year.  And, yes, more senior year sappiness, but I feel that we are doing a very good job within the youth group with encouraging underclass participation, not because we try to force it, but because we try to act more open and welcoming than the seniors my freshman year ever did.

That is why having freshman participation to me was so touching.  I feel like I am really doing something right with the group of seniors that are in my youth group.  I feel like we are making people more confident with their own opinions and with vocalizing them.  I feel like we are inspiring them, like we are helping them realize who they are.

And maybe I am the only one who really was this affected by these Wednesday night discussions.  Maybe I am the only one who was really that scared to make their opinions vulnerable by putting them out in the open where they could be picked apart in discussion.  But even if I am, at least I know that I have overcome this, and that I have even the slightest chance of helping someone do the same.

not a window, but a path

If I had to pick one word to describe my relationship with swimming over the past nine years, it would be tumultuous.  I don't want to say that the moment I swam my first 25 yard backstroke in a tiny NSSL dual meet at the old, crumbling Wyoming Municipal Pool, I was destined to swim for the rest of my life -- because I didn't know that.  What I did know the moment I touched the wall was that I loved swimming in a way that I had never loved the other recreational sports I had played.  My long, basketball-player limbs felt far more comfortable in the water than they ever had on the court.

I cried and cried when that first summer ended.  That was the first indication, I think, of the fact that I never did swimming because I was good at it.  I did it because once I started, it was so hard to know who I was without it.  The water embraced me like nothing else, and my love for its acceptance and easy companionship kept me going; kept me swimming back and forth across the pool, again and again.

It is not to say that my career has come without obstacles.  Like any relationship, my love affair with the sport wavered, at some points uncontrollably.  I struggled with being the youngest member of my national team; I struggled with having few friends because of this age gap.  I struggled with the pressure of being thrown into a world of higher competition so suddenly.  I struggled with the fact that people used swimming to define me, when there was still a student, an artist, a writer, a friend hiding inside of me, waiting to be recognized.

But my love for swimming, my love for the natural ability and comfort that I find within the water, has tethered me in so many ways to the pool.  I always come back.  And so to me, swimming does not mean two state championships in the 100 back, or 11 YMCA national meets.  It does not mean a state record, or an MVP award, or a Cincinnati Enquirer Swimmer of the Year.  Instead, it means an old friendship and the lessons I have learned because of it.  It means figuring out how to manage stress; learning the importance of teammates.  It means realizing that success comes from loving something, rather than the other way around.

And it means not only a window to my future, but a path, into college and beyond.

your heart is an empty room

I forgot to write yesterday! I hate that it is so easy to slack off and not write when I feel like I have nothing to say.  But I always have something to say, so it's dumb for me to think otherwise.  No, really, today this kid on my swim team said very loudly, "Celia. never. stops. talking." I'm hoping this is false, but you never know.  Maybe I should try to talk less.  Listen more.  I don't know.

I want to be a good listener, more than anything.  But when I get nervous I just default on what I know well: myself.  And I show people I understand by relating what they are going through to something that has happened to me.  But does this make me appear self-centered? Am I self-centered simply because this is the way my brain functions?

What a disconcerting thought.  I like to think of myself as understanding and empathetic, but if the only understanding that I can come to is the understanding when I connect my own experiences to what has happened, does that make me short-sighted? I don't want to be short-sighted.  But is not wanting enough to make it true?

I'm asking too many questions.  I feel bad that I forgot to post yesterday, and that I am not really doing anything at all in terms of my isearch, not even writing every day which is basically the only thing I had planned on doing until, you know, the week before it's due.  But I can't even do that.  Where the hell has all my self-discipline gone? It's like I submitted it with my college applications -- but I have yet to send my applications to my top two schools.  AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

In other news (since this post is pretty uncohesive as it is), this website is pretty cool.  I loooooove me some graphic design, and I love me some beautiful information.

(click to enlarge)

(click to enlarge)

land to run into and back

I miss Washington DC.

It's honestly not the being out and about for the entire day without any break, or the waking up at 6:15 in the morning even on the weekend, or the having to wear uncomfortable tights and look nice every day.  It's not eating the same food for breakfast every morning, or scrambling to take a shower before the bus left, or feeling physically exhausted by the time we got back at 10:30 each night and passing out on my bed before I could even get under the covers.  It's not the tour guides' rambling before each of the places we visited.

It is, however, being in a place with my entire grade.  Not unlike floatbuilding week, we were put in a position where we could (and were in some cases forced to) interact with one another.

It's funny, I remember on Friday morning at 4:30 when I got on bus number one and immediately felt that it was a mistake.  A million boys, who I had barely ever talked to, surrounded me and Julia in our seat in the middle of the bus.  Dread pooled inside of me because I knew that it was going to be the longest ten hours of my entire life, and the only other friends I had on the bus were sitting at the very front, a good seven rows ahead of me.  However, I very quickly realized that the ten hours were flying by, as Julia and I began to make conversation with the boys sitting around us.  It was amazing how friendships formed between us and how well we got along, just from a simple bus ride, but they did, and while I know others complained about being restless and bored and exhausted on the bus, I was fully awake with the adrenaline and excitement of meeting new people (even as a senior in high school!) and having new conversations.

We did this psychoanalysis game, and although I suppose you can assume that none of our answers really meant a damn thing about any of us, it was so interesting to see what people answered, especially when their answers seemed to line up perfectly with who they were.  I laughed so much on that bus ride, it's ridiculous.  Not only were the bus rides fun, though, all of the places we visited were very interesting and it was a completely new way of experiencing them, alongside my fellow seniors.  There was something cool about, you know, a bunch of kids, no matter what their political views and backgrounds, coming together and being dressed up and nice and polite in our nation's capital.

Yeah, yeah, I know, cheesy senior year bullshit, but I'm serious.  I felt very good about the entire trip, and I feel closer to my class because of it.  Plus, I had a great time away from my family (in a non-swimming environment, for sure) and with people I do not normally spend time with.  I got home, and immediately missed singing BIG BOOTY BITCHES for the entire bus ride, and playing stupid games, and doing immature government mad libs.  I missed constantly being around my friends, old and new.

I don't know.  I guess I am turning into one of those sentimental senior year saps.  But in a world full of lasts, it's nice to have a few firsts in there, as well.  And it's nice to take a little time to recognize them, in a blog or otherwise.

photo by julia carleton

photo by julia carleton

please remember me, happily

Today is Thanksgiving, but November 25th also marks the day that I met my best friend Julia Carleton five years ago.  I think this is a  nice coincidence because five years is a pretty long time, and I cannot describe how thankful I am for this friendship, so I think I will write about it in this blog entry, and then write some about my senior trip to Washington DC later (I do have some reflections on the trip, though, never fear!)

It's funny that it has been five years, because in some ways it feels like yesterday that I was going to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with a girl I hardly knew, and in others, I cannot remember a time that I was not best friends with her, and even when I do, things do not feel quite so vibrant and enriched.  I know that sounds ridiculous, but in my early middle school years, especially fifth and sixth grade, I thought I was nobody.  I literally questioned my existence because I felt that much of a bystander.  I wrote an essay about this my junior year and I actually called it my "bystander complex" because that was what it was -- it was not self-consciousness; rather, it was the lack thereof.  Because I did not have a solid friend on which to base myself, I did not feel like a real person.  Which is idiotic, but true.

That is why when I met this person who was so much like me and yet so different from me, it was like something clicked and I suddenly became the person I always had been.  I found someone who really liked the internet as much as I did, who wrote books and took photos and did art and talked in weird voices.  It sounds endlessly cliché, but from the first time I hung out with Julia, I knew that I was anything but a bystander.  And it is basically to her that I owe my confidence and drive to be the best that I can be.

Happy five years Julia! And Happy Thanksgiving to all of you! I am thankful for every last one of you :)

excited is an understatement.

 

when it's silent inside, it feels right

"Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in 'sadness', 'joy', or 'regret.' Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions like, say, 'the happiness that attends disaster.' Or: 'the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy.' I'd like to show how 'intimations of mortality brought on by again family members' connects with 'the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.' I'd like to have a word for 'the sadness inspired by failing restaurants' as well as for 'the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.' I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever."

-- Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

I guess this goes along the same lines as my last post, but I just remembered reading this quote from Middlesex and I started thinking about it.

At first, I feel this strange sense of satisfaction, because I know exactly what Cal means by this.  Sometimes words really are not enough to describe things like the sadness inspired by failing restaurants, and to think that he is putting into words what I have felt so many times in my life is immensely satisfying.  It is something I have always felt but never been able, or even tried to, explain.

And then I realize, what if it is language that is preventing me from doing this? It is a sense that I have never been able to convey -- is it because the english language does not posess the words? But obviously it does. I cannot dismiss my own incapabilities as being the result of the tools I have failed to utilize.  I guess I just think it's interesting that I can both be immensely satisfied with what the passage conveys, but also disappointed in myself for being almost relieved that this oversimplification of English is what has caused me to not think of it for so long.

On that note, I also can't comprehend not comprehending.  Like, French and English have similarities, right? Similar cadence, similar grammar, similar sentence structure.  Learning French in high school has been an interesting experience, but not an impossible one.  It gets easier as you go along, learn to reconcile the two languages not exactly side-by-side, but overlapping with each other.  But then I think about my friends who are taking Chinese, and I feel like an idiot.  I can't even comprehend something so incomprehensible.  There is nothing similar about Chinese and English, and I feel dumb and close-minded for not being able to wrap my brain around the fact that someone can think in Chinese in the same way that I think in English.  I can't even imagine being able to know and understand the symbols or sounds of the language.

It's weird to think of the things I can't imagine, that I don't have the physical capability to conjure up in my brain.  Because these things are beyond my simple imagination, when I try to think of them, there is just empty space.  But I know there is something there.  Will I ever learn how to see it? And how will I know if I've learned if I can't imagine not being able to imagine these things?





It's funny -- instead of asking a question in the beginning and answering it throughout my post, like I usually do, I just did the opposite with this.  I'm not sure if this means anything; it's just something I noticed.

we should always know that we can do everything.

"I want to be one of those people who have streaks to maintain,
who scorch the ground with their intensity."

-- John Green, Looking For Alaska

I have been criticized before for not being spontaneous enough.  It is imminent -- I think too much about everything.  Thinking has been my downfall in relationships, in swimming, and even sometimes in school, when I take an absurdly long time to finish my BC calculus tests because I am thinking so much about each question.  Is thinking a lot a bad thing for me?

I am compelled to think that sometimes, it really is.  Thinking prevents me from being spontaneous; it makes me think an incredible amount about what I am about to do or say.  I'm not exactly sure why I do this, whether it is just this stupid writer's brain that compels me to make everything I say not embarrassing or stupid, or fear of what people might think of me, or what.  I can't play games like truth or dare or never have I ever, because I can't think of any good questions or dares.  I can be candid with my feelings to people, but only if I feel completely comfortable with them and completely comfortable with what I am going to say first.  I think so much during swim practice that I legitimately have arguments inside my own head about whether I can finish the set or not, and I swear it would just be such a blessing to be able to turn my idiot brain off and DO THE SET.

Is this a character flaw, or a bad habit, or an Achilles heel? Is it something I can change, or that I should fight, or should I accept the fact that I am a born writer and nonverbal communicator and embrace the gifts that this gives me, like my ability to communicate through written word? Sometimes I feel like this writer's brain is a curse, and other times a blessing.  Occasionally, I feel socially and mentally frustrated when I cannot turn my editing mind off, but ultimately, I think it is wonderful that I can write and that this lack of spontaneity has allowed me to hone this ability.

Sometimes I do think it might be the other way around.  Did being a writer make me not spontaneous, or did being not spontaneous make me a writer? But maybe the answer doesn't matter -- maybe it's not something I should be thinking about at all.  And maybe that is a good thing, to accept that as it comes.

IN OTHER NEWS...

go listen to this song! right now!

so do you think i came to fight?

and do i always think i'm right?

Oh my god.  I found these photos on a girl's flickr through someone else's tumblr, and I am truly amazed because they are better than every single photo of him I have ever google image searched EVER.  Stumbling upon them was half lovely and half heartbreaking, what with him being the very essence of perfection and everything. Sorry for the mostly-picture post, but it's Friday night and there are things to be done and I just thought I would share this heartbreaking perfection with you :)

photo by laura musselman

photo by laura musselman

photo by laura musselman

photo by laura musselman

greater than the sum of our parts

"Those awful things are survivable, because we ARE as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. When adults say, ‘Teenagers think they are invincible’ with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don’t know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail."
-- John Green, Looking For Alaska

I have this gross obsession lately with quotes.  I read John Green books and I write down quotes that I love from them.  I read The Importance of Being Earnest and I write in the margins quotes that make me laugh and that I want to remember.  I'm even reading this weird lesson-type book about writing that my teacher gave me (and that I am actually very much enjoying), and I have three notebook pages of quotes scribbled down after the first 30 pages.

Why do I select these quotes? Is it because they put into words something that I have never been able to, or because they put into words something that I have never before thought about? Is it because they are beautiful and eloquent and I like the way the words sound together? Or is it just because they resonate inside of me so well?

I write down the quotes that make me smile, laugh, cry, think.  The ones that make my stomach do cartwheels because this resonance is just so beautiful.  The ones that fill a hole inside of me I didn't even notice was there until it wasn't anymore.  I write them down, and I read them over and over again, and I think about them for as little or as long as I need.  And they become a part of me, just like the book's characters and symbols and themes become a part of me.

So am I simply a vessel composed of words that are not my own? Perhaps; perhaps not.  But I like to think that simply the fact that I have chosen these particular combinations of words is enough to contain at least a part of Celia; a part of me.

Also, if you are reading this, thank you for making me different from that little girl who cannot make her voice be heard.  I love you.

"After all this time, it still seems to me like ‘straight and fast’ is the only way out. But I choose the labyrinth. The labyrinth blows, but I choose it.”

more poignant than silence

I love John Green.

"... So, like, imagine some girl who writes in her little unread blog, right? She writes, and no one comments, and she wonders if anyone reads it ... This girl, she can make her voice hearable, but cannot make it heard.  This sweet, little girl -- who has friends, who harbors crushes, who worries about homework, who knows that talking without being heard is sadder and more poignant than silence."

via dot-dashlee

thinking outrageously, i write in cursive

Please bear with me as I do crazy fangirl for perhaps the only man on earth I will ever consider doing crazy fangirl for.

So last Thursday, as you know, I went to see Sufjan in concert.  In the hours approaching the concert, I think I naturally lowered my expectations.  I have been compiling this list of fantastic Sufjan songs which I adore, and it is basically a list of songs that I would cry if he played live.  In the past four and a half years I have gotten to know him as this cute storyteller who writes plucky acoustic and lushly orchestrated narrative-based songs, and I have fallen in love with songs like He Woke Me Up Again, Romulus, The Mistress Witch From McClure, Casimir Pulaski Day, Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland Illinois, The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out To Get Us!, etcetera.  And I got used to wanting to hear these songs in concert so badly, and simply accepting that I would never hear them because Sufjan seemed to be dead for a long, long time (and never on tour!).

Then in August or September, I found these tickets for sale for this concert in Indianapolis, and I regained hope! But the night of the concert, I remembered for the first time that his new album was such a dramatic departure from the acoustic narrative-style songs of his old albums, and I realized that there was a huge possibility that I would not hear any of these songs that I so loved.  I'm not sure why this thought hadn't crossed my mind until the night of the concert, but I began to get nervous.  I worried that my parents would be taken aback by his highly synthesized new style, because his new songs were nothing like the calm, acoustic, beautiful pieces that I have played through the speakers of my house.  I worried that I would be disappointed.

Honestly, worrying was idiotic, because he was fantastic.  It's true that the vast majority of songs were from his new album and EP.  The songs from the album are highly electronic, while the EP songs are more acoustic (but still a departure from his old stuff).  So there was this great balance between the electronic stuff and acoustic stuff, both of which were fantastic.

The Age of Adz

He opened with Seven Swans, though, which was a nice way to transition into his new stuff, and he ended with Chicago (which, personally, I don't love that much -- but it was very good live, and a good way to recall old times).  Then for the encore, he came out and started playing UFO Sighting, and I almost died of happiness.  THEN he gathered at the front of the stage with his backup singers and played Casimir Pulaski Day (I literally almost cried), which was adorable because in the middle of the song the backups messed up the lyrics and they all stopped and laughed.  He also played The Dress Looks Nice on You and John Wayne Gacy, Jr, which were both excellent.

Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois

What surprised me the most, though, is how much his songs from his new album thrilled me.  Had the concert been all acoustic and plucky and narrative, as I had originally hoped it would be, it would have lost so much of its thrill and excitement.  Even in the new songs, his voice was still perfection, so I didn't lose that part of the Sufjan experience, and it really brought the album to life for me (naturally, I now cannot stop listening).

Also, my parents and sister loved it.  I haven't seen my dad smile so much in a while, which really, really made the night worth it for me.

Casimir Pulaski Day

i want to be well.

I have such a ridiculous amount of work to do but I didn't do any of it last night because I was feeling more upset than I have in a long time -- I have an entire college application with three essays due at midnight and 5000000 pieces of make up work from the days that I have missed for college visits.  I'm still worrying about paying for college.  Sorry this blog entry is terrible.  I'm supposed to be doing writing for my isearch paper, so you will probably see a lot more of me on here once it becomes a priority and my mom can't yell at me for doing this instead of my homework (since it will actually be my homework).

I don't know what to do with my life.  What else is new...

The best thing about my life, honestly, is the fact that I am seeing SUFJAN STEVENS tomorrow night at 9pm in Indianapolis.  Friday is going to be a rough day at school, but oh my god.  So so so worth it.

all's divine in desire

I'm not pleased with the fact that I haven't written an entry in an entire week, but to be fair, I've been incredibly busy (and out of town for the past five days).  I think instead of talking about my weekend and college experiences today I will talk about those later and instead write about something else that I've been thinking about.

I suppose the key to writing a blog is to simply pretend that people care about what you have to say, so that you may articulate your thoughts without being afraid that they are useless or meaningless.  Which is what, I figure, I have been doing for the first two weeks of having my blog.

It's so easy to think that your thoughts and everyday words can only resonate at a personal level, because they were written with some experience in mind that happened to only you.  I have been assuming for all this time that I would write entries only to get down my own thoughts so that I could either look back on them and laugh, or simply exercise my writing muscle every day (note to self: isearch topic?); that I would receive a few comments here and there from my friends who have blogs but nothing much more than that, which is why it is totally weird for me to have people tell me that they have bookmarked my blog for future reading.

I am not trying to toot my own horn, or self-promote, or brag.  It is so bizarre for me to have somebody tell me that what I have articulated means something to them.  I wrote my common application essay -- the one I'm sending to my top three schools! -- on what this concept has meant to me since seventh grade, when I hungrily started to try to make my writing to move someone, whether to laughter or to tears.  I tried and tried to write about things that I thought would resonate in people, like death and divorce; cancer and car crashes, but what I failed to do was to check first to see that these things resonated inside of me.  What resulted was writing that was flat and unrealistic (and the farthest thing away from resonation that I could get).  It was not until I began to do unconventional things that my writing started to flourish.  Instead of writing about tragedy, I assigned thoughts and emotions to inanimate objects and strange protagonists.  By putting my own thoughts into these unconventional narrators, I was able to speak so much louder than any story I wrote about death ever could.  (and with that, I present to you the Sparknotes version of my college essay...)

Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is that since seventh grade, I have been infatuated with the idea that my writing could resonate inside somebody as meaningful.  And I have been so shocked to find that people care about what I have said on here.  My last entry has been complimented by three people, and I think it means three different things to all of them.  I think my English teacher, who stumbled upon my blog through a series of links on facebook, is impressed by the fact that I am doing this project at all, and putting in as much thought into my entries that I am.  My friend Grace (who is pictured below!) appreciated my thoughts on floatbuilding, because both of us were incredibly involved in that process.  And for my friend Rob, who graduated last year and is currently in college, I think what meant the most to him was simply the remembering of it all.

My writing is not just what I intend for it to mean -- it is just as much what the reader brings to the table.  And the thought that what I have wrote can mean something to many different people for many different reasons is truly fascinating and, honestly, a seventh grade dream fulfilled.

be this sunset, one for keeping

Lately, I have been living in a world that is overflowing with lasts.  Some leap out at me, waving their arms, shouting my name so as to ensure my attention.  My last first day of school; my last homecoming floatbuilding competition; my last home football game and homecoming dance.  These lasts are bold; they are insurmountable; there is no mistaking their presence.

Others, they are not so ostentatious -- instead, they hide behind corners and inside closets like small children playing hide and seek, only noticeable if a whisper or murmur of impatience or discomfort manages to escape.  The last time I will go back-to-school shopping at Staples with my mother, a list of supplies for each class in hand; the last time I will dance and belt out the words to a silly Disney song as an astonishing float comes together in the background; the last time I will do a victory lap around the football field with my entire grade because we have won the competition; the last time I will sigh exasperatedly as my father takes his millionth picture of my pre-homecoming group.

While it is easy for me to be constantly aware of these grandiose lasts, it is the subtle, murmuring ones that strike the most beautiful, elaborate, unexpected chords inside of me.  For AP English, our teacher had us write a narrative that depicted a certain aspect of our community.  Because the assignment was due the week after our homecoming and floatbuilding week, many students used this as their topic.  For the most part, those who wrote about it captured how much the week meant to most of us in terms of hard work and class bonding, but I know of one person who wrote about how none of it would even matter in the long run; how with time we would forget about our victory and how floatbuilding would be reduced in our minds to nothing more than a fact.

Perhaps over time we will forget some details of our senior year and high school experience -- after all, that is what time is; it is getting further and further away from a moment and forgetting and losing its nuances and details and aspects.  But just because I have forgotten some of these subtleties does not make the experience unimportant.  It is absolutely not the general fact of floatbuilding that I will carry with me as a great experience; it is the singing and dancing and laughing and bonding and sheer enthusiasm and passion that the entire grade had in common for a week.

Perhaps I will not remember the specifics of these experiences, but that is exactly what makes them so much more fragile and valuable than the fact of the experience as a whole.  Even after I have forgotten the words to a silly Disney song, I will carry with me the experience of for once in my life not caring that my voice was loud and clumsy and still singing anyway.  I will carry with me the feeling of camaraderie that I had even with people that I did not know well.  I will carry with me the conversations that I had with people with whom I do not often get the chance to come in contact.  How could I forget this? I want to remember it all.

That is where I think this boy was wrong in his narrative about our community.  These nuances do matter, even more than the general ideas.  If we allow all of these lasts to fade into generalizations, we lose so many of the things that made the experiences beautiful and meaningful.



photo by rod apfelbeck

photo by rod apfelbeck