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.