Farewell

Here we are at the end of another year, of another era, of another time. It’s the end of a grade, of [life at] a school, and even of some acquaintanceships, as we are splitting and moving in different directions. In a way, it’s not only an end of all that, but also an end of a part of our lives--for high school is when we have to start making choices for (although I hate to say it) our futures; the end of careless freedom.


It’s funny to sit here and look in both directions: to the past and far to the future. It’s funny to remember how it was when I was half my age now, in second grade, before most of the things that make me who I am had happened--and a little further on, in third grade, trying to make sense of my new place in things in Spectrum--fourth grade, learning about writing and about who my friends are--fifth, trying to reorient (and perhaps I made the wrong choice, but what’s there to do?) “for my better survival in junior high”--sixth, just trying to balance things out…

And then it’s funny to think about 15 years from now, when I’ll be double my age, in my 30s. I wonder will I have figured things out then? And what’s in store between here and there? What will come in the murky depths of the future?

No one can answer that question just now. There is only to wait and hope. But this is a farewell, and all farewells are bittersweet. And every ending must know itself, however hard it is.

There are things I’d like to say, but can’t put into words. The quest of a writer, though, is to try--and so I will. I’d like to say how glad I am that I’ve been here, how glad I am that I’ve done everything I’ve done, and how, even when I felt like it was pointless, I think it turned out well in the end. I want to say how sorry I am that there are people I may never see again, and I want to say that I love you all anyway. I want to say that even though things are ending, they were worth it…I want to say that I have hope for what will happen in the future and that I

And to Mr. T, I wanted to say thanks for everything--the encouragement, the challenge, the random discussions. This year has been amazing in many ways, and I’m…proud of it. Of everything that’s happened. I’ve learned a lot, realized a lot, and I hope some of that will stay with me. Only time will tell.

And so it’s goodbye to another year and another time. Someday I’ll look back on this and wonder what I was thinking, and someday I’ll look back on it with a feeling of reconciliation. Every ending must be understood and every path must be come to terms with…and so it will. Farewell…
 
(PS I got distracted, so it falls apart a bit...)

Satisfaction

Triumph is sweet. After 8 months of training, stress, mixed bouts of elation and depression, we’ve gone there and back again from the National Science Olympiad. And we have done all we needed to. After all the time and pain and struggle, we have TRIUMPHED!
2nd place in Bio-Process Lab. FINALLY I’ve earned more than a bronze-colored medal. And it’s absolutely beautiful. And that’s not even mentioning the stunning 5th place in Solar System, a sweet reward after the misery-creating 7th place (one off from medaling) in Reach for the Stars last year. No one who saw us could say that it doesn’t pay off, because it really truly does. Although I didn’t do as well as I wanted to in my other events, I reckon it doesn’t matter. I did my best (although I still think we could have gotten gold in Bio-Process. >> That was my fault for starting at the station just after the microscopes…).
And anyway, it was an amazing trip after all. The sheer smell of the Hershey store might have been enough…but then there was the American Girl store with the creepy look-a-like dolls, the staying up late to talk about philosophical/theological topics with one of my best friends, the amusement of the plane ride home (aka sitting behind a lady with the worst case of BO known to mankind and doing all the things we could to circumvent the terrible smell, including concocting a potent smelling potion), staying up late the other night to be entertained by boys…not to mention the 8th grader Hawaiian and my teammate. :P Now that was a picture.

And then there was everything else. There were the screams of stunned joy as we medaled in Solar System and Write It/Do It. There was the frustration of the mousetraps’ failure in Junkyard Challenge. There was the baking heat of Chicago and the pouring rain we returned to. There was the red-bricked campus and the skyscrapers of the city. Did I mention the Cheesecake Factory (best ever!) and my birthday? Or the Museum of Science and Industry and the Fairy Castle? Absolutely stunning.

Mentioning that fairy castle, I wanted to give a few words on it. Let me just say this--it is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. In the entire museum, after coming out from that room everything else looked bland. That is something that’s truly enchanting. The carefully crafted structures, the beauty, the stories it ties to, and the way things are thought out are poignant and touching. If you get a chance, look it up sometime. It’s amazing.

Anyway, moving on. I’m glad, in the end, after all of this that this happened. Even though sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it, I always know in the end that it is. Maybe it’s like that in life too. Perhaps there’ll be a resolution after the long dark years in the night. We can hope. We can dream. And we can trust. <333333333 to my partners and my teammates--GO FALCONS!

Trepidation

Sometimes a realization comes as a shock--just hits you. Sometimes it creeps up on you for a long time before you can finally face it. Well...just like this. Nationals...is next week. We are LEAVING in six days!

And then you suddenly start panicking...

"I am up to the ends of my hair in homework!" says my partner for the triumph, and I wholeheartedly agree. Not only am I worrying about not being ready for Olympiad itself, missing three days of school at the end of the term is a real pain. It forces everything else to get pushed together...rather like the Doppler effect, with it being compressed on this side of Wednesday and rarefied on the opposite side of it. I find it especially convenient that I can rant about my homework while doing it...or some form of it...though.

I can't help looking forward to next weekend. Nationals really is the best ever--5 days with some of your favorite people in the world (well, and maybe a certain person you'd really rather not see...certain readers will know I mean "YKW"), doing all sorts of things you love. I have a feeling that this Nationals trip is going to be better than ever before. Although I've been like a horse digging its heels in, trying (hopelessly, of course, for no one really can) to slow the flow of time, I find myself in an odd sort of peace once more. Once again I've done all I can, and then it'll just be up to the very day of to see what shall happen to all of us.

Still, I'd have to say that trepidation is a good word for my feelings at the moment. My events are such that I actually do have several chances at medals--namely Bio-Process Lab, Solar System, and Experimental Design--and as it's my last year in which going to Nationals is a (almost) certainty. If I don't make something of this chance, then a lot of people (including myself) are going to be very disappointed.

In fact, the worst feeling is that you haven't done anything. This year I'm not really sure what I've accomplished--and this is my last chance for something big this year. It feels like so much hinges on this--even though it's something that we usually don't worry about, just do because it's so much fun. I'm not sure whether my fears or worries are founded or pointless, or whether I should be trying more, or if I'm doing something completely wrong...

Isn't indecision such a funny thing? Or the feeling like you should be doing something but don't know what? There's that old saying about the only thing certain in life being uncertainty (although that's a bit of a contradictory statement in itself). I wonder if that's a good thing or a bad thing, and if it's better to be so confident in something or to expect something bad to happen? Is it better for the outcome? Or your feelings after it? We'll see after next week...

Thoughts

If time were to stop for a day, and everything in the universe were arrested in place, would we even notice? I guess not. Isn’t that an odd thought? Who knows—maybe there are times where everything is arrested and we don’t know.


Now, now, I know you’re going to be on my case for the ridiculous unlikeliness of this. But wouldn’t that be interesting if it were to happen? In any case, that’s how you need to think if you want to be…a good writer? An imaginative person?

Maybe someone who wants to change the world?

I wonder what the people who turn out to be so amazing think early on. I wonder if they start out with wonderful intentions in mind, or if they start out for themselves. Does it make a difference, whether you do something for yourself or for others? I’d like to say it does, but sometimes I wonder.

Most of all I wonder about writers. Everyone dreams their writing will be a best-seller, I think. I wonder how it comes to them, really, the amazing ideas that turn out to be so much, even a form of sustenance! I know that many writers have their own sites where they try and tell these things, but sometimes I wonder if it can be explained.

I wish that were me. Writing is something I’d love to do—maybe that I’m more passionate about than other things. My mind’s always been rather active, as certain readers will know—all through elementary school, lying in bed at night, trying to bring myself away from reality. Maybe it’s not the best idea—after all, they always talk about facing things, but sometimes there’s only so much you can do. And sometimes it’s just nice to get away.

Books have always intrigued me. I was taught to read at the age of 4, and I loved it at once. According to my mother, I was always the better one with words in our family (although you probably can’t notice it here--this is what happens when I get in a hurry!). And I’ve always been drawn to fantasy and science fiction (although I won’t deny there have been other periods—mystery books in the third grade, horse books like Heartland and Thoroughbred in about the 5th…) because they had so much possibility for other things. You could create any kind of a world—even one in which time stopped for a day without anyone’s notice.

I’m writing a novel, of course, and I know that you can’t really just create anything. There are always rules to follow—and you’re not the creator, you find. You’re just the tool; the recorder; the historian. You see this world and what happens and you write it down for the rest of the world to find. I like to think that those worlds exist somewhere—books are the portals to reach them, and then your imagination can find what follows later.

So I wonder how the big writers feel? How is it, to write and discover every day of your life without having to go too far? That’s always been a dream of mine. Maybe someday…

Thoughts on Art

I am of the opinion that all the fine arts are connected and all help one another.


For instance, just yesterday I performed Lady Macbeth’s monologue at the theater festival. Afterwards, I came home and practiced a session of piano, specifically Chopin’s 1st Concerto. Now, I’d been thinking about ballet as my multi-genre paper for creative writing is closely tied to it. And as I played this giant 50-page piece, I couldn’t help thinking about all the other performing arts I’d ever done. And I came to the conclusion that they help with my music a lot. And, probably, vice versa.

You see, theater helps with music because it helps you learn how to find and express emotion infinitely better. And it helps you take something like a script or notes and turn it into something more, the way a good play or true music will be. You learn to see all the hidden nuances behind the little black marks on the page.

And dance helps with music because you can visualize dancers as you play. Costumes, moves…it helps you see what, perhaps, your audience is seeing, and it reminds you that things have to flow from one thing to another, not suddenly, but with grace, as a dancer does. Swift fingers do dance across the ivory keys, controlled, creating something beautiful.

With the help of other things, the art of music can be furthered in many respects.

It works vice versa, too. The knowledge of music helps you understand and feel when you dance. If you don’t know anything about music, how can you relate and react to it when you dance? And music is often a part in theater…music brings intensity to movies, everything to musicals, interest to plays. And you never know when performing experience comes in dead handy. Dance helps you learn to orchestrate movement in theater and to be on time, precise, and controlled—and theater teaches dancers performing and emotion.

After a while of this, you realize, of course it’s interconnected. All life is interconnected. Everything you do in one walk of life can be transferred to another somehow—because although you learn specific things for each, you also learn lessons about confidence, about learning, about different parts of life and about different kinds of people. You learn how to work with others instead of against them, you learn how to strive for your very best; you learn patience and determination and perseverance.

I guess that’s why I love the arts, even though sometimes they drive me crazy. Art can give meaning to the rest of life. It can enhance the experience we have on earth. Art can drive us to realizations as we explore its mysteries, which we may not fully understand (/reference to a poem from 4th period), but which can stir something inside of each and every one of us. It lends another dimension to the theater of life, something both real and not, something strange and surreal and infinitely beautiful.

Cleansed by Fire

Fire. An epitome of the duality of nature. On one side, the warming flame that has helped man since the beginning of everything to stay alive. On the other, the burning, raging, destroying inferno that lays waste to our homes and our lands. Balanced in between, it is also cleansing and purifying…the fire of roses.


Since the beginning of our memories, fire has held a sort of sacred place in the legends of mankind. We tell of how the sun is like a great ball of life-giving fire, and fire is indeed almost life-giving. Fire, I am sure, protected early people from wild animals, and it is the basis of civilization, allowing us to cook, fire our tools, and many more things that, although maybe done in other ways now, fire was once essential to. It has a special place in our minds.

Legends involve fire in manifold ways. Fire was once one of the 4 or more elements in different cultures, along with water, stone/earth, and air/wind, at least standardly. It has been embodied and praised as a god or goddess. There are all kinds of stories told about how man acquired fire, how it’s been helpful to us, and more. Fire has also been a symbol of both destruction and purity, both darkness and light. Almost…paradoxical, in a way.

And yet, fire does destroy. Even as we warm ourselves with it, it burns down the candle, the wood, the fuel you throw upon it. Even as it gives, it has to take from something else. What do we sacrifice to give ourselves warmth?

In a way, fire is like the balance of life. When we want something, we have to give something else up. And sometimes, what we want gets out of hand, and we have to start all over at the very beginning. Is this good, or is it bad? Can you really describe nature as good or bad? Everything has a gray area for someone, no matter how white or black it may seem to you. You can’t condemn fire because it destroys, because you rely on it for warmth. Unsurprisingly, this seems to apply to a lot of our world.

It’s like building a tower out of Janga blocks or cards. You work until it becomes exquisite and tall, and then something happens to tip the balance and it all falls down, destroying your entire work and leaving you to start anew. It’s like that in nature as well. Fire gets out of hand when the natural balance has tipped, and it falls upon us and destroys all of it, leaving us to start again. When the natural balance is tipped, we have revolutions, or wars, or plagues. And then, we start over again at the very beginning.

The thing is, even though fire is terrible, even though war is terrible, things always start anew. The lichens return and the forest grows. The people pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and start over. After destruction, even by fire, we can rebuild.

Fire…what does it mean to you?

Uncertainty

Where do dreams go? Do they remain, somewhere in the ether of reality, when they have passed? Is there a record somewhere of all the yearnings of mankind through the ages? If one could look into dreams, I wonder, what would one find? Perhaps all dreams have been dreamed before. Perhaps the secret yearnings of our hearts are desperate echoes of other dreams, repeating through the ages.


What are dreams, anyway? Anyone who remembers their dreams remembers the desperation of their real life, the people they think about, but they also remember things so far-gone that they cannot even begin to explain their strangeness. What wanderings in the deepest part of our mind produce these twists—and what do they mean? Are our dreams trying to tell us things?

It is more than likely that they are figments of our imagination, nonexistent, and completely out of our control. But one can’t help wondering what there is in our minds that causes them. It’s mildly unsettling to think that, indeed, we do not have complete control over our mind, that there is something below the level of consciousness. One can’t help thinking … how does it influence us? This subconscious…what does it do? Does it see as we do? Does it think? Is it obedient to our will? Is it, well , benevolent?

So, the depths of it are like science fiction, and perhaps improbable. It’s no secret, though, that we still have much to learn about ourselves. We lack the capacity of using so much of our brains—science has proved that. If we could use it; if we were capable of doing it; if we could only learn to do it; what would change? Would anything change?

Possibility is endless, as it were. Before certainty, imagination fills up the gaps so quickly and voraciously with millions of explanations. Is, then, certainty always better than the unknown? How often has your imagination created hopes of many things only to be surprised (not always pleasantly) when the reality is revealed? Perhaps simply not knowing is better than the absolute certainty.

Yet after all, the uncertainty is one of the reasons why we have wars. If we were certain that something was right (if we were certain of the nature or existence of a higher power!), our lives would be much different, but they would have the potential of being so much better (or worse).

In my understanding, the only thing we can be certain of is that uncertainty is a part of us and shapes our lives, in all its forms: in dreams, in reality, in faith, in hope. We err because we are human. We lack certainty because we are human. And as long as we still continue the search for certainty in the knowledge that we don’t know everything and likely never will, we will continue to be human. The moment we imagine we know more than we do, that we are the masters and not part of everything, is the day we fall into our darkness once more.