Wildwood Childhood

The days start out early, the caw of the morning gulls that soar over head pulling me from my sleep. I wince as I stretch my burnt body across the rough hotel sheets. I can feel the heat pulsing from my raw skin, and so I rise and walk towards the balcony, hoping that the morning air will cool what burns. I can see the beach from my view, and it is mostly waves of sand, interrupted by small, scattered clusters of people. The ocean water sparkles blue behind them, giving them—and me--a jeweled backdrop of a perfect day.
It’s hours later and I am on that wave of sand, burning my eager toes as I run from sidewalk to blanket. My feet blister when pressed into the boiling particles of sand. Its energy propels me further, faster and suddenly I am upon the blanket, and kicking sand on my brother.
“Hey!” he shouts, head swiveled back, eyes squinted against the sun.
I giggle and drop down beside him. A coke can rests in the sand and I pick it up and swig. The sand is wet from the can’s condensation, and it becomes loose in my fingers. Grains end up in my mouth and I crunch down on them with my back molars.
The sun quickly warms my already burnt skin and it itches in the light. My mother’s old portable Walkman belts out 70’s dance classics as she waves her hand at me and smiles
“Hi babay!” she mouths.
“Let’s go in,” I suddenly say, eager for the cooling splash of sea foam.
My brother is already up and grabbing his boogie board as I finish my statement.
We wave our goodbyes to our parents and younger brother and head down the slope of sand. Small, black mussels lay in a thin line where the surf meets land, a visible barricade between the aquatic world and ours.
“Okay, on the count of three,” I say, commencing the start of our race.
“One, two, three!” and were off, feet slapping wet muddy sand as waves break against our knees, then our chests. The icy slap shocks me and I dive under, allowing the salt of the earth to permeate my every orifice, every pore. The water cools my shoulders and I pop my head up for breath.
“Here comes a good one!” my brother shouts, pointing eagerly at a swelling wave behind us.
I quickly move to position my board and again take off, this time riding on the crest of a wave, feeling the surge and pull barely tug at my feet. I ride it the whole way in.

My 20 minute daily prolific writing(aka rambling) on why I agree with bell hooks

“If, as Thomas Merton suggests in his essay on pedagogy “Learning to Live,” the purpose of education is to show students how to define themselves in “authentically and spontaneously in relation” to the world, then professors can best teach if we are self-actualized”(20).
Whoa. While I am all for bell hooks theory and her expressivist values, I am suddenly realizing the reason why there may be so many critics of expressivism in the modern day education world. It takes WORK. Any system that requires a group or body of people to reflect inward is usually held at an arms’ distance. Take religion for example. It is always unpopular to self-actualize because it is a dangerous activity—one that removes the individual from the collective. There is a sense of polarity when discussing self-actualization, as if something within the inner personhood has swelled up to shout “no! something is not right here!” For if we did not do so, what would we be more than one of a million nameless beings that followed the major hearkenings of the newspapers and the Ipads and so on and so forth. I do not believe that self-actualization has occurred on many levels in our world today. If it had, we would not be seeing the fifteen minutes of fame stories that fill our mainstream media, or treating celebrity as a sort of pulpit for political change. We would instead be understanding of our spiritual state, our ethical needs and the opportunities for reason and change and work towards those ends. This leads me on to thoughts of why the movie “Avatar” was such a hit at the movies. It was a storyline that spoke to the inner man. There was something timeless in its quality, something that linked our world’s past with our current projecture and I believe that its message is something that could potentially spur on self-actualization in many the minds of mankind. There is a propensity towards clouded vision, towards linking yourself towards the onward pulling chain and assimilating to its structure and design. That is the nature of our college system! When I reflect back on my own experience in obtaining my undergraduate degree, I mostly see how relevant the instructors were to my speed and depth of learning. There were classes that inspired--classes that led me to new levels. And then there were the ones that comprised the majority of my academic experience. Droll, lacking of depth and meaning. So much knowledge, so little time. While this cram method may have to work for scenarios like history and mathematics, I believe that there is a freedom within the boundaries of English and writing. Instead of focusing on the mathematics of grammar within the composition classroom, I agree with bell hooks and believe that time would be better spent(in the interest of the individual and therefore the collective for everything in the interest of the individual is always in the interest of the collective)—that time would be better spent cultivating the internal, allowing for some inner spark to ignite and develop in your budding students over the course of the three or four months they have you. We know that life is a journey—we experience its waves each and every day—so as thinkers and composition teachers, allow your students the meaningful education that they desire and require.

Orange

I didn’t mean to steal it, I told my friends.
It just found its way into my suitcase, the splash of orange barely visible when surrounded by my muddied shirts and socks.
I would never take her shirt! I proclaimed, righteous indignation swelling up within my thirteen-year old body.
Stephanie’s orange tank top, the one that looked so cute on her toned, tanned body now resided on my shoulders. I didn’t think I much resembled Stephanie in it, with the blare of the orange sorely mismatched with my pale skin and large blue glasses. It was a few weeks after camp, and we had all gathered together again to celebrate Becky’s fourteenth birthday. I had chosen to wear the orange tank top because as far as I was concerned, it was new. Four weeks earlier, I had not known that tank top existed in the world. It had thick fabric, with a cling. You knew that it would never lose its shape, no matter how many washings it cycled through. The neckline was my favorite part. A slight dip at the collar bone made me feel bold and daring; aware that there was something to revealing this part of me, but not yet knowing just what it was.
I had known that the tank top would match perfectly with my navy blue shorts from the first time I had seen it on Stephanie. She had breezed into our cabin, the flowery scent of her perfume slightly masking the odor of mud and sunscreen. She had waggled her fingers at us and smiled hugely, her short blonde bob mimicking the curve of her grin.
I hated her then.
She had arrived with a gaggle of girlfriends, each one equally blonde and smiley. It was clear though, that Stephanie was the leader. I and my other three friends looked on, suddenly shamed in our Limited Too sweatshirts and spandex shorts. I raised a hand to my head and felt the frizzy, dishwater blonde hair practically leap into my fingers. She caught my eye and smiled, a certain sympathy seeming to be reflected towards me. Of course I smiled back.
Stephanie and friends had arrived a day later than my friends and I, and there had already been a few potential love interests spotted amongst the camp crowd. Becky and I had scanned the perimeters, our eyes assessing each and every male within a mile. It didn’t matter that none were really looking our way; I could hardly blame them. We were a motley crew of glasses and scraped up legs, with all sorts of colors reflecting off of our braces. It was surprising enough that we had found one another; trying to find a boyfriend was sheer wishful thinking.
That’s why when Zach from Indiana walked up and said hi, I could barely stop myself from falling into uncontrollable giggles. When Zach followed me to lunch and sat at my table, I could barely touch any of the sloppy joe on my plate.
“What if he asks me to the dance on Friday?” I excitedly whispered to Becky as we refilled our sodas.
We silently squealed and half-bounced back to our seats, my own mind running wild with the possibility of Zach giving me my very first kiss.
That was before Stephanie had arrived.
She had been in our cabin for barely an hour before she had sidled up and proceeded to win us over with her Midwestern charm.
“You guys are just the cutest! I love that sweatshirt you’ve got on, I’m sorry…is it Noelle? It’s so cute on you!”
We ate up her shit until it was pouring out of our throats and steaming out of our ears. Before the end of the afternoon, Stephanie and her crew had managed to teach us the lyrics to Nelly and had each one of us confessing who we liked at camp.
“His name is Zach and he’s from Indiana. He has sort of spiky hair, he was hanging out with this tall kid…I don’t remember his name. But we ate lunch together and he said ‘see you at the rally tonight’!”
The harder she smiled and nodded, the faster I spilled out the details. I was possessed by an insatiable desire to please Stephanie-- to make her think that I was the kind of girl that boys would decide to like at summer camp, the kind of girl who would enter a room smelling of flowers and sticky, sweet lipgloss.
I thought that I had done the right thing, or at least had begun the process of having this girl think that I was:
a. Cool
b. Pretty
c. Popular
d. Vapid
e. All of the above.
I was satisfied with myself the next day-- had even gooped gel into my thick bob that morning. But a good fat nothing it got me when I saw Stephanie and Zach waltzing into the cafeteria, his spiky blonde hair perfectly erect next to her bouncing yellow mane.
My initial thought was something along the lines “fuck you” surrounded by a cloud of utter disbelief.
Really?
I had seen some of the teen movies where the pretty girls had manipulated and calculated their way into the heartthrob’s life. I had heard of how mean girls could be, but until I saw Stephanie with Zach, I hadn’t believed it.
I was going to let this bitch do a makeover on me! I outraged inwardly.

It was brushed aside back in the cabin, even though a certain coolness had settled amongst the bunk beds.
“Oh, that’s Zach?!” she had asked flippantly. “I thought there must have been at least ten different Zachs here!”
While I sat sulking between Becky and Noelle at the ice cream social, Stephanie and Zach swallowed spoonfuls of whipped cream and threw rainbow sprinkles at one another. I watched them stand in line together for the slip and slide and I pretended not to hear when they quietly giggled as I limped past them afterwards, broken bits of twigs and rocks sticking out of my bloodied calf. I watched them sit at the dance together and swore, even as I accidentally spilled soda all over my dress, that I would never trust a girl, a Stephanie, a bitch, like that again.

Extracting revenge hadn’t been hard at the end. The opportunity had come so quickly, so easily that I almost couldn’t believe my good luck. It was our last morning and I was hurriedly packing, blatantly mixing dirty clothes with clean just in order to get outside for a few minutes before our bus pulled up to leave. The pile of clothes next to me wasn’t mine, and I had barely glanced at it until I saw a gleam of orange somewhere near the bottom. With a quick look around, I plunged my hand into the pile and like a toy chest claw, retracted what I desired and deposited it into my suitcase, not daring to look to see if I had snatched the right article of clothing. I didn’t dare try again.
After a restless six hour bus ride home and in the safety of my bedroom later that night, I gingerly lifted Stephanie’s orange tank top from the bed of my soiled clothes. I had stolen her beloved orange shirt, the one that had matched her navy shorts so perfectly, and held it up to myself in the mirror. Through my finger-smudged glasses, I could see it already clinging to my body. I couldn’t help but smile as I lifted it to my face and inhaled the flowery scent.

Life and all of its delicacies

The holiday season is falling behind us and the cold desolation of winter is coming upon us. It is hard not to feel nostalgic this time of year--to look back on the past year, at all of its faults and successes and see in the foggy distance the makings of a better man or woman. It is this time each year that we assess our inner selves, and see what is lacking. That is why I am a true believer in New Year's Resolutions. The change of seasons, the renewal of the snow and biting rain upon the frozen ground, can also represent what is going on inside each of us. We have had our celebrations, our reunions with friends and families, and there is not much left beyond us but the cold isolation that accompanies January through March. We become snowed in, darkness falls quicker and so we are left to deal with ourselves--without the noise and distraction that spring and summer bring. Less interaction with others outside of our family, more interaction with our inner selves. I believe this time of year brings a certain clarity, but it also begs the question why? For why is it only now, at a certain time each year, that we should be able to grasp the change and pen it down? We need our resolutions to sustain us through the year, to infiltrate our patterns of everyday life and cause change where we need it. Those last ten pounds might not come off, and you might not sit down and write 1,000 words each day (like I every year say I will do) but what about changing our resolutions? Instead of focusing so intently on the actions we know we should be taking to better ourselves, what about focusing on the internal man or woman? Change begins within, and I believe that kind of change can be found in a quiet mediation time each and every day. We need the quiet and in our modern day, the stillness is something that has been lost. We know what everyone around us is doing and thinking throughout the day through our various forms of communication (cell phones, facebook, twitter, BBM) but do we really know what our inner self is feeling and thinking? We've lost something in this great age of technology and that something is ourselves. This new year, and each year after it, let us try to access the heart and soul of what lies beneath those last ten pounds and maybe we will see that the changes we hope for each year will come naturally. This year, instead of a running list of resolutions to eat better and to exercise, or to finally submit my writings for publishings, I'm going to make my list short and sweet. Setting a time aside each day to pray and think, a time to sit in the quiet peace of the chilly morning and know my heart a bit better. To know thyself is to know others. To know others is to know the heart of God. "Peace to surpass all understanding" may be something we find in our morning stillness.