Where I'm Going

This summer is going by faster
than I want it to

I still haven't cleaned out my room
Or packed my clothes
Or opened the desk drawers to sort
through all the high school papers with
MLA headings and red ink

It's not hard to do it,
But something inside wants me to stop,
Wants me to forget about the place
I'm going to
even though that
place feels like magic

Where I'm going
I won't know everyone's name
and they won't know mine.

They won't know that
I am four feet and eleven inches
of mid-size university town
quiet girl
who writes
and wishes she could draw
and forgot how to dance long ago
but wants to sing

They won't know that
my first language resides in bits and pieces
in my brain
pero el español vive 
et le français aussi

They won't know
that I broke my pinky in 3rd grade playing basketball
but still joined the team five years later

They won't know that
it took me five years to calm my heartbeat
and sing a solo in chorus

They won't know that it took
me seventeen years
to realize that
liking art
and
liking science
is okay
and that
I am okay
too

They won't know that I don't feel alive unless I am writing
or laughing
or both

They won't  know who or what I left behind.

They feel so far away
and I am worried
that I cannot bring them closer
that they will fade away
or I never belonged
in the first place

They look like stars -- 1000-some stars
That shine with their new discoveries,
their marvelous, miraculous
minds

I am a speck of galactic debris
Trying to find my spark
To polish my glow
To learn what I can

But they won't know that
until I tell them

And I won't know anything
unless I string my words up
on a question mark
and ask

Waves (two flavors)

I am generally very fond of water. After all, my family, friends, and I are all comprised mostly of this lovely life-giving fluid. There is one circumstance when water and I are not happy to see each other: if said water manifests itself in the rectangular surface known as a "swimming pool".  The last time I went swimming, I was about two feet tall --  the deep end became the equivalent of the Atlantic Ocean. 

Today, I went swimming again for the first time in seven years. Despite being an eager 6-year-old swimmer at one point in my life, the only familiar thing about reentering the water was the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as I flailed about in panic. Through the course of the hour-long lesson, the water began to feel less like something bent on my liquidy destruction, thanks to my understanding instructor. I even went into the deep end of the pool with minimal panic.

Watery waves and sound waves are on my agenda for this week, since I'm working on the final bits of production for a radio documentary on marriage rights, a project made even more exciting by the recent Supreme Court decision.  I've been working on this documentary with a group of students since 2013, picking interviewees in the community to talk about their experiences with marriage, writing scripts, and other productive radio things.Our documentary focuses on the historical and social parallels between interracial and same-sex marriage rights. 

It's hard to believe we're in the home stretch. I feel like I was chatting with interviewees just yesterday, hearing about their families, childhoods and marriages. Now that I hear their voices again in the immense multitrack layout, I can't help but smile. Aligning all the sound bytes so that they mesh together in harmonious succession is infinitely rewarding. It's like dragging virtual puzzle pieces into place to create a beautiful finished product -- the product of two years of hard work!

Writing for Myself

We all spend years of our lives writing, Essays, e-mails, blog posts, even text messages.  Almost everything we write, I suppose, is driven by a desire to communicate. Even as I write these words on my so-called personal blog,  I do so in the hope that someone might come across them one day.

Today, I did something I haven't done in a long time. I wrote something that has no purpose other than to exercise my own imagination, tune out of the buzzing, crawling world, and float in dreamland. I'm somewhat of a sporadic writer -- I only write when inspiration strikes, and more often than not, that inspiration takes the form of the almighty Deadline. School deadlines, contest deadlines, I-should-probably-reply-to-that-email-but-you-know-what-I-haven't-written-anything-good-in-ages pseudo-deadlines brought on by avoiding responsibilities -- you name it, I've written because of it.

But the only deadline I ran after today was the I-want-to-write deadline, which isn't exactly a deadline because I can write whenever I want. For whatever reason, that particular idea is absurdly hard for me to grasp. I think I'm finally getting the hang of it -- just in time for college, a time in my life where I definitely don't want to put writing for myself by the wayside.

While I'm making progress, I'm going to go for it and post a tidbit of what I've written here. After all , the worst thing that could possibly happen is that someone might read it.

There was something beautiful in that house at the end of road. It advertised its antiquity with shutters on the verge of unhinging, paint peeling like papery garlic skin from its once-white façade.  Vines curled through gaps in the windows glass, delicate green eyelashes. You thought you heard them whisper your name in their shuffling tendrils. 

With the moon, the vines danced in the light, turning iridescent buds toward the sky.  

You can’t find the name of the buds, even in the most comprehensive books on botany.  You tell yourself that the plants are the reason you bought the house.

Framing

Photography is an art that I have always admired from afar. To me, the photographer is the imagist of the art world, seeking to distill the universe around us in single images. I've always enjoyed taking photos -- since I was a skipping kindergartner, I've domineered the family camera on every trip, taking artsy-fartsy photos of flowers, people, food, etc. When I was nine, I broke our camera following my brother's first-ever photo smile. "Mom, he smiled for the camera! Look!" I pointed eagerly at the flickering digital display. The camera tumbled down the stairs, and my camera privileges tumbled along with it.  And so my childhood fascination with images seemingly ended.

My interest was piqued once more during a Computer Literacy course I took subbie year (8th grade in my high school)  -- we were allowed to run amok with cameras for a class period, which resulted in some goofy (and some exciting pictures). I took a picture of the school tilted at an angle, and I remember our teacher put it up on the official slideshow of pictures on the main school website. I dug through my old school files and managed to drag up some of the photos I took that day (9/16/2010 -- a long time ago)

The old alma mater (can you say that for high schools?)

A pretty tree -- I think this is the one right outside my high school

 

My 8th-grade filter-happy self did apply some effects in Photoshop, but thankfully, the impact was minimal. A few days ago, my family and I went to St. Louis. For the first time in a long time, I was in possession of a camera (a phone camera, but a camera nonetheless). After a long period of remaining cameraless, of framing pictures in my mind's eye and imagining the perfect moment and angle at which to capture a moment, I was free to snap as I pleased. 

An interesting agate in the St. Louis Science Center

One of the wrought-iron wheel-things that adorn the railing of a gazebo in Tower Grove Park. My favorite thing about this photo is how some of the bushes are nestled happily in the top quarter of the wheel.

This is a picture of bread pudding that my mom and I made together a week ago (at home, not in St. Louis). I really liked how the picture came out, so I wanted to put it here. It makes me hungry just looking at it.

 

Last but not least, some lovely turtles and a duck from the pond at the St. Louis Zoo. I love this photo, even though (or maybe because) it  looks like the cover of a "Best Friends Forever" greeting card.

 

Looking at my old photos and the photos I took over the vacation (or in the summer thus far), I don't think my eye has changed much -- except I seem slightly less fascinated with strange camera angles. I think I'm focusing more on the moment I want to capture, rather than how exactly I capture it.

 

Now that I have a phone with a decent-quality camera, I'm excited to take more pictures (and share them)!