Daring to Create

This was an undertaking for my journalism class--I am fascinated with the idea of composing music and have tried (and a pretty feeble attempt at that) to compose my own stuff. I loved this assignment and hearing from different composers my own age who are learning how to make it come alive.

Samuel G. Freedman, in his book Letters to a Young Journalist, writes: “There is something daring, then, in believing, as I believe, that journalism must do more than pander to prejudices. There is something daring in letting your own attitudes and orthodoxies rub up against inconvenient realities. There is something daring in taking on a burden of expertise, proving by your own example that being a journalist means more than putting up a Web site and saying you are.” While Freedman was talking about the written language and the act of investigative journalism, his message can be applied to any art form that is losing its place in concrete places. Creativity that once belonged on the stage, in the museum, and the in concert halls are being transferred to youtube, ebay, and iTunes, and Freedman asks his readers to dare to be different. Dare to not buy in to what is simply efficient. Dare to still seek quality with the digital age, and perhaps even despite it. He is asking us to create.

The first vinyl record my father ever owned was the Beatle’s Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club. It was ranked number one in the Rolling Stone’s feature “the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time,” sold over eight million copies worldwide over several years, and was quoted as being “an unsurpassed work of concept, sound, and songwriting.” The album, released in 1967, had to be bought with dollars and cents at an actual record store. This meant that people actually had to get dressed, leave their homes, and pay the original listed price to get a portable playlist of their favorite tunes. Once purchased, getting the album home was another ordeal. Too bulky to carry in one’s pockets or bag, the record would have to be carried in both hands to a playing device either the size of a microwave or a small refrigerator before it could be enjoyed. If it were scratched, broken, or dirtied, the songs simply stopped playing.

The modern mind reels.

Forty two years later, I too purchased from my first big hit album. It was Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face,” which amassed an incredible ten million copies in less than one year, at least half of which were downloaded online. In the comfort of my pajamas, I logged into iTunes, dragged the digital track to my digital shopping cart, and headed to check out. There were no lines. No pushing or shoving at the counter. No risk of scratching or dirtying the cover. And within seconds the song was transferred literally into my pocket to be sung along with as I got ready for school. In less than two minutes I was able to own a song of relatively larger popularity for cheaper and enjoy it sooner than my father could have at the same age.

But perhaps “own” is the wrong word. John Lennon himself was quoted as saying: “Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it.” This is precisely the mindset of music consumers today. Songs are streamed, pirated, uploaded, downloaded, traded, created, enhanced, and produced on a far wider and faster scale than in any other time in history. There are literally thousands of opportunities to swindle, share, discover, change, and enjoy the complex international language of music, and all that is needed is a little monitor and an Internet connection.

From this viewpoint, with the tools of music globally accessible to the public at large, it is hard to make room for old technology like vinyls, eight tracks, tape players, and CDs. Just as typewriters and pen and ink made way for digital processing and newspapers are making way to Internet news feeds and blogs, music, as another form of language, is now taking its turn to digitalization. The art of creating a new song is as simple as entering a few notes into a software program, synchronizing them together with digital beats and instrumentation, and printing off the finished product. This is how it’s done for hundreds of commercial jingles, vlog channels, video games, and even concert music for band students.

All of these advancements beg the question: does anyone make real music anymore? Is the future of music cutting and copying pre-made beats and spending more time with keyboard and mouse then piano keys, instruments, creativity, and pen and paper? Will inspiration dwindle and be replaced by online commercial supply and demand?

I know at least five people who refuse to let that become the future. They are individuals who still find inspiration in themselves, their friends, the world around them, and even in God. They are the few who for their own personal reasons and in their own way bring music to life and compose their message into new songs with depth and ingenuity. They are the few who dare to create.

Ian Troester-Solbrig is a student at ISU in Pocatello and one of the lead songwriters for a band he formed called “Walther’s Wallpaper,” specializing in ska and alternative music. He records and distributes much of his music on the Internet, and his band has its own page on Facebook with videos of their latest performances for fans to view. While this seems a complete embrace of the technological age of efficiency, consider this: when Ian composes a song, he treats it like an investigative journalist treats a breaking story. In lieu of a laptop or blackberry, he uses a notebook and a recorder to capture his ideas. He tape records musical phrases, chords, and bits of tunes that he is working on and then listens to them over again with paper and pencil in hand. In this way he is able to write and rewrite lyrics that fit the emotions he is trying to convey, and more often than not the initial rough copy of a song is a jumble of words and chords on paper. Only after this process has been tempered with to satisfaction is it put into a computer music program and saved for printing.

“There is no right or wrong in music composition,” Ian explains, “you’ve got to experiment beyond the confines of what you’ve already heard. I like to think that my songs reflect who I am and provide an artistic framework for me to explore my emotions, my philosophies, and my possible reactions to alternate realities.” In other words, Ian doesn’t have to cater to online popularity or use the techniques that are the most efficient to make music. He uses his own timetable and his own resources to create songs that are personal, interesting, and inspired.

Anna Chapman and Ricardo Osuna share similar views. Both music composition majors at College of Idaho, the two compose through their emotions to produce music developed for their own ideas and inspiration rather than to any specific audience. “When I start out writing a song or a piece I’m never sure if it’ll work out,” Ricardo admits, “I always start with a feeling or emotion in mind, then try to write a melody that I feel captures that feeling or emotion.” For Ricardo this means a lot of starting new projects before finishing original ones; constantly shifting directions until the music finally fits into place. The hardest part about this kind of composing is that there is no employer or online review to provide instant feedback on the songs, so Ricardo must become his own critic, and this often makes it harder to find confidence in personal music style.

But this doesn’t stop him from continuing to grow and develop as a composer, and as he does so he turns to the computer more and more often. That isn’t to say that he lets the program do the work for him. On the contrary, it takes a great deal of knowledge in improvisation and music theory to be able to layer the parts of a song and make it professional and complex. The process of making a jingle or a simple tune takes only the knowledge of clicking certain buttons in a certain order. But the results have no depth to them, and cannot convey the kind of emotions and inspiration that composers like Ricardo strive for. For educated musicians a composing program acts as an organizer and simpler means of saving projects in a more logical way then paper, so each time Ricardo needs to go back to a past idea and make major changes to it, he can.

Anna also struggles with “composer’s block” and leaving pieces unfinished, but unlike commercial musicians who labor to make their pieces more complex and interesting to listeners, Anna fights to make her pieces less complicated so that her audience can still hear the message underneath. She relies on a composing program called Finale 2009 for most of her music writing, which is considered the standard program for music writing and allows the musician to plug in an electronic keyboard to the computer and play the notes directly into the software. Like Ricardo and Ian, she begins her pieces on paper and then saves them to the software using what she has learned in music theory and research to connect it all together. Because she isn’t writing for a specific agenda or product, she has more creative freedom with her pieces and actually has to put in the effort to harness that creativity.

Think about it. If commercialized song-writers had complete creative liberty there would be no limits to length, content, complexity, instrumentation, or tone. A thirty second jingle for a toilet bowl cleaner might grow into a thirty minute symphony. Radio stations would lose their advertisement investments as the airtime for music grew from a few minutes between commercials to a few hours. There’s a reason that these songs have restrictions. Attention spans are short, particularly on the Internet. So what gives composers like Anna and Ricardo and Ian the advantage over those who write for companies?

The audience difference is obviously a big part of it, but music theory is also one thing that divides those who compose for efficiency from those who compose for themselves. Anna explains it this way: “I’ve heard [music theory] termed ‘informed intuition.,’ and it’s entirely true. A composer knows the theory in the notes and harmonies and is ‘informed,’ yet they must also allow the ear and creativity to guide the composition, which is the ‘intuition.’” Digital technology cannot invent intuition or creativity, nor can it teach the user the music theory skills needed to really operate it.

Anthony Parry is another C of I composition major who combines “informed intuition” and the digitalization of music together without losing the elements of either. “I compose for myself. When I sit down and compose, I get lost for hours. Time doesn’t exist to me anymore, and I completely envelop myself into whatever I’m writing. Music is an escape for me.” Based on this statement, Anthony’s passion for the language of music is clear, and so I was surprised to hear that his hopes for publishing were centered widely on the Internet. There are public domain access programs which allow companies to sample bits of music for use in commercials and production, and Anthony plans to be a part of this media sharing and begin publishing his work for others.

“My love of contemporary popular music has led me to believe that three minute songs will make people happy,” he remarked, and it is this compression and limitation of inspiration in the corporate world that has caused creative minds like Anthony and Rob Walker, a musical instructor at College of Idaho, to seek out employment in the entertainment and advertising agencies. Initially I was dismayed to hear a college student already limiting himself to employment in the mainstream, but listening to the rest of Anthony’s beliefs about composing and the things that inspire him I realized that there was a difference between blindly accepting the shift in what is marketable and remaining true to oneself.

Because Anthony spends time in music classes that help him grow creatively and allows his own talent to be tested with improvisation, and because he continues to write songs so that his own message can be heard, he is already different from the composers who pander only to the consumers. He knows that what sold in the music industry twenty years ago is different from what sells now. Getting hired here and there for advertisement is not only smart financially, it will also get him recognized by other groups who might be willing to publish his longer, inspired compositions for film soundtracks, concerts, and even internationally sold as sheet music for other orchestras and bands to perform world wide. And really, that is what music is for. Sharing the message of one creative mind to hundreds of others.

Rob Walker is no stranger to the corporate world. He has a large number of television and film credits to his name, including High School Musical III, College Road Trip, Fired Up, Friday Night Lights, The O.C., Ugly Betty, and Animal Planet; and he also recorded the music for NBC’s Triple Crown Coverage for horse derbies. Rob saw the trends in the composition business and followed them, and was more than accomplished enough as a musician to be given a deadline and an idea for a song and to write something with quality for publication in a short amount of time. But Rob still remains true to himself and his passion for music. As a jazz instructor at the college and an active musician in the community, he often improvises and composes in whatever genre inspires him most simply for the pleasure of bringing new music to life.

When asked what the hardest part of composing music was he replied: “Narrowing down the possibilities. I always use the analogy of asking an artist to create a picture. Go! An artist must make decisions such as watercolor or charcoal, canvas or paper, colorful or dark…once these parameters are set, creating the work is easy.” So although Rob has a hand in fast-paced production of media music, he also takes the time for his own music projects that use different materials and a fresh canvas for his ideas. This past spring he held his own compositional concert at the school to showcase songs he composed for choir, orchestra, band, and jazz alike, most notably of all a tribute to President Lincoln which took weeks of research and piecing together of old 19th century tunes together to create.

As Rob explained, “composers should learn all of the rules and then forget them or attempt to break them.” By selling songs for television and soundtracks, Rob follows a few guidelines and preferences for others, but on the side, he is still feeding his ingenuity with music that defies the standard, stretches limitations, and even makes parodies of media tunes and their simplistic nature.

All five of these individuals have dared to be different, and have worked hard to make their own musical vision continue to develop beyond the restrictions of downloads, deadlines, and distribution. For Ian, music is a love affair that began in his attempts to be the next Jimi Hendrix. For Ricardo, his passion is in the drive to create something that is his own and express himself. To Anna music is more than a part of her, it is a calling and a way to share her feelings for her friends and the world around her. Anthony explained composing as “opening up so many boxes to create feeling and emotion without words,” and finds inspiration in love, in life, and in nature. Rob uses music as an outlet for his ideas, whether professionally or for fun, and constantly keeps a new mental canvas ready for the next project.

While their inspirations and motives differ from one another, each of them agree on one thing: when asked what the most rewarding part of composing music was, each and every one of them replied “hearing it.” Hearing their vision come together and become real, whether in front of an audience of two or two hundred, is what composition is all about.



Sources:
1. "Beatle's Srgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club History". CD Universe. 20 May, 2010 .

2. Chapman, Anna. Interview by e-mail. 27 April, 2010.

3. "Finale".Wikipedia. 20 May, 2010 .

4. Freedman, Samuel G. Letters to a Young Journalist. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books, 2006.

5. "John Lennon Quotes". Great-Quotes-Powerful-Minds.com. 20 May, 2010 .

6. Osuna, Ricardo. Interview by e-mail. 27 April, 2010.

7. Parry, Anthony. Interview by e-mail. 27 April, 2010.

8. "The Fame". Wikipedia. 20 May, 2010 .

9. Troester-Solbrig, Ian. Interview by e-mail. 19 April, 2010.

10. Walker, Rob. Interview by e-mail. 16 April, 2010.

Minestrone Soup-As It Was Published

Minestrone Soup

By: Robyn Argyle

Maturity has a selective memory. Age six: the unique perspective of the waist-high. Flat marble counter tops reach high above my head, making it hard to reach the elusive Oreos. My feet remember cold linoleum floor and stiff carpets in ugly colors; dark brown, deep orange, and jungle green. Hands recall scraped palms from falling down, then the soothing wool of the cream blankets in the guest room, where my sister and I have a sleepover. Magic exists. There is glitter on the ceiling embedded in the stucco that looks like stars; a whole secret galaxy for us to name and own. Brightly colored tinker toys wait patiently in the closet for us to free, building cars and cities and make believe heroes from painted sticks and plastic wheels. My brother smashes my skyscraper, and I cry.

Smells. Bacon and butter frying in the morning. Old lady perfume. Outside in the garden, the smell of tomatoes, cucumbers, dirt, grass, and sky. The euphoria of squishing snails and worms on the sidewalk after rainfall. The sound of the rusting swing set creaking back and forth, back and forth. Aunt Ruth’s perfect hair. The way she never seems to stop smiling. Having two Uncles in one house. One has big glasses and laughs a lot. The other uses a walker and stutters when he talks. Sometimes we watch Little House on the Prairie together. Sometimes we just sit and I read the funny papers. Dinner is a big deal. We always have to eat the weird soup. It has beans and little noodles and green things floating in it. Unnatural things. Things that don’t belong in soup. I always eat a lot of rolls so I don’t have room for the soup. Although I always have room for ice cream.

Age eight: I’m not so certain about magic anymore, but death is real. One of my Uncles, the one with the big laugh, is lying motionless in a casket. He was the husband of my Aunt Ruth,

and he is gone. He could do a perfect Daffy Duck impression, and suddenly I realize that is all I really remember about him. I cry big, round tears for the man I barely knew.

The house seems emptier after that. Aunt Ruth looks the same. She is a rock. She is strong and always smiles, at least when people are watching. And her hair is still perfect. But she is frustrated. Everyone forces her to sit down. They take the dishes away from her and chop vegetables for the soup that I won’t eat. They hold her hand, and whisper memories and sympathies that will never bring my Uncle back. For the first time I see something else in my Aunt. I see exhaustion. I wish there was a way for me to protect her from the pestering relatives. I wonder if she wants to go to the garden. It always helps me, with its promises of growing and scurrying things.

Not today, she says. She smiles, but it’s an empty smile. Not today.

Age ten: my other Uncle is Aunt Ruth’s twin, Reed. He was born with “complications.” He has trouble speaking, and hearing, and seeing, and walking. When I say hello to him, I hold his hand and speak loudly and clearly. I listen hard to understand what he says back. I can reach the oreos myself now, and frequently do. My sister and I are grown up now so I have a guest room to myself. It is almost entirely green, like the garden. There is a painting over the bed of a little girl with a black eye and a crooked smile, sitting outside the principle’s office. Her painted parents have furrowed brows, but she looks so proud of herself it’s hard to be on their side. The caption says Tomboy. At night the window is always open and I hear trains go by till dawn. They make a sad, crying sound.

In the morning I go out and pick the biggest tomatoes I can find. I help my Aunt to wash them and cut them up for the soup, which I am now too polite to refuse to try. She looks tired

again, and she smiles a little less often. My parents wash the dishes for her and in return she presses them to accept the leftovers from dinner. There is a chalkboard hanging by the door, and as we leave I write “we love you” in big letters with yellow chalk.

Age thirteen: in the garden room again. As I slip into my pajamas I pause to examine something familiar and gray on the dresser. Aunt Ruth’s perfect hair. It’s a wig! Something clicks into place, and I open one of the dresser drawers and see some of Aunt Ruth’s folded laundry. This is her room. I am sleeping on her bed. Where is she sleeping tonight? Does she sleep at all?

I see my Aunt with new eyes. I ask her about the painting in her room, and for the first time in many hours she smiles. It’s a Norman Rockwell, she explains, and the tomboy in the picture is the spitting image of herself in grade school. Aunt Ruth, getting in fights with boys? Coming home in mud and tatters? I can’t imagine. I help her cook the bacon for breakfast. Real bacon, I realize. That’s expensive. I go to the fridge and see it crammed full of fresh food from the garden and more expensive food that looks brand new. Whole milk and olives and salad dressing. I wonder how much money she spends to feed us when we’re here. I wonder, when we aren’t visiting, how empty the fridge gets.

Uncle Reed shuffles up the stairs and takes his seat at the head of the table next to Ruth. She fits a bib on him and loads his plate with hot eggs and French toast. Sometimes he misses his mouth and food rolls onto the floor. Aunt Ruth picks it up, scolds her brother, and continues on in conversation with my parents. She waits until all of Uncle Reed’s food has disappeared before she touches her own, and I wonder if it has gone cold. I watch her through the meal and notice that she eats half as much as the rest of us before she is up again, collecting dishes, clearing the

table, ignoring our protests. She reminds me of the rabbit in those commercials, the one that never stops working and banging his drum. I wonder how and if she ever recharges.

I play with the neighbor’s dog until the neighbor chases me away and the sun chases the light from the sky. The garden room has changed in the hour or two since I’ve been outside. My clothes are in a neat pile in the corner instead of strewn around the room. The bed is made. When did she have the time to do this? I could have sworn that my Aunt never left the living room. I feel like crying.

That night when it is time for soup, I don’t complain about the green things. I even ask for seconds.

Age fifteen: Emergency Trip. We announce our arrival at the house with as much warning as a firing squad, and making about as much noise. Aunt Ruth has had maybe an hour’s notice before we show up at her door, and yet there is the steam of soup cooking on the stove, the smell of laundry detergent in the air. Aunt Ruth fills up bowls of dinner for us, empties out the bathroom so we can take turns showering, and somehow still finds the time to ask us about our lives. She remains calm, talks cheerfully through the night, and keeps us all from falling apart. I remember getting impatient for my turn in the bathroom. I remember being too upset to eat much of the soup she had prepared. I don’t remember ever saying thank you.

There are more of us than there are beds tonight, and as I stretch out on the couch, warm, fed, and safe, I catch a glimpse of my Aunt’s insomnia work ethic. I hear her in the kitchen washing dishes, and as I listen she begins to sing; a sweet, low tenor that I have never heard before. I didn’t know what song she sang, but I recognized the emotion. It was the train whistle out my window.

I fall asleep to her humming as she dries the dishes and wake up to her cracking eggs and stirring juice. Same place in front of the sink. Same clothes. Same expression. That morning everyone is in better spirits, healed by the good care we’ve been given. My parents offer to pay for groceries which Aunt Ruth refuses with her usual shake of the head. We give her hugs and promise not to drop in on her without warning again. And we don’t, not for a long time.

Age sixteen: another funeral service. This one is for Uncle Reed. Aunt Ruth ages before our eyes. Her hair is lopsided, her mouth set in a stern line. She doesn’t smile once. She forgets what she is saying as she’s saying it. She drops things. Strangest of all, she lets people help her and doesn’t argue. We have the soup as usual, but this time I imagine it tastes bitter and salty. Like tears.

Age seventeen: our last visit. The house feels empty and cold. The garden outside is overrun with weeds. My parents sit with Aunt Ruth for hours and hold her hand, the way we did with her brother. I walk through the room with the star-studded ceiling and to the closet. It’s still full of tinker toys and pictures of grandchildren smiling, as if nothing has changed. But it has. I can feel it. I go to the green room and look at the Tomboy picture, and wonder what my Aunt was like when she was my age. I realize that for all these years of visits, I’ve never seen her weak. I’ve never seen her spirit break down. Until now.

We clean up before we leave. We wash all the dishes and make our own beds. We are no longer the ungrateful guests; we are the caretakers. It is our turn to keep her from falling apart. I write “we love you” on the chalkboard as usual before we slide out the driveway, taking one last look back to the kitchen door. I can still feel the yellow dust on my hands hours later, as the freeway takes us home.

A few weeks after that, we receive the phone call we have been dreading. Aunt Ruth is with her husband making Daffy Duck impressions. She’s with her brother helping him finish his dinner. Her funeral is enormous, full of friends and neighbors and family and acquaintances, who remember her kindness, her strength, and especially, her cooking.

Age twenty: independent living. College is a test of perseverance and discovery that I am eager to pass. But sometimes, I feel swallowed up and small on campus. Sometimes I still feel like I’m standing on my toes in my Aunt’s kitchen, stretching high above my head for the elusive, just out of sight. I lay awake at night and hear the Caldwell station trains make their sad, crying chords; and for the first time I think I can put a name to that feeling: longing. On nights like this I find comfort in a cup of minestrone soup. There are still the green things, and the unnatural things, and it tastes like the can instead of her garden, but I think of the girl with the black eye and the crooked smile, and savor every drop.

*Picture by Chelsea Larson*

Rewriting Myself

"Robyn you baffle me"

Somehow I was not surprised. I'd gone into this "session" with the full intent of crossing my arms protectively around my heart and letting the man across from me ask the questions while I gave short answers which revealed nothing. I would be stone.

So much for that plan.

"Most people come into this place because someone else makes them. Most people don't want to see their problems and try to solve them. Most people, in fact, resent the very idea of counseling."

I flinched at the word. I couldn't help it. Counseling implies broken. Counseling implies troubled. I was neither. Or maybe I was both. I preferred the word survivor. I was still here, wasn't I? I hadn't taken the pain killers. I hadn't given up. Not yet anyway.

"You are not most people."

That got my attention. Wasn't I? I was just as hesitant about "getting help" as anyone else would be. I hadn't expected that I'd be sitting here facing this same man for over an hour and a half, words tumbling fast and measured and sometimes torn from me by sobs I could not control. He had handed me a tissue box with gentle concern and gone back to his seat opposite me, contemplating me like a bird contemplates something strange in the grass. Head cocked to the side, he listened and wrote and listened some more, sometimes interjecting with a question but never interrupting the flow of my story. I was surprised that so much time had passed and I still had more to say. I guess I had never told anyone the full details cover to cover before. It was my story. It was our story. And it was painful.

"Robyn, I want to help you." Sure you'll help me. I pictured prescriptions for strange pills. Referrals to psychiatrists in long coats who stood around and shook their heads at me, declaring me "incurable." Or even a round of flashcards where the "patient" stares at ink blobs for an hour wondering if this is all their life is worth. A bunch of half-formed splats on a note card. A series of accidents. Nonsense. It was all nonsense. Making something of nothing.

"You are obviously a writer. A story teller. Well, we are going to rewrite your story."

I thought about this. What did that mean? Here I had spilled my mistakes into his hands, laid out every doubt and fear and painful moment in a row like children lay out rails for a toy train to chug around. The perfect set-up for a train wreck. Only the wreck had already happened, and I was here to try to put it back on the rails.

I have written this particular story a thousand times in my head since last June, when it all started. Sometimes it was a drama, a soap opera where each of the actors cried a lot and seemed to take several episodes to get anywhere. Sometimes it was an action piece, or a love story, or a comedy. Sometimes it was even a fairy tale, complete with the words "happily ever after" inscribed in gold on the back cover. But most often, it was simply a tragedy. And that's where it stopped. That's why I was here. No matter how I looked at it, the past year of my life had been one big loss. Loss of family, loss of control, loss of self. And now loss of the only person who had come to know me better than I knew myself. The only person to say she truly hated me.

But to rewrite my story. This was something else again. How does one begin to rewrite themselves? Is that even possible? Was that saying I would ignore what I did? Forget my guilt and cast myself as a hero? Impossible. I couldn't do that. In at least one way, I was the villain in my own play, in turns ruining and trying to UN-ruin the lives of those around me. I couldn't change that. I couldn't re-script it. It had already happened.

But maybe my counselor meant something else. Maybe he was referring to the future. Could I change the future? Hadn't that been my goal for the last four months? Or was I still stuck in the past, just like all of us? Was I only fooling myself when I said that I had gotten better, had stopped my old habits? Suddenly I wasn't sure.

I hope to God that you never know what it feels like to want to die. To know that your actions may have helped cause someone else to want to die. I had contemplated suicide, helped cause someone else to contemplate it, and talked another person out of it; all in a matter of weeks. I told them that life was worth living, even though I wasn't so sure myself. I was driven to undo the damage I had helped to inflict, and in the process I forged a deep connection with a woman that until January, I hardly knew.

This young woman and I had a strange understanding. Over weeks of e-mails, messages, and visits, we got to know each other. I realized the extent of my influence on her life and tried to reverse it, to smooth out the bumps and return her to the simple road she once traveled down. Only it wasn't so simple to begin with, and the scars of past misunderstandings cast a shadow over everything. Depression was common. Mood swings were common. One week she was as serene as a lake; still as glass. She told me she loved me as a sister, and she forgave me, and that things were getting better. The next week she was a raging swollen tide, shattering in on itself and reminding me of my part in her pain. She shouted her rage, her hatred for me, and the hopelessness of her life.

I could only tread water in this host of intense emotions, neither drowning nor making any progress to land and to normalcy. But what was normalcy anymore? Did it even exist? I didn't realize that I was so invested, so convinced that if I wasn't able to help her than I was a failure. In the end she shut me out entirely, choosing to keep the hate and discard the friendship.

Can this be rewritten? I don't think so. I am not the author of her life, and as much as I would like to say that I never did anything wrong in trying to help her, I know that is a lie. I know sometimes I made it worse. And maybe it wasn't intentional, but in this life, that hardly matters.

So what CAN be rewritten? Not the past, because it is already done. And not the future, because it is full of uncertainty and pain. But maybe the present. Maybe I can dedicate myself to this moment, and this day, to not hurting anyone anymore.

I'm sorry for the changes I made, and the person I became in the process. I'm auditioning for a new part now, and I hope it makes a difference.

Sistine Casserole

Here is the revised draft of another workshop writing piece. Our keyword was "disgust," and of course my subconscious picks Rome, city of my dreams, as the topic. I have an odd imagination.

Most people, I would imagine, return from a trip to Rome full of stories of inspirational pilgrimage, cheeses and wines, or swapping tales of how they spotted the Pope’s bald head and it changed their lives forever. For me, the thing I remember most about being inside the Vatican is indigestion. It was only months later, when looking back through photographs and videos on my digital camera, that I could recall anything else.

I didn’t go to Rome to find God, I had already found Him. I didn’t go for the food (although that was certainly a plus) or for the fashion or the shopping. As a student my passions were less glitter and more grit. I was in love with the heart of Italy. The people, the history, the art and the works of civilizations past that lived and bled and died there. It was a school trip that I had helped plan together with two of my friends and our history teacher my Junior year of high school, and it was something I had sweated a year and half at a small Italian restaurant for. Working regular twelve hour shifts crammed with noodles and screaming children and spills, I was no stranger to discomfort. But perhaps I had hoped that I could avoid it in any measure while in Europe. I should have known better.

Pictures remind me it was a sweltering June day, and as I sat in the shade of the massive semicircular colonnade I wished I had thought to pack lighter clothes. I remember pigeons flapping above my tour group’s heads, their wings throwing feathery shadows across the cobblestones and startling tourists into craning their heads up towards the blue heavens, searching for angels. I remember the obelisk towering in the heart of St. Peter’s square, and having just read Dan Brown’s latest novel, wondering if a cardinal really was murdered there. I imagined hallelujah choruses breaking out and a lion cub being held high on Pride Rock every time a cloud shifted and a shaft of sunlight poured forth onto the granite floor. I remember wondering whether it was sacrilegious to compare the voice of James Earl Jones to God, especially since the role of Darth Vader seemed paramount to evil, and surely God was not inclined to Death Stars and light-sabers.

Our guide interrupted these thoughts with his late arrival, and while apologizing in both Italian and English he passed out our “whispers;” little walkie-talkies through which he could speak to us quietly without disrupting the serene atmosphere of the Holy See. For some reason I had hoped that we might march straight up the white marble steps, past the Swiss guards in their silly striped pantaloons, and enter the front doors of the Vatican under the carved images of the angels handing St. Peter the keys to paradise.

Instead we were led into a yawning cave-like opening in the shadows topped with the image of the Pope’s seal, as though each entrance into the museum was granted individual permission by the Pope himself. This was probably meant to make us feel a little more human, a little more special upon our arrival to one of the most sacred church headquarters in the world. It was a nice thought, but as with any tourist enterprise, we would ultimately be nothing more than numbers to Vatican City. There was a blur of bag checking, ticket purchasing, and photo snapping around a replication of the famous Laocoon statue, immediately recognizable because of the leaves glued over the private parts of Laocoon and his two sons. The real statue, uncensored and baring all in cold marble, resided within Vatican City’s vast network of gardens and artifacts, far out of sight of the disapproving public eye.

The excitement crackling in the air began to rapidly fizzle out as we approached our first destination: the cafeteria. I had become spoiled by what I’d seen of Italy so far, and half expected a grand piazza framed with marble cherubs, frescoes, and priceless artwork. In actuality the cafeteria was disappointingly average. Whitewashed walls, tile floor, rows upon rows of fold-out tables crammed ceiling high with what appeared to be mostly Americans, judging by the khaki and bucket hats. We shoved our way like bellowing livestock to the trough, in a line that seemed thousands long. Each person was granted only a minute to choose a tray and its contents before being spewed back into the general cog-work of noisy tourists.

From afar I scanned the food and selected with my eyes a golden crusted substance that looked like chicken pot pie, a can of peach soda and a chocolate dessert, the name of which didn’t matter as long as it included chocolate. When my turn came I was secure in my choices, but almost immediately things took a turn for the worst. The cafeteria woman before me was a mammoth, unmovable mountain of hairnet and attitude, and I could have sworn I saw her smile as she transferred a huge quivering mass of orange mess to my plate, neither chicken nor jello but somewhere suspiciously in between. This was not the golden crusted bliss I had seen twenty yards back, and I opened my mouth to protest. Her eyes dared me to utter a word, but with the weight of a hundred starving people behind me I knew it was worthless to try. I swallowed hard and moved forward to the desserts, where all things chocolate had been stripped from the shelves already. I had approximately half a second to grab something at random before being elbowed out of the line, and I settled into one of the only open seats left, aware of the many pairs of jealous eyes behind me who wouldn’t have a place to sit.

The mystery gelatinous casserole turned out to be made mainly of noodles, cheese, and grease. I looked around me to see if anyone else was losing their appetite, but my ravenous table-mates were having no trouble in packing away whatever was on their plates. Closing my eyes, I choked it down and followed it with the soda that was ninety nine percent syrup and one percent peach, then said a prayer for my stomach as I eyed the dessert. But the powers above seemed to be preoccupied with the more prestigious parts of the Vatican, leaving the cafeteria dwellers to suffer alone. The dessert in question looked, smelled, and tasted exactly how I would imagine caramelized play-dough would, and having received no divine intervention to the contrary, I erroneously took that as a sign that it was edible.

The single photograph I have of our tour guide that day reminds me that the man was indeed an average Italian, and to all appearances at least human. But that’s not the way I remembered it that day. His dry, monotonous tone managed to put our entire group into extended comas, drool slipping out of the sides of our mouths as he explained in great detail 15th century tapestries that smelled of dust and mold. He also had the uncanny knack of finding the absolute hottest, most humid places to stop the group and point out this or that trivial detail for fifteen minutes at a time. We could actually FEEL our sweat evaporating into the air. Worse, he had stated firmly that he would be taking no questions until the end of the tour, and so while I could wave my arm in the air and telepathically demand of him where the bathroom was with all the urgency of a dying woman, he would only forge ahead with his mile-long monologue, his eyes carefully averted from mine.

The mystery casserole bumped into the play-dough and the two went at it while I clutched my stomach and silently begged for deliverance, glaring at the cloudless sky which refused to promise rain or an early Christmas snow. Finally, our guide led us into the shade of the sculpture galleries, traveling through centuries of past discoveries and talking right through centuries of future ones as well while other luckier tour groups scurried past us, shooting sympathetic glances in our direction. I watched them go and wished I could follow, hopefully to a world of pleasant cafeteria women and air conditioning and indoor plumbing.

And then came the staircases. Endless staircases winding higher and higher until I thought we would surely arrive at St. Peter’s gates prematurely. I had the feeling that we could collapse from heat stroke right there on the steps, and scores of tourists would walk over us, our guide still preaching to our deaf ears about the fascinating applications of lime and intonaco. My nausea increased the higher I climbed, and my head began to pound from the heat and buzz of the “whisper.” I cursed the casserole with a vengeance, apologizing to the man upstairs in the same breath. As we mounted yet another set of staircases I turned down the volume on my walkie-talkie until I could hear only the blood pounding in my ears. The peach soda had now joined the fray and the brawl inside me had escalated into all-out warfare. I couldn’t go on like this. I hoped that there were tums in paradise.

Cappella Sistina…mumble mumble…What was that? I turned up my “whisper” but heard only static. Someone tapped me on the shoulder and pointed above me to a “NO ELECTRONICS” sign. We were there. We had finally arrived at Michelangelo’s most famous stomping grounds. Two large Roman security guards on either side of the door watched as we turned off phones and cameras, repeating over and over the only two rules of the Sistine Chapel: “Silencio. No photos por favor. Silencio.” As we stepped into the dimly lit room my misery began to melt away. For forty minutes I simply stood and stared, my neck craning upwards to the world’s largest canvas, following every line and stroke and curve and feeling smaller by the minute. Drinking in the beauty of the artwork and the stories it told, I discovered my first slice of peace all day. The contents of my stomach began to settle down at last, and in a moment of sudden charity I forgave our guide for the purgatory he dragged us through, for without him we would never have glimpsed this heaven.

I suspected one or two of the individuals in that crowded room were praying, although I never turned my head to look. The silence was overwhelming. I wanted to stretch out on the ground and watch through the night, the way people lay in a grassy field to count the stars. I tried to picture the human hands that had mixed the rich colors, laid the wet plaster, and with infinite patience brought to life saints and teachers, angels and devils, children and cherubs and flowing robes in a dozen shades. I wondered how Michelangelo could possibly have resented this commission and not taken more pride in what he accomplished. Although his sections are considered the masterpiece—the ceiling and the far wall depicting the Last Judgment—the entire Chapel is covered wall to wall with other painter’s works; students and aspiring artists of the time. There was so much to take in it was impossible to focus my eyes on any one spot for too long. Later while sifting through photographs my parents would ask me what color the floor was. I still don’t know.

Too soon we were shooed down our last stairwell and back into reality. Dusk was fast approaching and the last tourists of the day trickling into the Square. I looked to the sky and was wondering how long it would take to paint a canvas of that size when one American dressed in her khaki best waved a few of us over. She looked hot and uncomfortable in her heavy clothes, but her excitement was undeniable. “Tell me, what was it like inside? Is it beautiful?” We all nodded, searching for the words to express what we felt inside.

“It’s perfect,” was all our group could manage. As we boarded the bus back to our hotel it struck me that I probably should have warned her about the pasta. Ah well, she would learn.

Nuclear Googling- Those Silly Interwebs

So sometimes I am pretty sure that I am not paying to go to school here to have teachers tell me something about life and making a place in society...sometimes I'm pretty sure their goal is just to scare the hell out of all of us. This week I learned two very scary facts:

Numero Uno-the Cuban Missile Crisis, believed to be the climax of the culmination of the Cold War, came thiiiiiiis close to destroying everything on the planet. In fact, (and our professor says this with a chuckle) a single Trident Submarine carries weapons with 24 megatons of firepower, enough to destroy every major city in the northern hemisphere, and there are eighteen of these owned by the US floating around somewhere. Our professor then whipped out a paper covered with little dots. A single dot, he told us nonchalantly, was the equivalent of all of the explosive power detonated during WW II combined. The paper represents how much nuclear power is estimated to exist twenty years ago, and there are 6,000 dots on it. SIX THOUSAND. And that was in the eighties! There are probably more now.

Numero Dos-in our Journalism class Professor Minskoff's favorite new catch phrase is "In today's society, we don't find the news, the news FINDS US." We watched a short documentary which pointed out that if Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth largest, get this, in the ENTIRE WORLD. There were millions of facts I'd rather not scare you with, but suffice it to say that the internet is way more enormous than any of us realize.

I can't say much about the first discovery except that I hope to God Dr. Strangelove is going to stay OUT of my dreams tonight with talk of mine shafts and "breeding methods" and world destruction. But the second one concerns me just as equally. My teacher made it sound like conspirators around the world were wringing their hands and plotting the demise of everyone on the internet, and stressed the importance of security measures on our personal usage of the web. (But really, after discovering that one person with a few loose marbles and nothing to lose could blow us all to pieces, do I really care what people are saying about me in Guam?)

I was curious. So I Googled myself. (NO, that is NOT what she said). I found that a complete stranger could type my name into an internet search engine and find these (shocking!) things about me:

-They could see a letter to the editor I wrote in eleventh grade to my high school newspaper in the school online archive. (It is not that impressive. Don't go and find it.) From this they could deduce that I was once in a high school that had a newspaper, and I can quote some dude named Finley Peter Dunne.

-They can see a few postings I made on friend's videos or blogs earlier in the year, and from this deduce that I do in fact have friends. Or at least I do on the internet.

-They could see a message of gratitude I wrote to the Southern Cross organization after my family took a humanitarian trip to Peru in 2007, and learn that I have at least one brother, a love for Peru and its people particularly the orphanage called El Girasol (The Sunflower), and read about an experience deeply personal to me which opened my eyes to third world conditions. Now they know both I am interested in international affairs and that I cry a lot.

-They could read excerpts from my sister-in-law's blog posts from two years ago and discover that I hiked Half Dome in Yosemite park with my father and my brother that summer. There are even pictures of us victoriously pumping our arms on the summit. So now they know I have the capability to walk and pump my arms in the air.

-They can see references and links to THIS blog, and read all of the information therein. This would let them know several important and potentially harmful facts, but chief among them are these:
I really do cry a LOT (what's with this girl?)
I like jazz music
I run into scary homeless men a lot
I write posts that are waaaaaaayyy too long (thus the title "rambling")
I like to use quotes and italics
The taco bell lady knows my order by heart

-They can find an online posting of the Dean's List at the College of Idaho and learn that my name is spelled with two "Y"s and not "I"s.

-Finally, they can see a single profile picture of me and a few categories I am a fan of on Facebook, which include:
"When I was your age, we had to blow on the video games to make them work."
"I redo high fives if they weren't good enough the first time"
"God"
"Wishing I could sometimes punch someone in the face with no consequences"
"College students need more naps than Pre-Schoolers"
"Mom mom mom mom mom mommy mom mom mommy WHAT? ...hi"

There you have it. Terrorists around the world now know that I, Robyn Argyle (spelled with Y's and not I's) am a student who cries, gets abused by the homeless, does in fact have the ability to read and write AND pump my arms in the air, went to a school with a newspaper, am seriously OLD (blowing on video games??? what is that??), am a perfectionist in the "high five" department, is a fan of God, has violent tendencies (punching people in the face with no consequences?? Think about this folks. You know you would like to too), likes Family Guy, and needs lots of naps.

With this information at their fingertips, what's stopping them from...adding me as a friend on facebook? Reading my blog? Pumping THEIR arms in the air? Watching Family Guy (new season on HULU people!!!!)? Abusing the homeless as revenge? (okay I jest on that) Perfecting their own high fives? PUSHING A BUTTON AND SENDING A NUCLEAR WARHEAD CAREENING TOWARDS CALDWELL???

Ah these silly interwebs. Personally I think people need to just calm down and enjoy the internet for its ability to meet new friends, learn new information, and keep up with the world in general. We could all be dead tomorrow anyway (enter Dr. Strangelove snickering in the background) so there is no need to waste what time we have left wondering what the Australians think of our Finley Peter Dunne quotes. (Who is that anyway?)

Rice Krispies

This is a portrait piece for my workshop writing class...we were asked to pick someone who has made an impact in our life and "flow write" on them for thirty minutes. It turned into a memoir/tribute/therapy session/something way more personal than I expected. Interesting how we discover who we are when we write about ourselves. *Names have been changed*

She poured out the puffed rice, each grain clinking against the sides of the glass measuring cup as it filled to overflowing, like rain on a tin roof. She leveled it off to a perfectly smooth top with one hand. Must be meticulous in the measurements; the OCD demanded aggravatingly precise standards. The extra rice, the loose drifters of the overflow, must be kept in a separate container entirely. Everything must be kept perfectly in its place. No matter how many extra dishes it created. She handed over the cups and the rest of the rice for me to finish. What was I doing? Melting the marshmallows. There were four different kinds: plain white, rainbow, chocolate, and jumbo. Which bag? Which one? Too many choices. Panic. Close eyes, pick one at random and empty the contents into the pot on the stove top. Ok. Breathe.

Funny how her face reflects peace, I thought, funny how the act of creating something new gives her light. Was she remembering Christmases past? A bigger kitchen maybe, elbow to elbow with her sisters and her mother, before the accident. Before the misunderstandings began. Always the endless misunderstandings. Was that an actual smile? I tried to think the last time I’d seen genuine interest and joy for anything in her expression. I was grasping at straws. No such moment existed in my memory.

What is she doing? She just dumped the extra rice back into the bag? And look at her scoop the rest of the cereal without measuring it first. I saw anxiety etched in her frown, but we both remained silent. Keep stirring. Keep measuring. A pool of pastel cream frothed inside the pot, like a multicolored ocean. I got out two potholders, one checkered sunset orange and the other cornflower blue, and took the handles of the pot. I poured the melted mess over the rice while she stirred, and both of us watched the dry cereal crackle with heat and form bigger and bigger clumps, the marshmallow goo sealing the gaps in between. Head bent over the bowl, she concentrated on the task at hand. Make it even, make it perfect. I took the dishes lying at random around the kitchen and bathed them in suds in the sink, washing quickly and quietly to prepare for the next batch of krispies.

A hard ceramic bowl suddenly slipped from my fingers to splash into the muddied dishwater below, making a loud “thud!” as it hit the bottom of the sink. Who’s there? Like a dreamer rudely awoken, Sheri’s eyes snapped to mine, all tranquility and peace scattering across the floor and fleeing through the open window. It was as if she had forgotten my presence in the room, or in her very life, and I had now very unconsciously reminded her of it. I felt every bit the trespasser. As if I had dropped the bowl on the floor and it had shattered instead. I wished I had. Ceramic could be swept up into neat piles and carried to the dustbin and forgotten. Hearts were different. I couldn’t begin to find her pieces, let alone organize them into little piles. And there wasn’t a dustbin big enough to fit them.

That night, I realize now, I didn’t really know Sheri. Had it really been a month ago that my cell phone had lit up with the words “she tried to hurt herself again. Glass everywhere. What do I do?” The frenzied phone calls, the panic that I was too late. The endless talking and praying for guidance (on my end). The silence (on hers). Question. Pause. Reply. Pause. It was not the first time it had happened, nor would it be the last. But I did not know that then.

When she was fourteen years old, tragedy struck Sheri’s family. The lives of her sister in law and two nephews vanished in a matter of seconds, smothered by the impact of cars grinding, metal twisting, and windows bursting on the highway. A funeral service was held, a period of mourning begun and ended some weeks later, and the family moved on. Racing, always racing. Work, school, appointments. Why didn’t they slow down? Life drove away from the accident like a hit-and-run, and Sheri was left standing on that highway road, waiting for closure. Representing the lost. For whatever reason, she was the most affected by what happened. But in a family of twelve it was difficult to be heard, difficult to demand recognition for her pain. So Sheri allowed herself to be swallowed up instead.

In a matter of a few months, she lost her only friend at school, a girl too startled by the changes she saw in Sheri and too frustrated with her inability to communicate that she too drove away. Another casualty of the drive-by friendship. To all outside appearance Sheri was a normal, if somewhat quiet and subdued, teenage student. But there was intense emotion bubbling under the calm surface. None of her teachers gave her comfort. No counselor offered an ear. And so she faded. She graduated Jr. High and then High School, got a part-time job, and devoted hours of her time to books and fantasy and online gaming. She created an imaginary world where she could stand out, and pretend to be something bigger than herself. Most notably, the world she belonged to substituted dragons and horses for automobiles. There are no highways in World of Warcraft. No crosses on the side of the road marking another life lost.

On her twenty-first birthday, someone coaxed Sheri away from the light of her computer monitor and into the black-lights of a local bar. Excitement. Panic. It was there she had her first kiss, and with courage she didn’t know she had (probably helped by the alcohol) she exchanged numbers with a young man she barely knew. Two years later, they got married. I didn’t go to the wedding (I had midterms) but I heard it was beautiful. The flowers were cornflower blue and sunset orange, and the fall day was warm and bright. “It was the sunniest day of my life,” she later told me. I believe her.

But within two months there was trouble. Sheri still rarely communicated, and eventually this drove a gap between herself and her husband. They spoke rarely, laughed even less, and clouds of doubt and divorce began to hover. No way out. There’s no way out. Too much silence. That was the first time she became self-destructive. Her husband painted frightening images of bottles strewn across the floor, Sheri in the bathroom throwing up beer and pain killers. That was also the first time those of us at work could tell how much sleep her husband got by counting the dark rings under his eyes. Two hours last night. Another bad one. I knew him first, and it wasn’t until halfway through the summer before I actually met and began to befriend Sheri, when they were still engaged.

I still don’t know why she chose me. Why I was able to succeed in getting her to open up where countless others failed is a mystery. But sooner than I could have believed possible I became her Dr. Phil, attempting to make sense of her failing marriage, her family’s apathy, past pain, and lack of confidence in herself and her worth. Perhaps it was because I represented stability—a fairly normal family life, faith in God, friends and relationships unfettered by silence. Not so stable now. Perhaps because I didn’t ask anything of her, but only listened. Perhaps it was just because I could make rice krispies. None of us anticipated the changes it would create.

Come Thanksgiving my prayers to God had not been heard. Sheri where are you? Where are you bleeding? Drink some more water. Breathe. She was not getting better. So many questions and images from that night, but chief among them are mirror shards littering the bathroom floor and bouncing light reflections on the walls. Panic. Not perfect. I have to sit down. So tired. I need more sleep. Breathe in. Glass on the floor. Glass is dangerous. Must pick up the pieces. Put them in their place. It struck me that Sheri had not been trying to break the mirror, she had been trying to break what she saw when she looked into it. And in a way, she succeeded.

I remember the moment it hit me, while reading Pat Barker’s WW I novel in my dorm room. I am Dr. Rivers. In the book, Rivers develops shell-shock and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the soldiers he treats, and although he never steps foot on the battlefield he begins to have nightmares just as acutely as any of the veterans. I was developing the very symptoms that I was trying to prevent in Sheri: insomnia, repressed emotion, panic attacks. It got to the point where I was no longer shocked to receive a call at one in the morning—and my trained response simply to grab my coat and keys and go. Her husband and family members were torn; grateful for a person that she could rely on, but worried about the changes they saw in me. Don’t worry. I’m okay. Just let me think. Just let me breathe. Yes I’m getting enough sleep, don’t worry about it.

There was a collective sigh of relief when I went to college, but the physical support I wasn’t able to provide any longer carried over into continuous e-mails back and forth. Sheri and I relied on each other. We were becoming each other. Here, take my hope. Here, take my fears. I didn’t sleep again last night. Me either. Does it ever get better? Gradually her writing grew more positive and rang with hope and promise. I looked in the mirror one day and decided I wasn’t sure who was looking back. I loaded up my textbooks and my new college friends and stepped on the gas, accelerating slowly away from Sheri, but gaining speed the more I was convinced that she was okay. I didn’t see it as a hit and run, but she did. One more person to enter her life too late and exit too soon.

After that night she was placed under a licensed counselor and given constant supervision by family and friends. She still has occasional moments of self-destruction, ripples in a tidal pool of otherwise emotionless living, but they have become fewer and farther in between. Little by little she is finding reasons to talk, reaching for a person that she remembers she was and wishes to be again. Little by little she finds more reasons to smile. For the first time in months, it looks like there might be peace again. The girl in the mirror is not so bad. Not so bad. I can see me again. But that week, peace was not a part of our vocabulary.

Crunch. Crunch. The frozen snow underfoot reminded me of broken glass as I walked to my car, carrying a few squares of rice krispies folded neatly in a paper towel. It’s not glass. It’s snow. Keep walking. It’s ok. Breathe. I shivered and cranked the heat up when the car rumbled to life, glancing back at the porch steps of Sheri’s apartment. The street light above flickered, electricity humming inside. Tires screeched somewhere. But inside, the apartment was silent. I was embarrassed for the tears that had found their way down my face when I hugged her good-bye, herself paralyzed by the sudden emotion and uncertain how to act. It will be okay. Don’t cry. She hugged me harder, and for a brief bizarre moment I recognized that it was her strength holding me up, and our roles reversed for an instant. Am I myself? Or am I you? Who am I?

And then the instant passed.

When Love Is a Battlefield

"To be in love is to see yourself as someone else sees you, it is to be in love with the falsified and exalted image of yourself. In love we are incapable of honour--the courageous act is no more than playing a part to an audience of two. Perhaps I was no longer in love but I remembered." --Graham Greene, the Quiet American

There is a pine tree next to the drive outside our brick house on Tiffany. Its branches dip down to create a little shelter on the inside, and there is a bough conveniently low enough and sturdy enough to support the weight of anyone who wishes to perch, dry and unseen from the world. In the days before the tree was trimmed of its shielding skirt there was a girl of nine or ten who took refuge on that bough, the cracked and peeling bark coming away underneath her sneakers like shingles on an aging rooftop, a book in her lap which would later have to be shaken free of dust and thin brown needles. Like the bird that shared her name, the girl found certain peace and solid strength in the tree, and if she closed her eyes long enough she could pretend she was in a forest somewhere far away and soon she would hear the urgent clattering of hooves as her prince arrived to carry her away from this fortress of solitude. But there was the buzz of lawn mowers and engines instead of horses. Shouts of neighborhood children and dogs barking woke her from her day dream and sliced its way back into reality, where there was still elementary school and homework and boys oozing cooties.

It was from this tree that I saw my first kiss take place, when my sister and her boyfriend parked their car directly below my perch unknowingly. I watched each of my siblings go through the stages of love and heartbreak, relationships and loss, and always wished I could know what they knew. What was this secret world that took them away from home so often, and took up so much room in their heads and so many tears from their eyes? I imagined that love must be a soft thing; like an embrace or snow falling gently. But it also had a cruel side. It caused tension and aching and sorrow, sometimes for weeks at a time, before another relationship started and the snow fell gently again.

I spent most of my high school life concentrating on another concept that escaped my understanding: my future. Judging from the title of my blog page, you can probably guess that this is still the case. But at least now I have the wisdom to know that this is how it should be. Our future is what we make it, every day, every hour, and if a time machine could be made I am of the opinion that it wouldn't be able to move a single millisecond forward, because that second is not yet created. During high school I focused on that second constantly, always pulling and stretching at that thin transparent space dividing me from my dreams, and wishing to rip it open and let the new, confident future me fall out, shake her wobbly legs, and walk. I wanted to grow up so fast. I wanted to take the world that I saw around me and shake it by the shirt collar, forcing it to see me and know that I existed.

But, like most young flames, when faced with separation from the things that gave me life and fed my resolve, I flickered and went out. College was a big smudged question mark the Riddler had smeared across the sky to taunt Batman with. It was the castle that you never actually knew whether it contained the Princess or not, but to hell with it you just wanted to procrastinate that Senior Thesis with more Mario time. I had been away from home before, but never for so long and never so little prepared.

On top of this, there was a sudden panic to remember all of the things I wished I had done before responsibility came to actually mean something more than the word that came right before "you're grounded." I mourned the time I would never get with friends, the effort I never put in to some of my classes, and the crazy stunts every high schooler has to have before they graduate. Where was my dyed hair? Where were my tattoos? Where were the pranks where we let loose a herd of cattle into the school or saran-wrapped the principle's car or something equally bizarre? Where was that first kiss and that dance were my date was actually more than just a good friend and saw me as more than just "one of the guys?"

The college girl cries out: "Where is your gratitude? Where are your plans for more time with people you love? What is your hurry? Slow down...slow down" But I didn't slow down. I ran faster, in the opposite direction.

Less than eight months later, I can tell you what a kiss feels like. I can tell you what it's like to go to a party where everyone around you is drunk or drinking but you. I can tell you the precise moment I lost my faith in God, and the precise moment I began to get it back. I can tell you what it's like to want to die. I can tell you how to play a two minute solo in jazz band, give an oral presentation in class without shaking, fall asleep crying, fall asleep laughing, make new friends, lose old ones, buy your own groceries for under twenty bucks, do five loads of laundry with one dryer sheet, scream at a rock concert, and which foods at the caf will make you sick for a week.

I can also tell you what it's like to be in love. It is not quite snow falling gently. It has consequences, and those consequences have the potential to take lives, to ruin marriages, and to cause pain. Mercifully, love has many faces, and the other kinds of love: friendship, empathy, and selflessness...these have the potential to save lives, fix marriages, and heal the deepest wounds.

Whoever said love is a battlefield (I think a cheesy seventies singer) meant every word. It has just taken experience for me to discover that I'm not Joan of Arc saving the troops. I'm not Tosh, Helen Z. Smith's bad-mouthed and fiercely lovable heroine of the ambulance drivers who died in a blaze of glory. I'm no Isi the Goose Girl and I'm certainly not Elizabeth I or Esther or Cosette. In Helen's world I'm most closely related to Smithy, the woman who survives war by refusing to fight it any longer. Or Helen of Howard's End, who only asked for peace. Or Margaret who gave up Peter for the sake of sanity. I'm Eponine, Sarah Lumb, and Jane.

The point I suppose, is that I'm still here.

Perhaps I'm not who you remember I was last year. Perhaps if you knew me and judged me you would not like me. But I still believe in a God who never meant life to be so hard that it could be impossible. I still find humor in the absurd. I still have a respect and love for the people who daily remind me that the next twenty four hours have meaning. And I still hope for the day when I can take my sword and shield and enter the battlefield again, a wiser woman than I ever hoped to be sitting in a tree dreaming of castles and knights.

But not yet. Not yet.