Leaving Behind

Leaving is a hard thing to do, sometimes. But its difficulty really depends on the person. Some people are always itching to get up out of their seats. Always looking for something new to try, looking for unusual sights and smells to keep them going, so they don't fizzle out.

But others like to anchor themselves, so that they are safe and secure. They like to immerse themselves in the buildings and daily happenings of their hometown, so that they are comfortably folded in its midst. Leaving then becomes a hard thing, like prying a caterpillar out of its cacoon, full of imperceptible alarm and frantic squirming.

For me, leaving is an experience which I have forgotten. I have done it before, but today it is fresh again, a surprise that I had been anticipating for many years. It creeps into my mind, like a bad thought you know you shouldn't be having. But its source is unknown to me. Leaving is the thing that stands behind you, holding tightly on to your shoulders and shuffling you forward, not waiting for your feet to obey. It is when you're standing in the library and someone kills the lights in the room behind you, so you swiftly step ahead, looking back a little disconcerted.

Leaving disrupts your coordination, and your balance. The things that were once solid are now convoluted and mercurial, and you can no longer trust your eyes and ears. You may stumble out of a labyrinth and realize that it was only a garden, and standing at the intersection, you may realize that every pathway is slanted and twisted, defying your understanding of physical space. 

Leaving is a place where you pause to rest a moment so that you have the chance to reflect clearly on what came before and what is coming soon. But if you stay too long, it may warp your sense of truth, so that you can no longer tell where things begin and where they end, so you can't see the point of anything. As long as you grasp that your perspective will never fully comprehend this time they call "leaving," you may one day have the courage to leave.

I'm Telling You, Don't Mess With This Woman

No really, don't try it.

I was first acquainted with Ms. Catherine Fisher many years ago, and I will forever recall our meeting with a wince and a shudder.

The time in which I got to know her was very brief and utterly horrifying. Someone, perhaps my mom, came home with an extremely tantalizing, thick, nasty-looking volume.

It was named The Sphere of Secrets.

I pried it open with sufficient excitement, thinking I had found a trove of treasure. It was, as you may conjecture, a trap.

Fisher proceeded to barrage me with a crooked tale of adventure, intrigue, and assassination. She forces the reader to shadow the parallel stories of several characters, each with their own hopes, dreams and motivations- but their ultimate goal in their world is survival.

She cleverly weaves a tale of mystery and fear with so many twists and cliff-hangers that one begins to think she actually enjoys leading her characters and readers astray to the brink of their deaths.

The book defeated me in a mere two days. I had to put it down, away, and out of my sight, not wanting to hear or feel the adrenaline and fright of the clamoring voices coming from the book, the suspense hissing in my head.

But recently I picked up another book of hers, Incarceron. In typical Fisher style, the book does not disappoint. It is fierce and daring, and she mercilessly rips the reader's heart out in the end.

Incarceron is a running mockery of humans and our construction of this thing we call "reality." Fisher likes to play mind games, and she always wins. Though perhaps not as often as Isobelle Carmody (oooooh, DISSSS. Yeah, Isobelle really takes the cake, but thats for later.)

If you are looking for a story to raise your blood pressure and kidnap your rationality, please consult my dear friend Catherine Fisher. She knows just the thing.

Ever Heard of A Student's Pet?

Almost everyone knows what a Teacher’s Pet is.

A Teacher’s Pet is a student who spends an exorbitant amount of energy and time trying to please- not impress- the teacher of their choosing.

Traditionally we think of the Teacher's Pet as the goofy kiss-up that goes out of their way to purchase their teacher gifts and do everything they say. But someone can still be a Teacher's Pet with less excessive and more realistic behavior. A Teacher's Pet, from my understanding, is someone who spends a great deal of time chatting up a teacher and getting deeply involved in the specific subjects of the teacher's interests- all for ill-motivated reasons. 

A Teacher’s Pet might hope to eventually achieve some sort of high ranking academic opportunity or improved grades from their teacher, but ultimately this rarely happens. In other words, they are selfish in their approach.

But I would like to suggest here that there is another side to this fake, shallow behavior in the teacher and student relationship.

Have you ever heard of a Student’s Pet?

A Student’s Pet is a teacher that displays the same behaviors as a Teacher’s Pet, but towards students.

This behavior, in my opinion, is exponentially more revolting considering it comes from a person of higher authority, and, presumably, wisdom.

A Student’s Pet will perhaps endear themselves to their students in their words and actions, acting dramatically sympathetic towards the class to the point where they become of little use as a role model. The teacher usually hopes to win the adoration and obedience of the students, because for most whippersnappers, obedience is the same as respect. Ultimately, such teacher/student relationships are based on little substance and involve the delusion of the students.

But both behaviors in severely diluted forms and displayed for the right reasons can be beneficial to everyone involved.

A student that takes a completely genuine interest in a teacher’s field of work and ends up helping them with their work is not “Teacher’s Pet” behavior. And teachers that take the time to get in touch with their students’ perspectives in order to be a better mentor is not “Student’s Pet” behavior- they are often better teachers than ones that choose to completely distance themselves from their students.

As long as the student and teacher relationship is informed by respect and and mutual goodwill, I believe the teacher/student relationship can be one of positive development. I am fortunate to have rarely encountered these behaviors in my academic experience. I just ask that we all keep our habits fairly distant from those of the four-legged variety.

Allow Me This Last Pang

If I had an inordinate amount of time and no realistic obligations, I know exactly what I would do.

I would purchase a great deal of book cases. They would be all shapes, sizes, and styles- mahogany and cedar, ones with curling cornices and lions’ feet, even the hidden drawer or two.

And then I would purchase a great deal of books to fill them with- including the ones people spend forever trying to throw away.

Last of all, I would purchase a hulking, high-backed Victorian armchair- bottle-green with gold tassels, to be exact.

Oh, but how could I forget! The next step would be to install floor to ceiling windows, with heavy drapes pinned to the sides with braided ropes.

And then I would settle into the armchair with a book- any book, anything that vaguely smells of stiffening wood, old glue, and the chemical smell of ink would be welcome.

I would never fall ill from craning my neck over the book or wrinkling my forehead from mental exertion, and I would never contract deep vein thrombosis from sitting for hours on end.

And of course, I would never interrupt my attempt at self-enrichment and escapism to procure something to eat or call up a friend. I would never get bored, I would never miss anything- it would be a perpetual daydream, and my enthusiasm would never dry up, and the books would never run out. It would be the infinitely more awe-inspiring version of Twilight, with more quality literature and less amateur writing.

Such thoughts are what they are- a simple comfort, a stanza of lies repeated, my silly answer to a tangible lack.

Becoming Human (Pt.1)

I started working in the Emergency Room about one and a half years ago.

When someone asks me why I chose the ER, I often answer that I love volunteering there, that the nurses and hospital personnel are close, like family.

But reader, you are wise: you know I am avoiding the question. I am not revealing my initial reasons for entering the ER, I am listing why it has been a rewarding experience.

A hospital volunteer has many responsibilities, many of them left unmentioned on orientation days. A volunteer primarily is assigned, and preforms, tasks that include folding, transportation, cleaning, attempting to provide a little relief to the nurses.

But the most important thing for a hospital volunteer to do is something that few will remind you of, or emphasize in your training. You must be human.

This is the hardest part. Counterintuitive, I know; we are all human, and yet few of us act that way.

So I made the effort to become human. Two years ago, when I was volunteering at the medical surgery ward, I was a novice, but I refused to let any weakness overcome me. When I observed a patient, staring at the wall, I used to wait outside their door. I breathed deeply, reminding myself that I was no intruder upon their privacy; I was a volunteer now.

When I enter the hospital, I cast off the cloaks of my different selves. I am not anyone's daughter, sister, student, friend, or athlete. The moment I walk into the building, I assume the responsibility of representing the hospital, their personnel, and the quality of their service. Putting on my shirt and ID card, I become just one thing; a hospital volunteer.

And then I would step into the patient's room and ask them if they need anything, if I can restock supplies. If they voice a concern, I become very attentive. Sometimes there is a lull in the activity and we start off a great conversation, and I sit awhile, listening to their life story. A patient played his guitar for me once. Anything to distract them from their situation, even if it is just for a moment.

The ER was a challenge to see if I could create the same connection with patients that would be zipping in and out in a very busy environment, with less time to develop a sense of familiarity. It would be different from the medical surgery ward, and I wanted to see how well I could adapt.

The change of pace was new, but I got used to it fast. Soon I was as comfortable there as I had been anywhere else in the hospital.

The Suicide Club

It deeply saddens me that I can not remember the last time I read a book.

So what have I been doing? Homework, spending many hours planning for our upcoming UFU event, basketball, college interviews and applications, chores, eating, sleeping (yes, sleeping)…

Since when did it become a lesser priority to nourish our intellect with something unique and powerful and transformative, a form of media that rips us out of our reality and neatly plops us in a world of our own creation – and the author’s? A form of telepathy, because the author is not there and yet we are reading their thoughts under their words, and sometimes, when they are a good author, it feels they are reading ours.

But, as you know, I am lying on one point of technicality- of course we all remember the last time we read a book, especially if you miss reading books whenever you wish, like I do.

I have never read a book when I wanted to. In fact, I always end up reading books when I explicitly do not want to, when I would really rather be doing something else. It always seems I find myself with a book over the summer, when there is barely any time to do anything. Last summer, my lab work and my trip to the delta not only considerably aged me in positive and negative ways, but also left me with half a week to myself in which a cherished relative chose to visit, and so my peace was happily ruined.

And over the summer I also happen to get cravings for books right when I am about to dive into the covers of my bed, especially because the suspense of post-apocalyptic books is often intensified in the delirium of the early hours of the morning. As are Harry Potter books, which all who bought each and every one at midnight probably understand.

And so the last time I caught myself sneaking a volume and a light into my world of adventure and extravagance, the volume’s title was The Suicide Club, written by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Far from entertaining any ludicrous ideas about my taste in literature, one should be curious as to what eccentric lengths I must have gone to obtain such an eccentric book.

Well I didn’t, I just checked it out at the library, but if I must say anything, then I will say it is a very unusual read that will probably change your entire mentality about the way typical, Western classics are written.

Disclosure

I have found that it is often much easier and safer to think about our convictions than speak them out loud. The moment you speak your thoughts, you risk delivering them with less eloquence than you would have hoped, or worse, in the wrong context. You allow them to float in the air, vulnerable to the deconstructing analysis of others. If your statement happens to be particularly profound or careful, suddenly it informs your receivers that you have devoted a great deal of time to undisturbed thought, and that knowledge is dangerous in its intimacy.

But sometimes, what we have to say is just too bleak for words. Very few people want to hear the honest truth from their acquaintances, regardless of context. The pause that follows such stark sentiments is not awkward, for a youth half way through a growth spurt may be described as awkward. The silence that fills the conversation is the subconscious agitation of withdrawn waves before a tsunami. The explicit accusations and disagreement stirred by this one observation are muted but continue to rage in the minds of the participants, though if you must, you may endeavor to see their contempt shining through their eyes.

The occasional detached observer is not so occasional. In fact, we are frequently detached from the group or category we make a show of being engaged in. To make your thoughts known from such a harsh, distant point of view is altogether disrespectful, whereas bleakness expressed in public is merely unrespectable, though I find both refreshingly distasteful. A mind that has grown distant from its circle of acquaintances is as dangerous as, like I said before, a mind made known to its acquaintances. One begins to see a loss of texture and shading in their surroundings, the apparent vapidity of their social investments growing into a thin, hard layer over their sight.

And then there are the instants of acute hilarity in which an observer must make the quick decision whether to save their dignity or exacerbate the spiraling course of shrieks (I dare not call that laughter.) And if you live life within the embrace of individuals who have a more fundamental understanding of you than you are comfortable admitting, the context is never wrong.