Last Saturday, a group of friends finished watching the extended edition of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In the aftermath, someone brought up journaling, and how they wanted to start, but didn't think they had anything good to say. I piped up with a cryptic 'pearls and seaweed, love.' (I didn't actually say love, but imagine Jack Sparrow saying that. I know, right?! So cool. So fitting.) I explained to her the concept, which was probably poorly worded, but I think she got the idea.
Tonight, a girl stopped by my room (Business as usual HIYOOOO!) asking if I'd done a reading yet in Peter Matthiessen's Snow Leopard. She complained that not much was happening, even though it was a journal (of his adventures in the Himalayas; I recommend it). That reminded me of my journals, which were boring but also brilliant sometimes! So I told her about it! And she was all, cool. And then she left a bit later.
The point of this all is that you should journal, because it is fun and fulfilling. Watch pearls emerge from seaweed, love.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Second Humble!
Hey all you beautiful people. It's been way too long since i've posted on the blog. Firstly, I must admit that, as usual, I miss you all dearly and love you.
Here's what will hopefully be the second humble of many more from all of us. For my poetry class, we have to write a weekly response to the poems we read and tell us why all of them, or one in particular, moved us. This week, we read Robert Frost. After I got over my initial I-love-Robert-Frost-so-much-he's-the-literary-soundtrack-to-TMS reaction (and subsequent teary memories rehash), I wrote this in response to "Birches." I wanted to share it with you. I hope you are all doing well in college and on gap year adventures, and I can't wait to hear all about them!!
Anyway, here's what I have to say. Love you all so much. As always, I can't wait to see each one of you whenever I get to.
Megan
The first time I read Robert Frost's "Birches," I was on a cold winter hike in the middle of a forest in the middle of Vermont. I'd been at the Mountain School (a semester boarding program that's part-farm, part-school) for about a week. My teacher stopped my group in the middle of a trail. "Read this," he told me, thrusting a laminated copy of "Birches" into my hand before leaping off the trail. As I read the poem aloud to my classmates, my teacher began to climb up the nearest birch tree, evidently to show us exactly how one could swing from a birch. Even though my teacher's demonstration didn't end well (the tree snapped in two when he was halfway up the trunk, causing him to plunge headfirst into the snow), his attempt marked a difference in my education. Indoor, textbook learning went on sabbatical that semester. Everything I learned at the Mountain School had some hands-on element, some kind of experiential quality, and this learning style defined my semester—and life—in Vermont.
Reading "Birches" again brought memories, although, for once, I did not just reminisce about making maple syrup or sledding down Garden Hill. I always saw myself in the poem as more of the speaker's younger incarnation, the swinger of birches. Now, I begin to wonder if I have become more of the present speaker, the man who once swung.
At the Mountain School, I certainly was the young swinger of birches. Although I remember my time there through the faces and voices of my classmates and teachers, I also remember much of it through the sounds of the Inner Loop hiking trail and the leaves of different species of trees, both of which I grew to recognize during the time I spent in solitude. However, my connection to the swinger of birches does not stem chiefly from the ability to play in nature alone. Rather, my primary connection, the link I feel most strongly, comes from our youth. At the school, I experienced a peculiar personal paradox: I matured and grew more independent, yet I felt more like a child than I think I did when I was ten years old. In many ways, my life at Mountain School reads like a strip from Calvin and Hobbes. I trusted my community implicitly, I played some kind of game every day, and my hands always had a little dirt on them from hiking, planting, or generally being outside at some point during that day. I may never have actually swung from birches—my teacher's demonstration deterred me from attempting that—but in spirit, I was right there alongside the speaker in his youth, riding down hillsides again and again or carefully keeping my poise while crossing a brook.
All of that ended a year and a half ago, though, and since I returned from Vermont, so much has happened to me. I graduated from high school, I became a legal adult, and I started college in the environment I least expected myself ever to wind up in, the urban roar of New York. And all of that is wonderful. Still, life in the suburbs and in the city naturally doesn't quite taste the same as it did in my mountain home, and the idea that I might be Frost's present speaker, older and less spry, is one I completely realize only now. I am not so "weary" as he or she is, but I too have already felt pangs of wishing to "come back to [Earth] and begin over" (Frost). To paraphrase the poet, I, too, once swung from birches, and found no greater manifestation of Heaven than in doing so. Although I know it is impossible to be the same swinger that I once was, "so I dream of going back to be" (Frost).
Here's what will hopefully be the second humble of many more from all of us. For my poetry class, we have to write a weekly response to the poems we read and tell us why all of them, or one in particular, moved us. This week, we read Robert Frost. After I got over my initial I-love-Robert-Frost-so-much-he's-the-literary-soundtrack-to-TMS reaction (and subsequent teary memories rehash), I wrote this in response to "Birches." I wanted to share it with you. I hope you are all doing well in college and on gap year adventures, and I can't wait to hear all about them!!
Anyway, here's what I have to say. Love you all so much. As always, I can't wait to see each one of you whenever I get to.
Megan
The first time I read Robert Frost's "Birches," I was on a cold winter hike in the middle of a forest in the middle of Vermont. I'd been at the Mountain School (a semester boarding program that's part-farm, part-school) for about a week. My teacher stopped my group in the middle of a trail. "Read this," he told me, thrusting a laminated copy of "Birches" into my hand before leaping off the trail. As I read the poem aloud to my classmates, my teacher began to climb up the nearest birch tree, evidently to show us exactly how one could swing from a birch. Even though my teacher's demonstration didn't end well (the tree snapped in two when he was halfway up the trunk, causing him to plunge headfirst into the snow), his attempt marked a difference in my education. Indoor, textbook learning went on sabbatical that semester. Everything I learned at the Mountain School had some hands-on element, some kind of experiential quality, and this learning style defined my semester—and life—in Vermont.
Reading "Birches" again brought memories, although, for once, I did not just reminisce about making maple syrup or sledding down Garden Hill. I always saw myself in the poem as more of the speaker's younger incarnation, the swinger of birches. Now, I begin to wonder if I have become more of the present speaker, the man who once swung.
At the Mountain School, I certainly was the young swinger of birches. Although I remember my time there through the faces and voices of my classmates and teachers, I also remember much of it through the sounds of the Inner Loop hiking trail and the leaves of different species of trees, both of which I grew to recognize during the time I spent in solitude. However, my connection to the swinger of birches does not stem chiefly from the ability to play in nature alone. Rather, my primary connection, the link I feel most strongly, comes from our youth. At the school, I experienced a peculiar personal paradox: I matured and grew more independent, yet I felt more like a child than I think I did when I was ten years old. In many ways, my life at Mountain School reads like a strip from Calvin and Hobbes. I trusted my community implicitly, I played some kind of game every day, and my hands always had a little dirt on them from hiking, planting, or generally being outside at some point during that day. I may never have actually swung from birches—my teacher's demonstration deterred me from attempting that—but in spirit, I was right there alongside the speaker in his youth, riding down hillsides again and again or carefully keeping my poise while crossing a brook.
All of that ended a year and a half ago, though, and since I returned from Vermont, so much has happened to me. I graduated from high school, I became a legal adult, and I started college in the environment I least expected myself ever to wind up in, the urban roar of New York. And all of that is wonderful. Still, life in the suburbs and in the city naturally doesn't quite taste the same as it did in my mountain home, and the idea that I might be Frost's present speaker, older and less spry, is one I completely realize only now. I am not so "weary" as he or she is, but I too have already felt pangs of wishing to "come back to [Earth] and begin over" (Frost). To paraphrase the poet, I, too, once swung from birches, and found no greater manifestation of Heaven than in doing so. Although I know it is impossible to be the same swinger that I once was, "so I dream of going back to be" (Frost).
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