“Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” It’s simple thermodynamics. If I shove someone forwards, I’ll either absorb the resultant backwards force because I’ve braced myself for it, or I’ll move backwards. Simple.
The law of conservation of energy is my favorite. Even though the law of conservation of matter promises that after I die, my corpse will continue to circulate as dirt or macromolecules or something, I really don’t care too much what happens to my corpse because, let’s face it, I won’t have any use for it after I’m dead. The law of conservation of matter just promises that physically, my molecules (which, if you think about it, were once someone or something else’s) will always exist in some form or another. Maybe that’s comforting in a kind of twisted way, but it just makes the law of conservation of energy even more special because energy is always energy. Energy is always moving or changing something—there are so many types of energy, but all of them share this concept of motion. (Matter? Matter just kind of sits there while it takes up space and has mass). The law of conservation of energy is like this promise that the world will never, ever stand still or stop changing.
When I was really little, there was this montage of baby pictures hanging on my bedroom wall, and one night I took it to my parents and started crying because I didn’t want to grow up. I didn’t want to change. It’s ironic, really, that at age five, when I didn’t know or care too much about who I really was, I would’ve been totally content to stay exactly as I was. In fourteen years, I’ve gone from total contentment with myself to looking through practice college interview questions and trying to pick out only one thing that I would change about myself if I could. The fact is, though, that although there are tons of things that I would hypothetically change about myself (like suddenly becoming neat or able to make sense all the time), I wouldn't actually want to change them.
The promise of thermodynamics is there, though—the promise that the world around me will never stop changing and that the world will never stop changing me. After all, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Change is coming, whether I like it or not, and I honestly cannot wait to see where it leads me.
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Friday, July 19, 2013
How to Disappear Completely
Reposted from Sami's and my blog here.
A long line of daycampers files noisily past, chattering as they go. Some of them look at me strangely, and okay, I guess a teenager sitting on a log and scribbling in a notebook isn’t the most normal thing you could run across, but there are weirder things out there. Right? It doesn’t take long for them to disappear, though, and I have nothing to distract me from wishing I’d remembered to bring my camera along. I can hear birds chirping and water running and in the shade of the army of tall trees surrounding me, it’s not too hard to pretend that I am pulling a Thoreau (or something like that) and writing alone in the woods. Soon enough, though, I realize that I am chewing on my pen (gross) and that I can hear the nearby clanging of construction and the whoosh of traffic rushing by. People walk past every now and then, and dead leaves crunch under their feet with every step.
Maybe this is what college is going to be like. There’s so much empty space, so much elastic freedom. I’m sitting on a log and writing and it’s magical because I am sitting on a log and writing on a college campus. I don’t belong here, and maybe it’s the incongruity that makes this magical. Nobody even realizes that I don’t belong here, but I’m here anyway.
I love the feeling of not belonging, to a certain extent. It’s like being invisible and melting into the wall and pretending that I don’t exist, until I am really just not there anymore. It’s sitting on a log and writing and feeling people’s gazes skip right past me. It’s the magic of invisibility. Maybe I’m just obsessed with this because I have tried way too many times to take candid pictures of people only to have them turn around and glare at me because I’m pointing a camera at their face; maybe it’s just because there is something really and truly magical about being invisible. There’s this Radiohead song called “How to Disappear Completely” and the singer just keeps repeating “I’m not here” over and over for part of the song. It fascinated me at first. If convincing himself that he is not there is the final stage of disappearing completely, it’s kind of chilling to think that it could be possible to convince yourself out of existence. In Harry Potter, in Lord of the Rings, in all the other fantasy books that I read when I was younger, invisibility was a gift. Invisibility helped good win out over evil. There was always a purpose to slipping through the background unseen–invisibility wasn’t employed just for the sake of disappearing for a little while. It was to be so good at not belonging that no one even noticed.
Maybe that is what college is going to be like. A lot of quirky people don’t necessarily fit together very well, but if everyone is unique then everyone shares a common characteristic. I don’t know if that actually makes sense or not, but that’s what college is for me right now. It’s finding people who know how to not fit in, even though they’ve learned everything they need to do to fit in. Right now, there are all kinds of people waiting in a box labeled “college.” I haven’t necessarily met them yet, but some of them think like I do and some of them think so differently that I can’t understand them. Some of them will get me right away, and some of them I’ll have to struggle to explain things to. All of them know how to not fit in, but have learned the right things to say and do and the right way to act over the years. Everyone knows how to be invisible, but no one really needs to be. It doesn’t get much more idealistic than that, but I haven’t had a chance to realize that college isn’t magical yet. Maybe college is really and truly magical and in a year I’ll be at some really amazing school meeting up with amazing people who get me. Maybe I won’t. I really don’t know what college is going to be like, and that’s part of what makes it so exciting. It’s the incongruity that’s magical, after all.
Maybe this is what college is going to be like. There’s so much empty space, so much elastic freedom. I’m sitting on a log and writing and it’s magical because I am sitting on a log and writing on a college campus. I don’t belong here, and maybe it’s the incongruity that makes this magical. Nobody even realizes that I don’t belong here, but I’m here anyway.
I love the feeling of not belonging, to a certain extent. It’s like being invisible and melting into the wall and pretending that I don’t exist, until I am really just not there anymore. It’s sitting on a log and writing and feeling people’s gazes skip right past me. It’s the magic of invisibility. Maybe I’m just obsessed with this because I have tried way too many times to take candid pictures of people only to have them turn around and glare at me because I’m pointing a camera at their face; maybe it’s just because there is something really and truly magical about being invisible. There’s this Radiohead song called “How to Disappear Completely” and the singer just keeps repeating “I’m not here” over and over for part of the song. It fascinated me at first. If convincing himself that he is not there is the final stage of disappearing completely, it’s kind of chilling to think that it could be possible to convince yourself out of existence. In Harry Potter, in Lord of the Rings, in all the other fantasy books that I read when I was younger, invisibility was a gift. Invisibility helped good win out over evil. There was always a purpose to slipping through the background unseen–invisibility wasn’t employed just for the sake of disappearing for a little while. It was to be so good at not belonging that no one even noticed.
Maybe that is what college is going to be like. A lot of quirky people don’t necessarily fit together very well, but if everyone is unique then everyone shares a common characteristic. I don’t know if that actually makes sense or not, but that’s what college is for me right now. It’s finding people who know how to not fit in, even though they’ve learned everything they need to do to fit in. Right now, there are all kinds of people waiting in a box labeled “college.” I haven’t necessarily met them yet, but some of them think like I do and some of them think so differently that I can’t understand them. Some of them will get me right away, and some of them I’ll have to struggle to explain things to. All of them know how to not fit in, but have learned the right things to say and do and the right way to act over the years. Everyone knows how to be invisible, but no one really needs to be. It doesn’t get much more idealistic than that, but I haven’t had a chance to realize that college isn’t magical yet. Maybe college is really and truly magical and in a year I’ll be at some really amazing school meeting up with amazing people who get me. Maybe I won’t. I really don’t know what college is going to be like, and that’s part of what makes it so exciting. It’s the incongruity that’s magical, after all.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
use before
Inspired by Sami’s comment on our blog. And also by her post on her blog here.
I used to think that if I did a cartwheel every single day, I’d never stop being able to do a cartwheel. Even when I got really old, I’d still be able to do a cartwheel because hey, I’d done one the day before. Getting old was really intimidating when I was five. I wanted to stay young and able to do cartwheels forever, because while I didn’t necessarily love doing cartwheels all that much, not being able to do them sounded terrifying.
Of course, I assumed that I would still want to do cartwheels when I was eighty. When I was five, I didn’t understand that getting old was gradual. I thought that life was kind of like driving through a tunnel—everything stays pretty much the same until suddenly, you’re out in the blinding sunlight and you’re old.
Maybe I’m not really old enough to be writing about getting old, but there is something about the finality of age that seems like it is more terrifying to the young than to the old. When you’re five or sixteen or seventeen, eighty just seems really, really old. But by the time you’re actually eighty, you have all these amazing memories and life experiences to look back on, and you hopefully get to realize that you have lived for eighty pretty fantastic years. It's not like a tunnel, like I used to think; as far as I know, you don't wake up one day and think, Oh my gosh, I'm old. You're simply yourself, just like you were yourself the day before. Everything looks the same, even though it's just a little bit different.
Everything has an expiration date. I don’t necessarily want to be able to do a cartwheel when I’m eighty anymore. Instead, I want all kinds of idealistic, romantic things to have happened, and I want to still believe that real life can be magical if I let it. Maybe I’ll want something different for my future self in five or ten years, but even though I know that my ideas and the way that I see the world right now all have an expiration date, they’re a permanent part of who I am right now. If the way that I see life changes even a tiny bit every day, then things will never stay exactly the same. Change makes life fascinating, and so do expiration dates.
I used to think that if I did a cartwheel every single day, I’d never stop being able to do a cartwheel. Even when I got really old, I’d still be able to do a cartwheel because hey, I’d done one the day before. Getting old was really intimidating when I was five. I wanted to stay young and able to do cartwheels forever, because while I didn’t necessarily love doing cartwheels all that much, not being able to do them sounded terrifying.
Of course, I assumed that I would still want to do cartwheels when I was eighty. When I was five, I didn’t understand that getting old was gradual. I thought that life was kind of like driving through a tunnel—everything stays pretty much the same until suddenly, you’re out in the blinding sunlight and you’re old.
Maybe I’m not really old enough to be writing about getting old, but there is something about the finality of age that seems like it is more terrifying to the young than to the old. When you’re five or sixteen or seventeen, eighty just seems really, really old. But by the time you’re actually eighty, you have all these amazing memories and life experiences to look back on, and you hopefully get to realize that you have lived for eighty pretty fantastic years. It's not like a tunnel, like I used to think; as far as I know, you don't wake up one day and think, Oh my gosh, I'm old. You're simply yourself, just like you were yourself the day before. Everything looks the same, even though it's just a little bit different.
Everything has an expiration date. I don’t necessarily want to be able to do a cartwheel when I’m eighty anymore. Instead, I want all kinds of idealistic, romantic things to have happened, and I want to still believe that real life can be magical if I let it. Maybe I’ll want something different for my future self in five or ten years, but even though I know that my ideas and the way that I see the world right now all have an expiration date, they’re a permanent part of who I am right now. If the way that I see life changes even a tiny bit every day, then things will never stay exactly the same. Change makes life fascinating, and so do expiration dates.
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