Writing Practice 6/17

My current source of inspiration: the wise words of Gloria Steinem.

Moments of inspiration come in many forms.

Seeing a group of schoolkids selling over-sweetened lemonade on an affluent street of Chicago while holding signs that say "All proceeds go to Chicago Public Schools!" and shouting "Help me keep my favorite teacher from losing her job!"

Watching a hummingbird dance gracefully around the ancient branches of your crabapple tree while you sit in the shade with a book in your lap on a hot June morning.

Getting in a passionate argument with an old friend who just can't seem to understand your perspective and why it's changed over all these years.

The sensation of summer sunlight warming your untanned skin, then permeating through every layer of your being until reaching your hibernating heart.

Everyone is inspired in different ways, but certain moments seem to be universally moving.

Seeing the pride on a new parent's face when they hold their newborn for the first time.

Watching students confidently cross the stage at their college graduation after four+ years of late nights, early mornings and an unfaltering sense of determination.

Clicking on a video showing the pure joy and heart-wrenching displays of love that resulted when a group of service dogs comforted survivors and loved ones of the victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting.

It's moments like these that keep me going.

It's moments like these that remind me why we're all here.

It's moments like these that give me another reason not to lose hope.

Love is all around us. We need to keep going. We need to win the battle against hate.

It's funny how cheesy and inspired you can feel after an afternoon outside.

Writing Practice 6/14 (the first of many extended "tone poems" about my time abroad)

It was early on the first morning of May. Or very, very late on the last night of April, depending on your perspective.

We were leaving the stupid yet somehow relentlessly enticing club that we had spent half of the semester trying to get into. It was the last time we would walk past the tall, bulky men who had been the deciders of our partyer fates for what seemed like a brief eternity.

We took a different way home that night. I shook my head, folded my brown, faux-leather-covered arms into my chilled chest and followed three of my favorite reckless wanderers into the night.  

As per usual, we opted for the street instead of the sidewalk. We pranced, ran and even jumped upon the uneven cobblestones that had come to feel more familiar than the smooth asphalt of our hometowns.

We were thirsty, so Kenz decided it would be a good idea to yell “AGUA?!” at some unsuspecting partygoers spilling onto the balcony of the sole party on an otherwise silent street.

The response was even more unexpected than her remark (which was made in a language that neither us nor the locals speak, mind you). The joyous strangers invited us into their home — an invitation which, looking back on it, should have been alarming — and we didn’t think twice before running up their creaky wooden stairs.

Consider this an ode to my semester of elated preposterousness.

We found ourselves in the middle of a party that was slowly thinning out. We were clearly the youngest party-goers in the crowd, but we weren’t there to mooch for adult beverages. Being the mature, responsible drunkards that we are, we were looking for an alcohol-free beverage to hydrate ourselves before the long trek ahead.

The overly-generous strangers complied, and Kenz went to the sink to fill empty Heineken bottles with the only non-alcoholic liquid to ever grace their glass bottoms. We made small talk with our saviors until multiple bottles had been filled, and eventually, we made our way back into the dark limbo between nighttime and daybreak.

I laughed as my friends reminisced about their wine-induced escapades, their voices echoing off the humble cream buildings surrounding us. It was a small miracle that no angry, robe-clad Frenchmen ran out of their homes to yell at our band of stereotypically rowdy Americans.

Green bottles clanked as they cracked against worn stones. Car lights flashed, warning the idiots dancing blissfully down the street that they had no place there. Birds sang a cheerful lullabye — or an alarming pre-dawn wakeup call, depending on your perspective.

It was one of the only times I’ve ever felt invincible. With the beat of the bass still pumping through my veins and remnants of a liquid confidence potion warming my throat, not a single anxious thought crossed my mind.

I was just a young girl being foolish with her equally irrational companions.

The streets were ours, and we were theirs.

Writing Practice 6/8

I’m at an intersection, but there are no stop lights.

Instead, there are sad, drooping trees with leaves that sway like wind chimes by my side. In the distance is a pathetic excuse for a sledding hill, made more appealing by the pink light quickly disappearing behind it. Behind me is a dark, noisy creek with no fish to call it home. Before me is a vast stretch of green earth that’s seen the soles of infinite children run across it.

There are no vehicles at this intersection.

Other than my mom’s silver mountain bike — thrown haphazardly amongst the weeds — there is no sign of anyone else trying to cross this intersection. It’s just me, sitting on the slanted rock where I used to ponder the thoughts that crowded my curious young mind.

Today, those thoughts are a little different than they were back then.

Yes, I still pine for romances that will never be and let friends who don’t value our relationship upset me, but there are new thoughts, too. There are new subjects to ponder, new unanswered questions to worry about. There are unpacked suitcases to fill, checks to write and a plane to catch. There are student loans to pay, people to meet and a job to get done. There are countless knowns and unknowns, and there is a new story in which only the first page has been written.

This is an intersection between the past, present, and the future.

For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m stuck between the different phases of time. When I sit criss-crossed in my room, surrounded by four alarmingly pink walls, I look at old photos and dance ribbons and award certificates and camp scarves and collectible teddy bear figurines. I carefully slide them off the shelves as a mini dust tornado swirls through my nostrils, and I’m reminded of how I got to this point.

But when I scroll through my camera roll, I come across the screenshot of a job offer that will define the years to come. I re-read the sentence describing the increase in vacation days offered after a year, and I can’t help but wonder how I’ll spend them. I look at my “Flo-rida Bucket List,” the piles of clothes in my bedroom and the stacks of paperwork in the dining room, and I wonder how this will all work out.

I’m at an intersection of time at which the past and the future are so appealing, the present seems completely inaccessible.

I watch the sun set over the green hump of land that I used to slide down every winter and roll down every summer, and I try to take the moment for what it is. I try not to think about the last time I sat atop this hill, or how this might be the last glimpse I ever get of it.

Instead, I let the cool summer breeze chill my legs, and I try, for the first time in a long time, to truly live in the present.