Day 4: The Spectrum of Suffering

Today instead of talking about what I did because it really wasn't much, I want to respond to something that Clare posted on a blog post of Alex's. (Clare and Alex seem to be who I will be traveling with down this BEDA rode so you should get to know them.)

I'm taking what Clare said a bit out of context but I find it also works for what I mean. She wrote "In fiction, the problems matter. In fiction, when something tugs at the morals of a character, the character does something about it, and when the character tries hard at it, it works."

What I really want to focus on are the phrases "In fiction, the problems matter" and "when the character tries hard at it, it works." "The problems matter." "It works." This reminded me of something I have been thinking about for a while now. That is what I call the Spectrum of Suffering and also the fact that fiction kills you.

Fiction creates these neat little world where authors put variations of problems that can happen in ours. They use the problems in our world as an example for what they create in their own. Then when we read about these, we use them as examples for how to solve the problem. It's like fiction is one of those transforming boxes from math class that I never understood that you put a number into and it modifies it. Or like orders being passed down a line of generals and officials at Valley Forge, slowly being translated from one language to another until they were shouted out in English by Alexander Hamilton. Fiction is a way of passing on ideas without discussing them directly. And when this happens, they tend to become inflated.

Oh, your boyfriend doesn't like your best friend? Here. Now one is a vampire and the other a werewolf and their families have been feuding for ages. That will help.

You're trying to make friends at your new school and want to figure out what the point of living is? Will it help if the girl you're in love with kills herself while driving to her mother's grave with a vase of metaphor flowers in the back?

You've been friends with this girl for ages and you've just been through a really rough patch in your relationship with her and you abandoned her but you still love her? Why don't you make out in the middle of a war after killing a bit of your enemy's soul!?

Now here is where the Spectrum of Suffering comes in. It is a very normal thing when you're feeling down for someone to try and comfort you by saying "Well it could be worse. You have a house. You have food. You live in a democracy. You're not a starving child in Bangladesh or a rape victim in Sudan or an Iraq war veteran with PTSD."

To them I would like to say "Yes. I know I am none of those things. But how does that fact make me feel any better? Reminding me of all of the suffering in the world only makes me feel more miserable."

Because here is the thing: No matter how hard you try, you cannot imagine the pain of something you have never experienced. It is like trying to remember exactly how it felt when you broke your arm. You just can't bring that feeling back.

Pain you feel cannot be conveyed to someone else so do not let them tell you it is no big deal. Your pain is not imagined and because you can't feel someone else's emotions, what is happening inside your head is just as intense as what is happening in someone else's. When it feels like the end of the world, it damn well feels like the end of the world.

So the Spectrum of Suffering does not extend between people. Everyone has their own Spectrum. When I found out I may be grounded due to FAA regulations back on January 31st, it felt like the sky had fallen and I was suffocating beneath it but I still couldn't reach it. If my Spectrum runs from 1 to 10 I would mark this as about a 9. But Alex and Clare each have different benchmarks than I do and there is no way to possibly compare them.

Fiction minimizes our suffering by expanding it. It makes your everyday problems appear trifling when you compare failing your math test to winning back the love of Daisy Buchanan. But Jay Gatsby did not take the test and therefore cannot tell you who is feeling worse.

I love fiction, but it can be belittling.

So whenever someone puts their arm around your shoulder and starts to say "Get some perspective-" or "Well this may seem like a big deal-" or "Think of starving kids in Africa-" or "At least you aren't chasing after a white whale", just look at them and say "No."

Day 3: Losing already?

Whoops! I nearly forgot to blog today. It's nearly 9:30 pm and I'm in my pajamas I have just let time slip by. I got home from Grease rehearsal nearly an hour ago (wouldn't you know it a hand-jive was playing on the radio on my way back home) and I've just been sitting on tumblr. I have to read two more chapters of The Scarlet Letter and study for a gov test I have tomorrow and possibly look over some biology answers. Like all three of those are actually going to happen.

Uh, let's pretend I'm interviewing myself.

So Heather, what has happened today?

Uh, we square danced in gym (YESSSSSAJkg;hda/klfhadjlh!!!!!!!!!) and I ran into a stray cat on my walk home?

How wonderful! Would you say this happens often?

Um, no. We don't spend nearly enough time square dancing. We should take the emphasis off of swimming and put it on square dancing. (In this town, square dancing may save your life just as much as swimming. Thankfully I'm good at both.) And the cat was really unexpected.

And is that all that has happened? Nothing else? Just square dancing, finding a cat, and rehearsal?

Well yeah pretty much. I watched some of the Office and Arrested Development, too. I was going to make custard because two years ago today The Eleventh Hour came out. I planned on celebrating Custard Day and was all ready when I got home but then I remembered that it is Easter/Passover season and my family goes through A LOT of eggs. I mean a lot. We're talking dozens. I think the all time record was 60 eggs a few years ago or something like that. And custard needs a lot of eggs, too and I just didn't think we had enough to spare. I wound up being right because we had eggs for dinner. I hadn't had an egg in a while because I just got really sick of them but they're pretty good.

So, moral of the blog: Eggs and stray cats. Now it's off to the English reading for me. I'll see you tomorrow, bloggies! (I probably shouldn't say that again.)

P.s. Oh and also I wound up with a prom date so that's pretty great. Okay bye.

Day 2: Candid

I'm going to be candid with you all. I kind of slept through school today. I was just exhausted and hadn't done a biology lab and my room was still a mess from packing and returning this weekend and I was just feeling tired and bleh. So I didn't go. It's kind of a bad habit of me, having these days where I just need to catch up on things like homework and chores and so I stay home to do it. I've been a lot better about not doing that this year, though. Last year I probably did it way too much but I'm getting better.

Now I've finished the bio and have cleaned up my room a bit and all I really want to do is eat French fries. I love French fries. They're probably my favorite food. On Friday night my SciOly team had "dissatisfying" French fries because they were cold and a little soggy but they tasted really good dipped in my friend Trent's tomato sauce from his pasta haha. I think I'll go eat a bit before going to play rehearsal tonight. Since I didn't go to school today I'm technically not allowed to go to rehearsal but we're doing a mini-show in school on Thursday and since I missed practices for the last week due to SciOly I really should go. I also need to memorize my lines. We're doing Grease and I'm Miss Lynch and still relying on my script for my longer speeches.

And that's a bout it for today. I've slept and watched a lot of Arrested Development today and now I'm going to go eat. That's basically all you need to know about my life. Bye!

Day 1: 7 Years

Remember when I said I was going to write more? Well I guess I lied. But I didn't do it intentionally. I just didn't want to/was far too lazy. But I think I am going to do BEDA just because. So let's begin.

I woke up nearly 12 hours into April.

Late last night I returned home from my 16th, and last, Science Olympiad competition. I have been doing this for 7 years and I can't really convey the array of complex emotions I felt. If you've been through this then I won't need to explain. But it's relief and remorse and sadness and emptiness and freedom and something inside you saying "thank god that's over" and something else saying "I wish we could go back" and all and all exhausting. I feel like I've slept for the first time in 7 years. But I came in 4th place in Geological Mapping somehow.

On Friday we went to Niagra Falls and made friends with a black squirrel named Willis. We stayed at a fancy hotel along with the Fayetteville-Manlius team. (I will be honorable and not say anymore about them.) At the hotel there was also a beauty pageant and a dance competition. Some of my team members crashed the beauty pageant and I went with some friends to crash the recital. I saw a doppelganger of my little sister when she was 10 years old dancing to the Across the Universe version of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." She was wonderful.

After the events were over my teammates and the coaches and parents killed time for two hours playing games. My friend Casey hid in a cupboard with some guy from another team for 20 minutes because we forgot to tell her we had stopped playing hide-and-seek. We nearly missed the awards ceremony because we were so into our game of Pictionary.

This year the competition was at Canisius College and the campus just smelled funny and bad. The whole trip kind of did. I didn't like the school and everything was spread out and confusing. I spent a speed walk with a girl from Stuyvesant High School across the campus complaining about how we weren't at West Point.

Oh West Point. West Point is the most beautiful place in the world and holds this insane magic over all who enter. You come out changed no matter how short your time there was. And once you go you just want to go back.

At Canisius there were no stone monuments and panoramic views or historic chains. There were no astronauts buried on the grounds. There was no threat of getting shot if you got lost and no threatening signs telling you not to step on the grass. There was no charismatic Major Bird keeping us entertained while waiting for the awards ceremony to start and no recruitment video from 2006 with an old friend of mine it somewhere. And there was not the longest and loudest standing ovation I have ever heard when they introduced an officer recently returned from deployment in the Middle East. Not at Cansius. Instead there were instead Christian symbols everywhere and lectures from professors who said "this is killing me" in front of inattentive teams and doors in places they shouldn't have been on buildings and bad feng shui of the tables holding the awards.

God I miss West Point.

Eliot said that April is the cruelest month. The school librarian tells me that if you can get through March then you can get through to Summer. We'll see who's right.

How to be fancy in flannel

This evening there was a trivia contest at our school to raise money for scholarships. I wasn't going to go even though I love trivia as I went last year and got in a fight with one of my team members. But at the end of the day I was asked to join a team of mostly teachers and I decided to do it. What the hell, right?

We came in second even though I danced/strutted my way to turn in the answer "Jim Lovell" but that's not the important part. The important part is that our team of 5 adults and 3 students won a $25 gift card that we could use, we were told, two restaurants. The adults left Molly, Brooke, and I with the gift card. We knew that one of the restaurants was really fancy and expensive and across the river so we decided to go to the other one then.

This is when the adventure really starts. We weren't sure exactly where the restaurant was. We discovered that we had driven past it so Molly pulled over to the side of the road to look it up on her GPS. While Molly was doing that, I noticed that a man in the house we were outside of was brushing his hands over the blinds so we couldn't see through the window, peeking out at us, and dragging his friend over to watch. I pointed this out and we drove around the block to a safer location.

So we now knew where we were going but still missed the restaurant a bit because we were distracted by "Badger Street". We parked in a convenience store parking lot which may have been considered loitering. The people in the car next to us seemed to be having a really good time (nudge nudge, wink wink.) The streets weren't that busy so Molly decided to run across the crosswalk when the glowing red hand was telling us to stop. I ran after her. Brooke got stuck on the other side. Panting and laughing and out of breath we entered. . . an extremely fancy Mediterranean restaurant. Molly and I were in flannel and Brooke was in a loose t-shirt. I also happened to be wearing an 8 year-old hunting jacket. The hostess was a little flustered but with excellent grace she led 3 laughing and under-dressed teenagers into a room filled with couples and fancy people.

We were a little awkward in our disarray and everything at first but we had a lovely time. Brooke got kind of stuck in the  bathroom but got out quickly. We had dessert and it was delicious. Brooke's rich aunt had taught her proper etiquette so she bestowed her wisdom upon Molly and I. We had lovely conversation which included me asking "Wait, can I say 'bitch' in a fancy restaurant?" and "Can I say 'litter box' here?" We had plenty of water as a very cute boy kept filling our glasses. When Brooke told us to put our napkins on the table to show we were done, our waitress came over and took our check. She noticed that the name of the other restaurant (which was owned by the same people who owned the one we were in) was on the gift card. And as it turned out they wouldn't accept the gift card.

At this point the waitress' maternal instincts took over and she asked us if we had money and was very apologetic and understanding. We had enough to pay for the 3 desserts we had ($22.68!!!!!!!!!!) and didn't have to pay off our debt in the kitchen but it was close. While we were sorting out the money I filled out the "tell us about your experience" card. I said that the food was great and it was very nice of them to not turn us away because of our flannel. I suggested that they make the gift cards usable at either restaurant or get envelopes that don't have both the names on them. I said that the staff was very kind and the water-boy extremely attractive. Then I wrote my name and phone number on the card with a smiley face and casually dropped it on the floor as we walked out the door. I'll tell you if anything comes of it.

And that, my friends, is how I wound up in flannel and a hunting jacket eating crème brûlée that I thought was paid for with two very good friends while rich people were romantic all around us in a room full of wine and dim candlelight and my name and number on a scrap of paper under a table in a Mediterranean restaurant.

How have you been?

I have decided that I am going to blog at least once a week for the next month or so. This is a thing I have just decided. And I hope I don't regret it. I'm just in such a blogging mood tonight! Tonight being the 15th. I won't post this tonight as I just posted something I wrote in biology earlier today. And I learned from doing VEDA last year the woes of over-saturating the market. (Because there is such a high demand for me. That makes me an inelastic good. I also just finished an economics class last month.)

Here's a brief list of what has happened since I've last blogged:

• I made a video of how I spent my New Year's Eve.

• I went to Albany for Governor Cuomo's State of the State Address. I meant to right a blog post about this but I didn't. Then I meant to write another on Jan 20th because that was the 3rd anniversary of one of the most mad-cap days of my life, being in D.C. for Barak Obama's inauguration. But again, I forgot/was too lazy. Now I'm just going to write a book of memoirs called "Capitol Adventures". Much easier, right?
• I made some awesome new friends on tumblr who have rekindled my love of Nic Cage.
• Got accepted to some colleges.
• Science

So yeah that's pretty much it. Oh and I finished Buffy the Vampire Slayer last night. Holy cow. I'm still processing it. But my god that was good.

 I also remembered an agreement I made with my friend Etco. If he posted slam poetry videos on youtube then I would post some writing on my blog. Etco has done just that so now I have to hold up my end of the bargain so you'll have that to look forward to.

I spend my time wisely (I wrote this in AP Bio)

I want to live in a perpetual state of Summer. I want to always have a good book and the sun in which to read it. I want something big to look forward to or something good to remember. I want the lush green and the cool moist earth and the hard, hot pavement and the warm, smooth stones and the dry and brittle grass dying outside of the shade of a tree, parched while waiting patiently for the August rains. And I want you to be only a phone call away.

I want the sun on headstones and fresh wildflowers laid beside them. I want the gravel between my bare toes and scraps of dandelion roots beneath my fingernails from weeding. And I want to see you again.

I want warm berries, pregnant with the juice that dribbles down my chin and stains my fingers and the paving stones below. I want to lay my head down in the dust of the last years leaves and watch the jets trace contrails through the deep blue.

I want chicken wire fences and lazy mornings in bed and bare foot soccer in the rain. I want dripping ice cream cones and still days for rocket launching, alternating with winds to catch in the sail of a Sunfish. I want the water dripping on my legs and lap as I pull an oar out of on Lake Teedyuskung and to stand on the jagged rocks of Canandaigua and watch Squaw Island sink lower and lower into the blue-green glass.

I want to stay up late and only realize the time when I hear the birds begin to sing. I want to walk through the morning fog after a bonfire and feel safe wrapped in a borrowed blanket and my father's old fatigues.

And I want to lie down on a dock at night and stare at the stars and do abso-

lutely

nothing

...

This is basically an amalgamation of various Summers in my life. See if you can spot yourself.