Youngest of One

If You Can't Find That Stuff In Life:

Whenever I think about blogging, it feels as if time has gone by quickly.  "Gosh, has it been almost a month since I wrote that last blog entry?  Seems like just yesterday? Where does the time go?"  This is a rare feeling.  In general, this summer vacation feels like it is dragging on at a snail's pace.  Gone are the days when summer was the most joyous time of the year and I long awaited a break from school.  I really enjoy my time at Susquehanna University, surrounded by lots of people, some of them friends.  My girlfriend lives in Pennsylvania, so for the time being I'm in a long distance relationship.  Here in New York, I spend most of my days at home, where lethargy just comes so easily.  While both my parents are at work, I sleep in late, rarely rolling out of bed before noon.  Sometimes I might run an errand or go out for lunch, but I spend most of my time watching television or, at my best, reading.  The more boring the days are, the longer they feel.  Only when I look at my blog do I think, "Boy, time flies."  I look back on the last month of laziness, and I wonder if my choices might be even more troubling than they appear.  They might even be a detriment to my academics.

Last semsester at Susquehanna, all first-year creative writing majors were required to take a course called Introduction to Creative Nonfiction.  I was pleased with this obligation, because I had been looking forward to taking the course anyway.  After my mixed feelings and bad vibes from Introduction to Fiction, discussed in my last post, I hoped that I might hit my stride and carve a niche in the genre of creative nonfiction.  Months ago, at a Christmas family get-together, I expressed these hopes, which were met with a line of questioning.  "What exactly is creative nonfiction?" my uncle asked, somehow emphasizing every syllable of every word.  I understand the confusion.  Some people are perplexed when they hear the word creative precede the word nonfiction.  To some it seems like an oxymoron.  When I talk to those people, I usually find that I cannot make them understand it.  The simplest way I know how to put it is this: creative nonfiction is the work that David Sedaris does.  And really, isn't that what I want to do with my life?  In the words of Michael Ian Black in his book My Custom Van, "David Sedaris is living the kind of sophisticated, glittering life I always envisioned for myself, minus the homosexuality."  So of course I welcomed the opportunity to be trained in creative nonfiction.

As a student in Introduction to Creative Nonfiction, I found the sort of inspiration and satisfaction that I often lacked in Introduction to Fiction.  I found writing stories to be tiresome and tedious, while writing essays was more fun and fulfilling.  (Have I mentioned I like alliteration?)  At the end of the course I produced a longer portfolio than my first, and I felt a greater sense of pride.  In those few months, I produced three essays: memoir, personal essay, and literary journalism.  I was so pleased by the experience that, when it came time to register for next semester's courses, I signed up to take Intermediate Creative Nonfiction.  This ought to be a happy decision, but now it has started to worry me.  I don't lead the life of David Sedaris.  I haven't visited the home of Anne Frank, I've never worked as an elf at Macy's, and I don't even have that many entertaining stories about my childhood.  During most days in the past month, I've had a rather boring existence in which I've been quite bored.  The question then becomes: Have I really lived enough to write any more memoirs?  Do I really have it in me to produce any thoughtful, emotionally driven essays with the material I have?  I've already written one memoir and one personal essay with roots in my childhood, and I don't know how much subject matter is left.

That's what I like about literary journalism.  Rather than reaching back into your memory for long past events, you actually experience something just for the sake of writing about it.  The possibilities are endless, so the material can never run out.  Also, the recency of the events reduce the distorting effects of memory.  Unfortunately, this intermediate course is going to focus on memoir, or so I've been told.  I guess I'll just have to take a closer look at my life, really put myself under the microscope and discover what's worth talking about.  Actually it's not fair to say that the past month has been entirely boring.  For example, during Memorial Day weekend I attended Balticon.  And just yesterday I had a job interview that ended in a job offer.  I could tell you about all that, but then I'd be wasting all my good material in a single entry.  I can't have that.  I promise I'll write to you again whenever I feel like it.  Finally a promise I can keep!

End Post.

Writer Of Fictions:

A few weeks ago, I stood near the counter at Clyde's Cafe, an eatery on the campus of Susquehanna University, where I'd just ordered a chicken quesadilla.  A girl approached me from behind and asked, "Are you on line?"  That got me thinking about my blog.  What a loaded question.  Am I online?  "I used to be," I almost said aloud.

Let me tell you briefly what it's like to fall off the face of the earth.  It began as the scariest moment of my life, even more frightening than my unpleasant experience inside the Touch Tunnel at the Liberty Science Center as a kid.  One afternoon in September, I was walking alone on campus when suddenly gravity seemed reversed and my body flipped, like a somersault that just stopped halfway through.  My stomach demanded an explanation, and I threw up in my mouth more than a little. I came to rest in a headstand position, and then I lifted off the ground.  While the ground was still in reach, I tried to grab on to something, but there was only smooth pavement beneath (or above) me.  From then on it didn't really feel like falling at all actually.  It was more like drifting at a leisurely pace, and I found it quite pleasant once I was accustomed to being upside down.  Some young women stopped to gawk at me, and I tucked my t-shirt into my pants.  "Call for help?" I shouted to them, but they hardly moved.  I got a nice view of the whole campus, and I saw that the construction of the new science building is coming along nicely.  As I floated higher, I saw the entirety of Selinsgrove, the podunk capital of the world which I have come to know and love, with its antique stores and working post office.  It wasn't long before I was looking at the whole state of Pennsylvania.  I first noticed I was in orbit when the smell of New Jersey wafted into my nostrils.  As time went on, I scanned every corner of the globe, figuratively speaking since the world is spherical.

My flight was only temporary, of course, and upon my return I had a lot of catch-up work to do in order to pass all of my classes.  Now the school year is over, so I can set those academic matters aside and wait for the GPA to come in.  Finally I have the chance to rejoin you all in this lovely world which I fondly call "series of tubes."  Of course, I chose to attend Susquehanna University for the creative writing major, a program which has certainly earned its reputation.  My first semester brought me to Introduction to Fiction, which was the subject of my last entry on this blog in late September.  That's embarrassing, but I've gotten over it.  Blogging is a good habit, and like any good habit it's easy to stop doing it.  The bad habits are always the hardest to quit.  Blogging, on the other hand, is just something I can set aside for a few days, then not come back to for a little while, until all of a sudden that little while has become several months.  It's been known to happen.  Also, the whole falling off the earth thing didn't help.  Let's not forget that.  Anyway, I was talking about Intro to Fiction.  That course shook my confidence in more ways than one.  Like all writing classes at the university, it is workshop-based, and I maintain that being workshopped is a singular experience that you may not fully understand if you haven't been through it.  In the same twenty minutes or thereabouts, you might get a huge boost for your ego and a shattering blow to your self-esteem.  That was an "and" statement, not an "or."  It's typical to get both.  The workshop class is an environment that welcomes sugarcoating and brutal honesty alike, and each can bring a guest.  Also the affair is not catered. Wait, what is this metaphor supposed to mean?

At the end of a creative writing course, each student must create, print, and bind a portfolio consisting of the semester's work.  For Intro to Fiction, that meant including the final drafts of two short stories.  When I say "final drafts," I don't really mean final at all.  Nothing is final in this type of work.  There's always room for improvement, and there's always some important reason why you need to redraft that story again. And again.  So "final draft" is only final for the purposes of the course.  Really it's the latest draft.  I look back on that portfolio now, and I can't say I'm satisfied.  I think I was already disappointed with it when I first made it.  It's a small bundle of less than twenty-five pages.  I did the best I could with the two stories therein, but there was no sense of pride in a job well done in the end.  Intro to Fiction taught me a lot, but it didn't make me feel like a writer.  I remember the first time I really felt that my professor and I were on two different wavelengths.  For the last class of the semester, he took all his first-year students to the used book store in town, where he promised to buy us each two books.  "Now you can choose the books yourselves, but I need to approve of them first," he said.  I picked out maybe five, and he approved of one.  As he looked through the pile I'd picked out, he stopped at Voltaire's Candide.  I saw it performed at my high school once and thought I might like to read it.  "Candide?" he said.  "Oh, for Christ's sake!"  I put it back on the shelf, and that's all I care to say about that experience.  I could go on about my feelings, but I don't want to say anything I might regret.  Gone are the days of spilling every funny story about high school teachers and peers.  I have a scholarship, which I'd like to keep, to a great university, where I'd like to stay.

That about sums up my feelings about my first semester as a creative writing major.  I haven't even mentioned the spring semester yet.  I intend to get to that in my next entry.  I'll write to you again soon, assuming that gravity doesn't have other plans.  I have so much more to say.

End Post.

Reductio Ad Absurdum:

Has it been a month already?  Has it only been a month?  I've encountered a number of paradoxes here, some of them regarding time.  The most notable of these is the paradox that, in my opinion, the weeks seem to move very quickly here, and yet it feels like I have been here forever.  Those two points appear to be contradictory.  Wouldn't you agree?  I am quite glad for this paradox, though.  If the days pass quickly, then they are not passing by slowly, which would be much worse, as it would result in a sort of horrible monotony.  Furthermore, I am lucky that I have grown so accustomed to my life here, because it means that I am less homesick.  My friendships here already seem like close, lasting ones, and I am very fortunate to have met the people with whom I choose to surround myself.  Many of these people are my fellow writers.  After all, that is what I came here to do: to write, to learn how to improve my writing, and to earn a degree for having written.

This semester, I am taking an Introduction to Fiction class, which I am always very happy to attend.  The professor is a rather cheerful, down to earth man with the sort of southern accent that carries wisdom.  But it's the kind of wisdom that makes him just the right man for the job.  It's not any sort of divine, holier than thou wisdom.  Instead, it's the wisdom of a pickup truck load of experience, coming from a man willing to work with us hands on toward a goal that is his life's passion.  His words are extremely motivating.  My first experience having a story up for discussion in a workshop, however, did not inspire me the same way he does.  I am grateful for the criticisms of my peers, but they are not what has shaken me.  It's the possibilities for the second draft that perplex me.

I've got to choose just one important direction for this story to follow, and I must make it more plausible.  Since I haven't found this single direction right away, I've been tempted to turn away from the story.  This frustration seems to result in another paradox.  If I keep reshaping this story, I may tire of it or lose everything about it.  Eventually, I could deconstruct the story so many times that it is simply reduced to the absurd.  But if I start something new, then I just open a brand new Pandora's Box of possibilities, doubts, directions, second drafts, third drafts, and a myriad of drafts to follow.  The short story, as an art form, ought to have no rules, because such a wide variety of creations may qualify for the title of "short story."  It may happen on a page or on dozens of them.  The story may happen in an hour or over the course of a lifetime.  The possibilities are apparently endless.  What could be easier than the task of creating something when there are no rules or boundaries for its creation?  That might explain how God was able to create in only six days, if you buy that sort of thing.

But the task is not easy, because there are certain goals that the writer hopes to achieve.  First, fiction deepens feeling.  That is the most important lesson that I have learned so far.  My second point is the one that I am struggling with so restlessly.  Presently, my understanding is that everything in a short story ought to be the means to a single end, i.e. what the story is really about.  Don't miss my meaning here.  I'm not referring to theme or something of that sort.  Every short story is about something that can be articulated by anyone with a rudimentary understanding of it.  For example, "Bullet in the Brain" by Tobias Wolff (if you haven't read it, please do so immediately) is about Anders' lost potential to become a sympathetic person with some appreciation for anything rather than the cynical jerk that he is at his death.  As a child, Anders hears those words "they is" and appreciates them, as I often do, and the reader knows what could have been, and suddenly we are mourning the loss of a man we earlier knew to be really closed-minded, self-absorbed, and rude.

I have a protagonist.  I have supporting characters.  I have a setting that may be subject to change.  I have much in the way of plot that must undergo some reconstruction.  But what is this story about?  It started as just a two page scene, our first assignment for the class.  The professor wanted to know more about my protagonist, especially what his background and home life are like.  I came up with the idea that his father left years ago, but not before passing down a guitar to him.  I have a habit of writing characters with problems concerning fathers.  I do not understand why that is true.  My father is still around, and I have nothing against the guy.  Moreover, I have read very little of Freud.  It seems so strange to me that this theme of father issues should come up in a number of my works to date.  That phrase, "my works," seems so pretentious.  It makes me sound like I think  I'm a professional, when I feel that that couldn't be farther from the truth right now.  I thought that the story was about this character's decisions in the absence of his father, but I haven't been too sure of anything since the workshop.

My classmates and I have been told that we must have an individual conference with the professor before we even attempt to write the second draft for our stories.  I sincerely hope that, after I have talked this over with my professor, I will have a concrete direction and I will know once and for all what this story is about, what ought to lie just underneath the surface like a shark revealing itself to the reader by its fin.  No matter how many drafts I go through, I can always make changes to the story, and so it seems impossible that I will ever write it to the point where I can actually call it finished.  This is no reason to quit, though.  I have to keep writing.  I must keep my butt in the chair.  I am allowed to suck.  These are important lessons as well.  I will press on, even though the task seems impossible.  But isn't that self-contradictory?  It sounds to me like a paradox.  If that is the case, then it must be downright absurd.  Then again, so are many other truths.

End Post.

Your Ice Makers For The Evening:

Tonight I shall continue to recall past events so that I may not have to revisit them during my future at Susquehanna University.  I have chosen to replace all of the names in this entry, for reasons that I do not completely understand.  I have been single ever since last October, when my first serious relationship ended in precisely the sort of way that one always hopes it will not (i.e., with a text message from her).  Therefore, two weeks before my senior prom, I still did not have a date.  Since I went to a high school exclusively for boys, this search for a date was exactly the sort of teen drama--the kind you see endlessly powdered and presented on the CW--that I had always hoped to avoid.  The situation could have been more cliché only if I had suddenly found a zit on my face at the last possible moment before the prom.  As it turned out, I never found that blemish, but I did find a date.  As I was leaving school one day, I ran into my friend Miranda, and we immediately started catching up because we do not see each other often.  During my senior year, I had mostly gotten to know her through speech tournaments, because she was also in the category of Duo Interpretation.  When we came to the subject of the prom, she asked who my date was, and my response was something to the effect of: "Yeah, um, you see, I haven't exactly worked that out yet."  Within seconds, the matter was settled.  I would take her to my senior prom.  Little did we know then what sort of clever union of tension builder and ice maker we had accidentally created, but it didn't take us too long to figure out.  In fact, we discussed it with a lot of laughter on the car trip to the event.  You see, we each had our own sordid past in our little high school community, and together we were a force to be reckoned with.

I first realized the happy accident when one day my friend Luigi approached me in the hallway.  We greeted each other as warmly as ever, and at first I had no idea what he had on his mind.  Then he spoke.  He said, "So, Will, I heard that you're taking my ex-girlfriend to the prom."  I do not recall my exact reaction, but I think that it is safe to say that I probably laughed openly, the same way that I laugh whenever I think about it.  I'm sure that it was okay to laugh, because their relationship ended something like two years ago, and I believe that he ended it.  Quite frankly, I didn't know these people back then, so I'm not entirely sure of the details.  I do know, however, that Miranda has had dates or other relations with a few other students at my high school, including my classmate Blake.  (I'm not being clever about these fake names at all.  Take my word for it.)  According to my understanding, this encounter with Blake led to the end of her relationship with Luigi.  Blake and Luigi, of course, were both at my senior prom.  At this point, I hope that you are beginning to understand that Miranda and I might cause tension or awkwardness at the prom, but we knew we could love every minute of it.  Also, at this point, I realize that all this information may start to confuse you.  I'm afraid that I can take no measures to prevent that.  I am describing, to the best of my knowledge, not one but two sordid pasts, and all of these names and facts are bound to get mixed up because they're all new to you.  That doesn't matter, because I'm making a point.  It doesn't matter who dated whom.  What matters is that I demonstrate what long, strange histories my date and I each had.  Now, where was I in this avalanche of code names and details?  Oh, that's right.  I was just about to tell you about my history.

I only had that one relationship in my whole time at high school, but it's funny how just one relationship can spread like an airborne contagion and create so much tension.  For almost a year, mostly as a junior, I dated a girl named Tracy in what can best be described as an "is it on now or off again" relationship.  Over eleven months, our relationship was put on hold, shifted around with other priorities, put in time out, delayed for rain, and finally ended.  The break-up sent me spiraling into a heap of loathing, from which I eventually emerged the more bitter, more cynical, more laid back person that I am today.  (I like the new me, by the way.)  A few months later, Tracy started going out with one of my classmates.  I think I'll call him Humbert.  Yes, the name Humbert fits very nicely.  I hardly noticed Humbert throughout three and a half years of high school.  He was barely an acquaintance of mine.  Then, he started dating my ex-girlfriend, and suddenly I started seeing him everywhere.  I had no idea that he often used to hang around with my friends, especially my Duo partner.  There's no point in changing Joe's name, because I've already used it many times in previous entries in the context of Duo.  Anyway, Joe was still going out with a girl named Molly, a close friend of Tracy, which means that Joe started hanging around with Humbert and Tracy's crew a lot more than he spent time with me.  And, of course, they were all going to the prom in a limo together.  The most difficult part of preparing for the prom was deciding who would sit at our table.  My close friend Esteban insisted on sitting with me, and I gladly agreed.  Unfortunately, even though I made a lot of friends in high school, not many of them are well liked by Esteban.  After much deliberation, we came up with three other names that reduced the awkwardness and maximized the fun at our table.

Our prom was held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, which was extremely classy and downright elegant.  Personally, I bought my own tuxedo rather than renting one.  Of course, I shouldn't say that I bought it.  I've never earned a dollar in my life.  My parents bought it for me, because my mother said that renting one would be almost as expensive.  Miranda wore a lovely orange dress, which was a nice coincidence for me because orange is one of the school colors at Susquehanna University.  (Those colors, by the way, are maroon and orange.  I realize how atrocious that sounds.  They realize it, too.  But it's much better than you might think.)  Our professional couple's photograph turned out very nicely.  In fact, it looks much nicer than any prom photo should.  What the heck am I going to look at and laugh about several years from now?  I guess my yearbook will have to suffice.  The prom was a pleasant event, even a night to remember (once in a while).  I danced quite a lot, even though I usually don't do that.  I'm very lanky and uncoordinated, especially on the dance floor.  There was even a dance contest. I had enough sense to avoid participation, but I had a lot of fun in the crowd cheering for my favorite pair of dancers.  After the prom, some friends and I went to a bowling alley and then went our separate ways.  Miranda and I didn't cause any scenes.  We did, however, have a few good laughs at the expense of others--those who had wronged us in the past and then came face-to-face with us again on what was supposed to be the happiest, most exciting night of their young lives.  If the whole night was a movie or an awful teen drama on the CW, I'd like to think that we were the two outcasts who showed up fashionably late in order to have fun and knock the popular kids down a few pegs.  At dinner, my friends and I even discussed who would play us if we were roles in a movie.  My friend Lorenzo (I would never change Lorenzo's name) told me that I could be played by Michael Cera.  "But he only plays geeky, pale, awkward, sad characters," I replied.  He only laughed and said, "Yeah, exactly."

End Post.

Everything Is Eliminated:

Since I am moving to Susquehanna University on Thursday, I have only a limited time left before my life undergoes a dramatic change.  For almost a year now, I have almost fallen out of the habit of blogging, with an average of about one post per month.  Therefore, with such infrequent updates, I have not taken the opportunity to tell you about some memorable events in my life.  I think perhaps that, after my life at college begins, I may hesitate to recall and write about these events, since I would prefer to focus on my new friends and other new developments.  Therefore, I think it is safe to say that these last few days before the 21st are my final opportunity to tell you about the lost chapters of my life in high school, the ones that went undocumented during the last few months.  I can think of only a few events that deserve this last-minute attention, two or three at most.  Today, I would like to bring you all the way back to early April, as I do my best to remember and recount my experience at the New York Speech and Debate Championship in Albany.

As I have explained before, my speech partner Joe and I never asked to be a part of the Hearn, our high school's speech and debate team, but the coach knew us and thought we had some talent.  With our hesitant consent, he signed us up to perform together in the category of Duo Interpretation with a comedic piece called "The Bible: The Complete Word of God (Abridged)."  I was happy to accept this script and play the role of God, which provided a great opportunity to use my booming baritone voice.  (That's not how my voice regularly sounds, by the way.)  Joe and I worked our way through several tournaments with some successes and some defeats, earning two trophies, one mug, and a full qualification to compete in the State Championship.  Of course, our high school sent dozens of students to the State Championship, so our achievement was hardly singular.  But it's a wonderful achievement nonetheless, especially for us as rookies.  We packed our things and boarded one of the school's buses headed for a hotel in Albany, where Joe and I, like all Duo partners, shared a bed.  Sure, we had a dispute or two.  He claimed that I was stretching across to his side of the bed, while I (rightfully) claimed that he was hogging all of the covers.  On the second night, though, we used all those extra hotel pillows to build a wall between us, and from then on we were two happy bedfellows.

The competition began at Albany High School on a Saturday afternoon, but we arrived at the hotel on Friday night.  With our spare time, my friends and I crossed the street and a large parking lot to get dinner at a nearby T.G.I. Friday's, where I drank a delicious Red Bull-based smoothie drink and ate some food that later made me regret my decision to eat at T.G.I. Friday's.  (The choice was so appropriate, though, because it was Friday.)  Before we returned to the hotel, some friends and I went to the nearest mega store.  It was probably a Wal Mart, but for all I know it might have been a K Mart, Walgreen's, Duane Reade, or anything to that effect.  Anyway, four or five of my friends invested in some Nerf guns that they would then bring back to the hotel.  It was here that I learned that Nerf actually makes a product that looks just like a shotgun--a slightly small, lightweight, bright yellow and orange shotgun.  Two were purchased that night.  Personally, I chose to spend my money on nourishment, specifically Reese's peanut butter cups and Red Bull.  By now, you may be thinking that I have a dependence on energy drinks.  Actually, I can quit any time I want.  All I need is one more fix, and then I'm off the stuff for good.  In all seriousness, I don't need energy drinks in my everyday life.  They provide a welcome boost under demanding circumstances, such as a speech tournament, which is more strenuous than you might think.  There are so many rules to follow, there's a lot of waiting to do, you have to be dressed very nicely, you have to worry about going over time as you're performing, and you're almost always in an unfamiliar setting.  It's more than enough to take a lot out of you.

Speaking of the competition, I found that the State Championship was really not much different from a regular tournament.  While there were many teams in the field of competitors that showed amazing talent, nevertheless there were also teams that I could only watch and wonder, "Really?  State Championship?  You guys?"  Of course, there are probably a few people who had the same thoughts while watching me perform, because these matters are so subjective.  Nonetheless, during the weekend of competition, I came to the conclusion that some of the other teams must have come from less competitive districts in order to earn a qualification for the State Championship.  I would hate to see the teams that they were able to beat, because the worst part about forensics is sitting through an awful piece.  Actually, the worst part is probably the judges or the long hours without sleep.  There was one particular Duo team at the State Championship that I will never forget, nor will anyone else who saw them that day.  In the second preliminary round, Joe and I, surrounded by two friends from our school and two friends from a sister school, watched in horror and astonishment as that infamous team performed a piece called "A Walk in Your Shoes."  The plot is simple: a married couple wake up to find that they have switched bodies for reasons that are never explained.  Lots of yelling and raunchy jokes ensue.  It was the yelling that really captured our attention.  The young man, who played the wife in her husband's body, screamed many of his lines in the shrillest, harshest tones that I have ever heard.  To watch it was almost maddening.  As we exited the room at the end of the round, the six of us could not contain our laughter.  For hours and days afterwards, we told stories of the strangest Duo team any of us has ever seen.  I offered the theory that perhaps we had all suffered a collective hallucination, but the truth is that it was all too real.

The fifth and final preliminary round ended before lunch on Sunday, and the results came in during the afternoon, after what surely must have been an eternity of waiting.  Huge sheets of paper were hung up in the Albany High School auditorium, each one bearing the code numbers of the performers who had been chosen to move on to the finals or semi-finals in each category.  Joe and I stepped down from the bleachers and found that our number was not among the chosen few.  In that moment, we knew we were eliminated from the competition, but it felt like more that that.  Everything was eliminated.  My career in the world of speech and debate was over.  I had already won all of my trophies.  I was no longer a performer.  I was no longer playing God.  Minutes later, I watched a girl pass out.  I would later take that girl to my senior prom.  That is a story for my next blog entry.  As for me, with no more rounds to go to, I had a lot of time on my hands.  I loosened my tie and stepped outside to think for a while.  Within ten or fifteen minutes, I gained some perspective on the matter.  I might have chosen to end my speech career differently, but it had to end at that State Championship anyway.  I love to have an audience, but I was never a big star in high school forensics, and I'm okay with that.  Joe and I had our own little rookie success story, and we had a lot of fun doing it.  Now that it was over, I was finally able to escape from this world of obligations that I never auditioned for.  I found a nice bench and wrote a few pages in my novel with my laptop, because that's where I'm most comfortable.  No more waiting for scores and results.  No more trips to other high schools.  No more judges telling me what to do and always being wrong about it.  And I saw that it was good.

End Post.

In Recovery:

It's late July.  Fantastic.  Ever since I graduated high school, I've been telling myself that I am in recovery.  High school was four years of late nights, early mornings, long commutes, and other exhausting horrors.  By the end, it seemed difficult to put up with even the simplest things, like the annoying habits of some teachers or the bothersome attitudes of certain peers, all of which I had to put up with constantly because it was a pretty small school.  With all that I powered through in those four years, of course I must need a significant span of time in order to recover.  At least that's my excuse for the way that my summer has been, i.e. very lazy.  I'm in recovery, so naturally I have not gotten a summer job.  In my defense, I did make some effort to secure one.  During my last marking period in high school, I devoted two full days a week to volunteering at a local day care facility, where I worked under the supervision of my cousin.  When the school year ended, I tried to use that connection in order to get a part time job for the summer.  Unfortunately, when my cousin spoke to her boss, she learned that, due to low enrollment during the summer, they simply don't have it in the budget to take on anyone new right now.  By the time I learned that, it was already mid-June.  I'm going away to school on August 21st.  With my parents, I came to the conclusion that very few businesses are looking for a teenager with no professional work experience who can only stay on as an employee for about two months. So, I don't have a job, and I spend most of my days at home.  I have gotten out of the house on a few occasions, spending my graduation money to see shows and concerts around the city.  Most recently, I saw Spoon when they performed at Prospect Park, which was a magnificent show.  Before that, I saw comedians Jim Gaffigan and Patton Oswalt perform in New York City, and not once but twice I went to see "Jollyship the Whiz-Bang," the most entertaining show I've ever seen.  Also, in the past several weeks, I have the following books: When you are Engulfed in Flames, Lolita, Fight Club, The Picture of Dorian Gray, This Side of Paradise, and an anthology created and issued by my school entitled Art of Memory.  The day I received the latter book, I got quite far away from home, all the way to Susquehanna University.

The day was June 28th, or Preview Day at SU.  Susquehanna schedules four Preview Days for first-year students (they don't use the word "freshmen," which I consider ridiculous) each summer.  Each student is required to attend only one.  Four exist so that the personnel are not overburdened with the entire class on a single day.  My father and I made the (approximately) three hour trip by car from our home in New York to the campus in rural Pennsylvania at the end of last month.  All of the new students were divided into several groups of about a dozen.  Each group was designated by a letter of the alphabet and separated according to prospective major.  To no one's surprise, I was placed in a group with several other creative writers.  Ours was Group E.  I suggested that we ought to be called the "group-ees," and I think it stuck, but only more time will tell.  I met a lot of people all at once, and I was amazed to discover how quickly we were all behaving like old friends.  The day's schedule was very busy, but in hindsight I hardly remember why.  I recall that the fine folks in charge had to convey a lot of information to us, so we listened to a number of speeches.  I think I walked through a rather brief tour of the campus.  Perhaps the most important event of the day was a survey that acts as one of the determining factors in the selection of our courses in the first semester.  Yes, SU does things a little differently.  Academic advisors choose the courses for first-year students, but only in their first semester.  It's not exactly normal, but I'm not complaining.  There has been some confusion regarding our first schedules.  A few weeks ago, our courses were listed on one area of the web site, and word spread immediately by AIM and Facebook.  However, the schedules were removed as suddenly as they appeared, about twelve hours later.  Some people reported that they had to be in two places at once, and so the schedules obviously weren't final.  Then, a few days ago, new course listings were discovered in a different area of the university's web site, and word spread yet again, like rats carrying a plague from coast to coast.  If these new schedules can be trusted, then my first semester will feature: Introduction to Fiction; Latin America, 1492 - 1825; Philosophy of Religion; Thought (my honors program course); and Core Perspectives (a two credit courses required for all new students).  That's eighteen credits in total.  I am mostly pleased.

My train of thought got derailed, took a detour.  Time to get back on track.  The wonderful thing about Preview Day is that it did a lot to prepare me to start my new life at SU with new friends and a closer look at the campus.  The unfortunate thing about Preview Day is that it prepared me to start this new life right then and there.  At the end of the day, I wasn't ready to go back home and stay there for almost two months.  I felt ready to move in to SU right away and keep building on my new friendships.  Instead, I had to do as all young men and women do these days.  I found my new friends via Facebook, and I have chatted with them by AIM.  Emma, a fellow creative writing major, is the one I have talked with most since we met that day.  She misses interaction with our new friends as much as I do, and a few weeks ago she suggested that I sign up for a program for SU SPLASH, a six day trip that takes twenty first-year students through rural Pennsylvania, D.C., and Baltimore in order to do work aiding people experiencing homelessness.  (That's the phrase they use, "people experiencing homelessness."  It's a lot like "first-year students."  I guess it's part of some effort to make simple phrases into more tiresome, politically correct ones.)  I've volunteered for a similar program or two in my high school career, and I was really looking to get out of the house, especially if it meant meeting new college friends.  I contacted someone at the Center for Volunteer Programs, and I learned that all the spots were filled.  They accepted my application anyway, and I was named the SU SPLASH "first alternate."  Then, a few days later, the phone rang at about 11:00 in the morning.  I was asleep in my bed, as I always am at that time of day.  I got up to look at the caller ID and saw "Susquehanna University."  What crossed my mind was, "This could either be very good or very bad."  I cleared my throat, shook my head around to awaken myself, and answered the phone.  Someone told me that a spot on the trip had opened up, and I graciously accepted it.  The trip was to begin at SU on July 20th.  Three new friends--Emma, Alyssa, and Mia--and I made arrangements to take the same train to Harrisburg, and my father was very pleased to learn that he would only have to drive me to Penn Station rather than Pennsylvania.  I packed two bags, with a lot of help from my mother.  The train left at about 10:50 A.M..  My friends and I found a "foursie," or two pairs of seats facing each other.  There was enough leg room between them for about one half of a regular-sized human being.  Emma is about 4'10", while I am about 6'4", so we sat across from each other.  We arrived in Harrisburg, PA at about 2:30.

The trip began with about two days spent on the college campus, where I was spoiled by the dormitory hall where we stayed.  I've recently learned that, during my first year, I am going to live in Hassinger Hall, which is just what I requested because it has a reputation for being quiet and because some English and creative writing professors have their offices in the basement (until they move out, which I've heard they're planning).  However, Hassinger is also known to have the most notoriously small rooms on campus, so the upperclassman hall where we stayed during SPLASH definitely gave me a false, generous impression of dorm life, at least for my first year.  Our first service trip was to a local transition shelter called Haven Ministry, where I spent most of my time painting some doors.  As a result, I learned a very important lesson about painting.  When you paint a light color over a dark color, it looks like you are doing a terrible job.  Regardless, I think we got the job off to a good start with our first coats, and I did my part to paint those high areas that the others could not reach.  Also, with no tarp to cover the ground, we did a great job of adding a Jackson Pollock vibe to the sidewalk.  Then, after the second night, it was on to Washington D.C., where we stayed in the basement at the Washington Seminar Center.  There were four bathrooms available to us on the premises, and they were all quite sketchy, perhaps the most disgusting bathrooms I've ever had to use in my life.  Therefore, when a tremendous downpour hit the area one night, I used the elements to my advantage.  With some friends joining me, I stepped out in my already wet clothes and shampooed my hair outdoors.  As for the bedrooms, there were two of them, one for the guys and the other for the girls, each with a large array of bunk beds.  Just outside those rooms was a large common area with some comfortable couches and chairs, where many people stayed up at night when they didn't want to sleep.  One night, I turned in earlier than my friends.  The next morning, I was told that during the night one of the other guys, a fellow named John Adams, stepped into the bedroom to grab one of his things.  Then, as he stepped out again into the common area, he announced to everyone else who was still awake that: "Will is in there sleeping like this."  He proceeded to demonstrate my position by lying atop a couch on his stomach with his face down, his arms at his sides, and his legs bent at the knee so that his feet faced upward.  I can not explain this.  I have no recollection of this, as I was asleep.  Upon hearing this story, my new friend Allie told me, "You sleep like a dum-dum."  That sums it up best, if you ask me.

While we were in D.C., we had the opportunity to tour the Capitol building.  This was a remarkably unpleasant experience.  Our journey began underneath a separate building, where our tour guides told us we would go through a tunnel leading to the Capitol building.  The line for the tunnel was long enough, and then we were delayed even further because the tunnel is shut down every time the House of Representatives votes on something.  (At least, I think it's the House of Representatives.  Honestly, I don't understand how our government works.  I don't even deserve citizenship.)  Once we were finally underneath the Capitol building, a security guard told us that the stairs were closed, although no one ever explained why.  Outside the elevator, I recognized the same people I saw earlier on the line for the tunnel.  They were easy to recognize because they had the same looks of boredom and impatience on their faces as they waited for the elevator.  We all lined up against the wall to wait, and almost immediately we sank to the floor in order to sit down.  Seconds later, another security guard walked by and not-so-politely informed us that, "You can't sit on the floor of the Capitol building."  Upon hearing that, everyone in our party channeled the spirit of John McEnroe as we collectively thought, "You cannot be serious."  The guard's seriousness was evidenced when he repeated his claim, and he watched us all groan as we stood up again.  D.C. is infamous for its humidity.  We had just walked around quite a lot to arrive at this point.  Before that, we did physical labor for a few hours to help people experiencing homelessness.  All I wanted at that moment was to get off my feet.  But no, we had to wait about half an hour until our tour guide finally decided that we should just walk back to the stairs rather than wait for this elevator any longer, and then we had to walk around the Capitol building and listen to his scripted little lessons until our tour was mercifully cut short by yet another security guard who reported that the building was closing.  I had a much better time at the CCNV, the Center for Creative Non-Violence, where we did most of our service during our stay.  One afternoon, as we sat around a large conference table after a long morning of moving lockers, painting them, and lots of weeding, we were introduced to a long-time employee there who wanted to speak with us.  He had no name, because he got rid of it.  He spoke so quickly that it is hard to recall his exact words, but I will paraphrase what he said on the subject of his name.  "People ask me, well how can you do that?  It's simple.  I gave it up.  You know why?  Because I'm insignificant."  He also told us, among other things, that he does not like titles, and therefore he is a janitor at CCNV, and he likes it that way.  He is a janitor with no name.  Yes, I thought of Scrubs, but only for a brief moment, because he captivated my attention.  I'll always remember him, even though he was insignificant.

From D.C., we traveled to Baltimore, where we only stayed for less than a day.  We were dropped off at the Inner Harbor, and many of us went to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe.  I ordered a burger called the Big Cheese.  The menu explains that the Big Cheese has three slices of cheese of your choice.  Upon ordering it, I asked our waiter, "What are my cheese choices?"  From the other end of the table, Allie laughed.  I guess I must order like a dum-dum as well.  I inhaled my burger once it arrived.  It was delicious.  Next door, I was delighted to find the largest Barnes & Noble I have ever laid eyes upon, four stories of books if I'm not mistaken.  We had a limited time, because we all had tickets to an Orioles game, but I insisted upon entering the bookstore, because I had a gift card with me.  I only had enough time to get to the second floor, but I spent my gift card and considerably more.  Then we traveled to the ballpark, where I spent most of my time reading Fitzgerald.  After that, we had a long bus trip back to Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, and again I spent that time reading Fitzgerald, thanks to my excellent keychain flashlight.  We spent another night on campus and then had a closing ceremony for the parents the next morning (not my parents, because I took the train with Emma and Alyssa again).  Once it was all over, I was reminded of my feelings at the end of Preview Day.  I felt that it was unfair that I should be expected to go home and wait there for about three weeks before I return.  After making so many new friends, my days at home do feel quite lonely.  But, of course, my Facebook activity is through the roof.  And besides, the wait for college isn't that much longer.  Until then, I suppose I'll relax and try to enjoy my recovery.  Every now and then I still get nightmares about finals at the old high school.  Maybe I need a new treatment.

End Post.