Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Exultant
Pronunciation Key (g-zltnt) adj.
Marked by great joy or jubilation; triumphant.
Have you ever found yourself going through your day and realizing that you are happy. Right now I am. I don't know what is filling me with joy, but I know that I can not stop smiling. I am happy, joyous, elated, exultant,delighted, ecstatic, exulting, transported, flushed, flying, gleeful, high, and jubilant. I had a simple day. I woke early and went and had coffee with a friend who is moving out of town. I then came home and took a walk through the park with two of my housemates. The majority of the afternoon was spent putting my PCT photos on my web page. Now I am just relaxing. And I am happy. Its a good feeling, I could get addicted to this. When have my spirits been this high without prompting from an uplifting experience, I know not. But may this warmth never end. It will, but I don't care...because right now I am happy, and I am making Mac and Cheese...mmmm Must go tend to the stove....
Monday, November 28, 2005
Quandary
Pronunciation: 'kwän-d(&-)rE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -ries
Etymology: origin unknown : a state of perplexity or doubt
Today I was offered a job at an Architecture firm. I will take the job, because it is quasi-required for me to take the job. I will make good money, relatively...$15/hr. Here is the problem. I want to return to ODS in the spring, and if I have the money I want to return to the PCT over summer. Now then, I am left with the dilemma of taking a job that I want only to turn around in four months and say that I am leaving. Why? Well I would want to leave to return to ODS. I have found a home at ODS and I like it enough to return another time...maybe two times or even three times. In time I will have to inform my boss that I am leaving to go do what I am passionate about. Why am I not as passionate about Architecture, then this would not be a problem? Any tips on how to work a serious job for four months and then leave to go back to what I consider "reality?"
Sunday, November 27, 2005
POEM: Invisible People
Invisible People
The bag lady reading "Better Homes & Gardens"
The Jazz Singer sharing how he hurts tonight
How he'll be better come the first
Always waiting for the first
Invisible People
Always jonesin' for their next fix
Be it a dollar, a beer, or a hit
The limping man
With less than a cane
The bicyclist salesman
With a new bike every day
They stand on the corner
Invisible People
You got any smokes
Any Money
Just enough for the bus
Enough to get a hostile room tonight
Invisible People
Visible Everywhere
HAIKUS: Belly Button Lint
Wool knit with cotton fibers
Blanket for an ant
Belly Button Lint
More than often blue and gray
Grow me a t-shirt
Belly Button Lint
Hot Morning showers transform
Your fuzz to pudding
Belly Button Lint
Square and circle define where
Vitruvian Man
HAIKUS: Toe Jam Frenzy
How does your morning fuzz ball
Ruin cuddle time?
Glorious Toe Jam
Your Disgusting funk down there
Is fun to pick at
Glorious Toe Jam
Comes from sweat and dirty socks
You're odorific
Glorious Toe Jam
Like dust bunnies under beds
collected from floors.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
DREAM: Dying in Dreams
Monday, November 21, 2005
POEM: Love Love
I love camping
I love fish and chips
The sound of babies laughter
I love the sun light on my face
The moonlight on my back
Climbing over mountain boulders
I love to see kids holding hands with moms
And resting on fathers shoulders
I love the sound of clicking shoes on hardwood floors
And singing songs that haven't been sung
I love double decker p.b. & j's
Rivaled only by the double decker oreo
I love to wake up before the alarm
I love to step on beached seashells
Hearing the crack, a sharp contrast to the constant that is the ocean
I love to compliment
I love to laugh alone
I love curves; be they on women, or grades, or in bell's statistics
I love numbers, saying perpendicular, and formulaic
I love finding cream treats in my donuts, especially if they come from bavaria.
I love love
I love puppets when they dance with their long hair
I love to hear my father wistle.
I love the way the baseball sounds when it is caught in a leather mit.
I love the sound of laughter in the Aparment below me, above me, around me.
I love the sounds of water lapping against a docked boat.
I love watching cattails sway in the wind.
I love the smell of fruit in the morning.
I love music played loudly while I clean house
I love music that cleans the house of myself
I love poems that ring true for everyone
and love that lasts through duldrums
I love sharing with others all that is, was, and will be
I love playing hopscotch when I pass some childs chalk doodles
I love turning around and doing it again
Or running down the street with my arms open to the wind
chasing birds as they meander through the streets looking for scraps of food
I love emotions that hit me like a brick
For it is then that I feel most alive
I love sadness, because it reminds me of the joy that once was, and will come again
I love that yesterday and tomorrow play leapfrog while I am trapped in today.
I love life because without life, love would not be,
and without love, life would not be.Tuesday, November 8, 2005
ODS: A Drug for the soul (3rd Reflection)
Not only this, but also the creek serves me with a metaphor for the progression of my experience at Outdoor School, particularly as I worked with my staff. When I first came to Milk Creek, new to the Multnomah Outdoor School Program, Nate Creek was running low. I looked down at the creek as saw a split creek. On the far side, the water flowed, the near side the water was stagnant. It held unmoving silt clouding the water. The distant side was like that of the returning staff members to Milk Creek. They moved along, aware of how the program works. The new staff members seemed to be fogged over with a wealth of knowledge that was being delivered to them early on. We were still the same creek, but there was a split in the way that we worked. As the winter season neared, we received some rain. This caused the creek to start flowing in a unified sense. This occurred around week 4 of the session. There was still cloudy areas, but for the most part the stream was no longer split into two distinct entities. The team of Program Leaders also meshed around week 4. We started to have a stronger vision of how we were working together. The creek still held foggy areas, as did the way that the six of us worked together. Week 5 was similar, but week 6 held dramatic changes. With the demands of a Halloween, the week was madness. Our first day of field study had torrential downpour. In fact a new record was set for the amount of rainfall on that particular day.
I wandered down to Nate Creek, and saw it gushing down the gully, tearing away at the earth. Frantically assembling a haunted house among other festive delights for all hallows eve, the staff worked together to pull off an amazing experience for the 6th graders. We moved quickly like Nate Creek. Toward the end of the week the stream had cleared. It was flowing quickly, but was clear. Our staff had successfully pulled off one of the best Halloweens that these 6th graders will probably ever experience. We worked well together, much like a consistent flow in the stream. Now all the silt that was gathered on site from Nate Creek and Milk Creek has flowed downstream, off site. In metaphor, I see this as symbolic of how the Outdoor School Experience has effected us and we will take something from site, carry it out of site, and effect something further down the line.
**** An Email from a student leader “I agree with you completely. Right now I’m sitting here in a hotel room in Baltimore, Maryland visiting colleges. Picture me trying to explain ODS to a pearl-and-tweed-suit-clad admissions officer in five minutes in an interview. ODS has been one of the best things I’ve ever done in my short life, but I know that as I get older it will continue being important. I’ve grown up a whole lot since I was a sophomore in this program. It’s unsettling, watching yourself grow up like that in front of your own eyes. “Yesterday I read an entry that I wrote in my journal a couple weeks before I came out for my week this fall. I was talking about ODS, and how apprehensive I was to come out and open up again. Because it’s painful when, again, it ends. It’s scary how numb we all become to real life sometimes. Maybe it’s because I’m at a stage where I’ve grown out of what I have to do everyday (high school), but I’m not quite at what my next stage will be (college). But I don’t know. It’s risky, though, to go out there and just have to deal directly with yourself for once. I finally feel validated, useful, just like you said. It feels good to be with people who acknowledge and complement each other. I always have such a horrible time adjusting back to real life. Going to school on Monday morning is okay, because I get to see my friends and teachers, and everybody asks me how things went. But then there’s Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday and I still think about all of you 100x a day, but I can’t keep talking about it. Nobody cares. I don’t blame them. They weren’t there with me. That’s sad too. Little by little I forget about what it was like too. I hate that. “I hardly ever cry. But god, every time final campfire just gets me. Usually I try to stop it though. I didn’t really this time. It just felt so good. It feels good to cry about something good once in a while. Stop being numb. Just let yourself feel something for once. I think it’s a tendency to treat crying as a symptom of a problem that needs to be solved. We hardly ever treat crying as a solution to the problem. I walked my girls back in the dark and sat on my bunk and just sort of cried while they got their teeth brushed and got tucked in their sleeping bags waiting for a goodnight. It felt wonderful. And then it stopped as quickly as it started and I was laughing and partying and eating cookies. That’s the way it should be. That night I got out a piece of lined paper at 1am and wrote ‘I don’t ever want to forget this feeling. I don’t ever want to forget those words that my ears heard tonight. Somewhere in the really near future these words are going to be so necessary.’ That’s the truth.” **** I sent her my journal entries on my experience at ODS, and this was the thoughtful response she gave me. Around week 4, I had figured the job out fairly well. I was in the groove of understanding how to do my tasks in an efficient manner. I soon realized that many of my returning student leaders also knew their responsibilities. Taking time to teach them how to do their job seemed almost a waste of their time as well as mine. I started to take time to get to know the students as people, as opposed to student leaders. By week five and six I spent most my time trying to impart upon my student leaders something they could take out of Outdoor School with them. Like the silt in the creek floating downstream, I wanted to give them some words of wisdom. I still taught the high schoolers how to teach 6th graders about erosion, weathering, etc. but I tried to also give them something that would help them grow outside of ODS. I am, by no means, filled with infinite wisdom. I learned a great deal about communication while I was at ODS. A coworker taught me to work at understanding the difference between being self-critical and self-aware. I tried passing on this and other things that I learned in the last year of my life. I think that this had impact on some people, because in my final week, I started receiving some letters from past student leaders. Letters of thanks. I was looking at a internet forum for ODS student leaders, and saw my name mentioned a few times. I took the time to have a “Magical Mystery ‘Moose’ Moment” with some of my student leaders. During this I shared a quote, a story, or a poem that has impacted me. Some of the student leaders took what I said to heart and wrote back thanking me for the advice. I even saw applied advice a couple weeks later, which showed me that the SLs were listening to what I had to say.
**** The final week of ODS was madness. We had torrential rain. We had halloween to set up for. We had to take down all the gear and store it for the winter. But our team of SLs, PLs, and FIs cruised through these responsibilities nearly flawlessly. For Halloween I shared “Scary Stories” with the sixth graders. I recited “The Cremation of Sam McGee” by Robert W. Service as a preliminary story. Then I took cues from the sixth graders to create a second “true” story of the missing bride of Camp Adams. My story developed with each group, and by the final group I had a crisp story. Sadly, I did scare a few sixth graders too much. This however gave me the opportunity to talk with the scared ones later, telling them the story isn’t true. It became a secret that I shared with them, telling them to keep the story “alive” for the other students. By the end of the week, there was a few sixth graders who came to me and thanked me for sharing a secret with them. They were able to listen to their scared classmates, yet feel secure in knowing the truth.
**** At the end of the week, one sixth grader came up to me and thanked me. She received all the beeds, a rare honor. I think around 200 sixth graders have received all beeds in the 40,000+ students under Cherokees as Site Supervisor. This young girl and I had a similar sense of humor. We sat at a table together once for lunch and without talking, just started staring up at the ceiling to see how many people we could get looking up. Soon our whole table was staring at the ceiling, she looked over at me and smiled…mission accomplished.
**** Its the small stories, the tiny connections, the simple day-to-day experiences that you get to share with people that make the experience at ODS so wonderful. I can not explain it, but those there understand what makes ODS a drug for the soul.
Happy Trails, Inner Peace, & Harmony