The Whole Harry Potter Thing

You would have to be living under a rock to not know that the final film installment of the Harry Potter series came out this weekend, and you can bet your bottom dollar that I braved the crowds to see it at midnight. I'm certainly not the most ravenous fan out there, but a life long fan just the same, and the end of the series symbolises many of the same things for me as it does for the characters. The end of an era, of childhood.

The first book came out when I was in the third grade. I remember it vividly because my teacher told my mother that I was not a strong enough reader to read the books which, of course, just made me want to read them more. The character's ages were close to mine, and in a weird way reading about their growth towards adult hood helped me in mine. I never had to fight the forces of evil, but I did have to deal with temptation, choices, responsibility, love, sacrifice, and friendship. I'm still dealing with them. I always will be.

And it's not just me. Such a huge percentage of my entire generation has felt what I have felt. It unifies all of us people around the world who don't know each other, but share a story. It’s not just the end of a movie. It’s the end of a relationship that started when I was in third grade and continued through film to my Junior year of college. It’s saying goodbye too the people who not only live in the book, but in myself - the ones who helped me learn how to grow up, that it's okay to be ordinary, or extra ordinary, or misunderstood. Above all, these people and books taught me that each of us is fighting through life in our own terrifying way. But some of us are fighting for something more that life.

Harry Potter was the first book that I took seriously, the first time I read past words and reached something else. That was the same year that I began to think about writing. In some strange, convoluted way, Harry Potter was the start of my adult life - my career, and the only thing that has consistently made me happy, content.

I guess I'm just trying to say, Thank you J.K. Rowling. Thank you for happening upon a pot of gold, and thank you for sharing it with me. With us.

Me at the midnight showing. If you can't see the shirt, I combined the deathly hallows with a lightning bolt. Yeah. Clever.

The Fourth. And Beyond.

Fourth of July has never been a big day in my family. The ritual to the 4th (it seems like all holidays have a level of ritualism to them) seems to be just as much concerned with laziness as anything else. Sleep in, have a late breakfast, walk down to the city street fair with Lisa - which involves the purchase of Guatemalan friendship bracelets and silly junk that only seems like a good idea before you've bought it, the eating of something either a)fried or b)ice cream and making a mess of eating it, and lastly, complaining about the heat. The rest of the afternoon is usually spent enjoying the Twilight Zone Marathon (which, to my dismay, was canceled last year. Still not sure if it will be back) either with Lisa or my sister. The fireworks are enjoyed casually and without pretense with the family. The event is always viewed with a certain level of nonsense - over exaggerating the "oohs" and "ahhs", and commenting on the often unpredictable fireworks show itself. Something technical always seems to go wrong.

Despite all of this, there is always a feeling of reverence lingering in the back of my mind. Whether it's a result of the day's significance, routine drilled into my head over 19 years, or just an excuse to not feel guilty for being lazy, is hard to say. But I'm not ignorant. I know that as I grow older, and move forward or sideways or whatever direction I'm going, holiday rituals like this begin to run out. I'll have to make my own days and my own rituals, and that's not at all exciting, but it does make this weekend all the more important.

Then again, each day has just as much potential to be as important as the day before it - holiday or not. Ever sense I was little, I've subconsciously done this thing on holidays, where I say to myself, "Wow, this is (Holiday). I've waited a whole year for it and now it's here". When really, I should be saying, "Wow, today has never happened before. I've been waiting my whole life for it, and now it's here".

Today is the 2nd of July, in my 19th year. It's the only one I'll ever get, and it's here.

Perception: Friend or Foe

It seems strange to me how differently two people can percieve and remeber the same experience. Psychology constantly begs the question, what matters more - our genetics our our environment? Just like all of these factors must be considered in psychology, I'm sure there is a myriad of things that affects our memories.

But lately, I've been thinking that our vices have just as much to do with it as our social or genetic factors. I've come to decide that everyone is insecure (not too big of a surprise there..) but also that everyone is vain. Don't we spend more time thinking about ourselfs and what others think about us than anything else? Why else would we think about what we wear, what we say, do. Why else would we strive to do well, or hate ourselves? Because at the heart of it all is self importance.

So, sometimes I wonder if people (consciously or not) actually remember the past as worse than it was because they need to believe that the present is better, that they have beat what held them back in the past.. And, hey, maybe it is and maybe they have. But the fact that we all need to find growth, improvement - instead of a plateau or stagnation, is incredibly self preserving. And self preservation is tied to our genes.

On the other side, isn't it possible to remember things better? To forget about the bad and romanticize the past? What's the first step that most people take when they encounter a problem? Pretend that it doesn't exist. Maybe it's to protect their sense of self, maybe it's because they don't want to believe that they could be anything less than happy, or maybe saying "that was me once. Wasn't I great?" is our own way of dealing with the problems of the present.

Either way, our memories can't be trusted.

Or, you know, I could just be makin' something outta nothin'. Wouldn't be the first time.

Then vs. Now

Lately I have been having this weird battle with nostalgia. Working with high school students, that phase of life is pretty much always sitting in the front of my consciousness. But the thing is, I never really associate their high school with my high school. Sure, I talk with them about my experiences, and there are tons of similarities, but high school isn't really real for me any more. It's like when I think about elementary school. When I think of it, I don't even really think about me. It's just some weird shadow that is only part me.

I was lucky to have a great high school experience, but I don't at all think of those years as the "peak" of my life. It's hard not to think back about a time when I had tons of friends and a social life, was really good at things and didn't have to work or stress about money. Now it's just the opposite, and after drifting so far away from the good things I had back then, I feel this weird unspoken drive to "win". To turn out better than the people I constantly wanted to be in high school, or at least equal. But usually, I only match them in words, not actions.

Guard contributes a lot to my perception of myself. Sure I make my money from teaching, and I will always love it, but I have also lived without guard in my life. It was so hard at first, but like anything else, I got used to it. Now, strangely, when I talk to or meet people who are still fully - even partially - apart of that world, I feel this strange sense of age. Even when these people are older than me, the fact that I have lived with out this thing that can't not consume your life makes me feel so, so - experienced, wise, old? - in comparison to them. It makes no sense, but it's proof that someone got my birthday wrong. I can't be just 19.

These thoughts all came to a head the other night, when the school I work for had a special performance, where all the girls did their own routine. Traditionally, the coaches preform too, but I didn't. a couple people came up to me, asking why and urging me to change my mind, but I just didn't want to. In high school, I would have been all for it. a year ago I would have been all for it. But now? Lately I've come to this weird acceptance that I am insignificant, and that everyone has their shot at that idealized, self centered high school experience that I had. I didn't do a routine, not because it would have been extra work, not because I was afraid to be embarrassed, but because I didn't need to. My time had come and gone, and it was my happy duty to step out of the way and let them have theirs. I felt this convoluted sense of contentment and happiness at this recognition. My only hope is that I can find it in everything. In my money stress, in my lack of social life, in the reluctant and willing choices I make.

The Problem

with the speed reading that is necessary to do when you're an English major, are the lyrical gems that often get disregarded, or blown right past. Like this one, from Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance:

"It is not, I apprehend, a healthy kind of mental occupation to devote ourselves too exclusively to the study of individual men and women. If the person under examination be one's self, the result is pretty certain to be diseased action of the heart, almost before we can snatch a second glance. Or if we take the freedom to put a friend under our microscope, we thereby insulate him from many of his true relations, magnify his peculiarities, inevitably tear him into parts, and of course patch him very clumsily together again. What wonder, then, should we be frightened by the aspect of a monster, which, after all,--though we can point to every feature of his deformity in the real personage,--may be said to have been created mainly by ourselves."

And to think that some people call reading a waste of time...

College

By the end of the month, I will have made my decision. By the end of the month, my college admission confirmation is due. I envy people who have no shame or doubt about moving into a new role in life, but now more than ever I find myself conflicted. Maybe it's the unfaltering concept of the unknown that holds me back; the absolute blindness of not knowing if or where I'll be happy, or how my units will transfer. Not knowing if I'll make friends, or be forgotten by my old ones, or be constantly homesick. Not knowing if I will thrive on my own and living off of top ramen, or be constantly working, or fall to the pressure and guilt of my job.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I don't know what it is that I'm looking for. One path tantalizes me with the possibility of restoring everything that I once loved about my life - all of those cold evenings that have been lumped together in my mind as one grand memory of what contentment felt like. That feeling has so long been forgotten, that I'm not even sure if I will recognize it again, or have the courage  to chase after it, or even want it at all.

Another path offers a new start, in a new place - where the potential for happiness is great, but the potential for catastrophe is greater.Would I even be able to pull off what I've so long been searching for? Will it be what I expected? Am I even capable of experiencing the all too romanticized college experience? Or would it change me, like so many others I used to know? Will the person I've fought to become and strive to be fall away? Am I strong enough?

The final path offers beauty, and freedom. But I know that it would also allow my tendency to turn inward to become all consuming. From that point, there is no turning back.

In my head, I keep playing back something an old teacher once said: once you go, there is no coming back. Nothing you can do will change that. It is mirrored with my own precaution. Two years are gone. You don't have time to not get it right.

Even as I write this, I can hear you scoffing. I really am envious of how easy it is for you. My mind is the best thing I've got, but it can sometimes be the worst.

I really can't be expected to focus on pilgrim lit. when I'm in this frame of mind.

I hate how

people are constantly offering to help me.

But even more, I hate it when they don't.

What Are They Seeing?

It never ceases to amaze me just how far off people's split second impressions are of me. I've recognized for a long time that I'm not particularly good at first impressions, but there is a difference between a "bad" impression, and a "totally off base" impression. What's even worse, is that a lot of times people let these ideas that they have about me prevent them from actually getting to know me.

One of these inaccuracies that people almost always have about me is that I'm shy. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the most confident person - but I am definitely not shy. I value words - they carry more power than a lot of people realize - and accordingly, I like to make sure that what I say actually matters. I may not always be "successful", but there is an obvious difference between myself, and a lot of other people I have known; the kind of people are constantly talking, and somehow say nothing.

Another thing about me that usually (and understandably) comes off as shy is the fact that I'm not very good at actually starting conversations. Obviously, if I'm around my family I don't have much of a problem saying something like, "You know those little loops on the back of tennis shoes", because they all ready know everything about me, and they're kind of stuck with me. But someone I've know for five minutes? A month? Not so much.

I don't know, maybe I'm rambling here.. People are constantly telling me that I'm a complex person - and I am. But a lot of the time they use that idea to turn me into some kind of puzzle they need to figure out. I may be puzzling, but I'm not a puzzle, and I definetly am not just here to amuse you.

It just seems like no one actually cares enough to try to know the real me.

Do You Ever

Do you ever see where you want to be -

and at the same time see it falling away from you?

Do you ever see what you want to keep-

and then see it passed along to some other anonymous?

Do you ever see who you are-

and see no one believing it?

I keep my hope on a shelf with the acid and the fear and all the little things that eat me up-

but I keep it.

At least I keep it.