Community Engagements Through the Arts: This I Believe essay #2

Saturday, January 19, 2019

This I Believe essay #2

Post your essay before class on Tuesday. Remember to bring a paper copy with you and be prepared to read it to the rest of us!

37 comments:

KurtJanuary 21, 2019 at 10:17 AM
I have never smoked a cigarette. I considered it once when I was 12, because I knew a burning cigarette was a handy thing with which to light firecrackers quickly. I considered it a second time two months ago, as a way to support a colleague who smokes to find peace. There are few socially acceptable things for men to do with one another as an expression of care when one of them is hurting.

Another colleague grew cactuses with beautiful blooms that smelled of rotting flesh. He would quit smoking at the start of every semester by replacing the habit with a new one: one year it was purchasing handmade carpets from Mexico off ebay, another it was eating nuts by the fistful from 10 pound bags, purchased in bulk to save money. One year he grew a wheelbarrow load of carrion cacti. These new vices would give way to pipe smoking by week two. The pipe seemed to fit his belief smoking is what professors did. He relaxed into the ritual, his collared shirt and leather vest completing the image he bore in mind. By week four he was hand-rolling cigarettes because he could smoke them more easily while building or firing a kiln. A few more weeks into the semester, he would find a local source for designer clove cigarettes. By the middle of the term, he was smoking cigarettes straight from the shelves of a nearby gas station. Soon he would be ripping the filters off in order to finish each cigarette more quickly to maximize its effect.

The two of them smoked together in their offices custom-outfitted with window fans for undetected indoor smoking even after the campus ban. I believe I will, one day, smoke a cigarette. I believe my health-conscious children will hate me for it, unless I use it as a cool way to light firecrackers. I believe I would hate myself if sharing a cigarette were my only way to connect with another person and my desire to heed a surgeon general’s warning stopped me from doing so.
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AnonymousJanuary 21, 2019 at 3:49 PM
The way you hide your laughter tells me that you think your laugh is ugly. Your eyes crinkle upwards at the same time your lips part, and dimples form on your cheeks before you can clamp a hand over your smiling mouth to repress that joyful noise, one that sometimes comes out as a squeak or a snort, or a squeaking snort. Your shoulders quake silently as your curl into yourself, eyes still smiling, minimizing as much sound as possible. You’ve been taught your whole life that you aren’t supposed to be here, but whoever taught you that lesson is dead wrong. The world would be awfully silent without you in it.

I try to make you laugh every time I’m around you. I’m not the sharpest person
around, but you seem to make clever witticisms come to mind quicker, and even when they don’t, you also appreciate my corny jokes. With each attempt to elicit a laugh, I watch your lips before your hand hides them away, eagerly waiting to hear that sign of your mirth, a crooked melody. I’d talk until my voice disappears if it meant I could hear you giggle. Not even fire whiskey could make my heart warm like your laugh does. You may think it’s ugly, but I believe in ugly laughter.
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AnonymousJanuary 21, 2019 at 7:50 PM
As soon as I get up in the mornings, no matter if I am in a rush, I grab it. It is the first thing on my mind when I wake up. I can’t start my day without it. I have to have it. I start every day laying there in a state of bliss after hitting it. After getting my rips in I am ready to start my day, and only after.
I drive to campus with it still on my mind. Looking forward to my next set of rips. I get into class and I can’t focus, I can not stop thinking about it. It possesses me. It drains my wallet, costing sixteen dollars every other day because I just can’t stop. I drive home twice in the middle of the day to get it, doesn’t matter what I am doing I have to have it. I have tried to stop, but I need it. It consumes me, rendering me useless without it. I don’t function properly anymore without it in my system. It is like the gas to a car. It is the gas, I am the car. In order to operate, I have to have it.
When I haven’t had it in a few hours I get panicky and really start to shut down, but that is when it feels the best. If I don’t get rips for multiple hours that is the toughest, but it is the most rewarding. I get dizzy. The dizziness takes me to a state of nirvana. I lay down and soak it all up. I can feel it moving through my body. The head rush that goes into full body tingles. For ten minutes I feel amazing when I hit it.
But then it starts again.
Loss of focus and the yearning for more. I can’t escape this. It is a vicious cycle that I brought myself into. I can’t complain because I did this to my self. It is affecting my life. My grades, my relationships, my well-being, and my wallet are all being impacted. Yet I can not stop. I told myself I would not get stuck on this, but that was out of my hands.
They said it was “cuul 2 Juul”. It is everywhere. All my friends do it, it’s all over my social media, it’s everywhere. I gave in. And now I can’t stop.
It is addictive.
I am addicted.
I believe in the power of addiction.
Hi, my name is Paige and I am addicted to the Juul.
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AnonymousJanuary 21, 2019 at 8:43 PM
It’s 15 degrees outside and yet I stand in the cold with no jacket. I snuck out of my room at home to catch a glimpse of the beautiful night sky. I don’t even feel the cold on my skin as I am so entranced by the blood red moon. It is a burning speck on the ceiling of the universe. Stars scatter the black void and the moon shines the brightest among them.

I am in awe of the beauty I am witnessing. The still, silent air around me is the perfect background for the sight before me. I could stare at this beautiful image forever. The snow on the ground around me is a reminder of how cold it is. With the frost settling on my skin, I sadly return to my room.

I lay in bed thinking about the special moment I just had. The universe is simply amazing. To witness a Super Blood wolf moon lunar eclipse is one thing I have wanted to see for a long time. I feel so lucky to have seen it where no light could pollute the night sky. I loved the soft silence that settled on the air. I have never felt more content with the world.

I believe in the power of the moon and the silent moments spent with yourself and the universe.
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AnonymousJanuary 21, 2019 at 9:47 PM
So many stories arrived at my young ears by way of wise mouths. A history. Oral. Stories of my family, and my hometown. Those ‘when I was your age I walked 6 miles each way to school every day’ kind of stories. Stories of youths long past. The passage of time, the stories of that time and the adventures of those people created the myths and legends of my childhood.

A formaldehyde-preserved pig in a grade book. A bullet to the middle finger. A haunted cabin with an even more haunted well. The trade of a new pair of shoes to a classmate, and the reprimand after. A tall Native American great, great grandmother with hands so large they would wrap around your face when she smacked your mouth for cussing.

Moving to a new house without running water, and a dead horse in the yard on move-in day. Graduating early to move to Chicago with a sibling only to be sent home because it was too much freedom too soon. A hit country song submitted to a song-writing contest never given recognition.

I believe in storytellers. I believe in myth-making. I believe in the history my family has given me by way of the stories they’ve shared. Stories about themselves, or family I never met or can hardly remember.

Oral traditions in history-sharing will never die. That makes me happy. Today, I am happy that my niece and nephew get to hear those same myths from the sources, and not only from my memories of those who came before. I believe in remembering those histories and myths. Each story a colorful block in the quilt of my family history, and of the world.
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Kremena TodorovaJanuary 21, 2019 at 10:00 PM
Kremena
January 20, 2019

For five years of my American life, I stopped going to Bulgaria. What broke my string of yearly returns was an encounter at the Sofia airport, a place Bulgarians visit only if they are traveling or accompanying close relatives who are traveling. On this occasion, my arrival at the departure gates elicited a vigorous greeting from an older woman I didn’t know. She introduced herself as Ivon’s mother. Ivon was of one of the two Bulgarians I had met in the Rust Belt city where I attended graduate school. Her husband’s name was Ivan. Ivon and Ivan cleaned houses in their pursuit of the American Dream. I took classes that exposed the dream as damaging propaganda. Ivon and I were too busy to become friends, each of us bent on excelling.

My surprise to see a stranger waiting for me turned into disbelief when she presented 2 bottles of home-made rakia, the Bulgarian version of Moonshine. The 2 bottles were for Ivon and Ivan; I was to take them in my suitcase. I tempered my shock and explained calmly that importing home-made liquor was a federal offense in the US, that my suitcase was already at the weight limit, that the glass bottles would easily shatter, soaking through the books I had packed. The alarmed look on the woman’s face revealed I was making no sense. She insisted I take the 2 bottles. I refused again. She turned to my mother and berated her for not making me take the rakia, known to warm one’s insides even on the coldest of winter nights.

In the end, I did not accept the rakia. I boarded my flight dismayed that my last Bulgarian hour was marred by a shouting match. My mother kept quiet, knowing she could not make either of us hear the other. While Ivon’s mother was acting on a traditional understanding that young people—especially women—had to comply with older folks’ wishes, I responded the American way, grounded in self-preservation and rational thought.

After that day, Ivon and Ivan never spoke to me again. I didn’t return to Bulgaria for five years. I congratulated myself on having escaped a place where young women were allowed no say. I continued to study the underbelly of the American Dream in pursuit of a PhD.

Years later, aided by social media, my voice spreads far. My American life wraps around me like an emergency blanket. And I wonder if Ivon and Ivan ever made enough money to bring their two girls from Bulgaria, if their girls grew up rational American women.

I believe no is the right answer to things that threaten my dignity. At times, it is freezing cold in the land of the dream.

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Marissa PriceJanuary 22, 2019 at 1:18 AM
At times when I get too overwhelmed with my work for other classes, I love being able to default to working on the art homework I have at the moment. When I took Sculpture last semester, if I found that I was anxious, or when I tried to work on an art history paper and all I did was stare at my laptop screen for ten minutes, I pulled on my coat, grabbed my things, and walked to Shearer. In addition to finding out that I love building physical, tangible art more than I thought I would, (for a few years, I’ve preferred digital,) I also found that there’s something very peaceful about working in the sculpture room. Although it’s sometimes chilly and the building creaks, I love the atmosphere it holds as a room designated for the creation of three-dimensional art. Drops of old paint stain a few of the seats, and I wonder how and when they got there. Sawdust gets tracked in from the woodworking room. The floor is spraypainted. Every room that’s been around awhile has a story, but for the sculpture room, it’s as though the room actually tells its story-- through the paint drips, the sawdust, the string lights, the things posted on the bulletin board.

Many of my friends have never stepped foot into the art building, or have only been once. While I spend a lot of time in the art building and the two DArt labs, most of them spend a lot of theirs in BSC. Some of them say the art building seems creepy. I disagree, (although the weird sounds are sometimes jarring.) I think it’s just quiet.

I sometimes left from working covered in bits of thread. Or sawdust. Or finely sifted, baked dirt.
This semester, I’m working with mostly digital art, and I find I miss building things with my hands, working in the studio late into the night.

I believe in the sculpture room.
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AnonymousJanuary 22, 2019 at 2:08 AM
I have been traveling since a young age and I never realized how much of a blessing it was until now. I have gone back and forth to Palestine, where my parents are from, and I even lived there for four years. While there, I was able to frequently visit Jerusalem and Bethlehem, cities which are historically significant to the Abrahamic religions. I have spent multiple summers exploring the bazaars, museums, and religious sites of Turkey and I have even toured inside the pyramids of Egypt. Niagara Falls was an unforgettable memory and the Red Sea which borders Jordan was amazing to explore.
When I was younger I just always thought of these trips as fun vacations with my family. While it was great to visit all these ‘places,’ I believe I have a deeper understanding of the human race through these experiences. I have seen so many people and have learned about the many differences in culture, race, religion, and tradition. However, I have also come to realize that while we are so different, we are also very much the same. Everywhere I go, I see parents who want to raise their children to be happy productive members of society. They perpetually guide them and rear them to be independent worldly citizens. Children are all about fun and play wherever you go. They don’t see color or hate.
Now, when I talk about my experiences I realize how blessed I am to have been exposed to different people of various cultures and religions. I also realize that I still have so many more people to meet and so many places to visit. I believe that if more people would travel, rather than having an ‘us versus them’ mentality, we would have more of a worldly view. I believe that with travel, we would be more accepting as human beings.
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EmilyJanuary 22, 2019 at 9:45 AM
I believe there is a secret force holding all of humanity together and that where it is missing, we fall apart. Somehow there can simultaneously be no one picture of it, yet millions of pictures of it: amorphous and incomprehensible but still instantly recognizable.

This secret force is the feeling when that one person tells me I made them smile, and I know that, without a shadow of a doubt, in at least this one moment I’m doing what I exist to do; my reason to be.
It’s when I meet someone after two decades of life, and the preceding years before them feels like a distant past life. Our souls take a breath and wipe away the sweat, able to rest because they finally found one another.
It lives in between my white sheets and down comforter, but also between someone else’s dinosaur-print sheets or on a navy futon in a dorm room or a mattress sans bed frame.
It feeds itself off lingering moments on front porches and hugs that go a little tighter and longer at hellos and goodbyes.
It’s in the silence after he said, “Don’t hate me, but I think I’m in love with you.”
It exhumes itself when an offhand encouraging word melts my melancholy like the sun melted the snow this morning.
It marches and chants alongside those willing and able to stand up for those who cannot.
It burrows into the darkest pits of depression, because there’s no way I’m letting my friends live in that pit without knowing I’m there for them and with them.

And most importantly, it never gives up. It never loses sight of the end game, because the end game is simply to exist.

I guess some people call it love, but I say it more like mom’s hug when I leave home or my best friend's laugh or the Women’s March or standing up to my racist uncle or hours long phone calls or forehead kisses. Et cetera.
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AnonymousJanuary 22, 2019 at 12:05 PM
A girl whose father was absent in her life obviously lived with her mom. She was only 11 at the time, all of her friends had a Facebook and she wanted one. Her mom disapproved of one but she made it anyway.
She had also just realized her sexuality or at least half of it and she wanted to share with her friends on Facebook. Her dad calls her mom a few days after but she didn’t know until her mom yelled for her to come in the room. She says her dad thinks he had found a Facebook page of her... and it states that she was gay. Her mom yelled at her because if it turned out to be her, she wasn’t supposed to have an account anyway and if she was gay? Her mother threatened to send her to The Ridge, put her up to foster care because being gay is unacceptable. Her mom asks her, “Is it you?” and she froze up. Before she could say anything, her mom told her to get out she’s waiting for her dad to call her back to see if it was her. She goes back to her room crying and scared because it could in fact be her, that describes her most recent Facebook post. A few minutes later, her mom gets another call and it turns out it wasn’t even her.
Several years later, the same girl comes to full terms with her sexuality. She makes friends that are apart of the same community and celebrates the Fourth of July with them. Her mom finds out, comes to pick her up and isn’t upset about the fact she lied about where she was at, she was upset that the crowd was gay. She starts yelling as soon as her daughter gets in the car and asks, “Why do you want to hang around those type of people if that isn’t your lifestyle? Is that your lifestyle?”. She only gives the quiet, crying girl about two seconds to answer. Her mom asks again, “Why do you want to hang around them?” the girl simply replies that they are her friends. The mother keeps yelling, calling them “those type of people”. The daughter angrily states that they are just people not anything out of the ordinary and the mom seriously asks, “What do you mean they’re people?”. The girl can’t stop crying because if her mother doesn’t accept them, she will never accept her.
I believe in disdain. The feeling that someone or something is unworthy of one’s consideration or respect. Intentionally or unconsciously.
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AnonymousJanuary 22, 2019 at 1:39 PM
I believe in Wine Wednesday…
I won’t share when I experienced my first Wine Wednesday but I will tell you that it occurred on fourth side in Forrer Hall and quickly became a tradition. I experienced it with three other girls; girls that I am still friends with today. While this group has grown over the years this first year holds a special place in my heart. I discovered things about myself and the world. I learned that I only like moscato and red wine is gross. I learned that I am not alone in my fear of being alone. I learned to be accepting of other peoples political affiliation even though I didn’t believe in them. I learned that people at their core are good and want to be good. I learned all these things from one bottle of wine, two hours, three girls, and numerous Wednesdays throughout the year.
According to research done by a wine bottler company in Australia, Wednesday nights are when most people are drinking wine because it is the midpoint of the week and it’s when most feel comfortable unwinding. Urban dictionary defines Wine Wednesday as an excuse to drink too much wine on a Wednesday and Instagram it without feeling like an alcoholic. Some restaurants have specials for wine Wednesday. Some people have come to the conclusion that thirsty Thursday is better. In my own opinion it is much more than that. It is more intimate than the loud sounds of the bars. It is more than an opportunity to get drunk. It is a chance to bond and catch up with my friends. A place to discuss issues in my life and in the world. It is a few hours where my responsibilities fades a way. I believe in Wine Wednesday and its healing powers.
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AnonymousJanuary 22, 2019 at 1:47 PM
Every time I try to write a ‘This I Believe’ essay, I start by trying to write about my past romantic endeavors. I always think it will be therapeutic and a way for me to get over a feeling or analyze a feeling or to just try and unstick the gloppy, unclear thoughts that occupy my mind. However, I am never able to put into words how one single person made me feel.

I wish I could convey to you how I felt when he played me my favorite song on the piano. Or when he told me he loved me without realizing he did so. Or when he said I wasn’t like most people he knew. Or when he knew exactly what he wanted--me. Or when I questioned him on his deeply rooted political beliefs. Or when we sat and talked for hours outside because he knew I preferred the sun over a lamp-lit room. Or when he bought me my favorite flavor chapstick. Or when he gave me a white rose every month. Or when he played, “Sweet Caroline” in the car and we sang together. Or when he never made things ‘official’ (whatever that means). Or when he called me beautiful and irreplaceable. Or when our love vanished before my eyes. Or when my eyes were soaked with sadness. I wish I could explain how these moments made me feel, but I just can’t.

There’s something about rewinding memories in my mind that is just so destructive and cruel. To be forced to abandon the emotions I once felt only to have them on constant replay in my mind to go through heartbreak all over again. I have a hunch as to why I can’t share how I felt in these moments with you though; maybe whatever I felt was only supposed to be felt in those moments. Maybe moments are meant to be fleeting. The quicker they subside or are destroyed, the more it seems I feel that emotion, only a bit more heightened. The feeling of love or pain are only heightened when they disappear or they bring along a new kind of emotion like reminiscence or appreciation for a lesson learned.

So, I guess what I mean by typing this weird, conglomeration of memories and my explanation as to why emotions, contrary to memories, aren’t meant to be dug up is to say they’re sacred and belong to your past self. Emotions in specific moments are temporary. I believe memories can be destructive. I believe emotions are destructive. I believe both are crucial to truly love anything or anyone. I do not believe I can do my past feelings justice simply by writing about them, but maybe I can do them justice by trying to feel them once more in a new way. I believe in resilience of the heart.
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KurtJanuary 22, 2019 at 3:17 PM
Your second paragraph (and it's string of "Or when..." sentences may do very much what you wish you could do: convey past emotions in a way that can be felt by a reader in the present. As I was reading that paragraph, I did not anticipate the dark ending within it. It arrived suddenly and made itself known.

Also, I love the idea you have implied that our emotions from the past are the property of our past self, that our past self is different and in some ways unreachable by our present.
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AnonymousJanuary 29, 2019 at 11:12 AM
I believe that when we die, we cease to exist.

The soul is real – the body is real – heaven and hell are fake. Reincarnation is a pleasant fantasy. The one known consequence of being alive is that when our life ends, our consciousness and presence cease. Our being and perception of others’ being go away. There is no avoiding this, and science will never cure it.

Nietzsche said in Zarathustra that it was strange that as yet, death is no celebration. That makes sense and doesn’t. I am not sure what regret is, exactly, but I know that I feel it because my grandmother died. I feel it because there were times in her life, while both of us were alive, that I wish I had been better to her, more open, more solicitous of stories and old, old truths found in washbins in the yard, from her childhood, before electricity came through with the TVA when she was thirteen; I wish I had asked about why she liked art so much, about why cards were always worth playing, about eating. She loved art and cards and eating. It seems that maybe those are profound and mysterious acts.

There is no way for me to find out what my grandmother would have thought if she found out I am not her grandson, but her granddaughter. She didn’t know that. It was kept a secret from her for six years after I came out, not just by my parents but by my brother, by my cousins. By me. A few months before she died, she was still writing checks to a dead person. She couldn’t understand why I wasn’t cashing them, and wrote that she wondered if it wasn’t enough money.

My mamaw didn’t really care for animals, but she loved to grow her own vegetables. Her garden was huge, her yard artificially terraced to reduce erosion. Was there a truth in the vegetables that animals couldn’t give? Was there a smell in the earth that drew her to it, a secret smell that one can notice consciously only if you have turned the earth day after day, year after year? Did she love cards because she loved people, or because she loved defeating people?

I am celebrating Mamaw because I am thinking about her now more than ever, because she has died. But I believe that whatever she didn’t find time to tell my dad or my mother whatever I squandered by allowing her to die without even knowing my name, is gone.
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Community Engagements Through the Arts

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Saturday, January 19, 2019

This I Believe essay #2

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