Maybe its the espresso talking

What is it about coffee shops in America that inspire people? They are a catalyst to novels, artwork, girlfriends catching up, studying, whatever you want to do- American coffee shops all do their best to advertise that they are the homiest place to do this. I wonder in particular though, what is inspiring about a small tiled room with people entering and exiting frequently, noise levels fluctuating, and indie music being played at a level that is impossible to ignore? What is it about these features that draw people in- regardless of their age or hobby- to sit, drink, and be inspired?

By many standards, coffee shops- especially chains- should be the opposite of inspirational. They’re all the same, after all, and inspiration should be something unique to you that speaks to you alone. We seem to have developed a conglomerate muse. If there is a finite amount of creativity in the world, we’re all screwed. I tend to believe, however, that as we have an infinite Creator, we have been granted limitless creativity- a gift or a curse, depending on how you use it.

That’s what I find is the most amazing piece of this whole puzzle I’m pondering- there is a set structure of coffee shops, they all follow similar patterns, have similar atmospheres, have outrageous prices- yet they all feed us new ideas on a regular basis. Something infinite from something finite.

Anyway, I need to get back to my coffee.

Updates

I don’t remember the last time I updated, but I remember this: I have changed since I last stared at this screen. I have been unable to share my thoughts- or even decipher them for myself in the past few months. Every time I open my blog to write something, I decide that I don’t have the words to share my idea properly. I don’t deserve the title as a “writer” or a “blogger” at this point in my life; I am in a place I never imagined myself to be. I’m not writing. It’s depressing.

I would like you to know, Internet, that since we last met I have graduated nursing school near the top of my class and come to the realization that I’m not going to get the job that I want. No psychiatric floors are hiring in my area, and I can’t exactly pick up and move because husband dearest has a job here. In this economy, I’m not giving up any guarantees for possibilities. Instead, I will sit on my hard-earned science degree and continue to serve chicken sandwiches to ungrateful human beings.

a vacation from the… wait

I’m on vacation right now on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina, and have been constantly amused at the life down here. There are of course, the natives to the land, living in million dollar homes while driving Escalades, BMWs, and Mercedes (the really unfortunate part to all this is that even though they have really nice cars, they still can’t park them). Living here they have all the necessities– Wal-mart, multiple grocery stores, a mall, and two Starbucks.

As for those vacationing, I am completely at a lost: what about coming here is a vacation? The non-stop flow of traffic and five minute lights? The sandy beaches, which are incredibly crowded and smell worse than any ocean I’ve encountered? The pool at every resort? The fact that it’s not your Wal-mart here, it’s just Hilton Head’s Wal-mart? Or could it… dare I say it…. be because it’s cool or trendy to be here?

This is not a vacation from life, I’m sorry to say. This is simply life uprooted and replanted. Vacation is getting away from the stresses of everyday like– like going to some small beach off the coast of New England that isn’t very well known or populated so that you can really get away from it all. Where you don’t have to wear your Jimmy Choos or carry around your Louis Vuitton because nobody cares!

While I do suppose that coming to HHI does, by all definitions, fulfill the definition of a vacation, I still don’t understand why people do it. Why do people care so much about doing the “trendy” thing and looking like they’re spending money? You look good to the wrong kind of people and, hey, you just spent a couple G’s on what is essentially a normal week of life for you.

Getting better

Working on a psychiatric ward has quite possibly been one of the worst and best experiences of my life. It’s a constant pick-me-up, because I always realize that I would be doing way worse; it is a constant bring-me-down because it consists of a couple dozen people who are doing way worse. Sometimes, I come home and sit down on the edge of my bed, just to stare at the wall in front of me while I try to process how humanity functions on a day-to-day basis. The things people do to each other, or to themselves, are so horrendous at times. Polypharmacologic overdoses, superficial wounds, physical arguments, child abandonments– it is devastating.

(Going from a psych ward to working in fast food was also a horrible experience. You think your life is difficult because you’re seventeen and your parents won’t let you stay out past eleven? Try being fifteen and having your best friend commit suicide, and you can’t go to the funeral because your mother tells you “people die. Get over it and go to school” then hitting you and sending you on your way. Try being with a man for eight years, being his wife, raising two children together… and having him sleep with another woman in your bed while you’re still in the hospital with his second son).

This has brought my life into perspective in two ways: one, as I’ve mentioned, it has made me appreciate where I am in life so much more than I ever could have. Two, it has made me more skeptical of people, in a good way. Well, to the drama queens, in a bad way, because I don’t really care if you don’t want to work drive-thru window because it’s cold outside. You can suck it up. You’re not spending the night in the hospital because living on the streets has made your psychosis so bad that you tried to kill yourself by swallowing broken glass. It’s made me appreciate little things more, like how much of a step it can be for some people to make eye contact, to smile, or to accept human touch.

Today, I was overjoyed because one of my patients ate a snack bag of pretzels. Do you have any idea how pathetic that is? ‘Cause it is… but at the same time, it was a monumental moment where she started eating again. Maybe she’s not ready to be discharged, and maybe you don’t care that some girl ate a few ounces of a pretzels, but it means a lot to me, and her, because it means she’s ready to start trying to get better.

Some people like to be around children because of their innocence and the way the offer an untainted view of the world. I like to be with broken adults, because they offer a tainted view of the world, and I get to help bring them back to that childlike place. Children grow up to become adults, it is inevitable– they will become tainted by the world they live in. We just have to wait and see what taints them first. I get the really tainted ones– the ones who may not even want to live anymore. I get to work with them, convincing them that life is worth living, that they can see the world again in a wonderful way, that they can find their strengths and enhance their quality of life.

I get to help patients learn to find God, love themselves, get a job, or even just talk to someone else. It’s little steps, sometimes painfully little, but it’s a step nonetheless. Some patients are eternally frustrating because they are frequent flyers and I will probably see them a few times a year until the day they die, but still, I can know with peace that for those days that I see them, I can show them Jesus in those moments that I am with them.

People ask me Isn’t it so depressing working with all those people? and I can honestly tell them– No, I would find it depressing working with children, knowing what they have coming. These people? This job? This is helping people get better, to me, this is making my difference in the world– I help people eat pretzels and change their lives.

A note on music

Have you ever noticed at a wedding that as people take their seats, they chat casually and say many hello’s, but the moment the music starts they shut up abruptly and wait eagerly (and some not so eagerly…)? It’s interesting particularly because nothing happens for the first few moments music plays, it is essentially, just music, something that typically fills the background of our lives as it is. So why do we shut up for this music?

I understand hushing when we see the bridesmaids gather, or the flower girl drop petals, and obviously when the bride appears. But why do we silence ourselves the moment the music starts? It is a phenomena, really.

I propose, perhaps, that it is the same phenomena that affects us when we hear the string instruments wailing and sawing in a horror film and we know something terrible is about to happen– or rather, something big is about to take place. Something that will forever alter the direction of this story we are sitting in front of.

When the music starts at a wedding, we are silenced, suddenly filled with feeling because we know that this marriage is about to take place. The bride didn’t run away, the groom didn’t sleep with the maid of honor, and the families are at the very least trying to get alone. All systems go, these two people are getting married. We know this because the music started; someone gave the cue. Someone took a deep breath, looked at someone else, and said let’s do this, here we go. I’m getting married now.

On my own wedding day, waiting to walk out was the most tense moment of my life. Not because I had doubts of any sort and not because I had a bad feeling, but because I wanted that music to start so badly. I wanted to walk out there. I wanted to prove that I was about to commit my life to another human being, vow to be by his side no matter what we face together on this earth.

It’s not just the audience, I discovered, who is captivated by the sudden introduction of song. I realized this, on the day of my wedding, waiting for the piano to pick up sound. Here was my last option to leave, here I was about to go up the stairs to say I do. When the music began, I suddenly calmed. My jitters left and I began breathing at a normal rate again. I smiled to myself in realization of why this phenomena occurs… We all know this, whether we realize it or not, and respond accordingly:

There is always time before the music.

An opportunity for change, growth, regression– all of these are options before those notes strike. But the moment one is played, we see a future set in stone, whether that be terrifying or exciting.

I don’t have any brilliant insight or thoughts on this, and the depth of my point remains fairly shallow. I just urge to keep in mind before you rush to hit play that there really is always time before the music.

Generations

Hello. world.

I am part of a generation. I am part of a new movement, a new history, and a group of individuals so big that I will never know all of them. We are Asian, Indian, European, American– We are in our twenties right now, and are in the prime of our lives. Soon, if not presently, we will be taking care of the generation after us, nurturing them as they learn to thrive on their own. Some day, we will be the ones to give them advice and wisdom because we have been through so much life that it’s time to start sharing it.

For now, where are we?

Some of us are new-age hippies, with love as our movement. We thrift instead of shop, we talk instead of speak, we grow instead of cutting, we love instead of fighting, we abstain from mainstream and protest government and want equality for all. We are the incarnation of our parents forty years ago, with their long hair and peace signs in the 70′s.

This, I believe, is the major movement of my generation, and how most of us will remember our youth. Playing acoustic guitar, listening to unsigned bands that don’t understand music theory, conserving water, preaching love and equality, and being educated through public education.

I am part of this generation, that is a choice I cannot avoid, but I am not part of this movement.

I had to the opportunity to forgo public education. I took it. I am free to think and act and feel as I want, I do love people around me and I do listen to Regina Spektor… but I was not educated through government schools. I was taught through a combination of correspondence schools throughout the states, my parents, nonfiction novels, experience, various short-term teachers, and any type of self-directed education I searched for.

I grew up apart from my own generation, only to join it as I started college. Here, I was suddenly introduced to the idea of classes and politics and teachers. Prior to this, it had been textbooks, the president, and mom or myself. I saw fire in eyes as politics were debated, students against teachers, and really long, boring lectures that go over unimportant details. Since this time, I’ve attained huge amounts of knowledge. About 10% of it has been from teachers. The other 90%? Classmates, textbooks, experiences, debates, testimonies, the internet.

One thing though, throughout all of this education, has stuck, and continues to be a thorn in my side: my generation. Forced through schools, hundreds of pupils sharing the same teacher, learning from the same view points. What good does that do? Isn’t learning about learning facts and learning how to form opinions about such facts– independent of anyone else? Isn’t it about what is right. what is proven, and what is true? What is truth, if we choose to ignore it? Why learn at all if this is what we are to be taught? My generation does not take advice from our predecessors, does not search for truth independently, and only stands up for that feels right. Not always what is right.

My generation is about love. Love as a movement, love as a feeling. Dear brothers and sisters, love is not a feeling. Love is a movement: it is decision followed by an action, through pain and suffering, with dedication, sincerity, and sacrifice. My fellow generation, how can we love whole-heartedly if we do not commit ourselves to educating ourselves on the people and world around us? How can we learn to best benefit each other, not with quick fixes to acute problems, but with changes to prevent a more chronic condition? When will we learn that taking people and things at face value is not the loving approach? That operating out of feelings is dangerous behavior?

Dearest, I encourage you, whole-heartedly, to take not my own words or someone else’s, but to find words of your own. To search through words of people from every side: right, left, and in between. To listen to the scientists, the economists, the sociologists, and the researchers. Listen to other generations. Listen to the rich. Listen to the poor. Listen to everyone, but take no one to heart. Figure it out for yourself, but please, know enough to figure it out. Don’t listen to the media, don’t listen to the politicians promising, don’t listen to anyone at face value.

Be part of a generation that loves not only ourselves, but generations to come.

Back when you had to get up to change the TV channel…

Who here remembers the 2001 VMAs? Anyone? Okay– Britney Spears on stage with a snake. Remember now? It made all kinds of headline news as a “shocking” performance, suggesting a whole new level of skankiness allowed on TV.

I wish we could go back to such innnocent days.

Not to sound like my mother or anything, but what the heck is with kids these days? Back when I was a kid, this is how things went: we had our staple boy bands (Nsync, BSB, etc) and female vocals (Britney, Christina, etc) and then a bunch of fluff all around them (98 degrees, Jessica Simpson– big deals, but not in comparison to those formally named). Nowadays, there are no staples that remain in the public eye constantly– everyone is famous now. No one quite to the extent of those famous in the early 2000′s, but they are famous nonetheless. Apparently there’s only so much fame in the world, and it’s being socialized across the music industry right now instead of a few individuals having a monopoly on attention.

Back then, people like Britney Spears would do things like show up on stage with a snake around her neck to see how far she could go to push the envalope and still be accepted (apparently getting married and divorced twice, being an insane mother, going crazy, and shaving your head is generally when people stop accepting you).

It’s a whole new ball game now. If you don’t push the envalope, no one knows who you are. We have created a society where media doesn’t care about you unless you’re writhing around the VMA stage with fake blood draining all over your almost naked body. Speaking of, anyone see Lady GaGa’s performance?! What the hell?

It doesn’t matter that her songs are completely void of meaning or genuine vocals, it doesn’t matter that she doesn’t write her own music, it doesn’t matter that she has a lifestyle your mother would be ashamed to know about– she is willing to do W H A T E V E R  I T  T A K E S to be famous. Which is why she hasn’t worn a pair of pants in twelve months. Which is why she openly tells the media that to keep herself satisfied, she sleeps with her band members whenever she wants. Which is why you should not be shocked that your seven year old daughter tries to go to school in a bikini and doesn’t understand why it’s not acceptable– “but that beautiful singer on TV does!”

Good job, America. Let’s keep up the awesome role-modeling!

Let me explain why your soup tastes like leg hair…

After working 11-8 without a break, I decided I deserved an evening doing absolutely nothing except sitting in front of my computer watching a movie and just unwinding from a day spent serving fake smiles, breaking in new shoes, and dealing with co-workers that make me want to stab myself. I picked up a couple of fifty cent rentals and went home to relax. I put on house clothes (read: shorts and a t-shirt), put the movie in, and settled down to fold laundry and become engrossed in some horribly trashy poorly directed film. As I’m folding, I notice the glimmer of light coming off my legs. <i>Glimmer of light coming off my legs?</i>

Oh right.

That would be my leg hair reflecting light– it’s so long now that PETA members have started throwing red paint on me. It might do me some good to shave; after all, my boyfriend is coming over later and if I shave, maybe he’ll start thinking of me as his hot girlfriend again, and not that chick in house clothes with legs comparable to Ron Jeremy’s.

Here is where I reached quite a predicament. I really wanted smooth, silky feeling legs that I could rub up and down for hours on end, appreciating the new found softness… but I’m in the middle of a movie I want to finish. There is no convenient way to set up my laptop in the bathroom while shaving. Not only that, but my roommate is in bed and the bathroom is right across from her room, given the poor insulation in our bathroom, I’d be sure to wake her up. Especially after I undoubtedly drop my laptop once or twice, then cuss loudly about dropping my laptop once or twice. My poor laptop is covered in more dents and scratches than Princess Diana’s limo (tasteless joke, much?).

As I sit on my floor pondering my situation, a vision from my middle school days suddenly floats into mind… My friend Becca is from a family of seven with two bathrooms: one in her parents room, and one to share with her three brothers and one sister. Being the resourceful person that she is, Becca figured out how to shave while preserving bathroom time. I distinctly remember sitting on her futon doing homework when Becca appeared in her doorway, razor, towel, and shaving cream in hand. She plopped down on the floor and began shaving right then and there, no sink or bathtub around. I thought it was the oddest thing ever, but hey, her legs her smooth and silky in a matter of moments, and no one yelled at her to hurry up in the bathroom.

I decided to pull a Becca. Except to avoid some serious razor burn, I was going to need a basin of water. Not just a cup or bowl full of water, but a serious basin that I could pretty much stick my whole leg in. The hunt began.

I scannd the entire kitchen, going through every cabinet and drawer multiple times, hoping that a giant basin would magically appear. The problem with my apartment is that it’s furnished by two college students– what’s the rule of college students? Only the necesity, and only if that necesity comes cheap enough. Translation: no way is there a big basin any where in this damn kitchen.

Alas, something catches my eye. The giant wide-mouthed pot abandoned on the stove that hours earlier held my roomie’s dinner. Should I? Would she notice?

Nahhhhh.

So I put it off the stove, washed it out, filled it up with warm water, and went to work on my extremities.

I sit here now, mere moments later, relishing in the glory of silky smooth legs and the secret that I put the pot right back on the stove without washing it out. A fairly thorough rinsing sufficed.

I’m going to have to remember not to try any soup the next time she makes it….

Thrive with five

I skipped four, shh, I’ll come back to it later…

I was running the number five through my head over and over again, trying to figure out how to relate it to writing. I was lost– what does five mean to me? Nothing in writing, everything in my life. Five is the number of children that danced in my mother’s womb. Cameron, Amy, Tegan, Laura, Brenton…. Five blond haired, blue eyed Spragues. So I’m going to talk about it.

We’re all really different, like those images Leslie showed us in class a week or so ago….

Cameron was born in 1982, the baby that my mother so desperately wanted. The first month after marriage to my dad in December of 1981, my mom cried because she wasn’t pregnant yet… but eventually, to steal words from FML, she was totally plump with dad’s seed. Cam burst onto the scene October 8th, 1982, forever changing the lives of my parents. With the mind of an engineer, Cameron spent his childhood building things with blocks and Legos, taking things apart before reassembling them, writing complex plays and recording them with a seven or eight pound Kodak video camera, and reading the entire Hardy Boys collection and Star Trek Magazine. Cameron is now an electrical engineer who does reserve work as an Officer in the Air Force, still calm and quiet with the occasional outburst. He loves to tell you that you’re wrong, he loves to beat you in whatever game you’re playing, and he loves to suddenly become Serious Christian Man when you need advice.

On April 17th, 1984, Amy joined the Sprague trio with her bouncy blond curls and vibrant blue eyes. Talking before she was walking, Amy handled every word in her mouth like it was a crystal vase, carefully and slowly articulating every syllable. She loved to knock down Cameron’s towers. As she grew older, she caught the eye of every guy she knew and spent a lot of time shopping, flirting, and generally enjoying time with her girlfriends. She’s sassy, stylish, and loves to be entertained.

Finally, there was quirky Tegan, born in February of 1986, the end of the Sprague children, my parents decided. Tegan is vivacious, bubbly, outspoken, outgoing, and doesn’t always know when to keep her opinion to herself. She loves to tell people what to do, loves to always come in first place, and is always in a secret competition with Cameron.

Surprise, my mom decided she needed more children, even though she wasn’t sure if they could have any more. Desperately, she prayed, and in September of 1989, the little bundle of joy known as ME! entered her life. I can’t imagine Tegan was especially pleased with this, but she was content to have someone else to boss around, so we always got along fairly well. Similar to Tegan, I’m determined, outgoing, and don’t always shut up when I should. I’m calm like Cam with the expressiveness of Tegan, leading people to believe I’m a lot more emotional and passionate then I actually am.

And then, in March of 1991, Brenton came along, the final page in the story of my siblings. Clearly the baby of the family, Brenton can whine or charm his way into anything with his fingers around my mother’s heart. Most similar to Amy in personality, Brent likes to be up on trends and seen as cool, is the most athletic of the family, and doesn’t really know how to be shy.

It’s weird reflecting on all of this, but the idea of unity really came to mind when thinking about all of my siblings– like the photo collection, we all initially appear different. Upon closer inspection, however, you can see extremely similar qualities in us. The most obvious is our appearances– naturally, we have lightly pigmented skin, sandy colored hair, blue eyes, and medium sized frames (some of us chose to color our hair a bit though… Tegan is a red-head, Amy has white and red streaks, and I’m kind of all over the map). In personality, we are all incredibly stubborn, er, determined, and usually stop at nothing achieve what we want. We’ve never been accused of being shy, charm our way through situations, and never trust any one else’s opinions… not even each other’s, at times.

In the end, our differences align with our similarities as the five of us are in fact, the five of us. The Sprague kids. When we were younger, we would enter our father’s office complex to choruses of “its the Sprague brigade!” or “head for the hills, it’s the Sprague invasion!” and proudly interlocked arms, a family of friends.

1 + 3 = 4?

I believe I bypassed number one, but I’m going to incorporate it since I believe it is fluid with the writing I am posting today.

In case my previos post did not shed light on this, I am using 1-5 to explore writing as I know it, 2 referring to the two most critical elements in my writing: character and setting. What I failed to mention was number one, the inspiration that gives way to these things.

I cannot write anything without inspiration, inspiration being completely different from a prompt (exercise, paper topic, etc). Inspiration comes at me in any given form– the picture of a human living their life, a phrase that catches my ear, or the way a coffee cup is perched on the edge of a table. Whether direct (a writing about a coffee cup perched at the edge of a table) or indirect (how our lives are so close to a ceramic mug on the corner of a piece of fruniture, how how it ended up there, etc), it will somehow serve to influence an entire work that will spill out of my head.

First comes the idea. I am usually captivated by a single phrase that I just have to incorporate into the piece somehow. I then unconciously choose a character and ponder hard about a setting, imaging the scents filling my nostrils, the sights to my eyes, the sounds resting in my ears.

My inspirations are brilliant. My follow-ups are poor. I wish I could write down a single phrase and it would hold as much meaning to the reader as it does to me. It would save me to task of filling in words around it to explain the importance of that single phrase. But alas, humans are different, and read into things with different points of view, so we must explain where we are coming from to show why a phrase is meaningful to us in hopes that we can make it important to other people too. I always come back to this, but Starbucks is a good example– for my mother, Starbucks is where she can get her fancy venti chai latte with three pumps of chai, no water, soy, no foam, extra hot fill. For my friend Ally, Starbucks is where she gathers to socialize with her friends. For me, Starbucks is where I sit to write, capitalizing on the dozens of persaonalities that grace the building. To each of us, this coffee shop serves an important function, but with different meanings. In order to understand, appreciate, or even realize each other’s uses for the store, it might take some explaining.

Likewise, a random phrase, oh, I don’t know, such as “frozen in your touch,” holds way more meaning than you may realize upon initial inspection. Each of us can look at it differently– the lover sees time standing still in a moment, the victim sees a prison, the patient with peripheral arterial disease sees cold hands. As a writer, it is my job to tell you what exactly that phrases means to me and should mean to you. I want you to know what you should take away from that phrase by writing a love peom around it, a thrilling action story, or a medical description. Otherwise, what function do I serve?

I am inspired by a phrase, frozen in your touch, and so I have the first part of my poem done, the hardest part, the beginning, the reason for writing in the first place. I’ve found the idea I want to communicate it– now how do I do that? I create a setting to give it more meaning– why not a warm, summar day, two lovers walking through a park, ignoring the damp heat as they appreciate the warmth they have for each other? Wouldn’t icy imagery be ironic in the summer time?

Next, I choose my character– is the narrator a third person, watching the romance take place? Or is it someone intimately involved in the scenerio? Here, I choose the male as my narrator, foregoing the cliche of a woman being frozen in the grips of her lover.

I have the first few stages of my writing done– the beginning, the meaning, the setting, the narrator and characters, but now come the more difficult steps. Piecing it all together, line by line. Here, my number three, is where writing becomes a work. Here, I must apply thoughtful details in a reader-friendly way, deciding on word choice and literary tools to use and depth of the piece.

More to come, I promise (i gotta go to work!)