July 18, 2009

• Entries from Teen Writing Contest: Anything Profound

  This essay isn't in the top 5, but I really liked how Jason was pondering that first meeting and wondering how much it mattered. It fits in well with my mindset today, and he said I could publish it. Take a look!
  
  Before you get to the actual essay, yes, this is a long essay. It was not written for the purpose of this contest, but for my Great Books class, as a work that ties in quotes from Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men." I was considering editing the paper, but decided to leave it as it it is. That explains the quotation marks, the page number references, and the two minor references to characters. If you've read the book, then you'll understand. If not, then feel free to ignore them. --Jason

  It all started a year ago by absolute coincidence. Or maybe it was fate; I won’t dwell on that. I was a junior in band, still early in the year, full of exciting and funny ideas. For the special winter concert, I had a bold idea to play the Mario theme song, of which I had a few copies of the sheet music during the upcoming concert. And so I went around and spread the idea among the band players. It was the first after-school rehearsal that I was walking to the train station, and the girl walked by. I stopped her and told her about my crazy idea and got a hearty laugh in return. I found out that we took different trains, but I thought to myself, what the hell, and followed her into the 1, 2, 3 train station. She looked surprised but accepted it, and we crawled into a stuffed car, found seats when we transferred trains, and had a nice chat the whole ride. The whole experience is a foggy memory, except one thought that breached my mind. I thought to myself, fancifully, that as we sat next to each other, I could have easily slipped my arm around her shoulders, “[b]ut I didn’t reach over.” (275) I had no reason to for although had she caught my eye as someone different on the very first day of band, I didn’t feel anything inside. It was just a fancy.
  As I got up to transfer once again to my own train after a long ride, I asked her, for it hadn’t crossed my mind before, for her name. She said Karen. And that’s how the very first day I ever talked to her went. We sat on a train right next to each other and chatted with a sublime aura. It was nice, and we had times similar to that first day during concerts, but I generally forgot about her for the next few months.
  And I guess that I had some sort of a thing for her from the very start since one uncanny day in spring, I had the urge to talk to her. It’s as if the memories and thoughts stored in my subconscious suddenly burst out in a splendor. However, even I the hopeless romantic could see that things weren’t going to work out. Like this I splintered through the rest of that wretched year and an empty summer. It was wretched and empty, filled with the monotony of the same tasks day after day, hour after hour, sometimes even moment after moment. After a while, everything looks the same. The same people in the same places, the same blank faces. It was comfortable though for I had successfully, in the last month of summer, gotten Karen out of my conscious, and lived each day not unhappy.
  The disturbance to my comfort came without a surprise in the start of senior year. It really didn’t take much to make me want to talk to her again, and within two weeks I was having casual chats with her again. But being the overachiever and constantly busy person that she is, our casual chats over the internet were constantly broken, and the mere forty minutes that I saw her in band would suffice it weren’t for the vigilant Dr. Wheeler cracking down on every mouth that quivered that wasn’t attached to a mouthpiece. But it was in that very same band and during spirit week that she invited me to homecoming. It shouldn’t have been surprising because she’s a cheerleader, but the way she put it caught my ear. After admitting that I had the final two periods of the day off and thus had a four hour gap between the end of my day and the game, she said that I could “get there early and say, hey, I know you, or something” with a shy and uncomfortable smile. That smile set the tone for the following day. It was a Thursday, a day off from school. I was mesmerized by Karen’s “wordless and handless trick, but it didn’t need words or hands.” (278) All that was needed was my inner fire and the backfire of my ‘not unhappy’ view of life to set off the mental agony that I had so carefully and successfully hidden away for the two months. And the fire engulfed me from inside out. My mind was set off again in a frenzy of assumption and doubt, imagining every possible situation, and my expectations for that night became those of optimum conditions, even though I told myself to stop imagining. However, it had the same effect as trying to convince a deaf man that he could hear, or a blind man that he could see. “That was the way it had always been- when I had come home from school, when I had come back....” from anywhere really. I always came back to the sanctuary of my mind where I truly lived.
  And as all things must come, homecoming came. I got there early and spotted her, and enthusiastically called, “Hey, I know you!” That conversation lasted just as long as our other ones, and she left me to sit in the stands with an “I’ll see you around.” It was a strange thing to say because I don’t think she saw me around. Maybe it was intentional that I didn’t notice even once during the three hour game her eyes looking in my direction. With nothing else to do, I spent that three hours trailing the game that was being played, chatting with several of the seniors there: Adam, Shayanta, William, etc. I was discouraged until the very end, when during the cheerleading group huddle, our eyes met and she gave me a smile such that, “just for that moment, it would be as though Adam and the others weren’t there.” (278) And it really was a moment, because a second later she went on to exchange with her fellow cheerleaders and in another five minutes, sped out of the stadium to her expectant cousin.
  It all happened so fast that I had no time to react. I had envisioned just a night before a chilly evening in which I would offer her my coat and we would walk down the dark, unfamiliar roads with only a single lamppost to illuminate the path ahead. I had envisioned even before the end of the game, sitting next to her and finally having an opportunity to talk to her. But most importantly, I envisioned taking the train home with her just like that very first day, on the crammed 2 train and finding consecutive trains on the 7 train, our soft words drowned out by the din of the speeding train, the clatter of the tracks, and the usual performer strumming on his guitar hoping to gather a few extra dollars for the cold night. We would whisper to each other, alone and separated from the rest of the world, in our own little sphere, just her and I on a crowded subway rolling over the silent and dark city with the ephemeral bright neon lights that simply fizz by, leaving their colors behind only imprinted in our memory.
  But of course that wasn’t what happened. Instead, she had walked out quickly and met her cousin, got into their car, and drove away. I had nothing else to do but tag along with a bunch of people that I knew and pray that they found a train station, which they did. And we rode the train home, which we did. And I was serene on the outside, a wreck on the inside, which I was. And all I aimed for was to get home, which I did, at ten-thirty PM. I was sore all over, from foot to head, including all of the internal organs and workings. My nerves were shot and my spirit was weak. And so, with nothing else to do, and wanting nothing else, I made small talk with some of my close friends. At eleven, however, an unexpected instant message came from none other than Karen herself, which was, to my memory, the first time that she had ever messaged me first. She asked me how homecoming was, and asked me if she was great out there. The gullible romantic within me flared up at this comment and had a nice chat with her, all the while the dark cynic in me told me to give up and avert my mind. By this point, “I didn’t even feel sorry for myself” anymore. (268) Instead, I was made to believe by the twisting of my mind that what had happened during those cold three hours were all a part of my elaborate imagination, and that there really was something going on. But I had to give up this idea for the night for my body was threatening me to get its sleep.
  I know how hopeless I sound and how hopeless I am, but that didn’t change the fact that she tossed her lasso, unwillingly I’m sure, around my feet and dragged me back. By Tuesday, although I still felt the repercussions of the following Friday, we were back to our casual chats, quick peeks and silent smiles over the grotesquely played notes, discordant of the brass section, and the occasional bellowing of the conductor. But still, things were deteriorating through the inevitable and sad passage of time. Things had dragged on far enough, and on that Thursday during my lunch period, I sat in my usual alcove and planned out this English paper, coming up with what I called the “most brilliant outline ever.” It was meant to be a perfect parallel between All the King’s Men’s Jack Burden’s life and my life until I realized that I didn’t have the benefit of time that he did, for he’s had all the years in his life to come up with his insights and stories. I also did not know the ending of my story. And so I decided to find, or rather, force an ending. With this intent in mind, I stashed away Jason the lovesick guy and assumed the role of Jason the English essay writer and, with all the confidence of the world, set out to find the truth. It seemed absolutely perfect, for brilliant plan would set both my academic and social life straight. I would ask her tonight, albeit through the internet to meet me after school on Friday, if she had time, and I would question her about all of the mysteries of the past. I was ready.
  It was not until English class that I, “full of beans and being an Eagle Scout, when the yellow acid taste had all at once crawled up to the back of my mouth.” (417) Careful meditation and realization that I was too excited and expectant for my own good, and that it was expectation that put me in the dump less than even a week ago. Thus, my mind probed up a blaze of possible situations, only stopping after it was confident that it had gone through every possible scenario. Then what really bothered me hit me, that I was terribly selfish. For the sake of my English paper, I was putting away myself and asking a girl to truthfully answer questions about her feelings towards me and perhaps the memories that she herself stashed away. And perhaps she wouldn’t answer them, for there was nothing to say. Or maybe she wouldn’t have time at all. And I realized here and now that I was taking the ultimate gamble. I would either get it all or lose it all.
  And the ending came much sooner than expected. It was just that night that I meekly asked her about her plans after school. I told and asked her for her permission to write this English paper on her. All through this time I had my eyes closed in half-prayer, half hopelessness. And I got what I had expected and maybe even wanted. It took her ten minutes to reply with a note of flattery, and another hour to say that I should write about someone else. “That was how I found out. At the moment the finding out simply numbed me. When a heavy-caliber slug hits you, you may spin around but you don’t feel a thing.” (349) I simply plugged music into my ears and took a long walk around my neighborhood at ten at night, trying to get myself lost, but I ended up in front of my back door. I stood at the entrance to my porch, refusing to go in, back to that life, that outcome, instead wishing to travel West. But I didn’t have the option of travelling West. What I did have though was a full moon shining down on me and a garage with a roof. And so I mounted the roof and sat on my roof, looking out into the driveway, music playing softly in my ears and thought about myself. I saw myself sitting on that roof, hands cupped together in hope of keeping warm during the chilly night, eyes staring hazily at the bright moon, completely at peace. What earlier was the epitome of confidence was now a sunken figure stooped forward with blank eyes. And it was like that that “I felt I had discovered the secret source of all strength and all endurance.” (311) I remembered the past experiences that I had had that were clouded from my field of vision for that month or however long it was, those thoughts filled with only Karen. Nothing and no one else occupied my mind, none of the other girls I had crushes on, traumatic or happy experiences of my childhood. Now, detached from myself, I was able to see deep into the past, far before even meeting this girl. I saw myself, happy, content, in my freshman year at Stuyvesant High School. Even before that, I saw my truly happy days in my Junior High School, those of eighth grade when I was truly happy. And I had seen why. I was happy because my happiness was derived from the happiness of those that I had helped to bring about. I was selfless.
  I went to sleep that night with nothing left except “the great thing, the secret. (315) And the next morning, while brushing my teeth, I realized that I had aged ten years, but I attributed that to my great discovery and not the trauma. Everything was fine until I saw her again in band. That heavy-caliber slug had dug its way inside me. I didn’t do much more than see her though, since her gaze was firmly on any being, person or object in the room that was not by association with a certain Jason. It crumbled every belief in my self except my grand discovery. The very foundation of my person had been broken down by that simple forty minutes on a Friday in a high school. But it was then that a second great truth graced me. Just as a wise Willie Stark believed, everything comes from dirt. Only by completely breaking down an institution and rebuilding it from scratch can it be saved. I had been corrupted beyond any redemption, and now, thanks to Karen, I can rebuild my person and character. My inner being had been reduced to dirt, and because of that dirt, I can now make something out of nothing, which is the only way anything profound is created.
  Thinking back on the very first time I talked to her, I muse. Perhaps if I really did put my arm around her, “things might have been different then and forever afterward.” (296) Alas, what happened has already happened, and there’s no use looking back and wishing something else. Instead, what’s ultimately important is not the future either, but each passing moment that instantly fades into the past. For human existence is so unpredictable and intangible that no sort of plan or brilliant outline can tell anything about anything. The past must be used as a textbook, as a guide through the drudgery of the present and not as a vision for the future. What’s most important of all is the glow of hope that must live securely inside, not a false or pretentious hope but the true essence, for that is what has saved mankind until this age. It’s “[funny], I had never seen it before. Not really.” (326) But that doesn’t matter, because what does is that I now know and understand, and it’s my deepest wish that everyone understands. That true and pure happiness is seeing the happiness brought upon others.

  • 10:43 pm
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