Knowing Yourself

                There’s something funny that starts to happen when mid-June rolls around in your seventeenth or eighteenth year. Your ears start to ring with the chords of “Pomp and Circumstance”, and in your dreams you see tassels and scrolls bearing your name and degree. Maybe it’s a doctorate, or maybe it’s just a high school diploma, but either way it’s a huge milestone. After all, you’ve labored for a decent number of years in order to hold that piece of paper in your sweaty hands over homework, tests, and oral presentations. But within the last few days, I’ve been feeling something a little more intricate than just pre-graduation excitement. I’ve realized just how far I’ve come along as a person and a human being. I know I’m not the first one to make this realization, too, but I feel it necessary to share it with you. Who knows, maybe you’ll connect with me on this level. I sure hope so.

                Let’s think about it this way: in the beginning, you were a single cell. And since then, you’ve developed a whole lot more (go mitosis!). But you’ve grown a lot more than just simple cell reproduction. You’ve grown traits and emotions and a backstory all your own, no longer a character stuck in developmental stages. As young children, we learned the basics of ourselves and of our species: walking, basic linguistics, and coordination. We were taught the basic principles of humanity; that we are creatures of habit, the difference that society has taught us between right and wrong, the value of friendships and other relationships. As we grew older, we began to realize that our friends were shaping us. Maybe we didn’t realize it all at first, but after a while we began to see changes, small differences that we might not have noticed before. Maybe Suzie persuaded us to join the town soccer team, or maybe Peter helped to show us how much fun trombone is to play and practice. The fact of the matter is that even at the young age of five or six, we were beginning to develop traits that are all our own.

                As we grew even older and moved on to higher forms of schooling we witnessed ourselves changing even more, developing talents and personality quirks, various combinations that were exclusive only to us. While some of us stuck with band from middle school on, others quit after the first year and moved on to a range of sports teams or school theatrical productions. Each interest we pursued, each friend that we made or grew apart from shaped us in ways that we don’t even begin to see until the tail end of maturity.

                So what brought on this philosophical idea upon which this blog is centered? The answer is simple: I’m graduating. I’m moving on with my life, growing up and out of the town I’ve lived in since grade school and away from family and other loved ones. And with all this change that’s going on around me, I decided to take a moment and look in at the change that I’ve made in myself. Going back through my memories, the good and the bad, I’ve realized exactly how much I’ve changed. Just four years ago people terrified me. Sure, I had friends, but I wasn’t what you’d call extroversive.  Always willing to succumb to others’ perceptions of me and submit to their will, I was never one to see any part of me that was good. I acknowledged that I had talents, but any sort of failure I made outweighed them. But I feel that, especially within the last four years, I’ve blossomed. I’ve come to accept myself, triumphs and failures alike. I’ve learned that there is and only ever will be one Stephanie Gabbey, and that she is me. I’ve discovered myself, all my talents, all my interests, all my goals. Within the last four years I’ve done more than just find out what I want to do with the rest of my life. I’ve gathered understanding of myself that I hadn’t before. And now I can stand before all who may read this and say with an honest and straight face, I truly know myself.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changing!

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Call Me Unpatriotic, But...

                Sometimes talking about nerdy things requires us to take a step out of our comfort zone and avoid the fandoms, to venture out into uncharted waters of conversation. Avoid Harry Potter, various anime, and Doctor Who (which I will be taking advantage of the summer to watch, by the way). Avoid the familiar shores of the countless nerd references from video games or Nerdfighteria (No Edge!, Swindon Town Swoodilypoopers, Bubbles the Nerdfighting Puppy, etc).  So pretty much avoid all the fun things. Sometimes talking about nerdy things means talking about politics.

                Recently I was completing the Social 12 project that was required of all graduating seniors. This project consisted of reading and analyzing newspaper articles, watching and analyzing news programs, writing letters to government and community leaders, and doing research on the computer about various government leaders and branches of government. After the bulk of the work was done, we were required to write a reflection paper in which we discussed how we felt about our role in the government system and all that jazz.

                So what does this have to do with anything that I’ve led you to think that we’ll be talking about in the first paragraph? Well, one of the research projects included looking at the different beliefs and traits of the political party spectrum within the United States. I’m not going to waste my time and spend the rest of this blog endorsing the beliefs of one particular party because I am a firm believer in the one-party system. Not the type in which dictators find their way in the world and rise to power, but the type in which people who want to be elected to office fight fairly to win the vote. No more will we have to worry about one candidate from Party A saying one thing and Party B’s candidate just saying the opposite to sweep up the remainder of the vote; no more will Party B resort to scare tactics to gain votes, because votes will be earned honestly by speaking the truth. Parties will actually get along with each other instead of undermining each other and spreading lies and deceit for a lousy vote. And, it’s a bit of a stretch, but maybe one day all candidates for any position will be given a price cap for their campaign, so that no one is defeated simply because they couldn’t afford additional commercial spots. The government in the United States is far from perfect, and I feel like some of my ideas are halfway decent, but I can’t change the government by myself even if I wanted to.

                This blog had little to do with actual politics and was more of me just pushing my beliefs on others who actually take the time to read this, but this is seriously how I think the government should work: where absolutely everything is equal regardless of any sort of outside factor. The truth of the matter is that I’m probably going to be ignored, a single voice lost in the crowd of opinions and negativity, cast off as an ignorant outsider. The truth of the matter is that I’m over-estimating the values of humanity. The truth of the matter is that none of this is possible in this world, because this world is far from perfect, far from ideal.

                What do you think about this subject? Leave your opinion(s) in comments, and don’t forget to follow me on Blogger or on Twitter (@srg_tntm).

Six Years Old

Mama, she says, I want to go to the moon.
I want to fly through the sky.
I want to swim underwater with the fish
And watch all the clouds pass by.

Mama, she says, I want to climb trees like a monkey.
I want to be a princess in a castle.
I want to jump on the back of a dragon
And never have a care or a hassle.

Mama, she says, I want to be ten feet tall.
I want to be a teacher.
I want to jump and not fall
And create a monstrous creature.

Mama, she says, I want to slide down the back of a dinosaur.
I want to have my first kiss.
I want to shoot an arrow at a target
And I don’t want to miss.

Mama, she says, I want to pick out my own clothes.
I want to win a barefoot race.
I want to sleep on a cloud
And put makeup on my face.

Mama, she says, I want to be a doctor.
I want to touch the stars.
I want to star in a feature film
And take a rocket ship to Mars.

And I just smile and nod
And I say, “I know you do, baby.”

Author’s note: I wrote this poem two years ago, and I feel like it was my first step into spoken word/slam poetry. I wrote it from the perspective of a six-year-old girl (six-year-old me) who wants to do and be everything under the sun (and all at the same time, of course). I was one of “those children” who always had their head in their clouds and their nose in a book, and any mention of reality was pretty much wasted on them. It is my hope that everyone who reads or hears this poem can find their younger selves in this poem and relive the splendorous fantasies of youth.

Cats!

Diamond and I on the living room sofa. Isn't he cute? :3

                Anyone who has ever seen a housecat before knows the craziness that cats seem to find themselves in all the time. My own cat, Diamond, is no exception, and I’m about to share with you some weird things that my cat has done throughout the course of his life (He is currently 13 years old).

• We lived with my aunt and uncle the year after we moved from Maryland to New York until we bought the house where I am now typing this blog. During that time, my uncle taught Diamond to drink from the bathtub faucet by letting him into the bathroom and drinking from the faucet. Today, he doesn’t drink from a bowl unless he’s severely thirsty, and he’ll chase you into the bathroom to yell at you to make sure that you don’t forget to give him a drink while you’re in there.

• Every day for the last week when I got home from school, I have returned to a cat that jumps up at the doorjambs, slides back down to the floor (he has no claws on his front paws), and then proceeds to run through the living room and up the stairs as fast as he can. The cause of this phenomenon has yet to be discovered.

• I can’t play fetch with my dog, but Diamond sure likes the game. If I have one of those hollow kitty balls with the bell inside and throw it for him,  he will run after it, bat it around with his paws a few times, pick it up in his mouth, and deposit it back at your feet for you to throw it again. This is particularly fun when you throw the ball down the stairs because you can hear everything: the ball hitting the stairs, Diamond running at the ball, the ball skittering across the floor after Diamond plays with it a little, and the short jingling noise as the ball is carried upstairs and placed on the kitchen floor by the door, ready to be tossed downstairs again.

• If I decide to use the computer (which, let’s face it, is all the time), Diamond must be present at all times. He will cry until noticed and invited onto my lap, but he doesn’t stay on my lap for very long. He just uses it as a stepstool to get onto the computer desk itself and sleep on my hands or arms while I type/use the mouse. Any movement for any reason whatsoever that does not involve minor movements of my fingers, wrists, or arms is a potentially deadly decision and may be retaliated against with cries of agitation and/or teeth in my flesh.

• I can do anything that I want to Diamond, and 99.99% of the time, he won’t give even half a care. There are two prime examples of this. 1) You know those statues of the shepherd boy holding the lamb over his shoulders (shown right)? I am the shepherd boy, and Diamond is the lamb. I can walk around the entire house like that and he won’t care. 2) The other day my mom handed me a sock while we were folding laundry. I had the cat on my lap. I told her that I didn’t have its match and she said to just throw it out since it had probably been through the wash a few times already. So, I looked at the cat, looked at the sock, looked back, and stuck the sock on his head like it was a hat. He just sat there and looked around. As if to prove that he didn’t care, he was still purring.

            My cat is one of the strangest beings on this planet. He makes extraterrestrials look normal and average, and it’s for that reason that I love my cat more than anything on this earth. That and he’s fluffy!

Poetry: An Evolutionary Journey

It started with a feeling.
Intense, raw emotion
Flowing through his veins
Think magma flowing through the earth’s belly
Red hot with the heat of passion.
Taking ink blacker than sin to curled parchment,
He wrote.

They composed lyrics of deepest admiration,
Deeper than death,
Compared their women to summer’s days,
Telling them that their hair is spun of pure gold and is far more valuable,
That their ivory skin and precious innocence have shown them the
Beauty that God must have put on this earth only for the
Adoration that is his love.


It developed further
Expanded to include hatred and heartache,
Tales of love forlorn and forsaken,
Each word specifically chosen for its ability to present itself as
Injured or broken.
Characters written out,
Stranded in the middle of the ocean in a boat with no oars,
Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink.
Friends hidden in shadows and enemies visible in sunlight
Without their signature black capes and dark auras.
Significant others cheat, and life is sad and desolate and lonely.
So we write.
And finally the words are put to a tune.
More easily recognizable,
Readily able to spread through the monotony of life
With an accompaniment of strings and piano keys
to reach interest groups of all varieties and sizes.
We call them out effortlessly by name and by artist,
By genre and album,
And pay no heed to what is really going on here,
What has really been created for us.
A way to share our emotions,
A way for us to channel ourselves into the world in a way so simply and with so little strain on o  our daily lives.

And for some reason, the songs we listen to
And the love poems we read, criticize, and create are seen as
Beautiful works of art,
Something to behold
While the free-verse style of
Spoken Word
Goes on as a hidden art form,
Not exactly ignored,
But almost unappreciated among the public eye.
Rhyme doesn’t dictate poetry,
And metaphors or the
Ridiculously Complicated language
Don’t equate to a fantastic poem,
And sometimes the simplest way to write a poem
Is to just say it,
Like talking to a friend, or to your mirror, or to
Yourself.

The Strings, the Grass, or the Vessel: Paper Towns

                Despite the end-of-year hassles of getting ready for exams and doing last-minute graduation prep, I’ve decided that it was about time to sit down with a good book and just read. And with my roots in Nerdfighteria (see “People Who Love People Who Love Blogging”) and my incomplete John Green reading list, I decided that Paper Towns would be a good choice. And boy was I right…

                Paper Towns follows the adventure of a Quentin “Q” Jacobsen as he searches for Margo Roth Spiegelman, the girl next door who was always too distant to acquire. But one night in the last month of their senior year, Q is visited by Margo in the dead of night and taken on a journey of revenge. After the all-nighter ends, Margo is gone, absent from school, from her home, and from the small community of their native Orlando, Florida. Shortly after her departure the clues begin to appear. Small and seemingly insignificant, it is up to Q and his small band of merry misfits to track down the exact location of Margo Roth Spiegelman. Through the journey led by the clues, Q makes discoveries about himself and the infinite perceptions made about oneself by others.

                I was so into this book from the get-go. Green has this way of describing events within the book on the reader’s level (assuming that they have the mentality and reading ability of a young adult), which quickly makes the reader comfortable with the contents of the book. It wasn’t like the book was preaching about anything; the voice created as the narrator was honest and believable, which is what makes any halfway decent book readable in my opinion. Such detail within the book existed to the point where I was right there solving the mystery along with Q and his friends. It was a fantastic journey with the right mixture of suspense and hidden secret; the mystery wasn’t too far-fetched, not too hard to solve as a reader, and not too easy either. Future readers of this will acknowledge the fact that the main protagonist and his closest friends are male high school seniors and thus tend to joke endlessly in perversion. It was almost too much so for my taste, but once you make your decision to accept it as part of life or simply choose to ignore it except in comic cases, the book becomes much less tainted, though nothing graphic actually does happen. On a scale of ten I would give this book a score of 9, hindered from achieving a ten based mostly on the amount of tainted language expressed throughout the book.