This is not my graduation contract. At least, not the one that I had originally written when I was a freshman/sophomore. Not that that one isn'tvalid. It is. It just doesn't seem to reflect the changes that have gone on since then. This narrative probably won't reflect who I will be in two moreyears, either. But that's the way it goes. Some of the points are still valid, but there's a new voice in me speaking those words.
That's where all this starts, I suppose. With me. It sounds egotistical in a way, I guess, but then again, college is an egotisical experience. Everything you do is geared toward yourself first. Everything you plan is planned by you, for you. These are my courses, my plans, my life, my contracts and evaluations, my responsibilities. You plan your life for four years, maybe even more if you're gutsy enough.
Starting with myself was how I got here. I starting writing poetry when I was fifteen, and it ended up being a indescribable theraputic tool for me in high school, especially when I decided to do something artsy like writing right in the middle of my years at a mostly white, mostly Mormon high school in Las Vegas. I wrote for me then. In fact, I still write for me now. But I keep what's for me for me, and leave the other discoveries for those around me to try and figure out.
I still keep the old saying inside, though: "if you allow yourself to feel the way you really feel, maybe you won't be afraid of that feeling anymore." It's a very difficult sentence to say to myself, even in times when I think it would be easy to say it. As a solitary Pagan, I find myself having to face whatever I'm feeling when I sit down to do a ritual or a spell for someone (or even myself). In a way my path defines me in a way that doesn't make sense to others. I follow a Goddess, but she's the kind who is more of a relfection of myself-- an abundant woman-- than someone who I worhip from afar. When I sit down with her, I am actually sitting down with myself, tracing back why I came to this place, whether it be sadness or celebration. If I cast a spell for someone, as my friend's Mexican Catholic grandmother put it, "It's her way of praying for me." If I don't have my own energy in order, I can't help others.
When I was first interested in religious studies, it was because of ignorance. When I was seventeen, I had a Christian man tell me that my views of how I saw (the) God(ess) were not valid because they didn't coincide with his. He didn't want to listen to anything that I had to say, and I couldn't say anything to him because I didn't read the Bible. He told me that I was wrong because of this. He didn't even know me, and he told me that I was wrong. This angered me, so I started reading. It followed over to college, where I continued my interest in religions and the paths that people take to their deities. In the study I've done about the Bible here at Redlands, I don't feel that anything I say or do is wrong, and neither is anyone else's belief system; they're all different, even though they all seem to point to the same kinds of values in a deity. But at least now I can sit down with a Christian and say, "see this passage? It doesn't quite fit with what you're saying here." In a way, the Johnston community has taught me that these kind of discussions, even if the two people are on extreme sides of the issue, can be a learning experience. You can respect another person's views, even if you don't really agree with them.
When someone asks me what I'm writing, I always tell them that I don't know. That's because I really don't. I never know where exactly the story is going to go. Even if it's a poem I don't really know where it's going, even if I know well in advance where I think it should go. When I started writing screenplays in college, something that I never thought I'd do, they were always on a whim, just as writing itself was a whim when I was 15. I had an idea, and I just went with it, not really caring much where it went. And it always ended up being different from what I originally intended. I never knew exactly where I was with the story, so I never really knew what it was about until I was finished with it. Or at least, almost finished with it. Someone asks me now, "What is it about?" "I don't know," I say. "I'll find out when I'm finished." It's about the journey of the story.
I think what makes me write too is deadlines. Deadlines are fun. I've noticed that if I don't have a set date for anything really, I just work on things in bits and pieces, but if I have to write something, say, for a class, I all of a sudden get productive. Granted, I have to do a lot of revision afterwards, but I get it done. I always look at it this way: if I really have nothing else to do, my Muse takes a vacation in the Bahamas. When there's something to do, she comes back. If I'm reallylucky, she'll show up when I'm not really noticing that she's gone. She's got a sick sense of humor.
It's all about the journey, not necessarily where you end up after you're done. How that would explain how scared I am to graduate I couldn't tell you, but at least I'll have fun trying to figure out whether I'm better at serving fries or telling stories. It would probably be a lot earier to cut and paste parts of the journal that I kept while I was overseas in England to explain literally what that feels like, but that would be too easy. Five months of rambling on about how much I miss or don't miss home or how much of an amazing experience I had wouldn't really capture everything that's in my head. Plus pasting all the pictures and stuff in here would be a little strange-- very Johnston, probably, but strange. It was only five months out of four years at Redlands, in Johnston, succeeding and failing and laughing and crying.
And there are the little things that I did that I don't think mean much, which were suggested that I put in my narrative at my initial Graduation Contract committee because they make up my experience. The kinds of things that weren't necessarily part of a class or an academic pursuit: playing guitar/piano duets in Holt lobby; putting up a shameless self-plug website of my writing on the web; starting (but not quite finishing) that comic book script; laying out Tarot cards for random people who ask, both on and off campus, and at home in Vegas; reading poetry both Stateside and abroad just because I'd go mad if I didn't; finishing college because I do it for Mom. In Pagan terms, I'm a typical Gemini-- I like to do lots of things but I never quite focus on one thing, really.
Except for writing. Writing lets me be a Gemini-- I can be all these different kinds of people, telling all these different kinds of stories, being as immersed in Multiple Personality Disorder as I want. Except for the part where I don't focus on just one kind of writing: poetry, fiction, autobiographical fiction, screenplays, comic books, journal-keeping... Part of my interest in writing, in characters, stems also from the kinds of friends that I made in high school (and that I still have) in Vegas. Some of them were from military families, some from divorced parents who moved all over the place; they had all these stories about where they'd lived and what it was like there. In high school nobody really cared about how your past influenced your present-- that is, just as long as your present fit in with everyone else's present. Nobody really listened to them, and I did, because I wanted to know how they became who they were, how all these places made them the person they presently were. And now that I'm heading into the end of my time at Redlands, I'm starting to look back at all the places I've been, both physically and emotionally.
Was it going to school in California that changed me? Was it going to England for a semester? Witnessing passionate arguments at community meetings? Sitting around the fire at GYST and feeling like I'm part of something bigger?
I'm not quite sure how Johnston has changed me these past four years. I probably won't see it until I'm really out there doing my thing. But I won't ever forget that I've had a unique experience, a good experience, a manic experience-- freefalls and floating included. I did everything that I wanted to do, and more. I expanded spiritually. And I came out of it glad for all the experiences.
Was it my mother's passing? My father being diagnosed with lung cancer? My brother and his fiance having twin boys?
In high school, I always wondered how I react to these kinds of things, but I always saw them as being way into the future, when I was old enough and mature enough to deal with them. I would be well into my late 20's, 30's, 50's and 60's even, to deal with this kind of stuff. I didn't expect it to happen when I was 19, 20, 21. It's a strange feeling when you're 21 and you're telling your friends that you said goodbye to your mother in a dream after she'd passed away. It's even weirder when she was going up an escalator at the mall.
Which brings me to the humor part. I've never forgotten to laugh these four years. In fact, after all the sadness had run through me, I made a joke about it, and I laugh more now than when I graduated high school. There's something in my nature, call it my Irish heritage I guess, that sees the humor in everything. Even something as tragic as death or cancer. Of course I cry, but you can't cry forever-- it's too draining, and you can't do anything else. And besides, laughter makes you smile, makes you celebrate. I figure, I had my four years of "I'm so Goth I'm dead" in high school. It's high time I actually started smiling for once.
So with that, I'll just say this: I think I'd rather be smiling serving fries than frowning and writing stories, pretending things are okay. At least I'd be admitting how I'd really feel. And I'd have a much more interesting journey.