Writing from the Heart

So I'm a college freshman living in the freshman dorms with a couple papers to write, sunk deep in the momentary bliss of procrastination and not even feigning a fight with my bottomless craving for anything sweet and preferably chocolaty. Last night was no exception. I came home from work wanting ice cream when, whata ya know? my two good friends came down the hall with ice-cream from the vending machine. I had found my justification and no sooner found myself enjoying a small pint of cookies 'n cream while listening to music and talking about -- Can you guess? Boys.
I'd actually been waiting for another friend to come home so we could go running -- by now it is almost 10:00, the perfect time for a run -- so maybe I hadn't really thought through the ice-cream . . .
I was saved when she proposed a movie instead.
Have you ever watched "The Dead Poet's Society"? If you haven't, cancel your plans for the day and watch it. Maybe it's because I'm an English major, but I got chills and goosebumps and little warm fuzzies. Okay, so maybe some of the warm fuzzies came from the chocolate my friend brought over to share, but seriously, it's a great movie.
Afterwards, I wanted to try writing a poem like the one Todd creates in the movie - literally a spattering of the first thoughts that come to mind, continuing down the various paths of a frayed piece of yarn until they magically wind themselves up and come together. Often the poem knows where it wants to go before you can direct it there, so quit racking your brain for Shakespearean couplets. Quit studying a topic until your passion has burnt out beneath the heavy air of eloquence. Quit looking to reason and logic. Look in your heart, and write.
Well, here's my first attempt. Can't say it's flawless, but beauty never was.

I want to write something more beautiful

More beautiful than the way the praying mantis

Strokes a lotus flower

As he bequeaths his prayers to the wind

On which the birds fly forth like a hurricane

That whispers sweet destruction

As it turns the malting leaves

In slow and wistful swirls

Circling back again and again like time

In it’s perfect clockwork

Counting the moments that seconds can’t measure

That dreams can’t encompass

And hearts can hardly hold

That fingers cannot type

And lips cannot impart

Because they are so ordinary

That eloquence and ornaments are gods

That sit aloft and mean to my heart nothing

Candidly,

Cookie

And I was Happy

I was reading an article yesterday in which it asked the reader the question, "What do you want? What do you really want?"
I stopped and thought about this for much longer than I think the question was intended to merit, and I do believe it was intended to merit some thought.
I'll admit when I read "what do you want?" the first things that came to mind were the generic superpowers. I want to fly, I want to be insanely intelligent, I want to breath underwater and run like lightning.
Then I thought a little deeper. I want to be able to sit and watch the sunrise without any thoughts of obligations and worries and without any awareness of the passing time and the tense anxiety such tends to bring.
I want to sit on the beach reading a good book, hearing the waves crash, feeling the wind blow drops of sunlight into a fine mist, without ever having to get up for a drink or a snack and with nothing to draw me back from the beach until my book is finished.
I thought about these things, but ultimately I dismissed them all. They all shared one problem: they were things I could not have and no one was ever the happier for wanting what he could not have.
You may wish to fly and that is a fine wish, but you will never get your wish and so it can bring you no joy. Me, I would much rather wish for some simple thing I know I can obtain, and upon obtaining it, I will find joy.
And so, what is that I want? What do I really want?
A hug.
And you know what? That very same day, I got my wish.
And I was happy.

Life is good. And so are these great people. Spent a whole day playing at the park after a delicious picnic. When a bunch of kids came out to play on the other playground I began to wonder what group they belonged to. Was it a summer camp?  Oh yeah, school's in session.
As much as I love school, it was great to forget for a day. Short sleeves, shorts, playgrounds and bike rides . . .The seed of summer's been planted. Hurry up and grow my precious seed!

Candidly,
Cookie

When Life Doesn't Seem Fair

Life is like a diving competition . . .

I feel that sometimes we see someone land on their back or do a belly flop and we think, "Man, they're not so great."

But perhaps our cell phone or a conversation with a fellow spectator kept us from seeing the dive. Of course we notice the flop, but for the duration of the dive our eyes were shut or otherwise averted. 

Then comes the award ceremony and up there in first place is the one who repeatedly "flopped." We then think to ourselves, "What of the diver who landed without a splash and entered the water seamlessly?" 

Well, there is something called the degree of difficulty. What we failed to take into account is that the diver who flopped was performing a forward with four and a half summersaults and back flying two and a half summersaults. And he who entered the water seamlessly? Well, he just did a forward dive. 

So next time you see someone flop, consider that maybe they had a harder dive, a harder fall. 

And when you see someone who just seems perfect, when life doesn't seem fair, think how they would do in a Backward Flying Four and a Half Summersaults . . . and know if you're struggling maybe your degree of difficulty is just a little higher. If people are laughing now, or if you're feeling down on yourself, don't worry, you're reward will come. 

So then you take a look at these guys . . . well, I'm sure they've flopped too. Was it worth it? I'll bet they'll say it was. 

Candidly,

Cookie

Too Perfect

"You're ugly."
"You're fat."
"You're stupid."
It's easy to see the negative effects of such judgments. But what about, "You're perfect"?
"You're perfect" has come to have a much different meaning than what Christ meant when he commanded "Be ye, therefore, perfect."
We hear it all the time now in a sort of jest. "You're just too perfect."
Pride can look down, but it can also look up. So too can judgment, and "you're perfect" has become a form of judgement. It is no more a compliment than "teacher's pet."
To call someone perfect is to say they're a suck-up, a perfectionist, or that the level they have reached is unattainable. It is effectively, isolating.
The other day I was told, "Brooke, you're so perfect. You have no idea how many people look up to you."
No, I have an idea. Because when everyone is looking up at you, no one is looking at you.
I don't want to be looked up at. I want to be looked at.
I don't want to be up on a pedestal. I want to be down in the crowd, where there is someone to place their arm around me and realize, "Hey, you're human too."
Besides, when you're up on a pedestal, it's so easy to fall, and when you do people notice your stark imperfection and look down at you. But down in the crowd, everyone's imperfect. And you know what? That's okay. Because we're in this together.
We're all imperfect beings just striving to be better.

Candidly,
Cookie

The Birthplace of Dreams

I was staring at a shelf full of books - Dante's Commedy, Jane Austen, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Canterbury Tales, Aristotle's Rhetoric - a copy of Walden Pond by Daivid Thoreau clasped in my hand. The cover was of fine brown leather, as intricately patterned and precious as an elephant's hide, concealing within a whole other life, an entirely other world. I read the title in its flowing script, and the letters blurred.
Tears do that.
I'm note sure exactly why I was crying. Perhaps it was all those beautiful books, more than I should ever have the time to read . . .
Sometimes I wish I could just live in the library. I wish time would stop and I could sit and read for as long as I like. But knowing me, if that ever were to happen, I would lose all my contacts and my glasses would break. That, or the library would catch fire and, simultaneously, ebooks would cease to exist.
And so I must be content with the few minutes before bed when homework has ceased to make sense; when reason has shut its door and the imagination (the middleman of reason and affection) can take only from the emotions - which is what reading is for.
Staring at that shelf full of books in the BYU bookstore, I had imagined for a moment that there would be time to read them all, and in so doing had shut the door on reason; I had poured out my emotions in order to feed an impossible dream, in order to live for just a moment in my own Walden Pond, beneath the beautiful brown leather, within the elephant's hide, where the imagination soars and emotion thrives, where for a moment dreams are born, and for a moment reason dies.

When I don't have much time to read, I write about it. Kind-of pathetic . . . But what can I say? I'm an English major. And I'm loving it.

Candidly,
Cookie