Color – Or Lack Thereof

Let’s rewind for a moment. At the end of the summer, I went on vacation to Lake George with one of my friends. We spent four days pretty much doing what we pleased – exploring the town, tanning on the beach and swimming in the pool. Okay, scratch that - We only went to the beach one day and ended up leaving because the water was full of stuff I’d rather not step on.

That moment, though, gave me the idea for what you are reading. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and two teenage girls had nothing else to do: We tanned (not really), we laid out our blankets and we decided to sit there and talk because nothing else entertained us. It was then that I noticed something – the towels we had were really, really white.

Being the great planners that we were, we forgot to bring our own beach towels from home and ended up borrowing the hotel towels for the day. The sand-dirt that surrounded Lake George was a distinct brown-tan color (like most sand/dirt is). But on that day, that particular sand-dirt made the towels appear very luminescent. Looking at them was equivalent to staring at a blanket of snow on a sunny day.

White. it’s not even a color, if you were wondering.

Actually, there is debate about whether or not white is a color. White reflects all the color waves. My physics class touched on this last year, but I’m not very good at explaining the color spectrum. To understand this fully, I suggest that you do some research.  

Yes, I know, you probably think I’m gonna go all scientific on you. No. What I’m really trying to say is that although white may or may not be a color, it definitely has a significant connotation.

White. What does it signify? You already know what it signifies; scream it out if you feel like it.

Innocence. Purity. Holiness. The color white is everywhere.

And have you noticed that every hotel towel is white? I’ve been going to hotels all seventeen years of my life and only this summer did I realize that all of the towels are white.

Why can’t they be cerulean? Or sea foam green? Or sunset orange? Honestly, why? If I owned a hotel I think multi-colored towels would be a lot more fun.

Sheets are white. Soap is white. Bath tubs and showers are white. Paper is white. The bristles on your tooth brush are white. Without even noticing, the items you use everyday are pure. Mentally, you acknowledge that these things are clean. Hotels want their clients to think the services they provide are spotless, therefore their towels are white.

White. White. White.

We have been brainwashed to believe that the cleaner something is, the better it is. Most would agree that this is true (I mean come on, I love showers as much as the next person), but now our minds are not as open to viewing the other side. For example, if that towel has a little brown spot on it, most people automatically want to use a different one because that towel is not ‘clean.’ And for all you know, that towel has been washed over and over again very thoroughly and that little chocolate stain just doesn’t want to come off.

White is pure. Once another color interferes, we want to find something else. We just toss it to the side like it’s nothing, when it is clearly something. We are judging without trying to judge. And this, my friends, will always be a fault of humankind.

Isn’t it ironic that the thing we consider pure actually taints our minds?

                                  Yours Truly,
                                     Alison “Lost in Believing”

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently." -Friedrich Nietzsche

I received a new Discover magazine today-along with two solid brass swan heads, but that’s another story- and began reading one of the articles, this one about the aging brain.

Now there’s something that has always intrigued me, something that comes up in whatever I’m reading, be it YA fiction, my History notes, or, today, an article from Discover magazine. I’ll give you a hint; in the Discover article Robert Epstein writes “Recent studies suggest that the total loss in brain volume due to atrophy—a wasting away of tissue caused by cell degeneration—between our teen years and old age is 15 percent or more…”

Why did this sentence catch my attention, spurring me to run upstairs without even finishing the article and start writing this? Well because it’s pointing out something that is in our society today downplayed- the fact that as teenagers, we are in the prime of our lives. No, some of you will say; that’s when we get into our twenties, maybe even a bit after that; that’s when we have all the energy and opportunities that our parents (aka the ‘old people’ in our lives) constantly yearn for and miss. That’s what they want you to think, I say.

The truth is, despite how our lives are structured today in the twenty-first century, our bodies are made to fit the minimum lifestyle. Years and years and years ago our primary function was to survive- not become famous, or fight for equal rights or anything “meaningful” by today’s standards; we were simply to survive, and do so in the most efficient way possible. Because of this our bodies came to fit our needs, so that we reached maturity quickly, reproduced, and then were useful enough until we died a few years later so that we could contribute to the rest of the community. We still reach physical maturity very early, even earlier, some of us, because of the chemicals we are subject to today, only our lives are structured differently now. I mentioned earlier that this comes up in YA fiction and my History notes, and it’s true; it bugs me. YA fiction has young people, teenagers, in the physical prime of their lives, actually doing things, saving the world, sometimes; but only because they are subject to adverse situations that make our normal social structure meaningless. In History class I am met with the stories and portraits of men and women who have accomplished more than I ever will, some before even reaching their eighteenth birthday. Theodore Roosevelt is constantly in the back of my mind, fueling an inferiority complex- he had what, seventy two jobs and was seven times more badass than anyone alive today?

Today most of us (unless we’re among the ranks of Gabby Douglas and Missy Franklin and other exemplary badasses) have a set path that may or may not lead us to a livable, mostly unremarkable life. We go to school, for a set number of years (a set number that is getting harder and harder from which to deviate; my aunt skipped a year in high school, but I doubt most anyone in my generation would be allowed to. I wish I could do that.) then we may or may not go to college; though if we want to be “successful” and can either afford it or con the school into giving us enough money, we probably will. Then we try to graduate, and now in our early twenties, move on to searching for a job and trying to settle down with a family or something and white picket fences and blah blah blah. Our lives aren’t based on the same things anymore; in fact, human priorities have changed so much that our lives seem to be created for us. To some extent we all follow a pattern that has been formulated by the generations that preceded us.

It seems, though, that the most successful people are those that break this pattern. It’s probably been this way in all societal patterns; dissenters either die, become pariahs, or are written into history as a great mind of their generation. I suppose that’s what makes the Steve Jobs’ and Theodore Roosevelts- people who are brave enough to disobey, strong enough to take advantage of not just what certain jobs or paths offer them, but their own resources. People who take advantage of themselves, and how they are made to work, not just how our culture wants us to.

This is slightly rant-ish, but basically this is stuff that should be recognized; our technical restraints, and then those cast on us (loosely, despite our interpretation). Our lives are structured by competing schedules.

This year I’m seventeen. I hope I’m strong enough to ignore the timetables and accomplish something that means something for real.

With sincerest regards,

Leigh

The Olympics and How They Remind Us We're Alive

                So I’ve been watching the Olympics, and unlike my parents, don’t mute and ignore all of the commercials. Personally, I think that’s a generational thing; our generation, children of the information age, cannot pass up a soundbite. Especially those thirty seconds or less that aim to trick us into buying something. That’s where we are most at home; it’s like the internet.

                Anyway, so my interest has been piqued by the commercials for the new show Revolution; scheduled to come out September 17^th (because I’m sure as hell watching it. You best remember that date. And isn’t that the day after Nick Jonas’ birthday? Haha). This show is based on the premise that somehow, all the power in the world has been knocked out, throwing our information-driven world back into the dark ages. It is going to follow the path of one girl who gained her own power when everyone else lost theirs, and is now a Katniss-like badass survival machine.

                This story is not unique. Hullo, the Hunger Games, first of all. A girl, hopeless against outside events as she fights for survival? With a bow? Yes. This has been done before. The whole survival thing has been done; it’s like some ingrained human fetish. And I am definitely one of those most affected; Survivor is one of my favorite shows, Hunger Games was for a time, an obsession, anyone heard of the game Lost in Blue for DS? I’ve had it for years, and need to replace it, so I can beat it for the third time WITHOUT it freezing up on me. Survival isn’t just the aim of all living things, it’s ingrained into their conscious minds, too. And now that humans, at least most of them, don’t have to worry about it, we still return to it for entertainment.

                Why is this? Well, for one, like sex, it’s something that never gets old. It’s the essence of our existence, and nothing gives us more of a thrill. Just like the Romans, with their panem et circenses, and Panem of the Hunger Games, with their own arena. Those who are comfortable, and safe, still need to feel, to be thrilled, and this is how.

                That’s the ultimate intrigue of Revolution, and why, come September, I will be hard pressed to miss a single episode(unless the writing makes me headdesk too hard. That has been known to happen, and is severely disappointing). Not only does it offer a kickass new female protagonist, but it looks like it will be thrilling and relatable. Especially for teenagers and younger people in general. We seem to feel the survival tug the strongest, seeing as we are just reaching the primitive definition of maturity. Our minds have yet to catch up with the centuries of what we call progress that has made our world much more boring in comparison to the sudden death thrill of primitive times. It was no mistake that Hunger Games and games like Lost in Blue are aimed at and are successful within the age groups they are.

                That’s possibly something that relates to your thoughts on inspiration by water; a return to our roots, the revealing of the human essence and what is purely necessary to us. There are things, in the collective human consciousness, that cannot fade through the years. Perhaps that’s the root of all excitement and inspiration, whether it be through the suffering that reminds us of the struggle for survival, or glimpses of what we came from at the basest of levels. The things that tug at our very standard heartstrings are incredibly straightforward, if we think about them.

~Leigh Shine

Summer Storms

Alison- Your (beautiful) post reminded me of the short blurb I wrote in the dark the other day after the power went out.

So here's "Summer Storms"

                I sat comfortably on the worm polyester seat, the seatbelt pressing lightly across my chest as I felt the pickup’s engine thrum beneath me. I breathed in the strange air, the indescribable sensation of coolness and humidity at once, at odds, that is only present during the moments after a summer storm. This one had been fierce, during its short life it had torn limbs from some of the trees nearby and left in its wake a layer of reflective warm water on the ground, the puddles and newly rechristened asphalt bouncing the neon lights of the storefronts  and bright lines from the streetlights and stop lights back into the air. It looked like nighttime on Route Nine, the dark clouds blocking out the sun as they struggled behind the quickly moving storm.

                We turned west onto a side street, the neon and cement soon replaced by weighty vegetation, wetness still dripping from the newly hydrated bright green leaves. Just then the sun came out, its setting orange hues bouncing around this new house of mirrors. It bathed the sopping street in its glow, newly brilliant in the face of the receding darkness. I felt its weak warmth on my cheeks through the still present wet humidity. Another turn and I could see the pale sky, glorious in peaches and golds, the edges of the parting clouds stained with the promise of a lighter world behind them, and so far above. It is in these moments that I think I can see a glimpse of Heaven. Surely this is why, long ago in the land of nomads and primitive cave sketches, the ancestors chose to place Paradise there, in that hidden world atop the golden ridged clouds.

                By the time gravel crunched and the old pickup tilted in its familiar dance toward home, the atmosphere had achieved an uneasy equilibrium. The bright sunlight submitted to the storm’s strange aftermath, filtering through the thick air and shedding an eerie glow on the world. Yes, I thought as the door slammed, echoing slightly in the heavy atmosphere, I loved summer storms.

I'll do a real post soon,

~Leigh