My Clan of Crazies

It's that time of year again when the libraries begin to fill. Students stride past the doors with heavy backpacks, thermoses filled with the highest levels of caffeine hidden at their sides as they quickly walk past the front desk, and minds filled with facts that need to be ingrained before the nights end. It's this time of year when I begin to steer as far away from the library as possible.

I love the library during the early weeks in the semester, when students go there with merely the intention to study, and since no tests exist in the near future to gauge their understanding of the hours spent in the library, they find a place at a table and open their books, hold their pens between their fingers, simply to feel studious for the time being.

It's during these times when tables of students suddenly giggle in whispers, and lovers sneak glances and hold hands under the table, friends write notes to each other, students walk aimlessly through the books picking and choosing whatever sounds interesting.

Unfortunately these times are short, for conditions change way to soon, and tables begin to fill with students whose bottoms are chained to the edge of their seats, whose elbows are glued to the edge of the table, and whose books are nailed to the wooden surfaces.

Though I try to steer away from the library during these days, I occasionally step in--waiting. Waiting for someone brave enough and strong enough to unlock a few of those chains and make a table of students jump quietly in their seat with laughter.

Perhaps I'll recruit a team myself. I'll recruit a team of students who will step in every four hours or so--some sort of disruptive clan of crazies-- who will sit at tables "in disguise" and randomly burst into uncontrollable laughter for a whole minute before calming down. I'm sure it'll force a few smiles to creep up on people's faces and that alone is enough to tickle and shake up this heavy, morbid vibe.

"The Secret"

They say that the "secret" to life is the law of attraction. It's to understand that every thought you have has a frequency; positive thoughts translate to larger frequencies, and negative thoughts to smaller frequencies. And every "thought" attracts the "thing" it is made of. Ultimately, your life's thoughts are manifested in the world around you.

Today, I started thinking about this phenomenon again. It crosses my mind every few days. It's hard for me to accept it. Not because I don't believe in the energy of thoughts, but because to accept it would be to accept that every inward pain I've ever felt, I've brought upon myself. Friendships that have crippled my soul and left me to dust, moments of weakness that have made me ashamed, tears I've brought to the eyes of those I love- to accept "the secret" would mean to accept that these have all been my doing. And usually, thinking about this part of the "secret" results in me setting it aside for a different day.

Today was different.

Today I thought that to accept the fact that my thoughts have attracted my realities would mean that making my mother smile on her birthday, feeling love, being talented, seeing the peace of the world more than the pain-- these would be all my doing. That my heart had brought the people who I love into my life.

I finally came to a conclusion about "the secret," and can cross it off my list.
Even though there's no way to prove its truth, no way to carve out numbers or facts or statistics or reactions...it can train my mind and heart to think of love over pain and talent over failure. I don't think that will be all too bad.

And since I've accepted it, I try it on pretty much everything- including scenic routes in movies, and pictures of houses with wooden floors and bay windows that let in a lot of light.

I'll let you know if they come my way ;)

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b1GKGWJbE8

Pieces of my Playground...

Recesses with my forehead against the concrete wall near my class, and my hands on my head. Time out they would call it. I spent enough of my fifteen minute recesses against this wall, at some point teachers gave up on supervision and attended to better and bigger things. It was in these moments that my classmates would all gather around seeping into the normally-dreaded corner, and filling it with sounds of laughter. Scraping pieces of tanbark against the ground making stars and circles, I’d promise them that tomorrow I’d behave and we’d be in the sandpit instead of on the dark concrete next to the room we just came out of.

Shaka put Laila’s eraser into his mouth during recess and left it wet and slimy on her desk for when she came back. We decided that a decent punishment would be to go to a far off corner of our elementary school playground and dig a hole, deep like a well, fill it up with muddy water, cover the top with sticks and leaves and call him over with some excuse, watch him stand and fall in and then tell him that he should never put a girl's eraser into his mouth again. We never finished it. In fact, before we were able to avenge Laila’s eraser, all our feet had fallen into the mud hold at least once. Our deep avenging powerful well was left at a small dent in the ground.

Lunch times consisted of all of us making a massive circle, one of us standing in the center turning round and round. Cut the cake, cut the cake, lay the pieces nice and straight. From kindergarteners to fifth graders—all forty of us singing in perfect unison. Chasing each other round and round and round the circle till we tired.

I’d sit in the sand pit, and stretch out my hand, and, just as I promised, would let her practice her henna patterns. Only I never had the patience to hold my hand in empty space for much longer than five minutes. There’s too much to attend to in a playground…

…especially when you’re trying to find a way to get into the older grades’ secret clubhouses. Their clubhouse was built under the only tree. Their clubhouse with spare tires (ruins from our inner city surroundings) as walls, spare pieces of wood as tiles, and a nail against a tree for a framed picture.

Kickball, States, Hopscotch, Clap games.

These are my playground memories.

And now I’m twenty, and our schools no longer have playgrounds.

Twenty where the schedule doesn’t carve out a fifteen minute block in your day, commanding you to play, where no one sees a piece of chalk against a blackboard and thinks to grab it and draw out a large hopscotch grid against the cement, where you can no longer dig through the mud with high aspirations of playful revenge.

And yet, I’ve managed to keep my playground. I keep it, with its spare tires, cement, and sand. I keep it all, with its hopscotch, and mud and kickball fields in my head. It’s perfectly intact. It’s quite a fun place only I’m the only one throwing stones against my boxes, and my balls only bounce as they leave my fingertips, and the cement corners are only filled with my laughter.

So here I am extracting my clubhouse from the corners and boxes of my mind, and extending a hand. Asking you to bounce me the ball back. Hold my hand and make a circle. Run around as we call states. Kick the ball when it comes your way. Chase me to the swings. Draw henna on my hand. Spit on my eraser. Keep me out of the secret clubhouse. Send me off to corners.