Lindsay’s Scribblings

It lay discarded there, on her crumpled teal bedspread. The book she had been reading, one of many Honor Harrington novels.
It lay discarded; she reached down to pick-up rouge from the entertainment center that she used as a make-shift vanity. Thick mauve smudges on her cheeks. Mascara clumps.
A façade of normalcy, of slow-witted materialism.
Still, through the dense powder she was transparent: timid, brilliant, and most dangerously – different. They – the conformists – saw through her ill-fitting subterfuge, kept to themselves.
More make-up, she constantly thought, another layer. Then they will talk to me, laugh with me, be my friends.
Wrong. The mists of make-up obscured only her own actualization: Self quivered, quaked, shivered under the burden of a presumed title, “odd.”
This was in 6th grade.
I knew her, for a time. When she spoke up in class (often, with the correct response), she was ridiculed. When she read for leisure (constantly, with few exceptions), she was decried. “NERD!” they – the followers – exclaimed. And she listened. Listened and tried to change, tried to fit, tried to hide behind trendy blouses and sparkly cherry lipgloss. They – the popular – controlled her self-image, assigned her a rank, designated her a number.
I knew her for a time, but she was not my type. I knew her for a time, and then we split. Split cataclysmically. Split instantaneously. Split permanently.

I split – cataclysmically, instantaneously, permanently. Split on my own because I chose to. Because I enjoy being intelligent. Because I enjoy setting my own trends. Because being similar is boring. Because nerdy is just-right.

I was in 6th grade when I split, from a conformist, a follower, a hopeful diva, to a brazen nerd, a budding writer, a proud reader. I was in 6th grade when I washed off the make-up.

Goodbye, might-have-been Lindsay.

Bombs crash. Wreckage spews turbulently among corpses and trembling homes.
Famine threatens life, leaving destitute, third world citizens struggling for subsistence.
No respite lingers from the maelstrom of our ignorance, violence, and apathy, no universal solution to temper our actions with kindness and common sense.
We can change it, if we try. If we think. If we care.

Build me a Chapel of the Mind.
A glass cube in the middle of verdant arboreal foliage, rustling leaves flirting behind every pane. Cool hard-wood floor demanding clarity. Sunlit silence offering amber hope.
A sterile New York loft, towering distantly over congestion on the rainy autumn streets below. Overlooking our modernized society. A society that runs on Slimfast and Coca-cola – it doesn’t require intellect, just caffeine. It doesn’t require thought, just warm bodies.
Build me a Chapel of the Mind. A serene sanctuary. A frank fortress, isolated in the midst of regulated pandemonium – a space for observing. A space for trying. Thinking. Caring.
Build me a Chapel of the Mind, and kneel to consider. To meditate. To pray. We’ll pray to humanity and the progress we’ll make. We’ll pray to intellect and the price that it pays. We’ll pray to humanity – together, we can end persecution, eliminate murder. Together, we can think of solutions.

Build me a Chapel of the Mind: forsake ignorance.
Build me a Chapel of the Mind: forgo violence.
Build me a Chapel of the Mind: forfeit apathy.

There we can worship individualism through mass empathy. There our separate worldviews can melt into one compassion. A single consciousness spiraling towards celestial actualization, leaving its corporeal prison and ascending to contemplation.

Insistent
would-be kisses
keep me from
my paper
Tell me you would, if you were here.
Persistent
guardian arms
keep me from
imagined danger

Tell me you would,
you will
you want to.
Tell me you would, if you were here.

 

 Would you?: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (15)

There is a space
in my lap
my beagle-boo
just for you
There is a space
on my floor
for you to lie
once more
There is space
in my room
for beagle-feet
to zoooom
There is space
in this place
in my home
just for you
my beagle-boo

 

 My Beagle-Boo: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (18)

Waning tide
Pouring over the
Event horizon
A cascade of
Dying thunder
Celestial whirlpools
Draining to
Terra’s downy foliage
A mist of
Humble disconcertion

Catholic, Protestant and Jewish: the religious banners suffuse a strange sense of exclusion over the make-shift stage in Texas Lutheran University’s gymnasium, though that is not the intent of the Bluebonnet Girls State staff. In a program that encourages progress and diversity, little of either is shown – a quick look around the room reveals a disproportionate skew of ethnicities, and a cursory glance at the stage proves that the program has yet to proffer the hand of acceptance to religions outside the realm of Judeo-Christianity.
When applying for the program – advertised vaguely as a symposium on Texas state politics for future leaders – I initially intended to attend with one of my closest friends, Zayna, a Muslim. While she ended up spending her summer with relatives in Europe, Egypt and Lebanon, I was astounded to find that though Girls State was not openly hostile towards Islam, Hinduism, Daoism, or Buddhism, it did not anticipate participants from any of these religions – despite the growing racial and religious diversity of Texas’s largest cities.
This was and is a drastic mistake, both in Girls State and the world-at-large. On a purely practical level, a successful state, and more valuably, a successful nation, will require cooperation from most (if not all) sects, and must harvest all of its available talent – regardless of background. It must look past the superficiality of physical differences and past too, the Venus Fly-Trap, Tradition. It must grow and adjust – it must be plastic, and it must teach it’s successors to be equally so. The alternative is bedlam and dissent when the unrepresented choose to boycott oppression.
Any program teaching democracy – the Greek “rule by the people” – should know and respect such simple principles. Certainly, any program teaching democracy in America, where immigration has constantly altered the political equilibrium, should consider this idea rote, if not trite.
Still, when Girls State was founded over half a century ago, it was progressive – urging female participation in a system culturally, if no longer legally, barred them. But it simply hasn’t kept pace with the times – expecting Caucasians alone to qualify based on academic ability is passé in a society where Asian Americans are applying to the Ivy League at a rate that causes even white males to fare favorably against affirmative action.
But my objection is tinted with more than mere pragmatism – of my four best friends, only one, Sarah, shares my Caucasian, single-parent background. The other three span the cultural and genetic spectrum – the aforementioned Zayna, Ranjani – an Indian Hindu, and Mandy (Man-yi) – an agnostic, 2nd generation Chinese immigrant. These three girls alone are quintessential manifestations of the value of diversity – Zayna: Latin Club President, Mandy: NHS President, and Ranjani: captain of the Upper Certamen team and Ancient Geography, webmaster of the JCL, varsity captain of our Academic Decathlon team and trivia nerd extraordinaire. They are the future, as much as I or any other Girls State Citizen. They are leaders – compassionate, intelligent, strong – who represent the academic bourgeoisie of our nation.