It is also not intentional on my part. But it is not accidental. I agree more and more with my teacher's emphatic declaration that there are no accidents.
In any case, as you may well know from previous posts, I'm embarking on a tidying/decluttering marathon, KonMari style. And I'm almost done with the most intense phase, the part that needs to get done all in one go, before I move, the discarding, or rather, choosing only those things that bring you joy or are essential. (and a thing well-used and needed is a thing of joy, even if it is not a thing of excitement.)
I'm onto (and a fair way through) the Final category: Memento's. This category is saved for last because it is the most challenging. I've gotten rid of a LOT of it. But I am running into things that, while not worth keeping, are entertaining, or interesting, or deserve some kind of brief record of them. And so, I've decided to share them with you, here. Not all of them. Just the one's that were funny, or reminded me of something about my past that I'd forgotten, and are appropriate. I've been reminded that I had a very inappropriate sense of humor. I think I still do, it's just slumbering because I'm not letting it out to play. It's one of the things I might wrestle with if I had time to be contemplative; how by trying to be "spiritual" and "good" I've kind of whitewashed my humor. I think I have at times come across as humorless, but I think the truth is closer to the fact that I have an extremely active and dark/ludicrous/nothing-sacred sense of humor, and, finding that to be not allowed, I'm then left with no jokes to make. Which is sad. Not that I need to go back to what it was, but I should certainly be laughing and joking frequently. I think that is a sign of good mental health, and being too serious is a sign of mental sickness.
Anyways, enough preamble, I present to you the first of what may be several parts, of "Files from the Memento Box"
Excerpt quote from a birthday card: "My wish for your 18th is that you always have the strength to pursue perfection in whatever form it may take, and the wisdom to know when not to." That was from Ku, now known as Cullen (who's publishing a web serial now?! So cool! Adult-ing achievement, unlock!)
This next segment is going through a series of papers I wrote over the years, on New Years the Day of Lasting Achievements and such.
I'm not going to share all the details, but reading them, I wanted to reflect on
A) the certain elements that have been constant in my life, as goals, for years and years.
B) the progress that I've made towards them.
The most constant goals, ever present:
-Enlightenment. That, and the wish for various things that will help with that, has been at the top of my list and remained there since at least high school.
-Becoming a good person. Stuff like developing self-discipline, the habit of always acting on what I know is right, and general self improvement.
-Using my skills to do the most good for the world that I can.
-Finding and being with my soul mate.
And not every time, but very often:
Developing mastering in skills, like art, writing, dance (these vary somewhat from paper to paper, but those are common ones)
And some of the ones that didn't hold up to the test of time:
-Getting super rich. Sounds shallow, but even then it was so I could use the money to make the world better in some way. At the time of writing I believe it was to finance a billion Vedic pundits chanting hymns for world peace and meditating, but that wasn't really my idea, I was just other peoples ideas. Maybe it was a billion dollars for several thousand pundits actually. That makes more sense mathematically.)
-Getting ripped, "like a Greek god" (this was pretty much exclusively for the sake of the above mentioned "find soul mate" one. As was the (now embarrassing to re-read,) "get a big you-know-what" (did I really think that would make a difference in whether a girl would like me? Lord help me, I think I did. If you are young and reading this... well, it's probably not appropriate, stop reading, and second, this is a crazy myth, it's not worth worrying about, and you should take that energy and put it where it will actually do some good: learn how to listen deeply, understand others, sacrifice for the sake of others, to be kind and good humored and friendly and respectful, and generally seek to be a version of you that you can stand to be alone with, as someone recently put it.
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Other facts that I had forgotten:
I hated homework, and Hebrew school. I was very slow doing homework. I was bothered by my spelling and my handwriting had to be super slow to be legible, even back then. I was super-consumer-y. I loved browsing catalogs (I wonder if I picked this up from my mom?) and when asked about what I was excited about or what holiday I liked, it was more often than not about the great presents I had gotten or was going to get.
I liked drawing pictures about guns, and explosions, and invented devices. I was always creative. I had a dark, inappropriate sense of humor. I'm grateful my teachers didn't think I was actually suicidal, but they sure could have assumed that, given some of the things I'd write, and I certainly got some check-ins from them (as I would do now if one of my students were writing such things. For example, one of my journal entries for writing class (spelling errors removed):
There once was a boy named Isaac. He had lots of homework. He had homework from school. He had homework from Hebrew school and he had stuff to do almost every day. He got so overwhelmed that he downed a whole bottle of suicide pills. THE END (of my life).
It's so easy to forget, now that I'm generally happy (and enjoying working hard) how seriously unhappy and sarcastic I was, how little tolerance I had for hard work, and how inappropriate I was in my humor and in my complaining. This was written back in 1996, for perspective, so I was about ten years old. After having gone through the suicides of two of my best friends I don't think I'd casually use a turn of phrase like "I want to die" let alone a flippant reference to killing myself. I think it's important to remember that self-centric, limited viewpoint that allowed me to behave that way, since I need to be able to step into the shoes of my students and understand where they are coming from, how they are feeling and why. But it's now alien to me.
On a lighter note, another Journal entry:
2/2/98
I don't have a favorite beach but one time I was in Martha's Vineyard and I was walking down a beach with my family and as we were walking the beach turned into a nude beach. My parents were looking at the scenery so they didn't notice until I said "mom how come the big fat hairy guys are lying on the beach naked? My parents got out of there as fast as they could.
And a few more excerpts (again, I'm editing all of these. I could take pictures but that would be hard for you to read. I should probably take at least one picture so you have an idea of what a page of my writing looked like, just for fun.)
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(I think this was in response to a question prompt like, "who is your hero?"
I have no hero except myself and the voices inside my head. But I am happy that cheese lives in pools. I'm sorry I can't think of anything to think of so I'm going to give you a riddle: I have hands, a face, and a grandfather, who am I?
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(I do not know what mysterious prompt produced this list)
Cheese, Wario Land II, Hi, Somebody that I've reconsidered, queen ant, Bobshmoe, Blue. This may sound a little weird but remember you asked.
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My parents are the best in the world and when they help me I get mad, I hope they don't stop because I always need any person to support me. I get very insecure when nobody loves me.
The teacher replied with a sticky note, "I know for a fact that many people love you!" and indeed, as I looked through my old papers and cards and such, there were a number of touching comments from my classmates, to the effect that they really liked me and enjoyed my presence. It's...sobering? Drunkening? To realize that, even though I thought quite poorly of myself back then, and even though many things have changed, I really wasn't a bad person, even then. And there were many fundamental elements of myself that were admirable and lovable, and haven't changed.
It's kind of like... there's just one person, but they are seeing and being seen and acting through different colored filters. It's always me and my personality, but early on it was my personality being modified through the lens of self-hate, fear, obsession with 'things' as the source of happiness, and lack of belief in myself and my abilities. Now the lens is different, lighter.. But the Isaac remains.
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some attempts at haiku:
I ate cheeses
I ate bees
I have a stomach ache
Bees bees the magical
fruit the more you eat the more
you--unhand me Yankee!
A bee stung me
my friends laughed at me, he he
now their dead, ha ha
(again, example of my seriously dark sense of humor. And as I said, that dark humor is still there. I still find it amusing, I just know better than to act on it and share it with others, so to speak. Except, I suppose, in this instance, where I have the plausible deniability of it being written by me when I was prepubescent. Do all kids do embarrassing, inappropriate things like this when they're young? I have to hope not, but also part of me wants that to be true so I feel less weird...)
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On another note, I found some instances of me reflecting on my strengths and weaknesses (nice prompt for future-me to read, Mead School teachers!) and found it interesting what elements of myself I was aware of. Here are two entries on that subject:
My best qualities are: I'm intelligent, curious, tolerant, good reader, good at spending money and buying cool things, gives respect to elders, good sense of humor, affectionate, and a loyal friend.
(this is good to be reminded of. I was really a "good kid." even though I complained and made inappropriate jokes in my journals and was easily angered. I apparently was trying hard to be respectful to elders (I guess I just didn't realize what I was writing was inappropriate? or maybe my writing teacher was encouraging me to write whatever I was thinking about, and not censor?) and I didn't act on my anger or frustration, almost ever. And I was and still am, a loyal and good friend, to those closest to me.
And "good at spending money." another groan-inducing/embarrassing thing, but I totally remember that from my youth. Spending hours browsing catalogs (I remember "the sharper image" being a favorite) and deciding what I wanted to get, as a pastime. Now I cringe at the thought of how materialistic and wasteful that was, both of my time and of money. Though on the plus side, I've always been a diligent researcher, trying to make sure anything I purchase is a wise decision, a good thrifty buy. I can vaguely remember trying to calculate amount of fun I would get out of a toy to the cost, dividing it up into dollars per hour of fun, and trying to find the toys that had the best ratios. I still tend to research extensively before making a purchase on amazon, though I'm more likely than in the past to simply decide I don't really want or need it.
I think the main turning point there was realizing that my strategy of "if I buy this thing then it will make me use it (say, for a musical instrument or sports equipment) was dead wrong, and that in actuality, if I made do as long as I could without buying anything, then I would know if I would actually use the thing (for example with exercising, now it's more a matter of, "I'm already doing this regularly, and I've got x problem, and I keep having it... OK, fine, I'll get something to remedy it...In a week. If I still feel that way.")
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This is from a graduation essay (so, the end of 8th grade), reflecting on my strengths, weaknesses, etc.
Things I realized were my strengths:
-My ability to look at myself from an outside perspective and judge myself in an unbiased way.
-My persistence "I know I can do something if I just take more time. Unfortunately that often means I don't have time for something else."
-Good at math, "because when I solve a problem, it makes me happy. The harder the problem, the more accomplished I feel."
-Not specifically a strength, but I mention, "I believe in being happy any way you can.... This philosophy was not taught to me. I simply ponder a lot. In my pondering I come up with theories." (Apparently this still-present tendency started quite young.)
-My language arts skills and creativity are good
-My humor is amusing
My weaknesses:
-Very forgetful "while writing this I have currently left my coat, book, saxophone and forensic science folder at school."
-Poor working memory (I must have gotten this phrase from the special ed people who were testing me and trying to figure out why my spelling was so bad, etc.)
-I do poorly on timed tests (I need extra time/I work very slowly)
-I don't know how to interact with girls, except as friends.
-Not good at making decisions
A few other excepts:
"What I'm going to do with my life is something I don't think about very often because when I do, I get stressed out."
"The thing that helped my education the most was not human: it was the computer. My spelling was decreasing the quality of my essays and short stories. But with the computer, all I have to do is click a button and it does the spelling for me." (something for me to think about when my students are having challenges.)
"I think Mead has prepared me very well academically (except for geography, but the other states don't exist anyway, they're just a figment of my imagination until I actually go there. Even the reality we see is just a shadow, cast by some kind of reality where time doesn't exist, where everything just happens at once. Our perception of time is just what we perceive as our consciousness moves through pictures that are each an infinitesimally small amount different... but I digress"
OK, this is long enough for today, methinks. I'll just post a page or two of my handwriting for your amusement, and the rest of this will go in a future post.
Note: this is me writing slowly, so as to be neat for the assignment. You can tell because you can actually read it, with some effort ;-)
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