Farewell Moments

Dear me;
Don't worry about how many yearbook signatures you get. If you get a hundred, fantastic. If you get zero, wonderful. If you get anything in between, that's perfectly fine, too. But, really, it's not about lines that someone scribbles on a page in a book you'll forget about in ten years. What matters are the moments that someone shapes in your life. These are the things you'll carry with you. So instead of immortalizing signatures, I want to imprint on you these moments. I don't want your feeble memory to lose its grasp, and I can't trust it to hold on indefinitely.

One;
A friend of mine recently suffered an injury at the hands of a machine, in which her hair got sucked into a fan and caused hair loss, damage to her scalp, and a minor concussion. This accident occurred on a Friday, and she was out of school for a few days, returning on Wednesday afternoon and easing herself into the schedule of presentations. We got a fifteen-minute break to go outside, walk around, get some fresh air, and I was initially going to go with another friend to adventure to the xeriscaped courtyard-garden behind the science building, but my injured friend couldn't walk very far distances or very quickly due to the minor concussion. So she and I meandered around the grass, searching for the owlets and otherwise leisurely walking around across from the library. It was quietly memorable because it seemed so normal and natural, but tender at the same time. Also, the dynamic was very different than when someone had run up to her and given her a hug when she saw her and others chattered away about what had happened while she was gone. My relationship with her is a lot different. Initially I was upset with myself for being aloof when she arrived, but our short perambulation reminded me that this is where the value in our friendship lies.

Two;
At the all-school awards ceremony on Thursday, the headmaster listed the several teachers that would be retiring after the completion of the current academic year, and I was surprised to hear the name of my United States history teacher from junior year. Once we were dismissed and everyone was leaving the gym, I saw my former teacher sitting a few rows behind where I had been seated. I approached him, and he smiled his crooked smile and stood up. We shook hands and I congratulated him on his retirement, admitting how sad I was that he would be leaving, but he assured me that he would still be involved with the school as the football coach. We seemed to shake hands for a lot longer than was typical before releasing our grasp. He asked me where I had decided to go to college, and after remarking on Middlebury's academic reputation, he mused about my going to "the wilds of New England." He congratulated me, and I congratulated him again before I continued on my way. I was glad to have had the opportunity to talk to him, because he was my favorite teacher from junior year, and in asking him to write a recommendation for me, he has been more involved in my college search than any other professor of mine. Also, I had bade farewell to a retiring former teacher at the end of junior year, and it was nice to be able to do that again, especially since I'm moving on to new journeys in my life as well.

Three;
I did a lot of gazing out the window during presentations on Thursday, and a patch of daisies underneath a cottonwood caught my eye. I didn't have my camera, and we had to go to the awards ceremony, so I reminded myself to head back down to the library after school to take pictures. As I walked across the football field and the track, I snapped some photos of the sky, the clouds, and the trees, and when I ducked around to the side of the library, something in me ached. I felt some reflexive expression from this quotation: "I hurt.... It's a good hurt, though, the wonderful, beautiful hurt called love where your heart breaks in a second and is mended a million times over in the next, where an internal flame scalds you thoroughly from the inside out and then washes you clean of the burns instantly." I walked through the thick grass littered with tree debris and weeds, marveling at the tall flowers as they stretched up proudly and drank in the sun. This was a corner of the library I had walked by a few times but wasn't particularly familiar with. It felt secluded, yet the simple, natural beauty emanating from it overwhelmed me. I identified with that quotation because, all of a sudden, a nostalgia had come over me. Even though I hadn't visited the niche before, a yearning filled me, a yearning to not leave yet because I still had more to see, to discover, to explore, to cherish. I recognized and embraced my whole-bodied connection to nature and the Earth in those moments.

To the Ladies: Keep Your Nails

Dear girls,

I am not speaking from the point of view of society when I say that you need to keep your long nails. This is not me stating how it is acceptable in society, or how it is feminine and how every girl should be.

Ladies, those long nails aren't just a pretty accessory. They are actually useful for many different purposes in our everyday lives. Without this evolutionary tool, life gets hard.

Don't ask me what nails are good for. You all should know by now:

• Tightening and/or loosening small screws
• Removing the battery cover on your phone
• Picking up or gripping very thin/small objects
• Scratching yourself/relieving itches
• Peeling off paper labels/stickers
• Effectively flipping/turning pages by sliding between them and isolating the desired page (instead of crumpling the corner with a stubby fingertip)
• Keeping your fingertips out of direct contact with potential dangers
• Being decorated and cutesy

While that's all I can think of right now, there are plenty of other uses that will pop up at some point. You might ask, why am I writing this? Why am I stating the obvious? It's a note to self as well as something I hope can save all of you some issues. Recently I just trimmed my nails, thinking it would be good for playing guitar and clarinet and because generally I find my long nails get ragged and caught on blankets and sweaters and are a nuisance. Well, I feel kind of like a declawed cat. I now try to do things I once was able to do with long nails, with no success. I feel like a bumbling caveman.

With this letter, I hope I can do my best to save all of us from feeling like bumbling cavemen and having painful and red fingertips and losing many of our natural evolutionary abilities by having long nails.

To John Lennon

You beautiful man. What else can I say? You were positively gorgeous, and that beauty didn't end at your face. As you matured, you learned to give and care, and grew to be irresistible in personality and character. Peace and love became your main goals, and you showed all of us this in your music and later activism.

It's not always easy to understand your motives for things, but the one thing about you that to this moment I continue to find a mystery are your eyes. At this, it's easy to think that maybe I can read your emotions through your eyes, and at times I can. Perhaps you emit a power through them that I can feel if I hold your gaze for long enough, and surely this is also true. But their color. I had always thought brown, but upon close inspection of the cover of a biography, they appeared almost green, and in some pictures they could pass as blue. I like to settle for the idea that they change, like you did, because you did change often as we all need to.

Something I appreciate that not everyone of your fans does or can was your love for Yoko. It sprouted in the most unlikely of ways, and it fought on through all of the tough spots in your relationship. You loved her every moment of every day, and gave her the opportunity to bring her music to our ears in a reasonable way. You fought for her, as any man should when they're lucky enough to have someone as creative and talented as Yoko, and for that I applaud both her and you.

There's something about your music that makes it more than just a melody with guitar chords and a predictable chorus. There's a pain behind it, the pain of experience, of living through the tough years you did, that I appreciate. I appreciate that you could project yourself in this way, and that we could know you on what seemed to be a more personal level.

 

The journey of your life and goal of peace was something that has inspired me since I knew. The tragedy of you being unfairly ripped from this world was something that I mourn even though I couldn't have stopped it. Your message of peace today would perhaps be what the world needed as a whole to get back on track. But your music hasn't disappeared. It hasn't disappeared, it never will, and "Imagine" will still be the anthem for world harmony for as long as music exists.

To George Harrison

My dear, sweet George. Sometimes I wonder about you. How you could have been the person you are: nice to everyone, selfless, giving, kind-hearted. You had the biggest heart of any living mortal, yet you yourself were a kind of god. I don't question this, question who someone is in their heart and soul, and I don't question your being. You were who you were, and I would do nothing to change that.

I love your smile. I try to remember it everyday, and I am unconsciously reminded of it all the time. Many a smile I see bears a striking resemblance to your own luminous, light-hearted grin. I wish I could have seen it for myself, seen it in person.

Concert for Bangladesh - 1971

On seeing you in person, I wonder what it would have been like to see you in concert, or on TV, here, alive. How far away would your music sweep me? How much would my heart race and my face flush even if I only saw you on television? Would I have loved you had our life timelines overlapped more than they had? I often wonder, sometimes knowing how vital the timing was, or else I may not have discovered you, really.

Somewhere in England - back cover

 

There is no way to describe in words the power your music has. I admit I disagree with the message certain songs project, but if I hear a song of yours blast out of the blue, unexpected in the shuffle, I am covered in all-over warmth, from my head to my toes. The big-band sounds in All Things Must Pass are the most striking, I'd say, the ones that captivate you in their seat, shining with a clear majestic glory. George Harrison is cloaked in an intriguing, jungle-y mystery I cannot solve but am all too capable of exploring. Living in the Material World is gentle and spiritual, and Brainwashed is your bittersweet goodbye to us, the one where we feel your departure in each line, even if the song was not your own.

Sharing how I feel about you with a friend is, I guess, one of my first steps in accepting that you are not solely mine, but the whole world's to cherish and treasure. It doesn't hurt to fantasize your smile and voice, though, and think what it would be like to have truly lost you. I haven't lost you though, and for that I thank you, George. Thank you, for letting me see the world.