''life is people and people are life''

Since life is people and people are life, to experience life is to
experience people as experiencing people is living life. Needing to
escape from my claustrophobic life that was wilting under stagnant
water, stuffy air, and artificial light and in searching for more
understanding in my ongoing interest in life, I reacted to my self-made
bumper sticker, SAVE LIFE - LIVE IT, and to Lord Chesterfield's words that
"the knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world and not in
a closet," so putting down "the knitting, the book and the broom," I
joined the cabaret. Thus, yearning for new cultivation of life, I sowed my
seeds in German soil for a year as I accepted my government-funded
scholarship from the Congress-Bundestag Exchange Program. For a year I
would thrive from an additional "childhood" and a different "upbringing"
as German rays would enhance my narrow being by undressing a completely
different and unknown ethos, including culture, people, language and even
parents. Back home after being the Valley Girl, better known as
Valedictorian, my land was ruined by deforestation as the abundant fruits
had been harvested a long time ago; hence, left tilling overgrown weeds of
my rational mind and perfectionism, I only had perfect illusions to feast
on and to grow from. Everything in life just seemed so trivial - school,
relationships, parents and even life itself. I was bored and had lost my
curiosity to a cunning, clever cat. Chasing that feline, extending past
the boundaries of my comfort level and stepping beyond the fork in the
road, I entered the forest, namely, the Black Forest, to create my own
trail.    And what hopping hares have I happened upon or what sweet
symphonies have I sung with the song birds? I could write a thousand page
book of how I have cultivated my passionate side by being more
understanding and patient (adding to my already procrastinating nature),
more aware and excepting, a better listener and sharer and how I have also
gained more experience and possess a better attitude towards life that is
filled with more laughter and happiness rather than crying over spilled
milk that the cat can lap up later. But since you would rather not spend
all winter and spring reading only my application and I would rather not
spend all my time in Germany writing a book, I will stick to one main
theme: love. Love, along with communication, I have realized, makes the
world go round. I came to Germany with my hands and heart wide open,
shedding prejudices by excepting whatever and whoever I encountered. With
this unconditional love that had formerly rusted under lack of use, I
greeted my family, my new friends and the strangers on the street. Thus,
unearthing myself, who was a stranger too, I actually learned how to love
her, for within ourselves, we must be able to find our best friend. Loving
her to the fullest extent, which includes censure for wrong and laud for
right, we must also push forth by sharing her and her love with the rest
of the world, for it is more fun to share ourselves with other people
rather than greedily storing it all in a castle where, guarded behind an
insurmountable moat, it will only collect cold and dust. Finding a reason
for my former jealous streaks when friends extended their love to other
people beyond me, I truly understand now that love is not a quantity but
rather a quality that can extend to all. And in finding and in believing
in love, I have found in other people my own religion, my own set of
beliefs for life. After traveling alone to my permanent host family on
unfamiliar trains, I was the benefactor of little acts of kindness; for
example, when I needed disparately to get off the train, some strangers
cleared a path through the crowd for me and my heavy suitcases. Hence,
putting my faith in human beings and their mercy and kindness, I have
omitted an inconsequential God who simply serves as a middle man or a tool
in the connection of love between humans. Since people operate on
different learning styles, God can be a useful step for some people, like
long division, by helping people who believe in him find within themselves
strength, comfort and guidelines to live by, but she can also be
eliminated from the equation since the same result can be derived by
performing short division too as people believe in themselves and others
without relying on support from a pillar of power. Moreover, family is not
bound to blood, or if it is, then it is tied to the existence of blood,
for if we are willing to except other people into our hearts, then they
have automatically entered our "family," people who we care about and live
for. We, as humans, do not need other people, especially in this
self-sufficiency age of computers and cars, but rather we desire people;
we want to share our lives with other people. Because we know that they
exist, we must believe in humans, for in laying my eggs somewhere, I would
rather lay them on the tangible earth than throw them to the sky because
THIS exists right here and right now. If we never tend to the present,
then there is no basis being built for the future. Therefore, wanting to
use my service on people, for people are the ones in need of service, not
a god which is omnipotent and omniscient, I am now more willing to return
those "little acts of kindness" by offering succor to anyone I find
needing, for love is an action, not a word. As life is ever changing so
are we. Sometimes we need to step out of the theater to realize that
inside there is a play being performed, so struggling past the girl and
her mother and the odd couple on the end, I left the play running for
Platonic shadows as I opened the door to new opportunities to find life,
to trap that seeking feline with satisfaction and to discover, as Tori
Amos sings, "pieces of me you've never seen." And in the end, after
following Jean-Paul Sartre's philosophy by creating an essence for my
futile existence, I can hopefully look forward to being a wiser speck of
dust.
 

''Valley Girl'' one

Everybody thinks that a Valley Girl, not the dizzy blond yokel but
rather the Valedictorian, is smart. And what exactly is the definition of
smart? I have been trying to figure that out since first grade. According
to these surmising people, the ingredients for intelligence, include the
possession of a marvelous memory and pointed punctuality in addition to
the assumption that anything I do is depressingly easy and turns out
disgustingly flawless every time. From experience, I beg to differ. I,
myself, do not believe these heedless and ingenuous assumptions but rather
know that they subsist only in people's heads. Possessing the most faulty
memory cells in a species, I often contemplate how even the consideration
of crowning my cranium with congratulations of Valedictorian was
conceived. I do not actually ponder long, though, because I cannot always
remember what I was thinking about. Once I was working on the computer
when there was something obviously wrong with the cupboard door as my
mother warned, "Do not open the cupboard," after we had precarious placed
it in its cadre. No later after thirty seconds I desperately needed paper
for the computer. Crash. Too bad for my toes, but the printer was fed;
hence, the end can justify the means here. Yet, if our German house should
glow with fire due to my forgetfulness to extinguish the flaming candles
that we use for electricity in the midst of reconstruction, I will
probably die if I am home alone before I realize that in Germany people
receive help by dialing 110 instead of  911. Wait. Or is it 001? But I am
proud to say that it only took me three months to learn my new five digit
telephone number by heart without consulting the numerous reminders in my
purse, so at least I will be able to call home in case of a fire.
Moreover, in my pious house we celebrate Easter all year round. The eggs
are pretty, of course, and the chocolate is always nice to have, but our
plants are the main event. Every three months when I think that our cat
has eaten all our leafy vegetation, I discover upon closer investigation
that my plants are only blending in with the brown wallpaper in the
background. Faithful creatures with more lives than their feline friends,
they always resurrect on the third day after I flood them with water. But
on our third day in Germany, I knew that Lyndsay, another foreign exchange
student, and I were an excellent match in our temporary host family as we
attended language camp for three weeks. Even though we were given an
exhausted tour by our transient relations through the neighborhood the day
before, we could not remember the way to the bus stop to start our day.
That is when I knew Lyndsay would prove to be an exceptional companion for
me, for if she was not going to utilize her memory skills, then I would
have to start sometime, or the probability that we would end up in a cow
pasture in the middle of Belgium following the cows to the barn to be
milked would be very high. At least we wouldn't be thirsty, though, in the
midst of our identity crises. Furthermore, other people, mostly mothers,
have this crazy notion that Valley Girls are exceptionally punctual and
always meet deadlines with plenty of time to spare. HA! If I could just be
graded in procrastination, my average would jump at least ten points.
Because I possess such a bad memory and I am aware of this fact, I try to
compensate for my handicap by writing on myriad pieces of scrap paper
exactly what thoughts my unfunctioning brain should be storing. However,
my procrastinating nature overcompensates for my compensation because, as
there is always a civil war being held in my head, it promptly ignores any
scattered compressed trees by turning the other eye. Yet, proving to be
the apex of my procrastination, my Valley Girl speech was printed out ten
minutes after we should have left for the ceremony. But being tardy a
sixth of an hour is a record for my ever dailying family. Yet, sometimes
the fragrance of the laurels deposited upon my head effect my brain and
fool myself into performing some intellectual one-acts that render merit
to the flowers. Managing an audition for a play, I ushered the actors into
the waiting room and then later into the theater. While waiting for his
daughter to try out, an uptight, pretentious, backstage father was
furiously searching through his Shakespeare antholo gy for a quote. Asking
if I could be of any assistance, he explained that he was looking for a
monologue on the stages of life. "Oh," I replied with pause, "it is in the
seventh scene of the second act in As You Like It. " He sort of stared at
me and after finding it, mumbled, "I'm quite impressed." I was too that I
had remembered after a whole week the origin of that quote, for I had just
used as my theme for my Valley Girl speech. Additionally, I have taken
measures to compensate for my family's "we can never get there early"
genetic defect by setting my clock twenty minutes fast, which actually
resolves the problem since, in forgetfulness, I overlook the creation of
my own time zone. And yet, from this chaos that reigns in my brain, I
emerged as the head of the class; well, the universe, too, had to form
somehow. But when all else fails, I do know all my state capitals by heart
and can impress them with that or maybe not. In any case, it will not help
the immediate future of my pinkie finger which is presently a plum
violet-blue due to the lack of oxygen and to my forgetfulness of why I
tied a yellow string around my finger. Now, if I could just also remember
where I put my Yale application, perhaps everything will be alright.