The Bell Tower in the Distance

First of all I would like to extend a round of applause to those dilligent enough to read what I have below. I would also like to thank you from the bottom of my heart because I know that must mean that I mean something to you. Because, it doesn't make sense, but I wrote it, and although I don't even know the significance of it or why I even like the last paragraph so much I thought I would display it to you all anyway. In case I should happen to find someone dilligent enough to read it, or someone who takes a slight interest in what I have written. *shrugs* it's a journal entry for my English class, I also find it interesting that I don't even know what it's about. *laughs* anyway...read on...if you dare...




The Bell Tower in the Distance

I felt like a dog today. Not because I was peeing in the bushes (eeewww), or because I felt faithful to someone for bringing me my food, not even because I was in a playful mood. Rather, it was because I had to find the perfect spot in the Oak Grove.

Let me start at the beginning. After watching my usual hour of television while lying in bed I decided that I wanted to eat by myself. This for me is untypical because ever since I got back from doing the College Program in Florida I feel like I need people around me all the time, or at least, most of the time. As I was eating at Folger’s dining hall by myself I knew that after I was done I was going to take a walk. With me I carried a book: “A Short History of Nearly Everything” by Bill Bryson. When I found it in the library, I picked it up because he is also the author of “A Walk in the Woods” a book I adore. The book is a very scientific one. He studied things in science and talked to scientists for three years before sitting down to write his book. He tries to explain the unexplainable and I very much like his style of writing. Sometimes his attempts to be funny don’t work, but most of the time I enjoy his satiric or joking manor. The reason I mention this at all is because I feel like I need to find a perfect place to read this. (This is where feeling like a dog comes in.)

I start by heading towards the tennis courts, but quickly decide nothing over there will work because the land is so flat that the grass may still be damp despite our lack of rain recently. So before I reach the tri-halls I turn right and decide to head up the stairs to the Oak Grove despite my earlier convictions that I needed to find some place other than the Oak Grove. I’m looking for a sunny location. The heat from the sun is a nice contrast to the too coldness of Folger dining hall. Off in the distance, almost at the back of the Oak Grove, I find the general area in which I would like to read. The perfect spot is more difficult and takes time. This is how I end up feeling like a dog; winding around in circles looking at the ground, but not sniffing, looking for a pleasant place. I’m looking for a place that lacks flowers so the bumble bees stay away, a place where the ground isn’t too sand like looking because that usually means ants, and a spot that has some nice cushiony green grass. After a few more circles I decide on a place and fall to the ground. In front of me I see four people playing Frisbee, there are many others scattered in the Oak Grove like the dots on a spotted plant, others are moving swiftly to destinations only they know, and to my left is Oakland Avenue and I can see the store Copies Now not too far down the street behind me. Finally ready to read I turn on my side, back to the street, and open the book. I can’t even read the first line of where I last left off. I read it three times, but the words don’t formulate meaning and I give up. I stay where I am but turn over on my back letting the book close by itself, because without my hand to hold down the left side, it won’t stay open.

Looking upward, I see a leaf falling down. The leaf itself is tiny and insignificant to all the other leaves, yet my eyes follow it downward. As it gets closer and closer I begin to get more and more interested because it’s headed towards me. I can’t even begin to describe the amount of joy I feel when this leaf lands on my stomach. I pick it up, turn it over, and see that it isn’t colorful, it is so green and soft it seems like it should still be on the tree. I set it on top of my book and begin to ponder what it was about the leaf that gave me such joy. I immediately think of when I was little, my sister and I attempting to catch the leaves that fell from the tree in our neighbors yard. My parents hated that tree, because we always had to clean up “their” leaves, but leaves are no one’s, no matter which tree they come from. I can picture us laughing; the more we get close to catching a leaf the harder it is. We never caught very many leaves, if any, and I begin to wonder then if we had been able to, would we still have enjoyed it? I know immediately that the answer is no. But isn’t that what we wanted to do? Catch the leaves. Which brings me to thinking about English class when were talking about how if we were dating someone that we previously considered an ideal partner, we wouldn’t enjoy them as much as someone who we didn’t know we wanted. The fact that we couldn’t catch them made it all the more enticing to try.
And then a voice comes into my head: What in these quiet woods should be so forbidden? It’s from the movie Tuck Everlasting. One of my favorite lines from it actually. But why did it come?

And then I stop thinking about everything all together, I just enjoy being, smiling upward. But before long, my earlier question about why I enjoyed the leaf falling on me, becomes more encompassing. Why am I enjoying myself at all? Why do I love nature so much? I feel like I’m in the woods, hiking somewhere, even though I am lying on the ground mostly motionless.

What in these quiet woods should be so forbidden? The voice repeats itself again.

What is it that makes this so much fun? I’ve always loved nature and I enjoy being close to it, and attempting to understand it, but that begs the question, why? Would it be different if I had a different upbringing? Does my race and status at a university make me enjoy myself? Or do I just simply like science? I immediately think to a story I had been writing one night on a whim of sleep-deprived motivation. This was unlike anything I’d ever written in that I didn’t feel like it was me writing, I felt like I was just being taken over and made to type things. The story also does not involve myself, or a character similar to myself or anyone that I know. Usually, I can’t make up characters, and have to use people I know, but there they were. And the girl in the story was going to be raped. (I say going to because I haven’t gotten there yet, if I will ever be able to finish it) She was going to be raped in the woods. If I were her, would the woods be some place I would never want to be? Would the confines of my house be ten times more alluring than the unknown outside? Or would I still have the same passion for outdoors I always did, just be too afraid to be out there?

What in these quiet woods should be so forbidden?

The previous thoughts let me to thinking again about English and how we were talking that everything was relative. And then how we all thought of different “trees” when asked to think of one; most were related to a memory. Is all life relative and skewed due to your experiences? Is everything nurture and nothing nature? And then I think about my friend Meghan who is very outgoing and her mind just thinks differently. I, meanwhile have to think about things for a long time before I speak. I perceive a lot of the world around me before I want to spout the things going on inside my head. I get most of my energy from internal thoughts and things while she needs people around her to get her happy and motivated and thinking. Most would call this introverted and extroverted. Thinking about our pasts, I know that she has always been like this. I haven’t known her all my life, but I know a lot of stories about her life and how she was similar to how she is now. And I know that I have always been one to keep quiet, yet people would be amazed at the things I remember, because I wasn’t engaged in the conversation a lot of times they don’t even remember me being there. I don’t think being introverted or extroverted is something you can change. One can become more outgoing and one can express ideas more openly and easily, but I still think introverts will always be able to entertain themselves in their own mind more easily than extroverts. And that extroverts need more interaction to ?stimulate? their brain. I think there are other things like this that are not changeable. Therefore, if Meghan had lived the life I lived and I the life she lived, I don’t think we would have come out thinking of it the same way. Sure, things would be similar and I may have been more conservative and she more liberal, but I don’t think we would think of things the same way, because we all think things differently. Similarly, maybe, and culture and experiences can certainly have an effect on the way we feel about some things, but I still think we are all born with likes and dislikes, and different ways of looking at the world. Take a baby for example that will not, no matter how much you try and make them, eat applesauce, while another devours it. I think it has to be the same with traits.

Faintly, in the distance I hear a clock chime the hour and it breaks my reverie. It’s hard to tell, but I’m almost positive it chimed the hour six. Trying to go back to that feeling of serenity and peace, I can’t. No matter how hard I try. I know the time. It’s six o’ clock. Suddenly, I have things to do. I had them to do all along, but without knowing the time everything was wonderful. And I realize what it is about the woods and hiking and nature that is so enticing. In nature time is non-existent or bendable. When I go hiking, I have no where else to be. There’s nothing else to do, but hike, and play. The calmness comes from not thinking about trivial day to day things, like when an assignment is due and how I should be doing this not that, and how I need to be here at this time, and doing this at five. I can just be. I can just exist. I can think and ponder philosophical things, or I can not think at all. When you look into the sky you see the past. The stars that are there might have burnt out already because it takes light time to travel. In geologic time we aren’t even a speck of dust. Things that take millions of years to form, we take for granted. I suppose I must be very fascinated with time. I like to know what a river is going to eventually do, given enough time. I like to think about how mountains got to be there and what damage can be done in a second of time and what things take billions of years to form.

What in these quiet woods should be so forbidden?

I could lose myself in time. Walk into the woods and not want to come back to this world of chaos and carefully scheduled things. I’ve been thinking a lot about the culture, or the Native-American tribe that I apologize for not being able to remember the name of, which has no future tense. To not take time for granted like that would be wonderful. We don’t know if there is going to be a tomorrow. A line from one of my favorite poems “Comes the Dawn” comes to mind. “… and you learn to build all of your roads today because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans and futures have a way of falling mid-flight…”

Thinking all these things can be exhausting, but it was exhilarating. I was sad that I could not bring back that feeling that I’d had before I knew the time. The sun was setting behind a building causing me to get chilly every once in a while, especially when the wind blew. I decided to go back to a world of time, meetings, homework, and people. Giving one last look to the leaf, I grab it, stand up, and wait for a semi large gust of wind. Throwing it as high as I can, I watch it travel away. Eventually it will hit the ground, and until some unknowing stranger kicks it up with its feet, it will have to stay there, but for now, traveling and swirling in the wind it is free. I pull my hair tie out. Usually it just gets in the way, but sometimes I love the feel of my hair dancing with the wind. And sometimes, like the leaf, it too needs to be free.