Feeling My Fleeting Youth
Float
Sometimes when I feel overwhelmed and want to escape the concrete box I call my room, I stop working and cross the street to Weeks Bridge.
The cool breeze is refreshing. The vast open space above the Charles provides a sense of clarity. I am on a bridge. I can choose to wander or to stay in that exact spot. Either way, the river beneath me will continue to chug along. Standing in the middle of that bridge, I realize that I am afraid of failure.
Print: Why I Read
A book is a ravine in the fingerprint of the human conscience. Not only do books record the thoughts of man, but they provide shelter—an insightful distraction—from the readers’ struggles.
Like dampened red earth, a book’s words shape a landscape to be viewed under the eyes of the beholder. The conditions of the journey are painted by the reader. Thoreau states in “Walden” that he “went to the woods because [he] wished to lived deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if [he] could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when [he] came to die, discover that [he] had not lived”. I sometimes descend into the canyon in times of struggle, to face “only the essential facts of life.” “Walden” laid out a map that helped me better question the habits of daily life, and ponder on my own level of satisfaction and appreciation. I trekked the chapter “Where I Lived and What I Lived For” for the first time in my high school English class. My hands firmly grasping the Bible-thin pages to support its spine, my Norton Anthology was like a face I could open to access the courage needed to actively confront my own thoughts. When reading I did not have to be passive to suppress the feelings of despair. I could disagree, say how I felt back, and not be as afraid to get damaged any more emotionally. During this time last year—my first year away from home—I was a book to my mother, a place she could go when she had no one to talk to. My dad, although not officially diagnosed, has post-traumatic stress disorder. He is still my world, but in times there are earthquakes and avalanches that take place due to his old scars of battle, both from an impoverished, abusive childhood, and from war.
Bovary and Avocado
Consuming Gustave Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary” one scoop at a time, I find within the bowl a pure and raw mixture of emotion that leaves my stomach satisfied and my mind unsettled.
Reading Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary” seemed like a chore—like I was handed a molcajete and a bag of fatty fruit that needed to be squashed—but in time the novel unveiled a filling appetizer that left sensual yet contrasting tastes on my tongue and fullness in my stomach. Perfected and surprisingly relatable, “Madame Bovary” was a bowl of guacamole, guiltily devoured by a lone invitee.