Encountering Creative Writing

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Whispered good-nights turned to snores, chirping birds turned into croaking frogs and the warm summer night ascended over camp. The molten summer day was cooling as the sun sank below the horizon, darkening the sky and stringing stars across the landscape. I sat on the stage of the lodge, where a few hours ago I was looking out at the meadow where there were piles of kids and counselors looking for refuge from the sun, dumping water on each other to relieve themselves from the weather. Now there was a new scene in front of me, 56 fifth and fourth grade girls laid on the floor in sleeping bags, eyes closing though occasionally I could see a memory of the day or of the past flicker across their face as their eyes crinkled and a smile twitched…show more content…
Pure, beautiful moments like this were so common at camp, so easy to see and so easy to create. From a kid facing their fear on the high ropes, 140 feet in the air and nothing but trust in themselves and my coworkers, keeping them going forward to the finish, I could see the look of pure joy when their feet were planted on the earth and they got to remove the harness that had been their lifeline for those few minutes. Or something as simple as seeing a campers transformation over the week, day one they would crawl in, quiet, scared talking to no one other than me and their counselor. Maybe they would fall asleep wishing that they would wake up in their own beds in the morning rather than in a bunk bed with a stranger lurking below them; by friday they would be the most popular person in the group, the one who was joyful and excited to do something as mundane as to walk outside and breath in the fresh air that remained untainted by the chemicals and fumes of a modern life. Moments like these were common and beautiful, easy to find and quick to pass, but they are the ones that last the longest inside of us and the ones that the camper would go home and talk about, dream about and retell the next…show more content…
Rather than living off of a constant stream of media and textbooks I am thriving off of the joy of those around me and the simpleness of a indescribable moment in time, a flash of white that leaves me wondering if it was real or if it was a dream. I spend my days now that I am back home looking for that flicker, that flame of passion and the beauty that I felt in that moment when I was sitting on a hard wooden stage with 56 fifth and fourth grade girls with four of the best people I have ever met to either side of me singing songs that are stranded in my memory waiting for a time where they can be brought out from the cage that is my skull and transferred into the memories of those around me. Looking for these flickers of passion in a mundane life while just going through the motions is like looking for a needle in a pile of needles. I am constantly thinking about those picturesque moments, actively looking for them, but unable to see. Knowing fully well I will not find a moment as perfect as that one until I am mentally back there on that hard wooden floor of the lodge. Not playing as who I am expected to be, but being that person who I was then. The one who saw beauty in silly little things where I was able to ignore society’s do’s and don'ts and stop living for that stream absurdity that is media,

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