Power to the People

source

Sometimes I think that if I were in some sort of danger in public, there would be a lack of care because of the obsession society has with what constitutes as a 'good look'. In that case, I certainly do not have it. And I am glad.

I am glad because in yet another way I do not conform. But deep down, I know that apart from the distance I create between myself and others, that I protrude even more because of my lac of conformity. Sometimes it is beneficial for me to stay away from most of society, yet when it comes to things like careers or fitting within a group for the purpose of teamwork, it brings me down. As well as all of that, I am surrounded by people who would rather save true damsels in distress, the petite figured blonde girls who speak in a tone of voice three-hundred notches too high and one-hundred IQ points too low.

But today I read about a man from Perth who had his leg stuck between the train and the platform. Fellow transport travellers soon ran to his aid and assisted him in removing his leg without having his leg removed. He had slipped, and fallen through the gap during peak hour in the morning.

source

It is breath-taking to see a large horde of absolute strangers gather together and assist this one man. This group of strangers, whose caffeine had not yet kicked in had used instead their adrenaline and leapt closer to the platform so as to push away as much as they can a heavy body of a train carriage. I wonder how much positive energy exists in the conglomeration of several good deeds at once in one area? However much does exist, I know for a fact that I wish I was in that energetic field this morning.

A while ago I was going to enter a writing competition based on compassion. I sat there for months, totally stumped on how to approach this huge theme that I had not witnessed a lot on. I had no experience in such a thing, it seems so surreal in a world focussed on fast living, capitalism and material objects. It has taken me until now to see that this is the form that compassion embodies. 

I hope that there are more humans out there that are like this. Not the ones standing there taking photographs of this occurrence, but the ones bending over the others in order to reach the carriage to assist that one man and his one leg. 

Paper Murder: A Homicide Story

source

The paper made its way through varied amounts of savage hands. The hands tore through it and sliced its corners and ripped right to its core. They lathered a sticky substance all over its back and tied it down onto other pieces of its kind, performing a strange chant of sorts throughout the tortuous ritual. 

The paper presented itself idly. It did not want to go through any more of this. It had been through more torment prior to this ritual, wherein it went through a rather touchy felt technological ordeal, whirling around through a plastic and metallic enclosure that buzzed and whirred as it sent the paper through it's many twists and turns, rolling it through its mechanical depths, stamping it with conforming ink and sending it flying out into an open enclosure where it awaited the human initiating this process. The human then continued to pick it and its duplicates up and dispersed the entire lot to the savages, for their strange ritual. 

"I just killed all the trees in the forest," my art teacher said before she handed out the fourth pile of worksheets to her students. I stared at the piles in horror, envisaging forests being torn down for these people, most of which care not for its availability nor its origins, nor the task that has been printed all over it and projected out into the room. The information enters the students' ears and leaves almost as fast as it entered. 

I think that as of late, people have not been mindful about our surroundings. We have to be aware that every action has a counteraction, that every decision makes an impact. We need to aware that our future generations might consider trees a thing of the past. That has happened before, but with animals. The fact that there are extinct animals and endangered ones alone should show us that we have not been considering anything but ourselves.

And thus the paper was murdered. The hands tore through it and sliced its corners and ripped right into its core. The savages laughed and carried on and the paper soon will love on no longer.

Workshopping

Today was the day that my first poetry workshop ran. I have been planning for this moment for months, and as per usual, had grown excessively high expectations of what would happen.

I was not ready for what actually did. The slam poetry videos I chose to play contained profanity that I somehow missed when listening to them at home, so I had to drop them. My attendance rate in my imagination was the size of an average classroom, but come reality I only had six people turn up. In the heart of the library, we sat, speaking about haiku and cinquain poetry. 

The girls were very attentive. They listened to all that I said, and partook in the same level of interest as I had anticipated. They all cooperated and produced lovely pieces of poetry that I was appreciative of. I was more timid than they were but tried not to show it, as I was the role model in that situation - who knew what I would uncover?

What I uncovered made me feel much better than a panda feels at the crack of a fresh bamboo stick. I uncovered a student who befits the label 'outcast'. She reminded me of myself when I was back in high school, the lone ranger of the private school world, sketching and writing to myself in the corner of classrooms.

Her poems were based on her loneliness and the fact that she too is a lone ranger. I did not know how to handle that situation. This is the type of situation that nobody can teach you about, that no textbook nor no theorist can prepare you for. And I do not think that I handled it adequately enough. If anything, I steered most of the attention away from her, but I think she revelled in that because of the look of content on her face.

I made them all read their poems, as little as they were. When that girl read her poem, and projected her voice like I told her to, I felt her crawl slowly out of her shell. I felt like I connected with her in the way that I had initially wanted to, and that is my aim in this project, to target those without a chance and to grant it to them, to grant them a time for their voices to be heard, to grant them a place where they do not feel alienated, rather welcome.

This project will prove interesting over the course of these two weeks. I just hope to target more soul, more spirituality, more convergence. That is, what I believe, what matters most in a school environment. To pick up the fallen.

Confide

source

I am three years into my teaching degree at the moment. This means that after October next year, I will allegedly be fully equipped to be able to teach students ranging from Preps to Year 12s.

This means that in much less than a mere year and a half, assuming that I can land a teaching position, I will be standing in front of the classroom with approximately twenty-five pairs of eyes looking at me, yearning for a role-model, yearning for assistance, for a chance to be heard, for a chance to show their worth. Twenty-five pairs of eyes will look unto me and await my assertion in varied subjects. They will wait for the reinstating of classroom rules, for their chances to introduce themselves to one another, to learn what they do not yet know, to be inspired, to evolve.

But nobody has yet mentioned to me that students need, more than anything else, to confide. It frightens me that in my cohort of fellow pre-service teachers, there are some who cannot even spare ten extra minutes to assist in group assignments. There are some who would not reserve a seat for you if your wheelchair broke, there are some who care not for the quality of learning, let alone the quality of teaching. It frightens me because how then are their students to confide in them? How are students to accept the quality and need for education when some teachers are not willing to offer it?

The worst thing is when I am seated in a lecture or a tutorial and some of my peers behave in the same manner as any bored student would, considering not our lecturer and their attempts to tell us all that they can before we are fully qualified. These same peers would go on to be teachers who enforce the need for the respecting of themselves - how can one acquire respect, though, when they do not themselves give it?

I gained a huge amount of clarity two weeks ago when I was introduced to a new lecturer. She had been teaching in high school for over thirty years, and lecturing for the past six years. "Now it is time for me to have my respect," she said at the beginning of the lesson. I thought nothing of that, until some students began to walk in late. She bucketed down on them like acid rain, demanding a medical slip the next time anyone was late. Those students trembled silently for the remainder of the class. It was a discomforting feeling, being taught by her, but I learnt something from it all - she is right. How then would we be like as educators? Running late because we slept in? What principal would allow us to retain our jobs if we had this attitude flowing from us when we expect it never to come from our students?

Pre-service teachers need to realise the impact they will have on students. Thus far, I have not learnt about any of it in my university setting, rather in school settings. Children notice everything. Sometimes I forget to notice that.

Lebanese Hospitality

source

"Are we having someone over for dinner?"

"No," replies my mother. I stare at her dumbfounded. She has cooked over four dishes, each a complete meal in itself. She is working on the fifth, complains a little about being tiresome and places herself back into her cooking mode, and zones out whilst creating the best tasting Middle-Eastern food that could possibly come out of a home kitchen. 

It has always been this way in my household. Each breakfast, lunch, dinner or snack time, I am taken on a guilt trip as I indulge in the heavenly food that my mother cooks. I momentarily think of all of the third world countries whose inhabitants will never see even a quarter of this much food in their lives, let alone ever taste it. It saddens me that we in the westernmost civilisation have experiences so natural to us and so distant and surreal to others, yet we take them for granted. 

When I reflect on some of these Middle-Eastern cuisines, I think myself overly critical and unappreciative. I, most of the time, criticise my mother's repetitive choices in cooking. A number of times, I have tried to cook different things myself only to end up with the watered down and tasteless version of what I had initially had in mind in terms of a meal, and it is only then that I understand the struggles of a motherly chef. To conjure up three different types of meals on a daily basis whilst sticking mostly to your cultural dishes can prove rather difficult. Somehow, my mother always managed to cook something extraordinarily unique and amazing in taste each time, sometimes creating foods that smell so superb that they, with a sense of immediacy, wake me from my insomnia-driven slumbers. 

Lebanese portions are infinite. Forget the protagonist from The Perks of Being a Wallflower and his group of close friends, the amount of food on a Lebanese person's place is legitimately infinite. It is never-ending and despite their pleas of stopping, Lebanese people cannot eat any less than every other family member, and every other family member consumes a lot of food. This is partially the reason as to why I am more fluffier than ever, as of late.

However, in saying this, I do not think that, since I have been living this way for twenty-two years now, I can ever change portion sizes or be satisfied with one mere plate of food, sitting inside it one mere food type. And even though my horoscope claims that I am one for balance, I think there is a bigger Lebanese side to me, which literally means that I most likely will always tip the scales. 

Cavemen and Dentistry

source

People of all ages nowadays absolutely despise and fear their regular attendances to their dentists. It is an idea that slips away all too often, though, that dentists should be more appreciated than they currently are.

Sitting in the lounge room, watching television with my family who are louder than the television set despite the fact that is is turned up quite high, I jumped in surprise as my father suddenly wailed in agony, bringing his hand up to his face and pressing it against his mouth. His painkiller dose wore off and the infected space that up until recently held a tooth in his gum began to throb. He quickly stood up and took some more painkillers and sat himself down onto the sofa again, two steps of pain away from breaking into tears. I watched and felt my own gums throb at the sight and sound of the pain. My father, in other circumstances than this, is a very strong man, unless stricken with the man flu, and to see him writhe in this state made the situation all too unsettling. A thought crossed my mind at that point in time: how did people manage tooth problems before dentists were in business? Did toothaches affect even the most powerful of cavemen? The most powerful of gladiators?

Dentistry allegedly dates back to 7,000 BC. Scientists have discovered sets of teeth, nine thousand years old, with holes drilled in them that are, according to anthropology professor David Frayer, "so perfect, so nice". Frayer went on to show these holes to his dentist, who "thought they were amazing holes". Unfortunately they did not have Tesla around to power their tools, nor did they have the ability to use anaesthesia, which was firstly ever used by a dentist in 1846.

source

My father should be glad that the pain he is feeling comes from the aftermath of a long removed tooth, painless in its extraction. Had it not been for the mechanics of a simply bow drill, dentists would not have further developed their practice enough to the point where they could offer my father immediate relief. Tooth extraction developed in the form of many tools and upon viewing those tools, one sighs a deep sigh of relief, because one would rather have in their mouth a hygienic rubber and plastic instrument than a rusty metallic tool that can be used to break ice, and maybe even rock.

The next time I feel that all too familiar sensation of throbbing in my gum, I will not remember the brief history of dentistry barely examined above. I will not be thankful for our advancement in the art of toothache relieving. I will not be thankful for the advancement of dentist tools either. I will instead despise and fear for my life until the time comes where I do not need the dentist again.

Growing Up

The video above echoes the very epitome of my innermost thoughts and feelings about losing my childhood one day at a time. I feel as though my youth is the younger boy in this video, and I am Sadie, and I am crying over the fact that my youth is slipping away.

When I was younger, I had pictured my life rather differently than what it is today. There is nobody to blame except for sadistic movie directors and screenwriters who think that portraying happy endings and fantasy-esque lifestyles are healthy for children to live up to.

I wanted to escape with Peter Pan. I had thought that he had not visited me because we did not own a double storey house - how was he supposed to come to a single storey house and not be spotted? I also thought he did not visit because of my lack of siblings - I have a younger sister, but at the time I was seven and she was four, so her and I probably would not have been much fun for Peter and Tinkerbell to be with.

Adult life is quite difficult. If somebody had warned me that drifting off to sleep would become difficult, and getting out of bed early even more difficult, and that drinking coffee was the only way to manage coping with sleep deprivation due to all the tasks adults perform, then I would not have signed up for it - I do not think that anybody would have. Would not you rather fly off with a young boy dressed in green, to a land where everything is ever-lasting? To a land where nothing like telephone bills or gas or water bills exist?

I blame Walt Disney for filling my head with this nonsense. I call it nonsense only because I think Tinkerbell would need to haul along three tonnes of that magic dust to make me fly, because Cinderella would be working at Starbucks today and would not be able to find a fairy godmother because all of the old women that come to get coffee in the morning are suffering from menopausal symptoms and sleep deprivation, a terrible concoction that could result in Cinderella losing her job if she is not quick and concise enough.

Reality hits hard those with wild imaginations, hits hard the dreamers and the make-believers. It hits hard those who have Disney movie collections, and those who await the presence of that little boy dressed in green each night. It hits those who think that true love even exists, particularly those who have invested in what they thought was it only to be shown otherwise in a painstaking manner. What Disney movies forgot to include was emotions, heartache, and loneliness. Those three elements are far more realistic than a poor woman magically fitting into the glass slipper, than a woman with long hair locked up in a tower who lets that hair down and does not feel any pain as a muscly main climbs up to her via her long locks of hair. 

It is all of utter ridiculousness and I pity those who enjoy reading romantic books. Unless you are reading Fifty Shades of Grey, then you better strap yourself in for a nice big slap from my friend, Reality.