December 31, 2002

Dear Friends –

 

Welcome to a fourth year of my end-of-the-year addresses.  As 2002 comes to a close, a year full of stress, surprise, transition, and most of all, growth, I look back at the year that opened our eyes to the new adult world unfolding before us.  The following is my reflection on some of those stressful moments a few of my hopes and dreams for the future.

 

I hope that the present was as revealing to you all as it was to me, and I pray for a promising future for all of us.

 

Thank you to all, the distant and the not-so-far away, who have given some part of themselves to bring me to this point in my life.

 

A Happy and Prosperous New Year to All,

Christine “Silverfox” Malazarte

 

 

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

 - Eleanor Roosevelt

 

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“The Allegory of the Goose”

(2002 End of the Year Address Edit)

 

I saw a goose at the El Dorado Park during my dad’s company’s picnic.  It sat there unaccompanied in the middle of a grassy section of the park, far enough to be noticed by anyone who looked off to the right of the grungy, manmade lake.  It was obvious that the goose put itself at risk, a newfound target for any hungry, unleashed dog, but for the reward of lightly damp and rarely trodden grass far away from the quacks and squawks of its aviary counterparts, it was worth the harrowing, one-hundred yard journey.

            So I wander away from the crowd of my dad’s coworkers and their hyper children into the isolation of the open field and meet the goose.  The goose looks up at me and refuses to move.  Removing my jacket and laying on the grass, I sit down about two feet from it and observe the bird that decided to observe my descent into a festering pool of self-pity for the next forty minutes.

            I start talking to it about what had been bothering me, fighting back tears of frustration while I’m staring at the gray, overcast clouds and then back at the goose that’s still there, sitting for no particular reason and looking back at me, as if there was some sort of solace in its two beady eyes and its relaxed stature.  It was the middle of August.  Fresh out of high school and finished with my first semester at Santa Monica College, I was confused of my current location in life.  With my close friends disappearing to their colleges in the East and me, still frustrated and angry at myself at the failure of several extensive movie projects and the rejection letters to colleges that would have otherwise accepted me based on my academic merit and accomplishments, I doubted whether or not I was really as talented or capable of anything special as my mentors, friends, and I encouraged myself to be.

            So what is a conversation with a goose like?  One-sided and as simple as the random honks and grunts coming out of its beak.  At least I believe that it’s one-sided because I’m not getting the answers I need or the ones that I want to hear.  I’m probably getting the ones I need but they are not the ones I want.  I think my definition of a clear-cut response stems back to the fact that I do not get an audible response.  To that day, I still believed that everything would come to me in some sort of organized summary.      

So the goose is still staring at my red eyes and my futile smile.  I glance at it and toss a blade of grass at its back.  The goose wicks it off with its orange beak and continues to sit there aimlessly, poking at the flies that buzz around its thin, contoured head.    I am still wiping tears while the goose dabbles at the surrounding weeds.  I toss another blade of grass at it and it nips it off its tail with one swipe of its beak.

I used to believe that ignoring my feelings was as easy as removing grass blades from a feathery back.  Is it worth it to remember?  Is it worth it to even try to save a small portion of the events that I can only witness through physical touch, taste, sight, smell, and feel?  Is it worth it to record the loves and desires of this microscopic stitch on the celestial tapestry of the universe?

I am infected with some sort of delirium that ravages the mental state and hides itself away from the physical state only to come back as some sort of panging in the heart and degree of insatiable desire, a desire to find out why the panging continues to torment.  To answer the question, “Does transition have to hurt like this?”  Yes, it has to.  To actually feel sadness and disappointment is the penalty of humanity and the idea that I am feeling this way is not new to me.  It is only awkward because this feeling is a rare experience.

Here I am with my daily journal writing and my imagination to guide me.  I know that everything I have done has added up to something worthwhile, but I have been unnecessarily focusing on my own disillusionment and blaming myself for outside circumstances beyond my control that I have neglected to see the puzzle pieces forming the masterpiece known as me.

My mind suffers a constant decay, using a method to clear what it believes to be ‘clutter’ to accommodate new items.  It is an eternal retrofitting project, its stability always questioned and its completion either unknown or never.  It would not be until years after I wrote my first journal entry that I realized my writing was preserving what my brain was sweeping away.

Writing for hours in my journal serves as the missing link between the physical paper and the mental pen, preserving the thoughts, aspirations, and dreams encountered through living.  Stories weave intricate patterns of questions and answers, suggestions and debates, moves and attempts, and decisions and indecisions, embedding lessons within resolutions.

I have tales to tell.  I am constructing my life’s storybook, built from small thoughts and selected accounts.  To condense a life and attempt to translate it into words paints an incomplete picture of an identity, a partial representation of a unique individual whose ideals and expectations are yet to be uncovered. It is only through a pleasant manifestation of hope and dreams that fuels my mind and causes me to keep moving and searching that which is to be uncovered, that which represents life and its mysteries.

What made these past stressful months different from the other moments of trials and tribulations regarding school and life?  Burdened by the transition from high school life to college life, my self-esteem was deflated, my ego pounded to the ground, and my self-image tarnished.  I knew I was more than the circumstances showed and this was my opportunity to step far away from my own lake of despair and find solace in the grassy field of my abilities, talents, and the creative forces inside of me.

I had become human, forced to revamp myself and start over again, with the wisdom I had acquired from failure.  Is there a right way or a wrong way to approach this crossroad in my life?  Maybe there isn’t even a set way at all.  Rather, it’s whatever gets built or improvised in front of me and developed as I go along the day-to-day routines.  My world appears to be familiar when in reality it is different in the people I meet and the new experiences I encounter.

I have gone too long hypothesizing “what could have been.”  Now is the point of life where I have to jump forward and think about “what might be.”  I had made the choice to attend Santa Monica College for the final year of my general education to polish off the dust and shine brighter than I ever had before.

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Staring at the goose and its sense of peace and content, I realized that I had been talking to a version of myself that has always existed inside of me, the risk taker who dares to ignore boundaries.  I am the artist behind the camera, the magician that whips up the finest movies for every like, interest, and utility.  I am the writer who weaves textures and patterns through dreams turned into words.  I am the photographer that captures a moment with the click of a shutter.  I am the computer technician that builds the computers that make people's lives just a bit easier, but much more than that, I am a person with dreams unknown and waiting for fulfillment.

The present is my springboard to jump forward and grasp what lies is merely over the horizon.  But, it will be the constant emergence of higher goals and newer dreams that shape a future unknown and an adventure that takes a lifetime to complete.  It is the present 'me,' the dedicated dreamer that is bound to reach my highest potential.  I trust my feelings and let them guide me more than I want them to.  The spirit is composed of the brain and the soul.  They are co-pilots, not hostile enemies.

I look at the sky once more, wiping more tears, but this time, they are of relief.  Allergies, I simply tell myself.  You’re allergic to the uncooked dinner sitting in front of you.  I get up, step over to the goose and pet it, and follow it as it waddles away toward the manmade lake in the middle of the park.  Slinging my jacket over my shoulder, I return to the main barbecue, grab a fudge bar at the refreshment stand, and walk off again to find another vacant bench and an excuse to stare at the gray, overcast sky again.

That’s all I could think of at the time.  Everything else on my mind needed a goose to complete the image.