Cheers

Time to babble randomly, on and on and on a whim, like a cyclone spinning out of control. Margin to margin, circles and doodles philosophizing about philosophers and juicy red apples with large happy stickers. Write my dear red blood color dripping waterfall chaotically, nonsensically, impatiently waiting for the happy that is glamorously terribly deconstructive but you wouldn’t trade it for the world. You promise a friend, you love an inanimate object and shed your affections on yourself. Question everything. Let’s go alphabetically: Animosity brewing contented drowning entrance from graphically hypocritically inanimate. Jovial knowledge looming momentarily nocturnal over people quizzically remembering solitude. Timeless use venturing wanting x-rays yearningly zoned. Fuck making sense. Dear Easter Bunny, have you seen Santa lately? I heard he was cheating on Mrs. Clause with the Tooth Fairy. A beautiful lady is she with those glorious glimmering wings. Charlie told me Santa felt justified because he thought he saw the Mrs. With Peter Pan, but we all know Peter is to vain to be with a large woman like that. But don’t tell the children, it will make them confused and sad. I saw the elves yesterday, throwing candy canes, diabolical laughter rippling through their cave. It made me crave a mint in an orange put together in its acidy way. I then ignored what I saw and walked away, chewing on my lip and humming a tune, inhaling a fragrance that sends my senses blissfully askew. I met the carrot on my walk back to the castle where I would call to Rapunzel and she would tell me about her dream as she waits for her prince to come. Poor dame was so desperate to escape that she planned to have the prince get her down, cut off all her hair and go find the true love of her life, for she had already known she hated the prince who would only rescue her for his selfish glory. I sat for an hour and talked with the carrot. Meaningless gossip but it cheered the poor carrot so that he was almost unaware of the hungry rabbit sneaking up behind him, if he rabbit hadn’t opened its mouth, and the words “what’s up doc?” emerged, the poor carrot would no longer be with me. Though I admit by the end of our conversation I was awfully hungry.

Old

Perpetually alone
Swept under a rug
Like the dirt I am
You are
The blue scarf of commitment
Intention and accidental bliss
Will always remain around my scabbed neck
the stories it has to tell with its’ roughly knitted wool
and my purple boots that sing songs
while my knee screams in pain
And you
And you and you and you and you and
You….

Catapulting the cantaloupe over into the clouds, up onto the hill top
spread my emotions
Desires
and philosophies
Give me that can of blue
blue paint
Catch me covered in ink, covered in ink, and I’ll cover you in
snow. Fallen from hell onto fiery masses of cortisone
and the thread about my hand, the black thread around my wrist
pull it tight, pull it tight, pull it
till it falls, until I fall, fall, fall!
Beneath, into your enchantment, your trap
those harsh blades of steel, those silver fangs larger than my head
ready to pull out my soul

But my soul, my soul, is already torn
into many horocurx
many horocrux
that I shall now never die, my life will live on
those thousands and thousands of pages
those millions and billions of words
are my soul
my soul, my soul, my cut blue fuzzy soul
is always there for everyone to
see.

Bleed me
Bleed my ink
Bleed my words

Let my soul consume you
with my bizarre logic you don’t care to listen to and
join me, join me, join me, swept under that vanilla coke rug
the black fuzzy rug
the leaf covered rug
that we cannot get clean

Cover me, cover me, cover me in red, let me fall, let me fall, let me fall….

Catapult into bliss, oblivion where fear is not rejection but redemption, where we
want to fall to temptation, to sin, to the horrors to the heaven hell!
To the black waters of doom swirling amiss our skulls letting the sea monsters
lick our teeth, covering our breath with their green slime
green slime, green slime
where we stutter and repeat,
repeat, repeat, repeat
because we must, we cannot understand without the repetition

Take my soul,
Read my soul, fall into my soul, fill my soul
Here you hold a piece of it
A torn battered piece of it
You have a horocrux
Use it to your advantage
Snuff out part of my life
Destroy it, destroy it, destroy it
Destroy my words, my bliss, my oblivion, my redemption, my contempt ion

Change it, change it, change it, change
Me
You want to I can see it, see it, blue
You hate my hair the water it conveys, the blue I interpret to many different things
You hate, you hate, you accuse, you encapsulate

Take this journey with me, this mile of a walk
Up a hill, down a hill, never stopping never breathing,
With nothing but far too much thinking
Take this walk with me, the journey this never-ending voyage

Watch as behind me I litter my soul
Leaving it for the worst, for the best, for whatever animal may take our path
that we will make through the grass, and the rocks, and the red pumice soil
Through the trees, whose needles keep stabbing me in the eyes, forcing
Cries! Of pain and hunger and….

Never-the-less

To whom it may concern;

On this coming Thinking Day I will have officially been a Girl Scout for fourteen years, and since I recently bridged to adult Scouting and got my life time membership, on February 22nd every year, the number of years I have been officially involved in this organization will continue to increase. I say officially, because though I couldn’t be a Girl Scout for the first five years of my life I was already involved in Scouting. My mother led a Brownie troop when I was just an infant, and would take me to the meetings on her back. Therefore I consider myself to have been born a Girl Scout, and I plan to die a Girl Scout.

It could be argued that I stayed in Scouts through my teenage years because of my mother, since most girls start dropping from the program when they begin to hit puberty and suddenly being a Girl Scout isn’t cool. However I would like to state that I did not stay in Scouting because of my mother.

During my middle school years, while my friends and I all became awkward and self-conscious, the numbers of our once massive troop began to dwindle drastically. With my friends quitting Scouts to play sports, my loyalty to the organization began to waver. My mother told me that if I wanted to quit, I could, the option was always on the table, all I had to do was tell her I didn’t want to do it anymore. There were a few moments, where I remember seriously contemplating this option, however there was one huge thing that I knew I desperately wanted to do, that I would lose if I quit Scouting. At the time this thing was called Wider Opportunities, now it is known as the Destination program.

I had seen and talked to older girls, whom I much admired, who had promised me these opportunities to travel the world, and have the time of my life meeting other scouts from all around the globe. All I had to do was stay in scouting long enough, to be old enough to partake in one of these adventures. So hold on I did, anxiously counting the years, months and days, until I would be old enough to go on one of these excursions I had heard so many fantastic things about.

Finally the opportunity arose, and when I was thirteen (2003) I went on my first council sponsored Wider Op to Our Cabana, in Mexico. I would now call this experience life changing. My appetite for travel began to grow, I couldn’t fathom ever quelling the hunger for the chance to immerse myself in other cultures, and see the world. Every bite I got, though immensely satisfying, only made me crave more.

The following year, 2004, I went on a National Destination to Wisconsin, where other girls from the country and myself got to dabble in music, art and drama, and experience the great State of Wisconsin, where I had never been.

2005 saw me on a council sponsored patrol that toured Ireland and England. This particular event proved to be equally as life changing as the trip to Mexico. I had been talking for several years about partaking in a study abroad program while I was in High School. After I returned from the most amazing trip to Ireland (most of the patrol are still great friends, and we try to get together as often as possible), I spent the following summer working so in January of 2007 I could board a plane at PDX that would land me in Limerick, Ireland where I would live and go to school for the next six months. It was while I was still in Ireland that I filled out the application to be part of the patrol the council planned to send to Our Chalet in Switzerland in the summer of 2008.

Somewhere, in the midst of all that traveling, I had to decide what I wanted to try to do with my life after I finished High School.

I am now a freshman at the University of Montana, studying photojournalism. My hope is this career path will lead me around the world, take me to places I’ve never seen and allow me to share what the rest of the world is really like with anyone and everyone who will take a minute to look at my pictures, and really think about what it is they are seeing.

If it hadn’t been for Girl Scouts, I don’t know that I would have ever decided on this career path. I know I wouldn’t have already travelled as much as I have. I feel that the opportunities Girl Scouts provided me with to travel were probably the most important things that could have ever happened to me. The chances to travel kept me in Scouts when most girls quit, it awoke my passion (travel) that led to my current career goals. It exposed me to new cultures, and let me see just how lucky I am in my life. It gave me experience being away from home, dealing with unexpected problems, and taught me how to quickly adapt to any situation. The travel opportunities I got through Girl Scouts prepared me for life, and I count them as the most valuable experiences I’ve had so far.

For me these programs were so crucial to becoming who I am today. Most people don’t have the kinds of opportunities to travel that I did. A lot of my peers in High School, and today, don’t see how they could ever travel like I already have, and I always tell them that it is possible. For me, Girl Scouts presented the fact that it was possible, and then made it so by providing the foundation to build from, by helping put together patrols, that would then fundraise and plan their trips.

I think it is crucial to the Girl Scout organization to continue to offer these opportunities to girls. Girl Scouts is such an amazing organization, with so much to offer to help girls grow up to be strong, independent women, and one way they do that, is by providing girls with the all the opportunities imaginable, so they can see that they really can do whatever they want.

The loss of the Destination program would be a hard blow to the Scouting organization, particularly the older girl program. Without Destinations I would have quit Scouting, and would never have decided what I wanted to do. I want to see other girls have the same opportunities I had to learn and grow by travelling. Especially in a time where foreign policy has become so essential to our Nation, I feel it is important for our youth to learn about other cultures, and there is no more effective way of do that, than by visiting one.

Girl Scouting is where girls grow strong! It is where I grew strong, and where many generations after me should also grow strong by having as many opportunities to explore all their options, whether abroad, or at home.


Respectfully,
Sally Finneran

Critical Movement

Our world moves forward in an interesting way. How can a few days and a calendar change make such a difference? As I notice personal advancements/changes, and stare at the static news.

Have things changed? And why do people care so much about what is happening in others lives? Could there be a time when being selfish is actually good? Focusing on yourself, and leaving others alone.

Caring about others is important. But why be so critical of them? Of they way they choose to live their lives? What makes the way we live ours better than how they choose to live theirs?

I watch people I love deeply be so critical of others choices. Even people who have endured criticism from others. Do they not remember how that made them feel? To be unfairly judged?

Hypocrisy continues.

It’s inevitable, and only human. But sometimes I feel it is taken to a point where it is no longer excusable.

Judgment.

Every human brain is also always subconsciously judging. I judge. This is me judging humanity. I am not excluding myself.

But I want to ask the world why we feel we have the right to criticize others? Did they ask for it? How many people sit back and examine themselves?

Perfection is ultimately non-existent because of the different ideas of perfection that each person has. My idea of a perfect novel, would not be the same idea as perhaps the person who wrote that novel. My idea of the perfect haircut, may not be the same idea as the person who cuts my hair. My idea of a perfect life (is destined to only ever be imaginary because as a human I will never be satisfied no matter how much of the idea of a perfect life I have now, actually happens) is in no way the same as my friends or my family.

People don’t see the same. I would love to view the world through another’s eyes. Impossible I know. But it would be interesting to see if things I see every day, look the same way to someone else.

Yet I watch the news. I see the judgments society passes and wonder who came up with them first? What makes them feel they are in the right?

I also wonder if it is moral to work on a project, who’s ideas you completely disagree with, simply for the experience and the money?

Who decides what is moral anyway, and what are the consequences for making immoral choices?

How many people have realized that these questions are rhetorical, and at the same time, not?

I aim to create thinking from confusion.

Possibly.