Wanderlust.

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

 - Ernest Hemingway

For as long as I can remember I have wanted to live in Paris. It seemed so exotic to me, someone who has been on Staten Island for her whole entire life with the occasional trips to Disney World. I longed for an apartment with a view of the Eiffel Tower, a symbol of my independence and freedom from my not so extraordinary life. I could smell the butter on the croissants and taste their flakiness as I imagined walking next to the Seine. In my head Paris was less crowded than Manhattan and no one pushed you out of their way in a rush to go someplace unimportant. I can be an anonymous person in a street café just reading until dusk without all of the honking taxis. This is the Paris of my imagination.

Around two years ago I went to France to study film with St. John's.  The Paris that I experienced was exactly what I had imagined and more.  The beautiful, cobblestone streets and old world architecture combined with so much history that America doesn’t have really struck me.  I know that we are a relatively young country with history of our own but there is absolutely no comparison.  Every building is beautifully designed, with curved angles, balconies, and shuttered windows.  Every street has a history and a story that the oldest buildings in New York could not compare to.  I can just imagine the people who have walked the streets that I now have, Marie Antoinette, Benjamin Franklin, Jacqueline Kennedy and countless others who have enjoyed and loved this city as much as I have.

Our class was studying film and food and we went to Antony to spend a day with a chef.  I was a little apprehensive to spend all day cooking with him.  I am quite a picky eater and a terrible cook, but once we stepped into the French market and I saw all of the meats and brightly colored vegetables I started to become excited about the day ahead of me.  We cooked Onion Tart, Potatoes Gratin, Lamb, Ratatouille, Apple Tart, Chocolate Cake and Flan from scratch.  Chef Phillipe, a stranger to all of us in the beginning of the day, opened his home to us to share his passion for cooking and by the end of the night a great meal and its preparation had brought everyone together as friends.

I found myself reading this passage from Sarah Vowell’s novel The Partly Cloudy Patriot; "An astrologer once told me, 'You suffer from what's called a geographic.' A geographic is when a person walks around thinking that where he lives will make his life better. The astrologer said, 'Let me tell you, life is about an emotional connection to people and things and it doesn't matter where you are on the globe.'" That paragraph really struck a chord with me. Every meal, and experience, that I had in Paris was delicious.  To be able to go to the Eiffel Tower and then sit down and have an amazing cup of hot chocolate was truly a treasure.  Finding cafes that are hidden, but turn out to have the freshest whipped cream and pasta that you have ever tasted is an experience that really brought the group and the trip together.  
          My bedroom is a dedication to Paris. There are Moulin Rouge posters along with at least three sculptures of the Eiffel Tower and numerous other French artifacts cluttering up space that could be put to a better use. I am not going to take them down because I have finally achieved my dream.  Instead of being a reminder of where I want to go, they remind me of where I have been, the movies I have seen, the friends I have made and the food that changed my life.

Thank you J.K. Rowling.

 

       I was eleven years old when my parents gave me Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for Christmas. I was an avid reader but the book just didn’t interest me much. A month later we were taking a long car ride and Harry Potter was the only thing in our house, including cereal boxes, that I had not read yet. I started the book in the car and finished the entire novel twice before we got to our destination. It was the best book I had ever read in my entire eleven years of life. It involved magic, which always interested me, but also good vs. evil, amazing characters who were my age, and an amazing world that I still love to this day. I have cultivated my closest group of friends based on Harry Potter and my entire childhood was spent being in love with those novels. J.K.Rowling’s napkin scribblings have become more than a fiscal wonderland; they have become an inspiration to people all over the world to pick up a novel in the age of electronics.  From children who never before have been interested in reading to people who have never before had access to books in third world countries. Even adults have become obsessed with the stories after reluctantly picking them up.
       On December 6th, 2008 J.K. Rowling published the Tales of Beedle the Bard. It coincides with a fictional book in the Harry Potter series and she has decided to publish it and make it a reality. I bring this up because when the book was only in pre-orders it was already set to be published in 63 languages. Rowling has reached an international audience like no other ever before. There are even countries that are so desperate to publish the book they translate the novels themselves, unauthorized. I think it is amazing that Rowling has been able to essentially bring the world together, over a novel. Even people in countries as remote as Nepal are reading these novels! Rowling has accomplished this much with a series of books during a time when novels are so easily disregarded.
       Harry Potter has changed my life. When I was a freshman in high school I felt it was uncool to love reading, and especially to be so in love and obsessed with a novel such as Harry Potter. That was before I discovered, in the beginning of the year that I was not alone.  I met others just like me; we spent hours discussing theories on the books and even reading them together. We went to every single midnight release party and based our friendships with people and even relationships on how the other person felt about these novels. I was talking to a friend the other day when I said “I think the reason we became friends in the first place, is because of Harry Potter.” She agreed and we just went on, but that revelation hit me like a ton of bricks. I have J.K. Rowling to thank for a large amount of people in my life whom I treasure. There is even a Facebook group called “I only know you because of J.K. Rowling.” Her novels have inspired music, called “Wizard Rock Bands” which are brilliant, and websites galore. All of us Harry Potter fans feel connected to one another because of our love for these novels. Whenever I am talking to someone new and they mention that they like Harry Potter I feel relieved because I know that on some level we are already connected and understand one another.
       Many people laugh at the idea of changing the world, especially with a novel, which unfortunately is a medium that seems to be becoming more and more antiquated. I think Rowling has accomplished it. I believe that inspiring children to read is an amazing accomplishment all on its own. These children will now go out and read other novels because of Rowling, hoping that they will also love them as much as they did Harry Potter. The whole world has been influenced by these novels that I will treasure forever and I feel indebted to Rowling for giving me something that has truly shaped who I am and changed my life for the better.

Wake Me Up When September Ends

 

        The start of a new school year is always exciting. I was thirteen years old and only just a few days into my 8th grade year at I.S. 34. As I was sitting in my science class, other kids kept being called out and not returning to class. Pretty soon all of the grades were brought into the auditorium as all of the teachers went to an emergency staff meeting. None of us children really had any idea what was going on., kids just kept being called out and not returning. This went on for two hours until it was my lunch period and I went with my friends down to the cafeteria. We were sitting around joking as usual, mostly about how we wish we could leave also, and then my name was called. I stood on a line with other kids as we were ushered out the front door of the school and into a huge mass of screaming and crying parents. It was September 11th, 2001.

        I was immediately upset and I wasn’t even sure what was going on. My name was called and my mother raced up to get me, with my younger brother in tow. I remember seeing some of my friends' parents and neighbors who all patted me on the back while giving my mother sympathetic looks. As I sat in the car I asked my mother what happened and she was shocked that I hadn’t found out yet, seeing as how my brother’s fourth grade teacher had told them and let them listen to the news on the radio. As she tried to explain to me about what exactly a “terrorist” was and what they had done in Manhattan all I could hear was the loud roar of the Army bombers overhead.

        I sat on the couch in my living room with a pillow on my lap for hours without moving a muscle. I just watched the news and my mother. My father is a Police Sergeant based in Brooklyn. Every time the phone rang my mother pounced on it (this was that fabled time before caller ID) hoping that it was my father, but time after time it was just family members from all over the country calling to make sure that we were okay. It wasn’t until I was a few years older that I realized I might have lost my father that day. It just never occurred to me that he wouldn’t come home. When my mother finally received a phone call from him after many long hours due to there being no cell reception, a lot of the tension in the house was lifted, but the sadness just stayed in place like a fog.

        It has been ten years now and I still get upset, the memories now hitting me harder than the actual event did. I was young and had no idea what was going on at the time, but now that I know what happened and have grown up with the war that has resulted from it; the memories just seem to hurt more. I tried not to watch or read any of the coverage of the anniversary. It's basically like bathing open wounds in salt. I accidentally caught some coverage of ribbons being tied around a fence, one for each victim and it seemed like it went of for miles of miles. White ribbons as far as the eye could see and I felt like someone had stabbed a soldering iron through my heart.

        Ten years later and not that much progress has been made. A memorial and part of a new building is not something to brag about. The worst part of all of this is the treatment that first responders have received. There was "no room" at the memorial ceremony today for the first responders because of all of the politicians and their security. It took ten years for Congress to pass a bill to give aid to first responders and they only JUST decided that the cancer first responders have been getting could be related to their work that day and in the days after. I can not imagine what it would be like to have your family member come home safe after that day only to slowly be killed by a disease they had contracted from the ash and chemicals in the air while they were rescuing others. There should be a white ribbon tied to that fence for each and every person who has unnecessarily died from a disease they got that day because they are victims as well.

        My father refuses to talk about what happened in those few weeks. We can guess but he has never told any of us, and now I don’t think I would really like to know. I know he picked body parts off of roof tops. I know someone whose father still wakes up screaming in the middle of the night, even after ten years.  I know people walked into the doctor's office where my mother works covered head to toe in ash, missing shoes. People all around me had lost friends and relatives, and I was lucky enough to have made it through with just a scratch when I could have lost a lot more. The thick black smoke rising from the city that I saw driving home from school that day is always on my mind and it will never disappear.

“‘In that direction,’ the Cat said, waving its right paw round, ‘lives a Hatter: and in that direction,’ waving the other paw, ‘lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they’re both mad.’
‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ Alice remarked.
‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the Cat: ‘we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.’
‘How do you know I’m mad?’ said Alice.
‘You must be’ said the Cat ‘or you wouldn’t have come here.’”

— “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll