Relieving Stress

Today's journal is about what I do to relieve stress. To relieve stress, I like to listen to music. Along with this, I like to be alone when I listen to music.  The loneliness allows me to better focus on the music which I use to relax and escape reality.  Music has the ability that nothing else has, the ability to portray pure emotion.  This is a complex topic which takes appreciation to realize.  Music can portray colors and color is emotion.  This beauty is the soul purpose of art. In the one act play, "Red", the main character is an abstract artist from the early 1930s. He is an artist in the last leg of his era.  Throughout the play we learn what emotion the color red portrays in the characters.  Each has his own deep meaning associated with the color.  Color can provoke emotion and memory, and the chords and chord progressions can portray pure colors through sound. The sounds create chords and chord progressions.  Chord progressions make up music and music is what I use to relax.  This is why it is necessary for me to be alone when I am relaxing and listening to music.

When Nature was in Control

Today's journal prompt is to write about a time when nature was in control.  The time that comes to mind is from when I was at summer camp.  I was taking the annual summer camp trip with the local Boy Scout Troop, which I was a part of at the time, and on this particular year we went to Camp Bunn in southern Illinois.  The year was the summer of my seventh grade, 2009, I believe.  It was mid July in southern Illinois.  This time of year, the heat is always about ninety degrees Fahrenheit, but worse yet is the humidity.  In Illinois it is never just hot. It is always hot and humid.  Regardless, I was having a fun time at summer camp getting the weather merit badge. With our constant attention to air pressure and temperature, we knew a storm was coming, but we were not prepared for what happened.  The clouds rolled in over camp. It was time to head back to base to batten down the tents and dining fly.  We got to camp and secured the tents for the rain.  After about fifteen minutes we could see rain by the climbing tower, about 200 yards away.  The rain was upon us and we were ready. No problems yet.  Then the sky turned green, a common sign that a tornado is coming.  We were not expecting this.  Winds picked up the tents were blowing in the wind and we had to open vents to allow for circulation so they wouldn't blow over.  The rain was pouring down, the alarm sounded, and we were not ready.  Some how, our safe spot was at the bottom of a gulch, not a great place to be. Anyway, I think reached my word limit, so were were at the bottom of this gulch with rain and trees falling on us. It was not fun.

Revolutionizing the Way People Think

Today's journal assignment is to discuss what it is like to revolutionize the way people think or do things. I have no clue as to what this feels like.  I am a student in high school, and I am not really an authority on authority.  I am not a revolutionary. I have ideas that could revolutionize the way people do things, but I have no authority to implement my ideas, and no means of gaining authority. Currently it is my job to listen to others, and to keep to myself as long as I can get good grades.  Also, I don't know why, at this point in my life, I would want to be a revolutionary.  Doing things to attempt to influence the ideas of people I do not care about, would simply be a waste of my time. They're alignment with my ideas is of no consequence to me, my ideas, or how well I am able to function.  It would be nice if people would agree with me. Life would be a lot less frustrating because then I would not have to be angry at those who disagree with me.  It sounds vain, but the things I want people to agree on with me are matters of times when I have difficulty explaining myself.  If I did not have to trace my thought processes to people who cannot follow them, I would be much happier.

Gossip

In class, we are reading Edgar Lee Masters's "Spoon River Anthology".  This book deals with the goings-ons in the small town of Spoon River.  Masters discusses the goings-ons with epitaphs written on peoples graves.  These poems discuss the major life events of people and the gossip that they knew or heard.  The people of Spoon River tell all in their epitaphs because they have nothing to lose.  In these epitaphs we see chains of events and stories that follow through many different people's epitaphs.  This gossip chain is very much like real life gossip.  We see that everyone seems to know parts of stories, and only through connecting all of the parts can we get the full story of the event.  Gossip in real life is similar to this.  You almost never hear the full story when you receive gossip.  Because of this, gossip cannot be trusted.  An example of this in Spoon river is when Mr. Purkapile attempts to keep his affair secret, but when we read the story of his wife, Mrs. Purkapile, we find that she knew all along.  We can also follow this gossip chain to the woman Mr Purkapile had an affair with.  In her epitaph, she admits to being in the affair, and she further accuses Mrs Purkapile of being a bad wife who couldn't satisfy her husband.  Whether this is true or not, one would have to dig deeper to find, so even in this instance of controlled gossip, we do not learn the full story.  It is infinitely more difficult in real life where the system of gossip is open and infinite. To conclude,  gossip is impossible to control in real life, so just don't do it.

Civil Rights

I believe in civil rights.  I see no reason why any group should be discriminated purely for their skin color or for their customs.  I fully believe that people are the same by nature. Whether someone is black, white, red, yellow, or brown, I see no difference in the available characteristics of a person.  Just because a person is from a different part of the world does not make them any more or less human.  We have all evolved from monkeys. The only reason we have different skin colors is because we adapted to our surroundings after Homo Erectus left south Africa.  In something of a contradictory fashion, I am all for putting people down who are ignorant or lack common sense.  If someone has been told many times how to do a simple task, and they choose not to do it, then I believe that they deserve to be at the back of the bus, not the person who simply has a different skin color.  Don't get me wrong. I only hold this standard for those that chose to ignore.  If someone has a mental or physical handicap which prevents them from performing a task of any sort, then they can not be held accountable for their inability to perform.  Race and color should not play into the determination of someones character, but someone who actually has poor character should be ostracized.  This is the stance I hold on civil rights. One should be judged on one's character and ethics, not their skin color or culture.