Merman pop, merMAN!

As i embark on this new journey to independence and discovery and all that sugar-coated goodness that a protected, simulated-reality, college environment provides, i find more and more that i need something as individual as i am becoming to be solely mine. No one elses, but just Rachels, to have and to hold. What a simple task, one might say. Anti-conformity; it can't be that hard. Well, let me tell you friends, there's a reason the phrase is against the grain. Here i am, nearing the end of my summer as a highschooler, and i am spawning up stream. Not only is the current kicking my ass, but my gills are all muddled up by the goo and filth of useless commercial ideas that society has generated. I've been racking my brain for things to add to better my life and self so that i am the most Rachel Sherman that i can be right now, but i can't seem to find salvation in anything. Maybe i need something new, i thought. Self-mutilation? Paint the holy temple that is my body with an inky, impromptu tattoo? Poke another 5 unnecessary holes somewhere in my skin? Raincheck for when i'm not so impulsive. How about through music? Discover a new band or singer, some diamond in the rough, and follow them cross country on all their tours? Fuck that, maybe i'll start a band and tour on my own. Now an important sidenote for all those who aren't in my head is that i actually thought about that last idea. I'm honestly impressed at how long the proposal floated around in my brain before my 4-fold reason of why not to start a band put me back on track. 1) i'm not musically gifted. i don't write songs, sing, and i can dabble poorly on the piano, which no longer is an individual feeling to me, because everyone who is anyone can do a little dabble. 2) i don't know which hard-core drug would suit me best 3) i know nothing about music theory and 4) i haven't left the fucking bathroom in the passing 30 minutes, you think i can tour? After music, i moved on to the following genres. Jewlery? too pricey. Food? too lazy. Clothing? too naked. All my options are dwindling rapidly. Then i approached it from the flipside. Instead of adding something new, maybe i'll take out something old. After purging half of my closet into an overflowing trashbag, i ended up with half the wardrobe, but no real nirvana. It took some serious thinking, and a couple games of tetris to realize that i think i have to find some redemption through literature. Say what? That's right. Literature. I have spent 18 years of my short-lived, unlearned life avoiding my a-e-i-o-u's, and now karma has come to bite me in the ass. I'm not sure if it's a change of wind or heart, but i have found that reading... can be fun. And not only that, wait till you hear this one, it is informative and enlightens you. Who knew? Throughout the summer i've gone through my fair share of David Sedaris novels, and am moving on to equally quirky, satirical writers. No matter how bizzare the stories seem to be, and how far off course they are from anything in my life, i can consistently relate to what is being said, or mostly, how the writing is presented. The more i read, the more i feel like i could write. Oh, it's a definate change in the wind says i. Untill i think further about my tentative career pathway, i'll leave you with the immortal words of Zoolander: who am i?

aaaaand scene.

If i were to express the last couple of days in accordance to my generation, i think i would have to utilize the age old adage, and by adage i mean acronym, WTF? I don't want to delve into anything too thick for me to flounder in, partly because i don't want to slander the holy name of Bnai Brith camp across the internet like i was so eloquently reminded at staff training, and partly because i don't know how to feel. The only thing i can decide on is that i am completely displaced at this point. With one of my best friends gone (and my only male ventilation system may i remind you), my co counselor out, and a recent but lovely good camp friend along with them, i can't seem to get my feet back on the ground. My poor campers (who i have officially fallen in love with in the most appropriate way possible) now are mommy-less (yes, i thought of myself as the father and cam as the mama bird) and have to deal with all the weird shit that i am spitting at them as a defense mechanism. They are eating it up, but a bystander, and any breathing, thinking, post-pubescent being would see that i'm acting like a freak. All the hype from yesterday has calmed down, but i can't stop myself from looking both back and forward when all i should be doing is focusing on the now. I can't stop replaying the countless hours off, the tears, the car cramming outside of KOA, the irrationality, the attempts to clear things up and the unfinished goodbyes in my head. I know that in the end i will always love this place, but right now this is the last place i want to be. It's just so surreal. I mean, the majority of my childhood that i can remember was written or founded here. All my best friendships were initiated or have blossomed in these cabins, at this dining hall, through the poor sewage system, during frigid showers, and on the rough grass of the infamous hill that kicks my ass year after year every time i have to scale it. In summary, this place and these people are my home, so these feelings of contempt make it feel foreign. Maybe i should join the dishwashing staff. Ouch, that was an unnecessary rude BB camp comment. Disregard it please. I'm in desperate need for a sesh of Clueless in my bed and a box of honey bunches of oats. And to stop myself from growing another vagina due to that ridiculously girlish routine i just admitted. In the play of my BB camp summertime life, this is where the music would escalate, i would drop to my knees and scream out the last definitive words that would echo throughout the theater... CAAAAAAMEEERRYYYYNNNN! Curtain drops.
On a brighter note my roomate facebooked me, and so i am officially starting the real college process: stalking the girl i'm about to scare shitless. I wonder if she has a toaster, because i sure do.

inkblot test

Finally, at the pinnacle of the summer, i have happened upon that moment when the culmination of all my schooling has come into action. PSYCH. Instead though i have decided that the majority of the bullshit i was spoonfed had little to no applicability to my life. So, as i try to better myself, i will force everything i know to fit into my cloudy mind. Round peg, square hole syndrome. In trying to think about the least helpful tidbits of knowledge that i have crammed for, only one specific man of the hour came to mind. Sigmund Freud was a crack addict living in an anal time period where women were repressed, men froliked around care-free like ponies, and everyone needed to get laid. One concept that he coined was the idea of catharsis. And so in this meddled mind of mine, i find that catharsis (which i have never used and feel that i probably never will) shall be my sole release. Hey, don't blame a woman for trying something new.
Thai food, cigarettes, paper, pens, keys, life, keyhole, locks, wallet, missing my wallet, where the fuck are my keys, dirty room, marraige, becca pasik, ignored, shabbat, shabbat shafuckinglom, roomate, college, packing, RC, learning, loving, growing, bed, growing pains, threes company, old tv, movies, balnkets, comfort, lacking comfort, despondent, air freshener, i could use some pop tarts. Analyze that oh great psychological father. Analyze that.

Can i get a cherry on top of that?

It was another seemingly unimportant night with the 5 of us that started off just like any other would. Lora got in trouble and we had to delay our departure, Liat wouldn't leave the cabin on time, Alana was wearing goofy-ass pants and displaying her new button bracelet, and Becca just wanted to get fucked up. Classic. Despite some internal struggle to get the fuck off camp, we eventually found ourselves at the Otis cafe. After some serious convincing and deliberation, the group convinced my fat ass that we can share a plate of potatoes that could have fed a small village in africa instead of me handling it on my lonesome (family style isn't my forte, i get territorial). In the end we ate everything on our plates, and everything on the plates of the table next to us (we knew them, but that probably wouldn't have stopped anyone). Slightly incapacitated and inebriated from all the deliciousness, we meandered on over to the cove, my absolute favorite spot in the LC. My rationale is the cove is quiet, secluded, has a significant lack of obnoxious drunk teens and tends to leave your clothing, hair and body smelling like it should instead of the overwhelming scent of old bonfire. We all settled in right away with all our goods and set up camp. After some pre-gaming we ended up in a heated discussion where we all were arguing the same point against nobody but the metaphorical man and sociaety as a whole. You see, we're told plenty as kids; don't drink, don't do drugs, don't hit your brother, etc. But until now we didn't realize that the reasoning behind these messages were mostly invalid and untrue (except for the brother one. He does get pissed when i hit). Why is altering your state of mind such a pathetic thing to do? Isn't bringing yourself onto another plane of thought overall beneficial? I mean it seems ridiculous to tell us that we should stay where we are forever. Sobriety is much more cloudy than people think it is. Inhibitions that come naturally, or that have been bred in our society stop us from seeing things from another point of view, accepting things as they are, and allowing ourselves to think against our normal pattern of thought. Only when these mental blocks are lifted can we start to understand things from the other side. I'm not saying we need to smoke to understand or drink to figure things out. I'm just saying that experiencing what it is like to release our inhibitions is vital to being able to do it on your own. It's just another way of looking at things. Thanks natasha beddingfield. That, among many other topics, was one of our genuis discoveries we made. I want to take a moment to remind myself that these are the best people in the world. There are few times that i can say i would not rather be anywhere else doing any other thing with any other individuals. P.s. i'm ridiculously lucky to have friends like this, so stop being a little bitch about your lack of pudding.

What's a sister got to do to get some pudding around here?

There's this give it get it philosophy that i've just recently picked up. I had my epiphany yesterday during the hustle and bustle of maccabiah, where campers over-exert themselves and staff do just the opposite . People depend on each others' energy to keep things circulating. It's weird how drastically and rapidly mood swings take place, especially at camp. The 24/7 contact with people makes every day so much busier, hence we have these unpredictable emotional changes that should be occurring throughout a week, but all have to fit in between flag and curfew. Throughout this past week of concentrated camp fun, i would unfailingly encounter a feeling that i can only describe as removed every day. No matter how good of a mood i was in, or how little contact i would have with certain people or even people all together, something would always trigger this removed persona. It's like one moment i would be in a situation, and the next i would we watching it, thinking "do i even need to be here?". The more i connected this feeling with certain activities, times of the day, and people, the more those things would push me away. I set out on an i hate so and so rampage thinking they were the ones ostracizing me, but not until much later did i realize that i was doing it to myself. If i take a second to really seperate myself from a situation and see it as an outsider, the way i would respond to people when i felt uninportant was to withdraw or simply leave when they came around. But by leaving i left no lasting impression on them, i didn't show them that i was physically there, and they would have no reason to think that i was a vital part of that situation. It's like if i feel like people think i'm useless, my self-pitying attitude will make people treat me like i can't do anything on my own, which just verifies the previous belief. Even if that's not how they would originally felt, my energy affects theirs. It's all one vicious cycle of worthlessness. Upon discovering that i'm an idiot (that was my rational conclusion), i have hereby decided to follow the golden rules of power of positive thinking. So far so good. Now i wonder if this practice will work for getting pudding for dessert...

car 54, where are you, where are you?!

I laid down the law today. In the most passive aggressive kind of way possible, but it was laid down nonetheless. Let's rewind to my childhood, where maybe you as an outsider can objectively determine what event in my short-lived, uneventful life made me so damn maleable :). I'm not sure if i was super domineering in a previous life, maybe hardcore S&M got me down, but either way i'm a pushover. Now that i've set the scene, lets fastforward to today, when i opened my car for the first time in 4 days and found it completely trashed, and the tank half empty (yes, half-empty. this is my pessimistic quota for the day). Well, i wasn't gonna take this laying down, no siree! lets just say i made my message very clear to all future car-borrowers. **note, the message i'm refering to is written on pastel pink paper and taped to my steering wheel. if that's not intimidating than i don't know what is.** sarah says hi. emily looks like a hooker. love ya. xoxo gossip girl

more-ientation

I feel like it's an inborn sentiment to despise the process of orientation. I can't begin to enter the depths of how many exasperated sighs i've heard since i've come here. In fact, sometimes i sigh just because conformity sounds like a nice change of pace, but really i'm kind of enjoying myself. Did i mention my college is the shizznit? (today this guy charles asked a girl to say "alfredo is the shizznit" in german. You know... one of those basic need-to-know phrases). The RC mentality has already swept me up with it's origin starting from brooding students ready for a change who establish their alternative learning so that they actually LEARN the material to better themselves and abandon the traditional format of classroom teaching as well as condecending i'm-better-than-you student-teacher relationships, moving into a more fluid "the student is the teacher" and vice versa ideals has made me want to stand up, kick a table over and yell "yeah! fuck the man!". Instead i think i threw my pencil down angrily and muttered under my breath, which to me was in essence the same, but to a bystander looked more like a weird tick or something similar. Not only has this whole experienced pumped me up for learning (yeah, thats right, i went there), but it reassured me that i can be a stud. if you don't know what i'm talking about, i'll leave you with i came, i saw, i conquered :)