The Fury of Cocks: a Translation

I had heard a couple of years ago about a Chinese poet who took other works, put them through Google translate, and made them her own. Though I would not call this a “scholarly journey” by any means, the results made me laugh. This is a side-by-side comparison, line by line.

 

 

 

Fury of Cocks: Linguistic Journey by Kira Yates

English to Spanish, Spanish to Polish, Polish to Swahili, Swahili to Arabic, Arabic to Gaelic, Gaelic to Norwegian, Norwegian to Zulu, Zulu to Turkish, and Turkish to English

The Fury of Cocks by Anne Sexton There they were drooping over the breakfast plates, angel-like, folding in their sad wing, animal sad, and only the night before there they were playing the banjo. Once more the day's light comes with its immense sun, its mother trucks, its engines of amputation. Whereas last night, the cock knew its way home, as stiff as a hammer, battering in with all its awful power. That theater. Today it is tender, a small bird, as soft as a baby's hand. She is the house. He is the steeple. When they fuck they are God. When they break away they are God. When they snore they are God. In the morning they butter toast. They don't say much. They are still God. All the cocks of the world are God, blooming, blooming, blooming into the sweet blood of woman.

anger Cocks by Kira Yates old reduced breakfast dishes, like angels, His own wings sad sad animals and only at night she is Play the banjo. The day is coming Sun, The mother of trucks Decision engine. Yesterday, during the night, Dick knew the way home As hard as a stone as the force of evil. In the stadium. As is currently preferred, birds, Soft as a child's arm. At home. One tower. If prostitution. When separated from God. Although snoring God. Morning and butter beans. They did not say much. Stay with God. Taps all over the world, which is Bloom, flower Women's sweet blood.

 

BEDFORD BULLETIN: Will This Be On The Test?

This is a column that I wrote last January, and it is the one that I am most proud of. I think it speaks to who I am as a person inside, and how I really feel concerning colleges and the future.

 

Today, I am having trouble thinking. This year, it has become a usual struggle for me: I try my hardest to do schoolwork, but I really am not engaged in any of the material.

    And I must admit, it troubles me. I don’t know that I have ever felt so detached from my academic learning environment. Unfortunately, I think I know the culprit: college.

    College has gotten so much more real this year, from adults getting too close to my face and cheerily asking, “Where ya thinkin’?” to my friends and I studying for the SATs, to the guidance counselors coming in to talk to us, and I feel somewhat lost. There seems to be a frightening undercurrent amongst my friends that has arisen: we are competition for colleges.

    This year, we have started to focus more on grades. And GPAs. And SAT scores. And extracurriculars. And whether or not we are the president of any of the clubs or organizations we are involved in. And community service, not for the sake of helping others, but for the sake of college applications.

    We’ve started asking our teachers, “Will this be on the test?,” a question that I heard a couple of weeks ago when discussing the lives lost in the Holocaust.

    We have developed the worst side effect of wanting success: we have ceased to learn.

    It is a dire reality, isn’t it? But you can bet, one of us will go to an Ivy League.

    Maybe even two.

    The other day, I received a test back. Unhappy with the result, I was instantly distraught, knowing for sure that I was not going to be able to attend the college of my choice based upon this grade and how it would affect my final grade and my other grades and it would inevitably affect my college acceptance which would inevitably affect my ability to get a job and then I would have no job unless I went to Harvard Law and without this particular test score, Harvard Law would be unattainable and I would never be worth anything in the grand scheme of life and history and religion and literature and science and Ican’tbelievethisishappeningtomewhatdidIdotodeservethis.

    I had not even looked to see what I had gotten wrong. I only saw my score.

    I stopped asking questions, even when I had them, because I heard that my teacher gives quiet kids better grades than talkative ones.

    I apologize. In a column called “Life at BHS,” this is not much of a life to lead.

    I, like many of my peers, have gotten so caught up in the race for college acceptance, that I have forgotten what it means to be a person. I stand on my soapbox in my own little corner of the Bedford Bulletin, supplying morals and life lessons in the hopes that people will think, while I have not actually thought for some time.

    And I am sorry for that.

    I have cared so much about my grades, that sometimes, I don’t listen unless I know it will be on the test.

    And I can hardly believe myself.

    Education is not about grades, Harvard Law or SAT scores. It is about learning; it’s that simple. True learning is not assessed through tests, colleges or prestige. Failure to recognize the virtue of learning, is to not learn at all.

    As an American student, I am taught the many workings of the world. I have the privilege of learning about everything in society: its ecosystems, its civilizations, its friends and its enemies and its imperfections. It is through learning of the world that we learn of ourselves.

    If we are to learn purely for the sake of learning, then there is a good chance that we will not know everything, something that many have trouble with. Students believe that the SAT assesses all knowledge derived from textbooks, not what we have “truly learned.” Therefore, in order to attain a perfect score on the SATs, students must know everything and nothing at all simultaneously, solely for the interests of appealing to the college system. This is a method that students must accept in order to gain entrance to the college of their choice.

    I must choose to learn.

    I will never know everything. In fact, there is a good chance that I will not know anything about some subjects.

    There is a good chance that I will never get a perfect score on my SATs. I may never be able to comprehend multivariable calculus, although I am certain I could not have comprehended that anyway, and I will probably never be a lawyer, physician, and astronaut at the same time.

    But, maybe I’ll ask questions when I have them. Maybe, I will see what I got wrong on tests before I wage war with the world over my scores. Maybe, I will spend more time daydreaming without worrying what those idle moments might do to my GPA. Maybe, despite imperfections, I will change the way someone sees the world. Maybe, I will see the world differently as well.

Maybe, I’ll be happy.

    And, if I am happy, then it is a pleasure to have learned anything at all.

A Random Fact To Break Up The Wall of Text

My World In Pictures: Old Man on the Mountain

My World in Pictures: Old Man on the Mountain

    The Old Man of the Mountain is the symbol that is etched into the nickel of every New Hampshire state quarter, mainly because that is our only claim to fame. That, and a town called Weare, spelled W-E-A-R-E, a joke that the natives never seem to grow tired of. “Where ya from?” “Weare.” “Where?” “Exactly.” And, save these two landmarks, we have a thriving industry of summer homes and tourism, the roots of which are planted in Bike Week and Shark Week, seven days of Hell for all the evangelicals and everyone else who hates unnecessary piercings, tattoos, and man-eaters. And I’ll let you in on a little known secret: the man-eaters aren’t the sharks or the bikers.

Believe it or not, the Old Man of the Mountain has always been a popular tourist spot for motorcyclists, exasperated mothers, and around 70,000 Toyota Priuses with Vermont license plates and coexist bumper stickers for about as long as anyone can remember. I couldn’t tell you what it is about him, but there is something about a rock formation that just gets people going.

The Old Man now looks like a Hollywood failure in desperate need of Botox. After an astoundingly depressing rock slide, his nose and features came tumbling down, leaving the slight indentation of a personified life in its place. Those in New Hampshire were crushed, naturally. The death of symbolism is always crushing. What do we have to worship if not for our idols? How many times had the average resident seen the wise silhouette of the old man in the mountain, the prominent curvature of his forehead domineering over an endless expanse of pine trees, the words “Live Free or Die” in a sweeping banner below him? Too many. Too many indeed.

I remember that my grandmother cried when the Old Man fell. So did all of our grandmothers. Live Free or Die did not have the same ring to it if it could not echo from the Old Man’s face, etched into the granite. The Old Man, a symbol of our rather angry sounding motto, had died. Maybe, he did not live free.

Some were surprised. Did we not attain the freedom we had so often toted with us as our life slogan? Were we, too, doomed to die without liberty?

“Ma, you know it’s just a rock, right?” Mom told my grandmother over the phone. We weren’t natives, she said, we would never understand what he meant.

And we didn’t. It was the only hint of fame anyone in New Hampshire had ever had, unless they have known Seth Meyers or Adam Sandler. It may be an inherent desire to be known, to be understood, and without the Old Man looking over his kingdom, the reality of the situation was that his lost people had to cling to their forests to be understood by the outside world. He was gone, and with his crumbling nose and forehead fell the liberty of understanding that the elders clung so heartily to. The Old Man proves it: the death of symbolism is what we grieve.

Word Count: 515, because every picture is worth 1,000 words, but the Old Man is only half a picture.

 

 

The Weaver: A Short Story

   The first adult decision that the man ever made was the only one that would assure he would never have to make another decision again. Permanence replaced wisdom in his mind as he swallowed the pills one handful at a time. After all, the man had run from wisdom long ago. And it did not chase him. It sat patiently, waiting to be found once more. The man was going to die, a feeling he wanted to pass over quickly as he lay on his bed, staring at the popcorn ceiling, waiting for his eyelids to droop into oblivion one last time. He descended into sleep with a slow burn in his chest, counting the ticks on a distant clock until he could hear nothing more.

    The man was sure it was over. It had to be. The clock was gone, and as his eyes cracked open, he knew that he had awoken in a place completely foreign. There was little light in the room, but he still squinted, as if the lethargy of the morning had heavied his eyes. He rotated his shoulders, peering silently about the emptiness, covered in shadows. Occasionally, a spill of light would shine through onto the white walls, speckling the white paint with yellow, blinding rays of sunshine. The man found the origin of the light after hearing a sudden cacophony of noise coming from behind him. He rose to his feet and about faced. There stood a thirty-foot tapestry, at the graceful hands of a woman sitting behind it. The hands stopped, and the woman crooked her neck to the right, her wrinkled eyes resting on the man.

    “I wasn’t expecting you,” the woman said, her hands resuming their work after a brief pause.

    “Where am I?” the man asked.

    “You will know soon,” the woman said. She smiled warmly, the crinkles around her eyes deepening as her lips parted. “Do you know what this is?” she asked.

    The man furrowed his brow. “No, should I?”

    “Not necessarily. Maybe if you came when I called for you, it might be different.”

    “Who are you?”

    “I am the weaver,” the woman said. She propelled the shuttle through the warp, slamming down the frame in such a raucous that the man flinched. “And you, you are early. Why are you early? Early people leave holes.” She gestured past the tapestry to the speckled wall, the light catching the small holes in the tapestry, shining forth in beams. The weaver’s craft was chaotic, threads of every color woven together without a set pattern. The man had not known much of looms in his past, but he knew that the finished product needed some semblance of order, and the hodgepodge jumble of color had a rather blinding effect on the man once he watched the threads intertwine.

    “What do you mean? What am I early for?” the man asked.

    The woman giggled. Her eyes fixed onto her right hand, pulling the weft once more through the tapestry. She held the it with the thumb and index finger of her right hand, the left gently fumbling through her pocket. Her left hand gripped a pair of golden scissors that caught the light like the holes of the tapestry, casting a sparkle of melancholy sunshine about the room. The blades clashed with one another as they opened and cut the thread in her right hand. She let the tail drop toward the floor, placing the small golden shears back inside her pocket.

    “This is your world,” the weaver said, her aged hand gesturing to the chaos of the tapestry. The colors seemed to blend together into a rainbow monopolized by red, others peeking out in the disarray when squinted at.

    “I... I don’t understand,” the man said.

    “This one,” the weaver said, grabbing at a weft wound with black yarn. “This one is you.”

    The man reached out to touch the weft as she began to weave it into the loom, her hands working slowly as she started to wind.

    The weaver looked up at the tapestry, hanging from the ceiling. Its gargantuan height overwhelmed her as her eyes approached the top, her neck craning upward to fathom it in its entirety.

    “This is your history,” the weaver said, “it is everything that has been, and everything that will be. You are nothing but a string in the universe. Your life runs from one end of the loom to the other, winding between others on the way.”

    “You mean, the people I meet are--”

    “Yes. They are here. They are wound in the loom with your thread for eternity. That is why you are so troublesome to me.” The weaver looked toward the man as she said this, her hand pausing less than a quarter of the way along the frame.

    “Me? Why?”

    “You’re early. You are not supposed to be here so soon. Your thread has not nearly crossed the loom; you are not done yet,” the weaver said, her eyes burning into the man.

    “But, it’s thirty feet tall! One string can’t make a half of a dent in this!” the man said, raising his voice to the weaver.

    “No? Look,” the weaver said, her hand pointing once more to the wall. “One frayed string falls through. One string is always enough.”

    “So there’s a little hole. That is my own decision,” the man said.

    “Is it?” The weaver pointed to the warp, still fixed near the beginning of the loom. “Look at the threads that you have left to cross. You have barely even started!” The man looked at the strands of thread, multicolored and waiting patiently to be woven. “What will they do? Always be one row short? It will never be complete!”

    “Sure it will,” the man said. “No one will know if it is one row short. No thread is that large. No one will know.”

    The weaver looked into the man’s eyes. Her eyes were gray and cloudy, a storm brewing within the irises. “You will know.”

    The weaver sat quietly, looking at the splotched and lonely wall. The man looked at the threads which had yet to be crossed. He wondered who they were.

    “There is a life beyond the senses. Beyond what we see. Beyond what we feel,” the weaver said, her left hand entering her pocket once more.

    “Seeing is believing,” the man said, laughing to himself.

    “Life is not seen. It is woven.”

    The tapestry began to make more sense to the man as he stared longer into its colors. As he fixed his eyes onto the thirty feet of the universe, chaos faded into the oblivion.

    “Since you have come to me so early, I suppose I will have to give you a choice,” the weaver gripped the golden scissors in her hand once more.

    The woman squeezed the scissors in her hand. She raised it to the man, who stood beside her, dropping the scissors, glaring from the sunlight, into the man’s hands.

    “You may cut your thread. But know that the tapestry of life will always be short a row on your behalf.”

    “Okay,” the man said. He raised his hand to his tread. The scissors quivered, shivering as the blades moved nearer. The man cleared his throat. A row missing. A whole row missing. The blades grated against each other in reluctance as they opened, and groaned even louder as they slowly began to close.

    “Or,” the weaver said, “You can leave your thread. See where it takes you.”

    “I-- I can’t. Life is too hard. I’ve tried it and--”

    “And no one ever said it would be easy, did they?”

    “No, but--”

    The weaver leaned in toward the man. “I have met a lot of people whose threads have reached the end, and not one of them said it was easy. They said it was worth the struggle. How will you ever know if it was worth your time if you stop now?”

    The man still held the scissors up to the thread, the blades shivering and shaking more violently than ever before. He closed his eyes, and waited for a sound. For a moment, he was unsure what he had done.

    The floor clattered. He had hit the floor. Or, maybe he didn’t. The man opened his eyes: no, he didn’t. The scissors had fallen to the ground, making a dent in the floor. He peered anxiously in the direction of the thread, not knowing whether or not it was still intact.

    The weaver whispered in his ear, “If you’ll excuse me, John, I have a lot more weaving to do and an appointment in a few minutes. I suggest next time you come to see me, you make an appointment.”

...

“John! John! Can you hear me?”

    “John! If you can hear me, please talk to me. This is Dr. Phillips.”

    “John. Can you hear me? Nod if you can hear me. This is Dr. Phillips.”

    John nodded. “The tapestry. You can’t see it.”

    “What? What did he say?”

    John’s eyes were bombarded with the lights of a hospital ceiling, his stretcher moving with a low roar down the hall. A team of doctors surrounded him.

    “John! What did you say?”

    “The weaver. She weaves a tapestry. You’re a thread. I’m a thread.”

    “What?”

    “I don’t know. He took an entire bottle of Zopiclone, Larry. Does it matter? He’s talking.”

    “I guess not.”

Anja's Letter

We had to do something "creative" for our Individual Oral Presentation for IB Global Studies Honors. So, I decided to write an open letter, of sorts, based off of the book Maus: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman, one of our options. I sort of liked how it ended up, so I thought I would throw it on here. If you haven't read Maus, it is a graphic novel (the first to ever win a Pulitzer) about the Holocaust. Anja, Art Spigelman's mother, committed suicide after the war, and this was supposed to be the last entry in her diary.

To my son, Art.

    I do not like to talk about the war. Of course, who likes to talk about war? I’ll tell you who: the ones who weren’t there.

    The truth is, Art, that there are no winners in wars. We won, you know? That is what the books say. And yet, I have seen death. If you were to ask me, I would say that there is no winner in death. But then again, no one asked me.

    I wrote a while ago that I hope you would take interest in my life, Art; that you might want to see what loss looks like from the winning side. I will tell you, it still hurts.

    I had always thought that I would die during the war. They told me what the gas smelled like, but it was only rumors. We all know that no one could have known what it smelled like, because they were in the ground. And I heard about the trains, and the labor camps. I knew that one day, we would be caught. I always knew. But, somehow, I seemed to evade fate. And that, Art, is something that I have learned one must never do.

    Liberation cost us a lot of bullets. Too many. And what did we win? Our lives? Every night I cry. Is that any life to live? And I ask you if you love me. And you say, “Sure.” Sure. As if I asked for my life from God above and he only said “Sure,” like I didn’t deserve it. Tell me, my son. If I do not deserve you, your father, or anyone else, then why am I here? Even better, why are you here? To keep to yourself? We have not been given a second chance to tell each other mindless musings like “Sure!” Too many have died. Too many who loved one another will never be able to tell their sons and daughters of their love ever again.

    I am writing this to you because I love you; soon I will not be here, and I need you to know that I love you.

    And I am also writing this because your father loves you, too, although he is not one to show it. He has had just as much trouble as I have had during the war, you know. Life, after all, makes troubles inevitable, and I suppose a second lease on it makes them all the more likely. As for his mentality, it would seem that he is doing well. Cheap, of course, but doing well. Some say his growing frugality was an effect of the war, but I am under the belief that one can never be sure. It is so easy to generalize any sort of victim, let alone a man who survived the Holocaust, when generalizations are not warranted. His reluctance to buy much of anything could be a product of Hitler, a product of aging, or a product of who he is. Maybe it is the historians who insist that we are affected by the terrors of the world. Maybe it is our neighbors. Maybe it is us; regardless, we have a natural tendency to blame our own problems on recovering from tragedy. The funny thing about tragedy, Art, is that it is utterly inevitable. If we are to blame our shortcomings, our bad health and habits, on the tragedies and death that surround us, then we have lost a war worse than any other: a war with life.

    A violent and tumultuous war has taken place in my mind ever since the war ended. I lost my child. I lost my parents. I lost much of what I had, and much of what I was to have. I tried to find ways to clear my soul, overcome by gloom. I tried by finding love in my life, by loving as much as I could. And yet, I felt like a nuisance. I still do. Without being fulfilled, to this day, I still do not know why I am here. Why did I live, if I have nothing to live for? If I have no greater purpose, why did I have to suffer, to hear of my son’s death? Why do I have to wake every day, wondering if it was all a dream, wondering by some impossible glint of faith that he might be in the next room? If fate has told me that my time is not yet over, why have I found myself so alone? Where have we gone? A place where we do not tell one another that we love each other? A place where “Sure,” is a proper confirmation that my life has worth?

    Art, I may not be much for this world, and I may not be long for it, either. But, I do have one dying wish for you. Tell me, my son, ask a historian, if you must: what have I won? My people have won the war. Hitler is dead; but is he, really? I have won a life that is not worth living; a prize not worth bearing. Ask the ones who speak of war so often, the ones who sit in their offices and speculate as to how I felt when I watched my mother and father leave me for the last time. Ask yourself, as you face away from me and tell me words like “Sure,” when I tell you that I love you: what have I won? Have I won your respect? Have I won theirs? My mother’s? Richieu’s? What respect is due for a woman who escaped? Ask the ones who write the textbooks if they love the ones close to them. If their families told them of their love, how would they respond? For if they would respond with anything but gratitude, they have forgotten why the textbook was written in the first place.

    I cannot go on in a world where I must see death and pain in order to find love. I refuse to live in a world where we find no purpose in ourselves. I have looked. I have hurt enough, Art. It seems that the past has gashed a wound in me that has never stopped bleeding, and I am nearly bled out. My son, whatever joy there is to be found in your life, I hope that you find it. And lastly, wherever you go, know that you are my joy. I love you.

 

Original Oratory 2013

Original Oratory from the 2013-2014 Speech season. I earned a 6th place trophy at a varsity tournament and 1st at a novice tournament with this speech. I might have gotten further, but I had my appendix taken out at the height of the season, so I was not able to attend many tournaments. This year, however, I plan to come back fighting and appendix free.

 

I have a confession to make -- I have achluophobia, or fear of the dark. I suppose it started on my fourteenth Halloween when, in the spirit of the holiday, I decided to watch the horror movie, Saw, after everyone had gone to bed. Bad decision. I then became convinced that the killer himself was hiding inside my closet, watching me sleep. I grabbed an 8-inch chef’s knife from the kitchen, the most intimidating I could find, and, creeping slowly toward the coat hangers, I stabbed! I opened the door carefully to see my kill. And, as I had known somewhere in my subconscious all along, the maniacal culprit was a coat and two shirts.

    I went and plugged in my Winnie the Pooh night light, left over from my third birthday, and after some deep breathing exercises, I thought: why do we fear? Of course I knew I was safe. I had been every night of my life. What is it about the dark that makes our hearts beat just a little faster?

    I pondered this question for nearly another hour until the answer finally came to me: we do not fear the dark at all, we fear what lies within it.

    It was then that I decided that this is the nature of fear: we are not afraid of the entity itself, but the unknown consequences. Unfortunately, the threat of these uncertainties never leave us. As American author Ursula K. Le Guin explains, “the only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.” These uncertainties are a centrifugal force in all of our lives, as we are never sure what will happen on a day to day basis. That’s today’s subject of conversation: the unknown. Now, there is a fear called arithmophobia, or the fear of numbers. Luckily, I don’t have that fear, so we’ll stick to three areas: first, the culture that arises out of uncertainty, second, the implications that the unknown has in all of our lives, and lastly, how we can find comfort in that which we cannot control, and hopefully by the end, we’ll reach a conclusion regarding the very nature of the uncertain. There will always be a part of life that is left in the dark. It is only by finding light in this darkness, embracing the unknown, that we find the essence of life itself.

Now, one fear that plays largely into the concept of uncertainty is doomsday phobia, or fear of the end of the world. And, for those of you who are wondering, no I did not just make that up. Although there is no official Latin name for fear of the apocalypse, it is in fact more common than one might think. There is a sector of people calling themselves “Doomsday Preppers” who prepare for the end of days. Be it the end of electricity, an epidemic, or economic collapse, doomsday preppers devote their entire lives to the principles of uncertainty, as much of their time is centered upon preparing for an event that is completely ambiguous. A recent CNN article examines the costs of living this lifestyle, stating that one Australian man has spent “$350,000 preparing for ‘the end of the world as we know it.’” And, he is not alone. James Rawles, popular doomsday prepper and author of several non-fiction books, states that “130,000 people regularly read his survivalblog.com, where he and numerous contributors provide tips on how to prepare.” People place so much value on the unknown that an entire culture has developed from it. Not that there is anything wrong with being a doomsday prepper, we all need a hobby, but the fact that a lifestyle has arisen out of uncertainty highlights its prevalence in our society: and though we may not feel the need buy an underground bunker over the matter, there is a large amount of anxiety revolving around the end of our known world. We adapt our lives, our cultures, to fathom life’s uncertainties, when in reality, the unknown is just that: unkown. Unfortunately, many of us would rather live in fear of these uncertainties, than learn to embrace the changes.

The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology conducted a study in November of 2010 that stated most people were far more comfortable with the known than the unknown, regardless of the possible benefits. “In one study, [college] students preferred the course requirement described as the status quo over a new version... [irrespective] of whether the new version meant more or less coursework.” The vast majority of people prefer old methods over the new, simply because they are “more certain.” We as a society have developed a psychological schema that longevity is equivalent to “goodness.” While this traditional ideology may work for some time, it will inevitably hold us back in the future. A study by Deakin University “examined levels of life satisfaction and perceived control” divided into two categories: primary control, aspects of life which one can change of their own volition, and secondary control, which one cannot. The study, conducted with “101 older adults living in a residential care facility, and another 101 older adults who lived independently in the same community” examined aspects of life like safety, connection to a community, and health. It was found that those who were able to adapt to instances of secondary control, the changes which they had no control over, were able to prosper in all facets of life. Embracing the unknown, accepting these changes, allows us to work to our most promising potential. We must be able to make use of what we have today, rather than fear tomorrow.

But, what if we were to face life’s ultimate uncertainty: not knowing whether we had a tomorrow. I discovered this firsthand in 2006 when my friend, Cameron Allen, was diagnosed with cancer. A rare form of brain cancer, particularly in children, Cameron was forced at a young age to cope with an illness from which he was unlikely to recover. As time went on, he began to contemplate the uncertainty of his own death, at thirteen years old. However, from the time of his diagnosis, Cameron proclaimed that he would embrace his condition. Despite seizures and 12 hour surgeries, he assured his friends and family that cancer might beat his body, but not his soul. “Even if I don’t make it, I’m not worried,” he said, “because I know if cancer strikes me down, I will only become more powerful.” Cameron passed away on September 14th, 2008. But, his spirit lives within all of us. It was some time after his passing that I realized in life, we are not inherently drawn to fear the uncertain, we are not obligated to turn away from that which we do not know, as we have a choice: to abandon the unknown, or to harness it, and in the words of Cameron, allow it to make us all the more powerful. There are times in life when hope seems absent, when our faith is tried and the future is unclear. It is in these times that we must remember: this is when we are most powerful, when we are stuck down into the world of the unknown, we are illuminated in the darkness of life.

Though I am not completely cured of my achluophobia, I have begun to see it in a different light.  I’ve upgraded to a more mature nightlight, SpongeBob SquarePants, and I have started to accept that there are some aspects of our lives which we will never be able to foresee. Today, we learned what it means to live an uncertain lifestyle, to fear the new, and finally the power we can gain from embracing the unknown, but how do we combat uncertainty? For this, there is one simple solution: we don’t. There is no path that we can take, no amount of money we can pay, no amount of questions we can ask that will make the unknown... known. Uncertainty cannot be solved, because in reality, it is not the problem. The conflict lies in how we cope with it. Shall we choose to live in fear of tomorrow, or allow ourselves to be free from the inevitable by accepting the unknown and permitting it to make our lives all the better? All we know of tomorrow is that it will be different from today. The uncertainty of life is a gift. And of that, we can all be certain.