About Arcs
“Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives.”
Reynolds Price
Arc – an extended or continuing storyline in episodic storytelling media.
“I heard it in the news, and I saw it on the television. How messed up things were down there, and not enough people helping. The government, not doing anything about it. I thought, ‘how can people not help? How are they just standing around?’ And I knew, that’s where I supposed to be.”
Jamie wasn’t charismatic. His demeanor was too serious, too melancholy to be called charming. It put lead in his words, made them heavy to bear and hard to pass along. Even his features, Irish-fair skin, dark hair and darker eyes, added a brooding depth to every gesture and line. However, the carriage only diluted the content. It didn’t poison it, or make it any less true.
“So I threw my clothes in a bag, and started hitchhiking. I figured I’d get to New Orleans anyway I could.”
Did you know about Saint Mary’s or Common Ground before you left? I asked.
“No. But I knew it would work itself out. The important thing was getting to where I needed to be. And right then, that was New Orleans.”
What about money?
He shrugged. Went back to eating the goulash on his cracked dinner plate.
That conversation planted the seed of minimalism in my mind, and led to the idea that minimalism and the conceptions swirling around the word wasn’t about some Tibetan monk lifestyle, aimed at depriving yourself of life’s pleasures. Minimalism could be a tool. You could apply it judiciously. For times when you looked out into the world, and something beckoned you. Or you gazed into your heart, and found an inexplicable yearning to be some place, to do something.
Armed with minimalism, you are free to take chances, untethered by thoughts of “losing this” or “not having that.” You know everything life takes from you is replaceable, and those irreplaceable things – identity, knowledge, self-worth – cannot be taken.
Minimalism grants you the fortitude to leave everything behind. To look loved ones in the eye and say, “This is where I need to be.” They’ll ask what I asked Jamie that day, sitting on the steps of Saint Mary’s. They’ll ask the questions that raged in my mind but I couldn’t give voice to: about security, money, employment, shelter, food. Since no answer could do justice to the conviction in your heart, you just shrug.
You say, it’ll work itself out.
It’s a business that brings out the worst in people. From those behind the bar, to the servers, to the dishwashers, to the chefs, to the managers. Something about the toil of the food-and-bev industry showcases the pettiness, the greed, and the immaturity in all of us.
It’s likely a melding of reasons: 12-hours shifts in cheap shoes, a hierarchy that inflates egos and grossly underestimates talent, or getting snubbed by patrons who look down on you because earning your living requires memorizing drink orders. There’s the easy-come-easy-go nature of getting paid cash money, bad tips and worse attitudes, owners power-tripping from their smidgen of authority, and the unceasing feeling you’re the lone horse pulling the cart while everyone else is in for the ride.
It’s a business that earns a good living without so much as a high school diploma. But it also destroys families, ruins relationships, and keeps you in debt for the rest of your life.
Explains the high-turnover rate, at least.
So in a business which by its very nature appears to – not to be melodramatic – poisons the soul, it’s more important than ever to find the bright spots (spots brighter than, say, cash pay, flexible hours, and post-shift discounts. These are perks, not life-affirming moments.) Everyday, millions of people work in this industry.
Some tend bar to cover this month’s rent.
Some wash dishes and prep salads to send their pitiful wages back home, an ocean away.
Some serve so their children won’t have to.
Some are in it until they’ve found something better, some until they “make it,” and for still some more, they found what they searched for and this is it.
If that’s the case, they deserve to have some faith restored to their toil. They deserve to be reminded of moments where expectations exceeded reality; moments where there was more at stake than the pursuit of a higher profit margin or futilely trying to please the unappeasable, where kindness and compassion won over the pettiness prevalent in this industry.
Even if it only happened on that single occasion, when the stars aligned and a chorus of angels cracked through the Heavens to sing glorious praise and never again will such an event come to pass, they deserve to know.
Especially then.
Discovering values and principles amongst these conditions is a story worth telling.
It’s romanticized often enough, in books, in film, in our own minds. The Big Move, from Podunk, Iowa or Bumblefudge, New York, to some larger-than-life city, where you plan on Making Something of Yourself, and shedding the straw covered shackles of your hometown.
When it comes to the minutia, though, or the notes on the execution of said Big Move, details are suddenly scarce. Camera time cut to non-existent, like deleted footage that doesn’t even make the B-reel.
Instead, CAMERA PANS on our HERO, fresh faced and new, standing in front of MEMORABLE BUILDING/MONUMENT, iconic in LARGER-THAN-LIFE CITY of your choice.
FADE OUT.
What happened to the journey? The internal conflict to choose between this life and one that’s 10 times more boring but 100 times less likely to leave you homeless and broke if you fail, and miserable and jaded if you succeed? Where’s the planning: the research, the mapping, trying to fit your life into your small sedan? Or the blank stares at a flat tire on a gravely side road, the car camping, the miserable 12-hour drive in a non-stop downpour? Why isn’t this material in books, on the net, on screen?
Because it’s not very entertaining, that’s why. There’s nothing particularly inspirational about watching young HERO debate between comforters, or towel color palettes. It’s certainly not filmic.
For those planning to take the plunge themselves, though, these beats are essential. They’re assurance; yes, before you, others have faced the same hesitance, agonized over the same decisions, and ultimately, they, too came to the same conclusion.
Go. Do it.
And take the cornflower blue towel, not the sunrise orange.
This period threatens to fly below the radar, under the cover of the romanticized vision of your life to be: the struggle, the perseverance, the success. Recognize this isn’t an aspect of your life to gloss over, to forget about along with the thousands of other days we think pass with no consequence. This journey, and every decision leading up it, is as momentous as the life you build when you arrive. Anticipate it.
Take note.
Pay attention.
This one’s important.
Part 2: Planning a Permanent Move
Part 3: Planning the Road Trip
Part 5: Settling in Los Angeles
CTY
It’s difficult to encapsulate the John Hopkins Summer Program, Center for Talented Youth (CTY) in a blurb. It’s its own world, with its own language, traditions, and milieu, as diverse as Middle Earth or Hogwarts or the Enderverse. It’s a melding of people from continents all over, united by Drag Days and Friday night dances, intellectual prowess and dodge ball, glow sticks galore infused with Rubik cube-offs, scored by a soundtrack with Canon more sacred than Holy Scripture, all set to the frantic chanting of “Die! Die! Die! Live! Live! Live! Sex! Sex! Sex! More! More! More!”
When the final day creeps in though, as stealthy as fall leaves onto summer trees, you leave behind more than your colleagues, your students, and your friends. You leave behind Family. You exit the bubble this community created to return to Normalcy, the place we spend the other 310 days of the year.
The Bubble is not for everyone. It’s different and fun and challenging but by no means Utopia. Inside, your days enter the fast-track, like you’ve stepped on a moving walkway while the rest of the world idles. You’re resigned to spend the next six weeks surrounded by the same faces. Everywhere you go, there your colleagues and charges will be: the cafeteria, the gym, the pool, meetings, dailies, weekends. There’s no escape. Relationships which might take a lifetime to develop get compacted into six weeks; the result of seeing people at their very best and their very worst, set in a location where they have no place to hide either.
One staff member described the effect CTY has on them as thus: “I’m my best version of myself while I’m here.” Except CTY doesn’t so much as bring out the best in you, insomuch as you revert to the real you at CTY; the one that dances and plays and cares. Time and time again, uttered within the bubble are the words: “This is the only place I can be myself.” It’s the version of You lying dormant inside, before years of conditioning and self-defense mechanisms and social posturing shaped a crusty husk to shield it, to protect it from being eroded away forever.
With the barriers lowered and the guard down, it’s easier to focus on the task at hand – that is, make this summer into the most memorable one your students have ever had. That’s your M.O., your Code Red, and it’s a worthy one.
The best part? CTY is a living, breathing organism; it changes as the needs of the students change, as the strengths and weaknesses of the staffs alter and shift. By remembering the lessons from the year before, we can improve on what they built. We can succeed on making the program more memorable than the year before.
For all members of the community.
For everyone who enters the bubble of CTY.
