Lyric essays

 "As the Pendulum Fades" by Caroline Leahy

The cracked pavement rolls beneath each wheel as we steadily assume higher ground.  My left leg moves like a pendulum to a steady beat, and my weight pushes the vehicle forward.  Andrea is not far behind.  She quickens the beat of her leg and catches up.  Waiting for her arrival, my movements are hesitant.   

            Fire is combustion or burning where substances chemically combine with oxygen.  A fire emanates bright light, heat, and smoke, and all fires start with the presence of sufficient ignition (Fact Sheet Home Fire Safety).

            We reach each other, and without talking, proceed up the small hill-on which both of our houses reside.  Suddenly, the upward slope of the hill flattens out, and our legs are no longer working-no longer strained to move us forward.  Now, we explode into conversation.

           A fire tetrahedron describes the four elements fire is composed of. The ignition of a fire is a direct result of the presence of sufficient levels of oxygen, heat, fuel, and a chain reaction.  The removal of any one element of the tetrahedron results in the extinguishing of the fire ("Fire Tetrahedron").

            Andrea and I shared a ritual.  We met up after school every day, for two years, to conquer the hill.  We never spoke on the way up, but as soon as we reached the top, conversation dominated the scene.  Every day, we rode down the hill together, and everyday adhered to different criteria on our way down.  Sometimes we decided on "no brakes", and other times, switch backing down the hill was the goal.  We never missed a day.  Instead, we bundled up in seven layers when it snowed, and frolicked in the water when it rained. 

            These factors contribute to the creation of a fire, but the sole presence the igniting elements cannot sustain the fire over a longer period of time (Fact Sheet Home Fire Safety).

           When hot, new pavement covered the road, each of us snuck out with our scooters.  We were quiet as we approached the top of the hill-but this time, so no one would notice us.  When we reached the top, our goal was different than it had ever been before.  Leave you mark.  Weary of the gap between us, we took off cruising.  I watched over my shoulder as the slight impression of a thin wheel followed me down the road. 

     "My trouble is I don't know him.  In fact, one of my troubles is that I don't even know whether he needs help. I don't know, that's my trouble" (Maclean 81-82).

      But the wheels slowly ceased to turn, and the once well-traveled vehicle assumed a different home at the back of the garage.  With every day of neglect, the memory seemed to disappear more.  Soon, the green wheels appeared of an undecipherable color.  The feeling of adventure that had once come hand in hand with the Razor scooter began to fade.  There was a disconnect somewhere along the line, and when this ritual snuck out of routine, so did Andrea.            

            The sound of the garage door opening no longer had the same adventurous ring.  When it snowed, instead of scrambling around my neighborhood, exploring the "new world", I savored the warmth of the indoors.  I realized two years too late that she had been without her braces-and I was surprised.  

      The road brought us together, but when our scooters began to collect dust in the garage, and the pavement provided a means of transportation rather than an adventure, it provided a boundary between us.  The road-a roadblock rather than a playground.  Sports teams, homework, different schools, and new friends assumed priority.  Forgetting was too easy-as easy as not picking up the phone -- as closing the garage door for the night.

      The presence of a fire lasts long after the fire dies down.  The Embers fade, and the exuding warmth ceases with the last burning log--But the burning spots on your face from sitting too close only disappear slowly, and with time.      

      Cars will run down the road from day to day, making large tracks of dust, and temporary impressions in the snow.  Then, there is our mark.  Two indented tracks remain down the side of the road that we share-leading my house to hers.

"A Fallen Hero with the Setting Sun" by Liz Martin

            “If you'’re not careful, sneaky snake will sneak into your root beer and drink it all.” Sneaky snake, Dolly Diarrhea, Baby Barf-up, Lucy and Big Al the alligator couple, and the dumb bunnies, formed the plethora of characters that my grandfather created to keep all of his grandkids entertained. He told us many tales of all of these characters, each one capturing the utmost attention from all of us.

As a small child I remember being captivated by all the astonishing stories my grandfather had to tell me every night. They were not always about his crazy created characters. But they ranged from his childhood and breaking the national record in the butterfly for swimming, to his secret spy missions into Russia during the Cold War. He always had a story to tell, and he always enjoyed telling them. I would watch as he would sit back in his chair, gripping tightly on the mug of coffee just presented to him by my grandmother. I now only faintly remember my grandfather. I can still picture all the grandchildren huddled around the base of his feet as he began his stories. My brother and I especially mesmerized by his wisdom and his adventures. Too young to pronounce Granddaddy, my brother and I would yell “Ghangi, Ghangi, tell us another one!” He would always then begin a story from his camp in Greenwood Hills, and his days at the Naval Academy. I would lay motionless on the floor, wrapped up like a burrito in the cocoon created by the numerous blankets arranged to craft my temporary bed. I remember drifting off to the soothing sound of his voice, and the faint sound of the National Anthem playing on the record player in the background.

“Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them” (Maclean 104).

Those are the last memories I have of my grandfather alive. All replaced by the horror that came after his return flight from India. I remember going to greet my grandmother and Ghangi at the airport and welcome them home from their long trip. Our welcome party was to be cut short when, on the way to greet them, my dad received a phone call that Ghangi had just gotten a massive heart attack and was being sent to the Cleveland Clinic for a consecutive 5 open heart surgeries. He held out for one week until finally, on August 21, 1999 I saw my hero for the very last time.

“As the path which sunlight takes through our atmosphere increases in length, ROYGBIV encounters more and more atmospheric particles. This results in the scattering of greater and greater amounts of yellow light. During sunset hours, the light passing through our atmosphere to our eyes tends to be most concentrated with red and orange frequencies of light. For this reason, the sunsets have a reddish-orange hue.”(physicsclassroom.com)

We drove in silence home from the church, my grandfather’s ashes in the hands of my grandmother. I watched as the tears flowed down her pale face. I had known sadness before, but not of the magnitude that comes when the hero of so many, family and country alike, slips into that inevitable sleep from which no one returns. As we pulled into the driveway of my grandparents house, all members stepped out of the limo in silence. The quiet pitter-patter of the heels on the pavement as we walked hand in hand to the garden in the back of the house, rang through my ears and pierced the deafening stillness that had surrounded us only moments before. As we reached the garden my grandma opened the urn and began to spread the ashes out over the thousands of flowers that engulfed her back yard. That garden had been Ghangi’s one passion, and it showed through in the vibrance held deep in each flower. All I could do was look out as the ashes of my fallen hero were poured out over the stretches of flora.

“An afterglow is a broad high arch of whitish or rosy light appearing in the sky.” An afterglow is “the atmospheric glow that remains for a short time after sunset, emitting a rosy or whitish light” (dictionary.com) It is the effervescent color that we see in the sky, just as the sun dips below the horizon yet the color remains to remind all who stare at it of the magnificence of what has just disappeared. A spectacle to all who look upon it.

I can now forever walk within the garden in the back of my grandma’s house. “only then will you understand what happened and why” (Maclean 104) Every time I wander through it, I am reminded of the great man whose remains now stay forever embedded in the beauty that surrounds me. As I walk in the evening, I look up to the sky and see the stunning sunset that is falling above me. It leaves remnants of its beauty for all to see, until that one final moment at dusk, when the color and sun are gone waiting for the splendor to rise again and meet us the next morning.

"Sunrise in a Grave" by Jeannie Bartlett:

From second through sixth grade I rode the same twenty-minute route in the car with one of my parents to and from school every day.  I came to anticipate needing to put down the sun visor against the blinding glare of the sun.  I knew which sections of road were too bumpy to drink water on.  I knew which stretch of road often afforded a beautiful view of a colorful New England sunrise over low valley clouds.  Proud of my thorough understanding of the drive, I once spent most of a dinner at my grandparents' house detailing to them every intersection, hill, building, and turn in the road of my drive to school.

A plate of Earth, flat, featureless, consistent, predictable, at some point in its story may experience an incredible change.  The mantle underneath may begin to play tug-of-war with the crust, pulling it in opposite directions and trying to stretch it.  But the brittle plate, like a rope that can't stretch, instead breaks.  As the pieces pull apart, a chunk of land between the growing gaps slips down into the widening space, over millenia coming to rest thousands of feet below the neighboring land.

For my seventh birthday, which every year falls in the middle of maple sugaring season, my dad and I took a walk in the woods and fields near our house and found a sugar maple sapling exactly my height.  We carefully dug it up and transplanted it in our yard, then took a picture of me grinning beside it, my winter hat just even with its bare, topmost twig.  For the nine years since then, I have watched that tree take off.  Still a scrawny-looking sapling, it now stands several times taller than I.  I can hardly remember our yard without "my tree," and I can't imagine living in some other house, without it, or other people living in our house and not knowing its significance.  It seems that it has always been there, at the house that has always been my home, and it's hard to imagine that ever changing.

Two mountain ranges now tower over the fallen valley like the survivors of a battle.  They are called horsts.  Defeated, the sunken valley in between is called a graben, the German word for “grave.”

"I asked him, 'How did you think that one out?'

He thought back on what had happened like a reporter.  He started to answer, shook his head when he found he was wrong, and then started out again.  'All there is to thinking,' he said, 'is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren't noticing which makes you see something that isn't even visible'" (Maclean 92).

Leadville, Colorado falls in a valley defined by the Mosquito and Sawatch mountain ranges.  The valley sinks still deeper towards its place of final rest as the two mountain ranges pull apart.

I put my shoes back on after security and pick up my carry-on.  A few paces away there is a spot where I can still see my mom on the other side, smiling and saving.  I wave back.  Goodbye for a long time.  Finally I can't stand dragging it out and walk beyond sight of her, and look to the signs pointing toward my gate.  Walking down the concourse, I am reminded of walking a few blocks down Main Street in my town to wait for my mom at the bookstore.  That's about the extent of my previous independence.

"Then he asked me 'What's more obvious on earth than sunshine and shadow...'" (Maclean 93).

Running toward the fish hatchery, the unrisen sun throws brightest pinks onto morning clouds over the Mosquito mountains to my left.  I run with a few people, then move ahead by myself for a while, run with someone else, then am alone for the rest of the run.  This first time running six miles I know I can run it all without stopping, and that is my plan.  This is an experiment: how will I naturally run six miles?  How will my pace be and how will I feel?  This evening I will be proud to tell my parents about my run.  This evening I will see my parents for the first time in over two months.

The Sawatch to my right are now illuminated in rose, while the clouds to my left still project an array of hues.  I look to these magnificent peaks, this horst, and realize that this grave may be the most beautiful place I've been.

"We Couldn’t Stop It if We Tried" by Maura O'Brien

three.

It’s raining outside in the humid air of northern Minnesota. In a cabin on a hill I am twelve and my family is gathered in the kitchen. Uncle John is there, and so are his other 6 siblings and their families. There isn’t much light outside, and there isn’t much inside either, but that’s okay. Katie, Emily, Lauren, Becca, and I huddle around the toaster. A child Alice bounces on her mother’s lap and we watch soaked humming birds feed out of the vibrant red bird feeders hanging outside. My family is loud, but someone is napping somewhere, and the walls do not keep out my dad’s uproarious laugh. Everyone is together, as we have always been.

two.

It starts with a river. No, not even. It starts with water from the sky, which falls onto the waiting earth, seeks its kinfolk and tumbles into a river. In a rocky, barren landscape, the earth does not absorb the gift of water, but refuses it and floods the earth’s surface. But over time, pressure in the landscape forces acceptance, and uplift roots the river into it’s new home. Inevitably, the walls grow higher and the river grows deeper. Now only time can separate them, but for now it seems as though the river will run in the canyon for all the length of the time of the world.

one.

Someone left something at the lake. It’s not really important what or who, but as they became used to us, our parents had come to delegate their tasks to us, so we became used to volunteering. To “Who will go to the lake and get…?”, Becca and I hopped off the bench and said, “We will”. So we put on rain jackets much too big for our figures, and, opening the screen door, walked into the rain. Instead of running down the stone steps as we normally did, Becca and I had to be careful not to slip, even walking at a snail’s pace. The forest vibrated around us as we made our quiet way down the steps, not wanting to interrupt.

Arriving at the lake we were met with something I’ve only seen once. The lake had erupted into raindrops and was tossing itself into the air. Norman Maclean wrote, “One of life’s quiet excitements is to stand slightly apart from yourself and watch yourself quietly becoming the author of something beautiful” (43). We did. At that moment, the world was entirely Becca standing at my shoulder and the lake erupting before us. We stood side by side as long as our eyes delighted in the vision of the lake, and even though we didn’t want to, we tore ourselves away and searched for what we’d been sent to retrieve. Then we returned to our family empty handed.

Go.

The simple beauty of the lake and the canyon put everything up to the light. Beauty is perspective, and on one day in my childhood pushed it all together. I did not realize it then, but we were writing something beautiful in ourselves. In 16 years the five of us, my cousins and I, have run our lives together so completely that being in the company of each other is like breathing air, and still its magnitude does not reach us. The walls reach higher each year, and the river cuts deeper with every moment. Everything runs together and everything runs deeper in due time. It is not merely a geographical event but a pattern of the human lifestyle. Time, of course, etched the canyon with the river’s help, and time, of course, has etched the lives of humans together for centuries, and has created something now so momentous that it surpasses the time that created it. We couldn’t stop it if we tried.

"Lyric Essay " by Becca Doll:

I find myself constantly surrounded by change. The continuous changing seasons, from the snow capped mountains to the scorching summer days. From birth, our bodies change at the same time the environment around us evolves. Change is something that we can never escape

When my sister was younger, she almost lost her life. My father was driving the John Deere to cut the extensive grass, as my sister jumped in front of the heavy machinery with no inkling of what was about to happen. She almost lost all of her leaves at once.

Aspens are successional, and they thrive through change. In the summer, the leaves are tender and green, enjoying the warmth the sun brings. The petioles suck up as much moisture as they desire. They live in the moment and do not expect the major transformation of fall.

She was four. She was rushed the Kosair’s Children’s Hospital, and the doctor said that there was no glimmer for hope. My mother, forever changed, waited day and night as my sister was hanging on by a thread. She had lacerations from head to toe, with an exposed brain.

The encroaching fall season brings a sense of mystery. No one can ever really tell the exact date the leaves will morph into the luminescent golden color or lackadaisically trickle off the trees. The leaves are ready for the major transformation after the persisting idealistic weather.

After hours of surgery, the doctor congratulated my parents by saying, “Your daughter is a miracle child.” My father has never been the same. He has forever been filled with resentment and guilt. That is the reason why my parents split. My mother came out a little stronger and my father came out a little bit more miserable. 

As winter approaches, the leaves have fallen and the trees are ready for the transformation. They are warm and surrounded by the puffy lodgepoles. They are asleep until spring. Then the juicy blooms pop up, and the Aspen is ready for yet another season. The tree is another year older and little wiser.

After the surgery was complete my parents received the final report. If the doctor said that she would have learning disabilities, then why did she have a 4.0 average in high school, receive magna cum laude, or get into medical school?  I cannot comprehend why God let her survive.

There is something strange about the way that people adapt to change. It seems to make or break the cycle of life. In life there are always major transitions, but thee key to success is being able to adapt positively to change. “The body and spirit suffer no more sudden visitation than that of losing a big fish, since, after all there must be a transition between life and death” (Maclean 44).

My family has forever been shaped by the lawnmower accident. It has morphed our way of living. The scar is not a bad thing; it is just another change that we faced.

"A Logical Appreciation" by Gregg Miller:

Directly beneath our feet are enormous slabs of earth known as the tectonic plates. These plates are constantly in motion, moving infinitesimally slowly. When two plates collide, and continue colliding along their magnetically pre-ordained track, they form physical protrusions of earth. Millions of years pass, the plates shift and overlap more and more, snow falls and wind blows and erodes, and you wake up one day and see mountains out your bedroom window.

The romantics call it the Miracle of Life. Scientists call it human conception. Two hundred years ago, the one way of explaining it was as one of God's greatest blessings. Now, the story goes that two people have sex, sperm hits an egg, and bull's eye: a zygote. Nine and a half months pass on average and a young human being is sticking its head out and crying at the top of its breath. Two hundred years pass, and a miracle has become seventy pages to be pored over by a pre-med major at Harvard. Some say the conversion to a textbook subject for the service of the Harvard student is perverse.

Millennia ago when it rained it wasn't the reaction of two pressure systems colliding. No, for nature-worshipping pagans, such a proposition would be blasphemous. The wind gusting across a mountain-face was a divine beauty to ponder. Seeing the ocean was a mentally challenging feat; how did one greet the end of the world? People knelt down in prayer before the first and last rays of the sun on its inevitable, endless circuit. They weren't as crazy or foolish as some say.

Once I was younger, and much more capable of unquestioning appreciation. I climbed Mt. Adams as part of a camp trip. We slept in a hut at the summit on the Presidential Trail, and when we awoke we were in a different place entirely. None could describe it better than Rick Bass: "So high up in the mountains, and in such heavy woods is like a step up to heaven, the last place you go before the real thing" (Winter,61). We, at the peak, were transported onto an island above a white, milky ocean. Looking out across the cloud layer, we could have been the only people on the planet. For all we knew, there was nothing else out there. For all I know now, there isn't.

Recently I went out winter camping. Standing, toes going numb, fingers numb days ago, a spatula in my hand, cooking breakfast for the group. Blizzards had raged through our humble quinzhee camp for six days straight, and I was reaching my limit. As I pressed the SPAM down, trying to determine the precise pressure to make it squeal most loudly (a pig's disenfranchised call from beyond the grave), I came out of my semi-despondent trance long enough to be startled by the fact that I was squinting. I looked up and out, over the wind-wall, to the view behind. It was the first time we could see it, the beautiful Mosquito range with Lake County sprawling underneath. It was more than a group of rocks ultimately derived from the Big Bang and millions of years. In actuality, it was nothing like that. The beauty I beheld held my gaze. I could see for miles and miles, and saw not one thing not worth studying for hours. It was a postcard. I was so entangled in enormity's embrace, able to leave only when I smelled the acrid smoke of burning pork.

Logic:

and of a different sort. An analytic mind is both a blessing and a curse. You see the world in a different light, but at times this light is so bright you can't see what matters beneath it. Sometimes you just need to accept things at face value. In nature, there isn't much else you can do. A tree, when considered in depth, really isn't so compelling. A snow flake's thermal index is, in fact, quite dull. Seeing the monotonously beautiful harmony between nothing but lodge-pole pines and a white blanket of new snow, though, is something else entirely. If one turns to science, when it comes down to it we are all just protons, neutrons, and electrons. Depressing or what. I am more than atoms, but I can't prove that with a textbook. There is a fascination with mountains and nature that I can't define by finding facts and trends in an encyclopedia. Inexplicable beauty is in new life, despite the scientific discoveries and definitions attempting to rob it of such. Once again, Bass describes my situation perfectly: "It can be so wonderful, finding out you were wrong, that you are ignorant, that you know nothing, not squat. You get to start over" (Winter,20). It's not that I know nothing, just that what I know isn't squat. Knowing implies ownership, and you can't own what's worthwhile. You can't own your world, your life.