An Essay I Wrote in High School

As a young and ever changing writer, I have noticed how my veiws on life and love have evolved. In my youth, seldom did I read poetry that was worth publishing, and looking back, I realize how phoney they were. The majority of writtings I enjoyed were lyrics to cheesy songs by pop boy bands, who did not write most of their lyics. Both N'Sync and the Backstreet Boys were mass marketed and overplayed on the radio and were brainwashing listeners. Regardless of being fourteen and spoiled singers, they seemed to know evrey detail about love. In N'Sync's song "God  Must Have Spent A Little More Time On You," they sang:

            Can this be true?

            Tell me can this be real?

            How can I put into words what I feel?

            My life was complete,

            I thought I was whole.

            Why do I feel like I'm losing controll?

They never knew the meaning of love in the first place, yet somehow they convinced themselves they were complete. They then asked for a definintion from groups of screaming girls nightly at concert venues all over the country. The band was stubborn that their new love was a cure all and were evevtually doomed to a repeated cycle of thinking they were complete, then realizing they were not whole.

            I admit, I was sucked into this logic of thinking that boys were the only way to controll the complications of being an adolesent. When things would get hectic in my life, I could at least find comfort in the fact that writtings I read were simple, as well as my mind. I would also expand my readings to teen beauty magazines such as Cosmo Girl  and Seventeen. These magazines were filled with garbage like, "Wear rouge blush to win the man of your dreams," and, "This sultry halter top will grab every boy's attention!" Such superficial claims could be printed and sold nationwide at the check out line of most stores and for a discount you can buy a year's subscription to guarantee they controlled your love life.

            Eventually in school, I was forced to read poem after poem without any idea how to interpret them because so many layers and hidden meanings were disguised within a few lines. Those writers were regarded for their ability to create literary marvels and not how well they could shake their butt on stage. Also, I felt raw emotions and was not plainly told 'I love you' or worn out cliches. The more I read, the more I became intrigued to read writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Dean Young.     

            In Emerson's essay titled "Love," he reflected on his experiences with the subject and wrote them using arceic and complex metaphors. Thus, people intellagent enough to understand him could better understand his veiw on the complex emotion. His opinions were not limited to the intelligent, he wrote:

            Thus we are put in training for a love that knows not sex,                 nor person, nor partially, but which seeks virtue and                         wisdom everywhere, to the end of increasing virtue and                 wisdom.  We are by nature observers, and thereby                         learners. That is our permanent state. But we are often                     made to feel that are affections are but tents of a night.                     Though slowly and with pain, the objects of the affections                 change, as the objects of thought do. There are moments                 when the affections rule and absorb the man, and make his              happiness dependent on a person or persons.

I agree that no one is born knowing all about love or is born a certain way that they could learn faster than the next person. As they go along with life, one should observe the faults in their past relationships and hope to improve on them in the next. Some try to use love only for security, but this need will deteriorate the bond as the protector becomes tired of his duty. This dependency for the other is not love but the search for a mother figure and nobody should want to marry their mother.

            Emerson and I are not bitter about love, we just feel life should not be circled around it. People also should not go around saying it is a horrible emotion, as Emerson wrote, "But we need not fear that  we can lose anything by the progress of the soul. The soul may be trusted to the end.That which is so beautiful and attractive as these relations must be succeeded and supplanted only by what is more beautiful, and so on for ever." People may have been hurt by giving away their love to another, but it is not necessary for them to go around mourning or grieving. Instead of complaining, they should learn from and embrace their experiences. In the long run they would be better off with their knowledge of it instead of resenting love.

            A similar point is made in the short story called, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love." Mel tries to tell Terri his views on love are correct and his past relationship with Ed was meaningless. He said n response to her disagreement, "My God, don't be silly. That's not love and you know it. I don't know what you'd call that, but I sure know you wouldn't call that love." Terri still knew Ed loved her because she was the one who learned from the experience, not Mel. He tried to put a definition on it, thus making 'love' a word and not an emotion. She learned that love can be different between couples because people and their affections are different. No one told her that, but she felt it as she stood by Ed when he acted crazy. 

            Another writer, Dean Young, is a recent surrealist poet who often makes fun love; thus, he is also able to write love poems well. In the poem "Chest Pains of the Romantic Poets," he writes:        

            If the spirit is to entangle the commonplace

            in the congeries of the impossible,

            I missed my chance with the tall Dutch girls.

            I wasn't 23, wasn't in Amsterdam where I

            where I couldn't muster a sensible consonant cluster

            through a cytoplasmic hash cloud when they didn't

            materialize like frost.

People think they fall in love every day and are filled with emotions that they believe enable them to be great writers. Science there are so many types of meaningless relationships to describe, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that they were talented poets based on their own opinions. If Young had fallen into that trap he said he would not be with his present wife, instead he would be immature and with tall Dutch girls. He would still be thinking he was in love with many stereotypically gorgeous girls who did not posses the power to love either.

            In another one of Young's poems, "Maybe it Meant Something Else," he described that love is confusing but you need the confusion in order to find it. He wrote:

            Maybe it meant something else

            when the little girl held forward her lamb

            and called I love you. Maybe it meant

            I love this lamb when she said I love you

            to the man she'd never seen before

            on the Greek island. She must have

            learned English during the war,

            the resistance and counter resistance.

            Maybe some one with her mother. Maybe

            it meant over here fleece you over their.

            She seemed to young for it to mean poor us.

The character was confused on what the girls definition of love was and the fact that he could guess many definitions about it meant it was a confusing emotion. In order to love something she must have hated something, like war, otherwise she would have not had a comparison against love. As the poem progressed, time and many things in nature changed, but he still could not forget that girl. He found out the meaning of love when he tried to love hundreds of people until he told his wife and baby he loved them, and it meant the right thing.

            The novel, A Room With A View, is about a girl Lucy, who went through many stages of confusion about love, much like the persona and little girl in the previous poem. Instead of creating poetry to decipher love, she played piano. It is written that:

            It so happens that Lucy, who found life rather chaotic,                     entered a more solid world when she opened the piano. She             was no longer either differential or patronizing; no longer              either a rebel or a slave. The kingdom of music is not the                 kingdom of the world; it will except those whom breeding                 and intellect and culture have alike rejected.

When Lucy used the piano to discover herself, she was all alone in her world with no one to tell her she was wrong because her thoughts were an opinion based on experience. With no opposition or basis for comparison, she could be any one she wanted to be and feel as she pleased. Also, music was an outlet for stress resulting form love. By using this art, she knew that she could rely on music coming out of the piano, but science she rarely read the sheet music, it was has to predict what notes would be heard.

            With the influences of two writers, I joined my schools literary magazine. Here, I read many poems from people around campus. Many of them were influenced by the same cheesy pop songs and  forced rhyme schemes I used to fall pattern to. It was also evident that our student body only read poetry written about love and probably never read any other genre's. It was almost impossible to revise their submissions without changing their veiws on it to myn.

            At my age I am certain that my current writtings will appear childish in the future. Reading works of my own from months ago makes me nauseous at what my thoughts on love were. In a past poem titled "New," I wrote:

            I'm only the fruit of Georgia

            From the bunch I've fallen astray

            Out of the shade I rolled to you

            Ripened in a new mornings day

I probably should not have felt the need to depend on a noy to make me feel 'new,' especially since I later found out about his hobbies of womanizing and alcohol. On the other hand, I learned and will continue to learn. With more experience and practice, I am sure I will find my true opinions about love and all it may bring. Until then, I will continue to write what little I know and hope I never find the right meaning because I enjoy attempting to gain as many ideas on love as I can.