The Works of Simeon Sheef

My Essays

My Tail

Synopsis: For anyone who loves winter and most of all sledding. A humorous piece of non-fiction, written for my sophomore AP English class. It is technically a narrative memoir with an interview(not in it).

Hazy clouds, full of lazy snow, muddled the sky-blue canvas. But it wasn’t the constantly changing masterpiece above that had my attention. It was the muddy clay below splattered with the cloud-white paint. There where I sat, I watched my brother, among other people, go sledding and tumbling down the hill. I felt my heart fall and roll beside them. It picked up speed, as my heart beat raced, and started snowballing downward. Jumping the monstrous ramp it flew through the air and with one plop and one gulp, it was gone, down into the pit of the earth and the pit of my stomach.

The sled beneath me rocked back and forth in the direction of the ramp. The first times weren’t bad. They might have been full of slush at the end but they didn’t end in pain, and they weren’t scary. I was ready…I thought. One last heave and the power of a father enjoying himself, launched me, his little boy, forward, hurtling me, icy wind eddying around my body and face, towards my apparent doom. Faster than my eyes could communicate with my brain, I was at the edge of the ramp leaving dead-end snow-ruts. I flew through the air, higher and faster than the usual dare-devil did, seemingly weightless. Down the hill, my brother, who had just landed from his flight, turned around to observe me and, my being his older brother, what he thought would be my perfect landing. My father, contrastingly, stood at the top of the mountain and, similarly, watched my ascent. Light piercing the clouds reflected off me and ran to each of their eyes. Both saw the vague-blue sled come out from under me and fly ahead with ease, slicing through the wind. The back end tried to cut ahead of the front whose steering rope was weighted in my grasp. Suddenly, my momentum changed. I slowed down and dropped like lead to the ground twenty-feet below. It all happened too suddenly for me to react and the punishment was taken out on my butt. Yes, my ba-tooty, my rump, my hind end, tail. I landed and like a flick to jell-o my spine crackled and popped from my tail bone to my neck.

After sledding on for a while my brother tilted and wiped out in the slush. Soaking wet, he got up and ran to me, at the same time watching my fish-gasping-for-air expression. Seconds before he reached me, he saw me faint. I left reality for a while. While my brother yelled at me to get up, my father was still at the top puzzled. My brother, in his loving nature, kicked me. Then he knelt down, slapped me, and told me to get up a couple more times, hoping that would revive me. Right then my father thought it was a good time to see what was happening. “Well, looks like he took that badly,” he said to another father, as he started to gallop down the hill.

While my body was getting a brotherly beating, my mind was exploring the party. I was at an upper-class party in a beautiful house. Lights and smiles were everywhere. Suited men walked around chattering about business and smoking cigars and beautiful woman flirted and filled the spectrum with their array of colored dresses. A woman with long black hair kept in a bun and a contagious smile, wearing a long red sequined dress and carrying a tray full of glasses, came around the group of competitors nearest me, looked at me, and held out her tray. Then I woke up, coughing and moaning. Both my brother and my father were standing over me staring. The woman and her smile was still drifting in my head and in my eyes. I can still see her now. As the smells of the mansion and the party faded away, my senses in reality came back to me. My back ached and most of all, my butt hurt!!

1 September 2006

The Japanese Comic Book - A Satire

They have big heads, big, sparkling eyes, slender, feminine, bodies, pointy chins, outlandish hair and if not absent, small noses, ears and mouths. What does this describe? Why, the people of Japan, of course; and we Americans know this fact because of the dyslexic books they send over for our enjoyment. I theorize that they send the books here to brainwash our youth and if not, to make up for their transgressions(1). If you have ever read, more accurately, viewed, manga, which according to Microsoft(c) Works 2000 isn’t a word, you would know that it is a comic written by adult drama queens and kings, and sci-fi/ fantasy writers who are obsessed with magic. You would also know that manga is drawn to accurately represent the Japanese people in every aspect of life, including their huge eyes. If you have never read manga and didn’t know these things already, you do now. Also for you who have never had the great honor of looking at black and white images of pointy-chinned fat headed people with symbols for eyes, I warn you that manga comes from the minds of people very different than yourself, unless you’re a secluded Japanese, and that reading these comic books might effect the way you act and think; and you better start learning Japanese, because most novels are full of Japanese symbols.

According to American scholars, whose insignificant title makes them sound intelligent, manga has two roots, man and ga. Man, by lengthy searching and prolonged studies of the history and creation of the Japanese language, was revealed to mean man, pronounced “mea-in” by the general public, but because of people unfamiliar with the creation story(2), man must be translated as “man or woman” or “a person”. Ga is a word used by babies universally meaning “random words”(“blah” in adult tongue) or “childish”. Therefore, according to our brilliant scholars, manga means “people with random words” or “childish people”. Fortunately our scholars are so intelligent, without knowing it (in fact, no one knows it), that they failed to look at the definition of manga in the Japanese dictionary and have consequently given us a second definition that is very similar, assuring us of its true meaning. According to Wikipedia, the very unreliable source(3), manga is directly translated from Japanese as “random (or whimsical) pictures”. This information can most likely be found on any other site but because Wikipedia is mostly written by regular people who are probably fanatics about what they are submitting and not “professionals”, it’s considered by teachers universally, even those who submit to it, to be unreliable, revealing how little teachers can be trusted. The two definitions of manga are very similar and accurate; there might be a small difference but the overall ideas are the same, especially when you consider that before there were “pictures” of slender people with big eyes and pointy chins, you had the real “people” to look at.

For the average American a manga novel is harder to understand as a whole than the songs of the flying buffalo(4). The reason for this awfully strange phenomena is that manga novels are written backwards, further explaining why they may totally reverse the way you think. Most manga novels are also in black in white due to their extreme lengths ,which is made possible by the poor style that the cartoons are drawn in. Like, basically, in a nut shell, manga is really, just pretty much a big scandal(5); manga is an industry with a huge output but hardly any input. Even the plots lack evidence of any planning, thought, or detail.

I do not believe that manga has to be of such poor quality; the art in my opinion, besides the cheap way of showing a characters emotion, by making their heads big and making their eyes symbols, isn’t that bad. Manga art is a lazy way of drawing a comic (I mean, how hard is it to draw a background!) but if it can be done right than it would be just as good as any other comic. Other than the art, the books need to be read the American way, the backwards fad is over, it’s not that cool anymore; they need to be a little more creative in their plots and characters, if I wanted to watch a drama than I would look up during school; and cut out the random Japanese symbols, we aren’t Japanese. Wait, what did you say? Yaoi(6)? Don’t even get me started!

(1) Referring to World War II
(2) Many new versions of the bible have replaced Man, the term that was used to refer to the general public while still placing man above woman, with “he or she” and “people/everyone”.
(3) Wikipedia.com has been one of many sources containing a wealth of knowledge that has been considered unreliable due to the way information is added to the site and the domain title, .com; a topic of dispute between students and teachers.
(4) Buffalo-wings, chicken wings covered in a spicy sauce, are a fairly popular food in 2007.
(5) Like, basically, in a nut shell, really, just, and pretty much are cliché words and phrases popular in the 21st century that are often used at the wrong times, for no reason, or as a filler; they tend to get very annoying.
(6) Yaoi is the manga genre of gay romance.

7 January 2007

Trying to Make the Right Decisions?

To those who God has led here (you),

This poem resulted from a phone conversation with my grandmother.

“If you don’t know if you should,
than you probably shouldn’t
but if you don’t know if you want to,
than you probably should.”

My grandmother, whom we call Grammy, is a very considerate woman (at times) and she wanted to talk. First we talked about the weather and then we talked about her coming to visit and then we started to talk about me. I had been having problems with making decisions. I didn’t want to keep waiting for the answers and I really didn’t like searching for them. I wanted (and still do) to make my decisions based on God’s will for my life but it seemed that I could never get any answers, either that or I didn’t know how to listen. Fortunately, my problem was solved with this poem.

This poem came about, not by mere coincidence, as most would believe, but by divine intervention. My grandmother and I continued to talk about my problem. Later in the conversation, she tried giving me some advice but really wasn’t getting anywhere. Then she came up with the first line to this poem, unaware. The second line I made to go along with it and to finish the answer to my problem. It just came together.

One thing that isn’t described in the poem is that we also need to have our eyes peeled for what God might be pushing us towards-just like the last part of my story reveals. If it weren’t for the fact that I was trying to listen and pay attention to what my heavenly father wanted me to do for him, than you wouldn’t be reading this right now. Before my grandmother had called there was an open Microsoft Word document at the bottom of my screen with nothing on it, and I didn’t know where it had come from. Until I hung up the phone, there wasn’t a thought in my mind towards it, but when I put the phone down on it’s hook, I realized what the blank document might have been there for. Because I had been praying for and had been trying to see God’s will, I was able to put two and two together to bring to you something that might help you.

So, whenever you’re trying to make a decision and you want to do it God’s way, remember this poem and remember to keep your eyes and heart open. Also, remember to pray for guidance.

God bless,

Simeon

07 April 2006

Time Trick

    I believe it is safe to assume that the audience of this essay, you, despite when you are reading it, A.D. or even B.C. if time travel is truly possible, has experienced waiting, a test of patience, or boredom. We all have our own ways to combat it but, unless you are physically traveling through time, I propose to you a better way. I would like to share a tricky form of subconscious suggestion that will effect your conscious perception of time. I use the word “tricky” to describe the difficult and altering nature of the suggestion without eluding that it’s eccentric in its process.
    Time is a creation of man to compare change. If nothing changed, we could not perceive change and therefore time would not exist. We, bodies of change (and yet creatures of habit), are born to a world of change and our mind naturally accustoms itself to that. If you wish to increase the rate that time seems to move, you must slow the rate your mind recognizes time. If you wish to slow the rate that time seems to move, a more rare circumstance, you must increase the rate your mind recognizes time. Most realize this inverse relationship early in life but the modern ideas of how to use them are tedious and less long lasting. Before I explain the easier way, I would like to explore the modern way of accelerating the felt rate of change.
    The first way most think of to speed up time, is to have fun. Why is this? Fun is something that we enjoy and is often something new. If it is not new than it is something that distracts our mind. To increase the passing-feeling and slow the recognition of time, it is modernly suggested to have fun, daydream, meditate, keep yourself occupied, and avoid thoughts about time. In essence, to slow the motion of your mind you must clutter it or give it little to nothing at all to think about. In analogy, to slow a vehicle, you either must make it work slower or allow it to work at the same speed but in a denser environment. As the “linear” motion of your mind nears zero every increment of time “looks” to be going much faster than before. This concept concerning motion and time is a reverse look at a theory stated by Einstein.
   Einstein’s theory of special relativity states that as you near the speed of light, time slows. Your mind functions in a similar way. Today, people will suggest to you that if you want to make time slower, “watch the pot boil” or other things to streamline your thoughts. To streamline, you can think about time or do something that you are familiar with that will still work your mind. The latter is often referred to as “boring” because it has a pattern; you are overly familiar with it; because of the first two reasons, your mind is usually uninterested; and it slows time. This last reason creates the snowball affect of boredom we all know so well: when you become used to something it becomes boring, the feeling of time also slows which makes it even more boring, and so on. Streamlining speeds up the process of thought but doesn’t hinder your consciousness of it. Thus allowing your mind to perceive other processes as slower.
   The conventional methods people use to alter their perception of time work but they need your continual participation and can have the reverse affect if you concentrate on them. The time trick does not have either of these side-affects, in fact if you concentrate on it, it only helps. Apart from a person’s biological clock, which can be lost, your mind is void of time and can be trained to use that fact. Simply, the time trick is a method of suggestion before an action and affirmation afterwards to hypnotize your subconscious into accepting the suggestion despite time. For example, if you are in a boring class and you want the time to pass quicker you should suggest to yourself that the class is “already over” whenever you begin to think about how boring it is, almost like encouragement to go on. The word “already” is only used for extra emphasis that the thing has happened. When the class is over, affirm your suggestions that yes, in fact, the class is already over. The suggestions, “tricks”, are not logically true when you make them but are when you affirm them. This difference is not naturally known by your mind but has been taught to it. You are subconsciously suggesting to your mind that there is no time and after repeated instances your mind will begin to, almost consciously, accept it. Because your mind believes that the time it’s experiencing is nothing, time flies. I believe this progressive hypnosis returns our minds to its intended state of a much less conscious awareness of time.
   My experience using this time trick has revealed possible disadvantages and difficulty that I could not do justice without mentioning. Some may find the time trick difficult because they find it hard to trick their subconscious; it will not work if you do not force yourself to believe the words you say. When you are hypnotized, you have made a suggestion but have yet been able to affirm it; you may find yourself thinking less and doing things very automatically. This underlying hypnosis doesn’t take away from your span or depth of attention but may, in fact, increase them. You also may become less aware of time. After the time of affirmation, which, after some practice, may be without a verbal affirmation and without your knowledge, you may feel as though you have just woken up. You may also feel as though you were just doing something that was a waste of time, this is because it is, you are literally wasting excess time to jump ahead. Lastly, you may find memory from within a period of hypnosis to be very weak. Before I continue, I strongly suggest the free exercise of the two methods in this essay, but be aware that the combination of the two may result in a simple cancellation or possibly negative consequences.
   Though it is a secondary demand, sometimes people want to slow time. This is more difficult. The time trick of slowing is still hypnosis of the subconscious by asynchronous suggestion and affirmation to discount time. The difference is the suggestion is used only once and the affirmation is repeated, and unlike the time trick of speeding up time, there are two ways to do this trick. To do the trick correctly you must suggest to yourself that the moment or a certain action will never end. Then by affirming it, time will slow. When the moment or thing ends, you can either accept or ignore it has ended (I suggest ignore), but both will still end the hypnosis and may disrupt your ability to convince your subconscious the next time. Another way to allow for the action to end is to continue to tell yourself that it is still happening. Doing this may even make you feel as though it were still happening after it has ended, but this will only last as long as you deny the thing has ended.   To increase the depth of these hypnoses, especially if you choose to “end” them, you should begin with a reference trick for your other hypnoses concerning something which end is incomprehensible, like time, so that your mind will more easily continue to believe you. This should help the difficulty of convincing yourself of eternity, which is probably the most difficult thing for a human to ever explore. Eternity, though difficult, is necessary for the time trick to work. As your mind’s conception of time nears infinity, every other process begins to appear slower.

23 April 2008

Dragon Flew

   On my way out to see my best friend this summer—I don’t know which out of the many times it was, though each time was very distinct—I sped the whole way to her city only to be stopped by a train a few miles away from her house. Something so small that made me see, once more, how futile my efforts in life really are when they stand up to life itself. I was in a hurry to see her, my best friend, but I didn’t feel rushed like I had so many times before. My mind was calm with nothing on it. I didn’t watch the train but maybe for a second, watching the end that didn’t seem to end, but still I could feel its affect. Trains passing always make me feel sick; their looming quality that fills one’s vision mixed with their constant motion seems to pull my mind right along, while my small body stays motionless.
   In the midst of my calm mind’s contemplation, a dragonfly appeared. It entered my world as much as I intruded upon its own. It lay feet from my “grandma car” on the other side of the road lying on its side. No cars from the opposite traffic threatened to crush it because of the train, and so, I was left to include it in my life. Its small, stiff body blew from side to side to the beat of the passing train. The first thing I thought of was, recording it, I had to keep the moment, a camera, a picture, but I had nothing. In that moment of watching it, it seemed as if it was now included in something greater, that if I had not seen it, it wouldn’t have existed. Its beautiful dark green body reflected the sun as it swayed, sometimes without rhythm. The train passed, the cross-arms rose, and my car went into drive. My body drove over the tracks and beyond, leaving my mind in peace to think about what I had seen. I would never experience it again, even then the feeling turned to memory. I had my mental pictures but nothing I could share with anyone else. I could never make anyone else feel or see what I had then, and I could never recreate it for myself. It was lost to the past, nothing more than a beautiful description or lesson. As I drove away, that world disappeared, and I can almost be sure that it was no more. I doubt the dragonfly was included in anyone else’s world, and so it disappeared. The feeling of loss haunts this story for me, the only redemption maybe being in my last in-the-moment thought: “It was still flying.”

13 August 2008

The Missing Wing

   I recollect two recent memories, each distinct, only connected because I have done so. They mean nothing but what I have assigned to them. They are nothing now but memories.
   In a residential school, one never gets away. There are always meetings, invitations to do things, and homework to do. Peace seems to be beyond the students, however gifted they are or are supposed to be. Meditation, reading, tai-chi, and even prayer seem to all too quickly meld into the rut in the road of life of things that are done but easily replaced with other activities, which begin to fade as soon as they have begun. I entered into this world yet again, with enthusiasm that only lasted as long as my ability to procrastinate the realization of where I truly was.
    It was not that long ago that I sat in a metal fold-out chair under a large striped tent, their availability the benefit of the previous, more important meetings, one’s that obviously called for more comfort than our own. My floor’s Student Life Counselors gathered us together and discussed the direly important details of some criteria that our lives there would need to adhere to, to go on uninhibited. The SLC’s, who like my floor, are awkward to claim, are two men whose job it is to see the faces twice a day of those who can’t manage a legitimate excuse, notify them of their failures, and have meetings about things they don’t want to have another meeting about, like their constituents downfalls. Many points were brought up in their combined monologue, none that I can remember specifically, but only one question was asked, “Can we use the bathrooms after room curfew?”. The group called “the floor”, despite its being under a tent outside in the grass, laughed, even the juniors who were asking themselves the same naïve but pertinent, unaddressed question. It seems like a rather silly question unless, of course, the answer was no.
    I talked quietly at opportune moments, those pauses after a laugh or long monologue that are almost made for interjections. Before the meeting had started, I had learned at least one name, later to find out it was not “Chris” but “Tyler”. So, I tried to talk to those around me in the two sentence dialogues allotted, often being ignored or unheard. At one point I even wanted to say something to my roommate but he was too far in the back for the rules of allotted “discussion” intervals—quietness is still expected. I met one of my best friends then in those moments, and maybe it’s too far of a stretch, but I think he became my friend then.
    In the midst of such an amazingly precise and to-the-point message from the leaders, something much more important happened in my life. “Dude, it’s a moth’s wing!” whispered someone, unexpectedly, as they pointed to my leg; I can’t remember whom or even if they had thrown it on me or not, but it was there. On my leg sat lightly a moth’s wing. There’s no doubt what it was, though what it was is such an obscure object that it’s hard to believe we both recognized it. After seeing it there on my lap, in my life, my mind told me that I had seen it flutter down out of the corner of my eye, but considering, before*, I was intently focusing on a man speaking about something relating to the must-say common sense topics like how to clean your room or how to read a clock or how to control your tongue, I don’t think my mind was in any condition to tell me what I had seen. What I saw then, though, was not a product of a tired mind. It was a moth’s wing. I no longer listened on any level to the directors; instead I pondered the existence of a moth’s wing on my lap, a moth’s wing. I had never seen a moth’s wing separate from a moth before. It was a beautiful, small, furry wing outlined in black* and painted with a few speckles of black on a canvas of tan. I wondered what small creature it belonged to, and if it was searching for it or struggling without it. I wondered what it meant.
    I knew that God, though he may have ordained it to happen, had not dropped the moth’s wing into my lap. It had come from somewhere. This small thing could have a more exciting history than I myself did, yet I knew nothing about it but where it was at that very moment. I picked it up with a quiet “Huh!”. It felt soft but it began to fall apart in my hands. The moment I interfered in its existence, the beauty I beheld quickly began turning into a fine powder, even as I picked it up to examine it. As I held it, as I looked at it, it began to disintegrate. I could not behold its beauty or feel its texture without destroying it. I was not allowed.
I tossed the wing out in front of me into the grass. I would have said then that I just tossed it, it was just a wing, but I tossed it because it meant more, it revealed, because I couldn’t keep it, because I immediately, on some level, attached emotions to it that would later unfold into a story. Something as irregular and small as a moth’s wing landing on my lap, a pebble dropped into the pool of my life, had and has enough power to cause tsunamis to test its boundaries.
    Nearly one month later, my newfound group strolled threw the quad on our way to eat at the dorm and dining area, Woodworth, which dualism was and is a topic of controversy among the overbearingly overprotective Academy. I walked mostly in front as I usually do when I know where I’m going, probably something psychological, and as walked, I thought. I thought about the people in my life, the things I planned to do, and what I wanted. Conversations surrounded my world of thought, probably some that I was a part of, but nothing disturbed my walk; then someone said “Hey, look. It’s a butterfly!”.
    Both my sanctuary of thought and pace halted before the possibility of having found a “bug story”. I turned and quickly walked to where my friends where standing. I went off the path and into the grass, around the group to get close. This butterfly most of us so happened to have walked by, sat in the grass before its audience. It was a very dark colored, shiny butterfly, imbued with a blue that held little difference from the black outline. It didn’t move at first, something exciting for me; there must have been some interesting reason why the creature didn’t move. As its image came to me, it seemed, for a second time, I saw the reason. Its right wing was somehow missing the outer half. The edge was a jagged black, like a steeper silhouette of a mountain ridge at dusk.
    It fluttered a bit, resembling the predecessors of our beloved air travel, helpless in its own right, but I wonder now how helpless it really was or would have felt. It may have looked at us there, standing around it, some pondering its existence and predicament, others solely observing it, in pity. It may have pitied us. In those moments, I no longer saw the creature in the grass in front of me; I saw a story, something I meant to simply use for finding deeper meaning. I sucked every analogy, lesson, and description I could from the scene. I even thought about my change of perception, and pondered its existence. With eyes wide open, I physically saw a butterfly with scars from being literally ripped away from its purpose. I wanted it be bigger, more important, for it to mean more, but it didn’t. I felt nothing. I simply thought about what the things I didn’t feel meant. My mind was somehow, immediately remembering each un-aged memory it had created the moment before.
    As the group around me became disinterested and some walked away, I bent down almost automatically and picked up a stick. As I did that and extended it towards the insect’s feet, I asked myself what I was doing. Maybe I was trying to make up for objectifying it, or maybe I was becoming part of the story; I don’t know. It crawled awkwardly forward, teetering back and forth when it took a step, but looking eager to regain some height in the world. I wondered again how it perceived me, and if my life was somehow inferior to its beautifully simplistic one. I never saw that creature again. It crawled on the ground, grounded from escaping away to freedom. I took one last memory before leaving, but there was no butterfly there to remember, simply a story crawling up the stick. I was not allowed to simply enjoy that experience and later contemplate it. I dropped the stick and walked away to catch up, explain what had happened, and continue writing the story I had inevitably created.
I know where the wing went.

26 August 2008