High on Exhaustion

Ryan Billington

12-5-05

AP English

Journal Entry Essay

High on Exhaustion

            A man stumbles down the sidewalk.  His eyes are bloodshot and his clothes and hair are rumpled.  He trips on the uneven surface of the sidewalk and falls to the ground.  Most people would assume that this man is abusing some type of substance.  But the man is not high, drunk, or wasted; he just hasn’t slept for 4 days.  Although most people never consider it, the experience of living in an exhausted state is remarkably similar the “high” effect produced by the misuse of drugs or alcohol.  Inability to focus, vagueness or loss of memory, the condition of finding mundane events uproarious, and experiencing strange feelings are usually all thought of as drug-induced states; but exhaustion produces similar effects.

            Examples supporting such a conclusion lay hidden on every side.  Examine the driving situation:  a car weaves down a two-lane road.  It drifts into the left lane, and jerks back into the right.  All of the driver’s actions are delayed, and car is barely staying on the asphalt.  The driver is in a semi-conscious state:  is he drunk, or is he drowsy?  The meager evidence makes it difficult to answer, because the actions of a drunk driver and a sleepy driver while on the road are alike.  In accidents, both survive more often than people that are awake and alert, and both usually find it difficult to recall the events leading up to the accident.  Many more illustrations can be drawn:  physical side effects, the prohibition of alcohol and sleeping agents…

            Everyone reacts differently when confronted with sleep deprivation.  Some people become moody, quickly rising in rage over the most innocent misunderstanding.  Others seem happily disconnected from reality, while still others are transformed into very mellow creatures, flowing along with the current of life.  Exhaustion changes the psychological, physical, and emotional aspects of a person’s life.  Common sense becomes not so common, and the process of logical thought is suddenly filled with pitfalls and snares.  Because they are seeing life differently, individuals in a semi somnambulant state experience different emotions than they normally would.  A drowsy person often seems to move through the day as if they were encased in quicksand.  But can’t all of these descriptions be applied to someone who is involved with drugs or alcohol?  The similarities are striking... once normal people are transformed into angry drunks, mellow marijuana smokers, and emotionally unstable meth addicts.

            Imagine a world in which these similarities were realized; a world in which alcohol, heroin, LSD, marijuana, PCP, and methamphetamines didn’t exist, replaced by lack of sleep.  In such a world alcohol wouldn’t claim millions of lives per year.  Teenagers wouldn’t die from overdosing on drugs, ruin their lives with addictions, or destroy their minds with substances.  Babies wouldn’t suffer from the effects of drugs and alcohol at birth.  Suicide rates would drop.  Depression would be almost non-existent.  To escape from life, all someone would need is time and a pillow.  They could call in sick, stay up for 2 days, sleep for one, and return to ordinary life the next day, without side effects.  Imagine such a world…

A Pen

 

A Pen

by Ryan Billington

Written in the summer of 2005

Meaningless scribbles, a pen in the hand

Neither understanding nor fathoming the depth or use it holds

A purpose it has, a brush for the Master’s piece

Resting in the scars

But to what end is it that I write?

Uncontrolled existence, chaos fills the purpose

Poetry, prose, arithmetic, or account

I know I am held but for what?

Does ink even flow from this mind that consumes me?

Thoughts forever flowing, but from the Source or the stone?

Pride in use, purpose, Maker—not self

Confidence, assurity in what dirt contains

Jar of clay or piece of shale,

To what end have I been formed?

To some a crown and to some a fork

Both from silver vein

But in the end, its purpose served, both shall melt away

For what makes it last and fulfill purpose laid

Is the Maker not the clay

And so I sit a pen, this lump of mud

Unsure, unstable, confident, assured

A pen resting in the Master’s scars

Thoughts

 

Thoughts

by Ryan Billington

6/4/05

Surrounded by things I despise, sickened by things I have grown accustomed to, but most of all saddened by what I see in the deepest darkness of myself… forgiven, but forever seeing and remembering the scars that I have left on his body… bathing in the blood that ran out of those scars and trickled down his broken body, down to me and becoming transformed…  but oh so many times I have to return to his hands and feet and bathe once again.  May I never leave Him again…

            “By his wounds we are healed…”  Isaiah 53

I really liked that… may we live everyday being at and thus becoming His hands and feet…

Marmalade Summer

Ryan Billington

1-17-05

AP English

Narrative Essay

 

Marmalade Summer

            When I was growing up, my grandparents owned a small red cabin on the edge of a lake.  Many summers were spent with my family out on our lovely lake, sitting down at the dock, basking in the warmth of summer sunshine.  It was during one of these summers that an event occurred that has changed my outlook on life; I call it the marmalade summer…

I sat in a chair, eyes closed, the smooth brown carpet warming my feet as I soaked in the warmth of the late summer sun.  A water droplet trickled from my hair and danced down my side.  I brushed it away and sat up.  The faded colors of our lake greeted my eyes.   Pale trees rose from the bank, surrounding the grey blue water, domed by a wispy blue sky.  The wind gusted across the rippling surface, whispering of the coming fall.  My eyes drifted from the cove back to the opposite edge of our dock.  And back to cove…

            Three hundred feet out from our dock lay a speck of orange, struggling, wrestling with the surface of the water.  Our aluminum boat cast off and I powered my oar through the glistening water, out to the trapped fleck of marmalade.  Two enormous wings floundered on the surface of the deep.  Carefully, after several tries, I brought my oar up under my friend.  He was the largest moth I had ever seen:  a fall colored mix of orange, light brown, and swirls of yellow.  His little black eyes stared back into mine for a moment, then all strength left him.

            Gently setting him down, I rowed back to the dock.  I laid him on the smooth carpet, retrieved a lid for a water dish from the boat, and made an alcove from the wind.  Content with the rescue of my new friend, I sat down to observe and wait.  The sound of a bell reached down out of the trees, signaling that lunch was ready.  Waving to my friend, I rushed up the steps. 

            When I returned, the alcove was empty and a speck of orange was lying on the surface of the water once again.  For the second time, I retrieved my friend, and placed his tired and wet frame in the sanctuary I’d built; and this time I watched…

              I watched as he dragged his body to the edge of the dock.  His enormous wings slowly rose and fell in the evening breeze.  His body quivered for a moment, and then he took off, headed for the opposite shore.  I don’t recall the orange speck rising more than 10 feet off the water, and all too quickly it began to fall.  My oars splashed through the water and I set my trembling friend on the dock.  His right wing had a spasmodic tendency, and several of his legs were broken.  I was sure he would stay on the dock, in comfort, and that his death would come with the night. 

            But night never reached us.  Teetering on broken legs, he stood at the edge of the dock, his enormous wings rising and falling.  I thought to stop him, but I could not bring myself to do so.   His eyes were set on the opposite shore; and after a moment he was gone. 

            I held my friend with trembling hands one last time.  I set him down in the final sanctuary I had built for him and watched as that brilliant orange was lost from the world, hidden behind the dark soil. 

When I laid those orange wings in the ground, I believed that my friend had failed, and that his life had been a waste.  His goals were left unfulfilled, and his earnest search had led only to death.  But time and life are showing me that this is not true.  And while the opposite shore was never graced by those marmalade wings, I am realizing that my friend died not in failure, but in accomplishment.

A Void

A Void

by Ryan Billington

Written January 16, 2005

Winter of JuniorYear

I am a phantom, an illusion;

Going through life as a ghost.

You cannot kill me; I cannot die.

Instead, I wander through my world.

I am unnoticed; I am invisible.

I search the sea of expressionless faces.

“Acknowledge me, affirm my existence,” I cry

But only downcast eyes glance away;

Grey, like the clouds, the concrete, the buildings;

Walling their world into a cell; a prison inescapable

Trapped in their misunderstanding of life

Empty blank eyes reflect their minds

Accustomed to hollowness, to the void inside them

How I long to fill them with color

This world I have bought, will you still reject me?

What is this life that you have abandoned me to live?

I am the trickle of water in this frozen winter spring

I am the sun fighting to pierce the haze that surrounds you

You try to contain me in a building and steeple

To fit me into this colorless void of your life

To make me a piece of your puzzle that will change to fit your desires

Oh my children, how long will you turn away?

Why do you choose this emptiness?

I am not made to fit into your puzzle, your confusion

Neither were you

I already have a picture for you

Made from the fragments of my broken body

You sit in a pew, expecting me to take the haze of life away.

I reach out, trying to finally grasp your heart

But I run into the cold gray wall that you have built around it

You leave; feeling abandoned by me, distant, unseen.

I follow you down the gray sidewalks

I have never left you, I‘ve always been right here

Behind you, at your side, staring into your barren soul

I try to touch you

My scarred hand passes through your cheek.

In this void, filled with nothing

The only One that truly exists has become a phantom

Your shrouded faces drift by

Hidden in disguises, living a falsehood

Masks that smile and sparkle; facades that cover you up

Made from the clay of this empty void

You spend so much time in delusion, trying to hide who you are

But the masks keep cracking into emptiness and nothing can put them back together.

Painted white by winter’s chill, and black by the darkness inside you

If mixed together they form the color of your vacant stare

The masks smile; they speak; they seek to conceal and forget

But in your eyes lives an emptiness that cannot be hidden

A longing that you will never be able to veil

I look out over the world I created

Twisted, distorted, and deformed into this void that I see

A world bought back by the living color that flows through my veins

When will they accept the life in me?

Instead they choose to live in this darkness

Actors, surviving through life

Covered in masks

Covered in grayness

Hastening about in the bleakness of winter

Filling their minds and starving their souls

You know my name and claim to know me

But when will you let my water beyond the walls of your mind?

When will you let it reach the cracked and barren surface of your heart?

Even now you shrug me off.

Will you ever be wholly mine?

The conflict is here: grayness covers your body, but I desire soul

Will you still choose the void?

Ryan Billington

1-4-05

AP English

Extra Credit

Winter’s Quandary

By Ryan Billington

            A weakening of winter’s power has left UCA in a form of a winter drought.  The once frozen tundra covered in snow has been transformed by a midwinter spring.  Sun and rain have washed away the blinding white that favored this campus in the record low, pre-break temperatures.  The New Year has brought about change and our white wintry fluff has disappeared. 

Winter brings a unique atmosphere to these wheatfields that we have come to love.  UCA takes on a mystical, storybook atmosphere.  The trees turn completely white, covered by twinkling frost.  The snow swirls that cover the ground and fill the air cause the world we know to dwindle and disappear, leaving only one’s self and the pinpricks of white.  But winter has fallen into a quandary, and remains undecided and unsure of what is to come.  So we sit in this mix of seasons, ever changing.

Snow enthusiasts, such as the avid mountain riders that attend this school in droves, are quite disappointed with this turn of events but “there’s still snow in the mountains,” which always makes things better.  The ski rec program is going strong, and winterists can still slide and float through those wonderful little crystals.  But those who dream of whiter days can’t help but remember winters of old, and wonder when nature’s quandary will end.

In the mean time, rain, wind, sunshine, and blue skies have all found a place at UCA.  Those faithful few who long for warmer days and the sports they love can occasionally be spotted around campus.  Skateboards gather at the front of the dorm and wakeboarders can be seen discussing equipment, new tricks, and their goals for the coming summer.  

It’s quite possible that this northwestern weather may never fully decide, and that the quandary will continue to some unforeseeable end; a continuous mixing pot of seasons and peoples.  After all, that is why we love it here.  Lakes, mountains, snow, rain, sunshine, and clouds… brought together so that all can marvel and enjoy the wonder of our home.