Tuesday, October 21, 2008

The Quest Retreat

Been a couple weeks since I last made a post. Well I was gone all of last week so that played a major role and the reasons for which I was gone will be the subject of my latest entry. I was consistantly hassled(practically harrassed though his intentions were good) by Mr. Reiling to go on this "Quest Retreat." His words are as follows "Hey Hauser, don't you want to uncover the mysterious energies of being a man!" Not always the best way for a 50-some year old man to approach a 17 year old about a supposedly religous retreat, but he's not your average religion teacher (or person for that matter). Luckily the retreat was in a span of 3 days where I would only miss one day of school and it was supposed to be "senior skip day" that thursday anyway.

So I arrive at school at about 3 pm and we are on the school bus by 4 to go to a hostel in Peninsula, Ohio. Did you know that there was a hostel in peninsula Ohio? Or a Peninsula Ohio for that matter. But there apparently is and that is where the many misadventures would take place over the following 3 days.

We had little discussions about Jung's four archetypes of male energy, a little map-drawing session of our individual kingdoms, etc. Don't shake your head at the computer screen, you just had to be there. Anyway, these were all EXTREMELY interesting but one can only handle so much psychology per day.

So in between these discussions we did the normal stuff likfe throwing a football around, hiking, playing card games, hassling Mr. Reiling for not bringing his hippie guitar or peace pipe, etc. So we were sitting there playing Uno (which, like scattergories, is 2nd base in christian basebal) and four of us agreed that Uno was fun and interesting at age 7, but seems to get boring afther the 16th round. So we went and played Euchre, which is by far my favorite card game. So between all of these activities I actually got some time to get quite a few pages of writing done.

There's something about the wilderness and countryside that instills peace in me and allows me to really be creative, there are way to many distractions in city life, especially in the loud city of Lakewood. Now for the people who are not affected by ADD: Loud/Sudden noises + ADD = Bad. It's next to impossible to concentrate sometimes but thankfully i can just put on my mp3 player at full blast and put my entrainment track on repeat for a few hours. This is a cool little trick (that plenty of people could use) to put oneself into a deeper level of thought. The great thing about the wilderness is that you don't need high-tech devices to do that. just a blanket and a pen and paper.

Since this is supposed to be about my crazy life of writing, revising, and directing it seemed fitting to add these thoughts in here. Its a shame that millions of people in the world rarely leave the big cities of places like New York, LA, or Cleveland and plague themselves with a form of tunnel vision that pushes out any thoughts of self expression. Plenty of the people I go to school with, a lot my closest friends, are only concerned about where the next big party is going to be. It's so nice just getting away from the hustle and bustle and enabling yourself to actually hear your thoughts.

The saddest thing about living in a big city, or even just a small town where lights are wround is where you can't just look up and see this:

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