Streams of Unconsciousness
Feb. 27th, 2008 02:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogThe mind and the Internet often work in the same mysterious ways. Zeroes and ones and hexadecimals, as well as their cerebral equivalents, get processed into words and sounds and graphics in ways one cannot easily understand, much less expect.
Something reminded me the other day that I met one of my longest-standing and closest-by LJ buds here by such a happy accident. In my early days of blogging, back when my Friendslist was still in single digits and I no can had much skllz, I often used a non-LJ blog as the quickiest-clickiest way to link to my friend May. After one misclicked link on Andrew's sidebar, I discovered another Friend- the first of many I acquired here from nearby North Tonawanda.
So it goes, sometimes, with the old brainbox. Despite usually having at least three chances nightly to remember dreams (after the near-nightly random pee break in the dead of night, right before the animals assault me in the 5 a.m. hour, and on being alarmed awake when I do get back to sleep after that), I usually can't come away with much of them. I might remember an overall theme, a place, one or two friends or family who worked their way in, but that's about it.
Lately, though, I've been coming away with the oddest of even smaller snippets. A few nights ago, I distinctly dreamed a phone number- remembering it, probably, because in the dream, I dialed it several times. Unless I'm mistaken, it was the phone number my college roommate's parents had in Chelmsford, Massachusetts before they moved from there more than 25 years ago. Now what mental purpose gets served by retrieving that, much less by remembering it?
Then, night before last, a word popped into my head that perhaps means something to a tiny number of people who read here, yet different things to at least two of them. The word is Heraea. I awoke with it on my lips, with no idea of what part of a dream had inspired it or what part of my life today had triggered the dream.
To the classicists among us, that word likely means the piece of antiquity that Wikipedia says it means:
The ancient Heraea Games, dedicated to the goddess Hera (also spelled Heraia) is the first sanctioned (and recorded) women's athletic competition to be held in the Stadium at Olympia, possibly in the Olympic year, prior to the men's events. It is dated as early as the 6th century BC.
To my sister, and perhaps the other occasional passer-by from my old home town, it means something far more modern and yet, from today's perspective, almost as ancient. From the time she was in high school (early 1960s) until, I've since learned, the early 80s after I graduated, Heraea was the name of the annual girls' sports competition among the sophomore, junior and senior classes of my high school. I remember looking at Donna's yearbook when I was a kid, seeing the pages devoted to it, and going, "huh?" For they showed only girls playing at various games without any results or commentary on what it was all about.
When I arrived in the building in 1974, though, word quickly got to me about what A Big Deal this was for the girls. Title IX had just come into existence a few years before, and the Phys Ed department was still in denial about what it meant. Other than field hockey and a few spots on the cross-country and track teams, girls were still expected to lead cheers and dance in kicklines rather than seek their own potentials as athletes. Offered in place of such activities was what we, also, called "Heraea"- a one-night extravaganza that probably drew more fans to the school gym than any varsity basketball game (and certainly more than any concert I ever played in). Preparations for this event rivaled those for any school play or competition, and the non-PE faculty, naturally, hated how distractive it was. It was an annual contest between the gym teachers and other departments to find some obscure religious holiday to "observe" right before Heraea, to prevent vengeful teachers from giving exams or assigning term papers that day. ("Iranian New Year" was what they came up with for my senior year.)
A friend of mine wrote the school paper's article about our senior year's competition. It was not well-received by the participants, because it brought out far more of the out-and-out competitiveness that was being packed into this one night's event- such as the "Seniors Kick Ass" and "Flush Twice- It's A Long Way to a Junior Victory" banners he saw in the stands. There was actual sport during the night- volleyball, tumbling, basketball, and relay races (some running, others on those little square scooters you played with in kindergarten), but the final standings also awarded significant points for attendance, "pre-Heraea team behavior," wall decorations, "entrance" (think the floats from the parade scene in Animal House), and sportsmanship. In the end, the seniors won, if you could call anything under that kind of point system "winning."
----
All these years later, though? Those decades of effort seem to have been wiped from our computerized consciousness. I googled "Heraea" and "high school" to see if anyone had memories of this once major event among hundreds of high school students. I found not a single mention of our school in any of them, and only one, at least contained in the first 40 or so entries, that seemed even remotely to refer to it at all.
That reference came from a blog, written by another of our alumni four years behind me, which has turned out to be a remarkable piece of writing with some awesome use of graphics. I didn't know this author in high school (her class would not have arrived at the high school until two Septembers after I graduated), but I felt compelled to read about the friend of hers- also a name I did not recognize- who had inspired her to refer to this long-past sporting event in a 2007 journal entry.
She was sharing pictures from her high school yearbook with her daughter. Pictures of an old friend from back then who, she'd just learned, had killed herself the previous week.
I looked at some of those pictures. I didn't know any of the kids shown in them, but I remember some of their older brothers and sisters. They're my age now, some with married children and grandkids, some I even know to be deceased, others, surely, who are though I don't know it.
They, and their little brothers and sisters, have lived through triumph and torment, have found and lost love, have found faith or, perhaps, found that they needed some at the worst of moments.
One of them couldn't find what she was looking for and lost her life in the process of that failure.
I grieve for her.
Yet I'm thankful for whatever random experience extracted that brain cell the other night, and again offer my sympathies to the friend of hers who expanded on it (and I'll be reading when and if your journal comes back from hiatus).
Something reminded me the other day that I met one of my longest-standing and closest-by LJ buds here by such a happy accident. In my early days of blogging, back when my Friendslist was still in single digits and I no can had much skllz, I often used a non-LJ blog as the quickiest-clickiest way to link to my friend May. After one misclicked link on Andrew's sidebar, I discovered another Friend- the first of many I acquired here from nearby North Tonawanda.
So it goes, sometimes, with the old brainbox. Despite usually having at least three chances nightly to remember dreams (after the near-nightly random pee break in the dead of night, right before the animals assault me in the 5 a.m. hour, and on being alarmed awake when I do get back to sleep after that), I usually can't come away with much of them. I might remember an overall theme, a place, one or two friends or family who worked their way in, but that's about it.
Lately, though, I've been coming away with the oddest of even smaller snippets. A few nights ago, I distinctly dreamed a phone number- remembering it, probably, because in the dream, I dialed it several times. Unless I'm mistaken, it was the phone number my college roommate's parents had in Chelmsford, Massachusetts before they moved from there more than 25 years ago. Now what mental purpose gets served by retrieving that, much less by remembering it?
Then, night before last, a word popped into my head that perhaps means something to a tiny number of people who read here, yet different things to at least two of them. The word is Heraea. I awoke with it on my lips, with no idea of what part of a dream had inspired it or what part of my life today had triggered the dream.
To the classicists among us, that word likely means the piece of antiquity that Wikipedia says it means:
The ancient Heraea Games, dedicated to the goddess Hera (also spelled Heraia) is the first sanctioned (and recorded) women's athletic competition to be held in the Stadium at Olympia, possibly in the Olympic year, prior to the men's events. It is dated as early as the 6th century BC.
To my sister, and perhaps the other occasional passer-by from my old home town, it means something far more modern and yet, from today's perspective, almost as ancient. From the time she was in high school (early 1960s) until, I've since learned, the early 80s after I graduated, Heraea was the name of the annual girls' sports competition among the sophomore, junior and senior classes of my high school. I remember looking at Donna's yearbook when I was a kid, seeing the pages devoted to it, and going, "huh?" For they showed only girls playing at various games without any results or commentary on what it was all about.
When I arrived in the building in 1974, though, word quickly got to me about what A Big Deal this was for the girls. Title IX had just come into existence a few years before, and the Phys Ed department was still in denial about what it meant. Other than field hockey and a few spots on the cross-country and track teams, girls were still expected to lead cheers and dance in kicklines rather than seek their own potentials as athletes. Offered in place of such activities was what we, also, called "Heraea"- a one-night extravaganza that probably drew more fans to the school gym than any varsity basketball game (and certainly more than any concert I ever played in). Preparations for this event rivaled those for any school play or competition, and the non-PE faculty, naturally, hated how distractive it was. It was an annual contest between the gym teachers and other departments to find some obscure religious holiday to "observe" right before Heraea, to prevent vengeful teachers from giving exams or assigning term papers that day. ("Iranian New Year" was what they came up with for my senior year.)
A friend of mine wrote the school paper's article about our senior year's competition. It was not well-received by the participants, because it brought out far more of the out-and-out competitiveness that was being packed into this one night's event- such as the "Seniors Kick Ass" and "Flush Twice- It's A Long Way to a Junior Victory" banners he saw in the stands. There was actual sport during the night- volleyball, tumbling, basketball, and relay races (some running, others on those little square scooters you played with in kindergarten), but the final standings also awarded significant points for attendance, "pre-Heraea team behavior," wall decorations, "entrance" (think the floats from the parade scene in Animal House), and sportsmanship. In the end, the seniors won, if you could call anything under that kind of point system "winning."
----
All these years later, though? Those decades of effort seem to have been wiped from our computerized consciousness. I googled "Heraea" and "high school" to see if anyone had memories of this once major event among hundreds of high school students. I found not a single mention of our school in any of them, and only one, at least contained in the first 40 or so entries, that seemed even remotely to refer to it at all.
That reference came from a blog, written by another of our alumni four years behind me, which has turned out to be a remarkable piece of writing with some awesome use of graphics. I didn't know this author in high school (her class would not have arrived at the high school until two Septembers after I graduated), but I felt compelled to read about the friend of hers- also a name I did not recognize- who had inspired her to refer to this long-past sporting event in a 2007 journal entry.
She was sharing pictures from her high school yearbook with her daughter. Pictures of an old friend from back then who, she'd just learned, had killed herself the previous week.
I looked at some of those pictures. I didn't know any of the kids shown in them, but I remember some of their older brothers and sisters. They're my age now, some with married children and grandkids, some I even know to be deceased, others, surely, who are though I don't know it.
They, and their little brothers and sisters, have lived through triumph and torment, have found and lost love, have found faith or, perhaps, found that they needed some at the worst of moments.
One of them couldn't find what she was looking for and lost her life in the process of that failure.
I grieve for her.
Yet I'm thankful for whatever random experience extracted that brain cell the other night, and again offer my sympathies to the friend of hers who expanded on it (and I'll be reading when and if your journal comes back from hiatus).
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Why, thank you!
Date: 2008-02-27 10:13 pm (UTC)Heraea was, indeed, an EVENT. TUMBLING!!!! I haven't heard that word since about 1982!! I hope you don't mind, but I would love to send the link to this entry to some alumni. I know they would love it!
Thanks for the memories. ;)
Re: Why, thank you!
Date: 2008-02-27 10:47 pm (UTC)And sure, share with whomever. I welcome comments from on and off LiveJournal, so enjoy checking out any and all.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 11:50 pm (UTC)I'm very sorry for the family of the woman who gave up the struggle of will that life often becomes. I pray that she is finding rest at last, and that her loved ones find comfort with time.