My wide compression

college application essay

My wide compression

 

 

 Tom Waits’s ‘Beautiful Maladies’ is driving weary vibes through my neocortex and setting off a warm rush of endorphins through my body, while Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ernest Hemingway and many other personalities I have the distinguished pleasure of hosting on my top shelf watch skeptically upon the nearly blank pages that lie in front of me. As ‘Innocent when you dream’ starts playing, I realize that the most accurate self portrait should be painted by words generated by my first impulses, the same impulses that define my nature. Uncensored, free of the behavioral habits that have tagged almost every single form of our expression, I am finally ready to write.

 

 ….okay, this is not as easy as I though it would be. I figured that if I let my ‘how will my reader interpret this passage’ question aside, words will burst out naturally. If only words were the most pure representation of me... The thing is that while putting down your thoughts, whether on paper or using any other form of expression, various filters mounted by your subconscious (‘is this good or cool enough’ questions or ‘is this really who I am’ when discovering you just had a thought that disputes conventional moral values) alter your original thoughts. If you’re lucky you might just recognize dispersed bits of yourself, but one who views these thoughts will probably identify them with the image of a completely different person. Filters are our main problem when expressing our thoughts. This is especially because the foundation of this world consists of representations of us and our actions. Our whole database of knowledge and the functionality of our societies are based on representations: books, news, politics, etc. Filters compress these representations leaving out the tiny details and nuances that actually define us, thus, leading to erroneous facts.

 

People who shape the course of history, stories that shape the course of people’s lives, all thronged in 10 minute news clips which kill the nuances and thoroughness of these stories and reduce everything to hate or approval. Elaborate events of the highest importance, phenomena that shaped the world are crushed under titles like ‘World history in 100 pages’ alienate us by distancing us from our true identity. Thousands of essays piled in tight rooms of universities: clichés, experiences of the highest intensity, intelligence, mediocrity and brilliance all crowded into the narrow body of rectangular sheets of paper. Black and White may be appealing by its complex simplicity, but colors are part of reality too. I refuse to contribute to the foundation of a compressed world and those who want to create the profile of my intellect, personality or spirituality should view me as holistic as possible, because all the tiny things such as the already mentioned clichés, brilliance, staggering experiences that belong to me, don’t express anything regarding my true self when viewed as separate parts.

 

Clotting 500 words with meaningful odysseys that made up my life or with several crumbs of my ideas and concepts (which may be Nobel material) would only serve as a constitution for chaotic jigsaws that, you, the reader, should assemble accurately in order to get a sharp image of myself, the writer. Overcrowding a few words by using this technique will lead to their explosion and the leftovers will probably be a distorted ‘me’. So, what I am trying to say is that I am always between the crumbles of my existence. I am always in between writing driven by my spirit or my conscience and prejudices. I am always between being outstandingly brilliant and excruciatingly idiotic. Between pages of books. Between sitting aside, engrossed by the moral aspects of some and taking attitude and trying to change things. Between silent and prophet, I end up between what I want to say and what I actually say. I’m between tall and short, Wagner and The Killers, man and child. I am a greater child than the one I was a couple years ago but a greater man than many others. I am between being wise and wise-a*s. I am between dreamy REM bursts and weakening lucidity. I’m on cloud nine, but my feet are stuck in sticky mud. I’m centered never above. Not yet.

 

This writing clearly can’t be a projection of me, since it is also linked between separate pieces; however, I am always ‘compressed’ between these lines.

Author's Note

college application essay. Any suggestions are welcome.

Reviews

[Cherryblossom]

It is true that you cannot be defined by a mere 500 words, because exactly what are words on paper? They do not make the person. I have actually felt this way for a while as well, and I find it odd how colleges expect this much out of us. Anyways, great piece :)