Term Paper on "Travels it Stays Stuck in My Mind"

Term Paper 6 pages (1736 words) Sources: 0

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Travels

It stays stuck in my mind, the raw smell engulfing the land, the plodding thunder of their feet hitting the ground, the shutterspeed freezing towards a traffic jam of elephants. it's one of many - a mountain of fireants towering over the people, frighteningly slight below, fireworks dashing through the nights' sky, sprent with stars, at the San Redentore festival, the peculiar strength and symbol of China's Great Wall. They fill my body full, a mountain of memories connecting me to my world, and my soul to my hands; they are what keep the camera pressed fast to my eye.

We traveled the world keeping up with my dad, a professional photographer, and, as a family, earned the great privilege by proxy of wide-world exploration; my parents, however, kept me firm in my appreciation of it. Nothing ever glossed over, there was never too much - there was only me, still a little girl, tugging on my father's sleeve, begging for his camera. I found inside of it a symbiosis of distance and exposure that let me see something new; though the lens, a whole world of adventure. The exotic smells, brightly colored vistas, and epic peculiarities of the greater world I saw through the lens were different than those I found at home on our small island of Puerto Rico, more different still than the home I later discovered in New York.

As a family, we trekked the vast beauty of the earth, from continent to continent, seas, mountain ranges, and deserts in between. Atop elephants, horses, camels, boat; looking down from an airplane, up from slow train, I found a world in which each moment, cultural site, and person along the way that world, big, powerful engine that it is, exists in precarious harmony with the other. From the Caribbean and North America I was able to see Mexico, Cuba, Spain, Italy, Greece, England, Holland, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, the islands of the South Pacific, and Japan. A mirage of faces and insular little worlds, I was able to connect them all in my memory, a collection of the still photographs I cultivated and kept, locked away inside my mind.

There were also physical photographs, the ones I proudly showed my friends, traced with my fingers upon our returns, puzzled out the greater world. Outside of my front door was something vastly different than the one inside it; my parents filled our home with classical music, knowledge, and exposure; we soaked it up like sponges. Somehow, though, the two worlds melded together and the experiences, one, tied me not only to my home island, but left a bit of me everywhere I went, while I captured pieces of the world to keep, too.

At five years, still a little girl, while my friends sat on their bedroom floors playing with their favorite dolls, I curled up next to my father on the orange nylon of an airplane seat, pleading with him to show me his camera and how it worked, picking the threads apart with my fingers in rampant anticipation. We were going to Italy! Italy was the world of dreams, to me, it was where princes and princesses danced until the wee hours of the night, where the Pope ruled with kingly presence, where the most fashionable dined along the shores of Wharton's Como. Italy was the place of dreams.

I remember landing and, the routine now too engrained to be a nuisance, fetching our luggage and going through the turmoil of getting settled into a new trip. With suitcases, luggage, camera bags, and young children trailing them, my parents set off into the Italian countryside to show us this land of which I had dreamed. We started in Venice, where the splashing water of the gondola wet my thirst for the land, the language soared in and out of my head with the heat of painters and musicians. I fell in love with it, looking up to Italy from the awe-filled eyes of a child barely tall enough to see over the counter where I enjoyed the many flavored gelatti with the glee only a child can muster.

We fell in and out of other countries as I grew older; I found a world under water in Australia as we dove the great depths of the sea. In Bora, I snorkled the barrier, rife with magic, eyes peeled for sting rays, jelly fish, turtles, and coral so dazzling I could never forget it; I wanted to take a piece of all of it - the salty sting of the water, the velvety touch of the rays - home with me, to keep it forever. My sense of adventure and longing to preserve this world I met failed to cease; my big brother took me shark feeding and I realized that this world I knew was more alive than anything one could ever imagine unless they, too, were able to experience it.

When my fifteenth birthday came around, and my friends began preparing for their own parties in celebrative commemoration of this rite of passage, I begged my parents to take me to Africa. A big, grand trip, not associated with work, just so I could see it - it was, in my head, the biggest present for which I could ask. I wanted to see more of the world. To my delight and surprise, they relented, and very soon after, I was sitting in front of my tent, camera in hand, taping the warthogs as they roamed the night's land, running familiar songs through my head I knew I would pare with the footage the minute we stepped back through the front door at home.

Soon our front doors changed, and we left our little island of Puerto Rico for another, Manhattan. I hated the city at first; I miss my home, my family, the heat, the familiar. My parents were undeterred, immersing themselves in the jobs that brought us here, exploring every inch of New York with the same determination they made Italy understandable to a young child. At school, I enrolled in a photography class, the most sacred thing in my life, and one of the few things that did not change in our great move. New York was so fast and hectic, still a shock to my system; but under the careful tutelage of my teachers, guiding calm of my parents, and the beat for adventure that spurred my heart forward, I found New York to be something entirely different than the place that first scared me - hectic turned out to be just another way to describe a place that was really just a kingdom of infinite moments, mine for the taking. Here, amongst the Whitneys, Vanderbilts, and Trumps, I knew I was rich.

My school, trenchant in determination to give us New York, offered a New York City Literature course that I clamored to take. The final project was for most the steady recomposition of English essays that have graced teachers' desks for years; but the course had showed me New York, and my camera traced it; I found the stories of New York existed for me not on the paper, but instead, behind the lens. I submitted a final video, a clumsy first, splicing clips, my own interview explaining the death of John Lennon, shots of the Dakota, and mingled them with the developmental history of Central Park. As I stayed awake well past my bedtime night after night, desperate to finish the project and show my classmates the city I discovered, I found my passion. My teacher, a true pedagogue, observed my complete inspiration and, granting me not only an a but an earned excuse from the final exam, encouraged me to pursue my dream.

A decided to go catch it. I splurged on a Macintosh, filling with Final Cut Pro and Avid Cinema. I read the program manuals cover to cover, soaking up everything I could, enrolled in photography and film courses at Georgetown College Prep, and took the Nikon Workshop Course. I documented everything - graduations, celebrations, trips, the sidewalk bordering our apartment. Attending University in Puerto Rico, I changed schools to try and get closer to the arts, remembering the Italy I discovered as a little girl and wanting to feel its language on my own tongue. I participated in a Summer Exchange Program and lived in Urbino for two months, discovering Roma, San Marino, Rimini, Perguai, Napoli, Portofino, Venezia for the first time on my own, and always with my camera.

I am now trilingual, with an ever-expanding veraciousness for the world, and a camera inextricably connected to my eyes through which I not only see but also share it. Now at American Inter-Continental Unversity, I am nearing the completion of pursuit for my MFA, after which I intend to seek a strong, vocational training in the art that has characterized my life. I am continuously spurred on, not only through… READ MORE

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