Isaac's Pilgrimage Project, Labyrinth Reflections, and Pilgrimage Reflections

Labyrinth Reflection #1:

"Soon, Govinda, your friend will leave the path of the Samanas, he has walked along your side for so long. I'm suffering of thirst, oh Govinda, and on this long path of a Samana, my thirst has remained as strong as ever. I always thirsted for knowledge, I have always been full of questions…It took me a long time and am not finished learning this yet, oh Govinda: that there is nothing to be learned! There is indeed no such thing, so I believe, as what we refer to as ‘learning.’ There is, oh my friend, just one knowledge, this is everywhere, this is Atman, this is within me and within you and within every creature. And so I'm starting to believe that this knowledge has no worser enemy than the desire to know it, than learning.”

From Siddhartha. Chapter: With The Samanas.

Constructing the labyrinth this afternoon on Arden Lawn was an amazing experience and, I believe, the perfect way to conclude our Pilgrimage class. When going back into my favorite text from this semester, Siddhartha, this passage initially stuck out to me because of its mention of “path.” Siddhartha is talking to his best friend, Govinda, about his dissatisfaction with their following of the Samana priests. Siddhartha does not feel that their direction will enable his attainment of true enlightenment. I see the contents of this passage reflected in our labyrinth project in a few different ways. On a most basic level, we too followed a path. Like Siddhartha, the path we followed (or will follow, once we complete the finishing touches) was one of our own creation. In the above passage, Siddhartha is setting out on his own and distancing himself from the path of the Samanas. Our class also set out on our own with the construction of the labyrinth, undertaking a project that no English class at Poly had ever attempted before. It was a path we forged ourselves, like the path Siddhartha sets out to construct in the passage. Towards the end of the passage, Siddhartha discusses how learning is actually an impediment to knowledge. This seemingly contradictory statement is usually non-applicable to a Poly education today, but in some ways, I can understand the attitude he expresses. Doing for doing’s sake is oftentimes an unintended consequence of the litany of Advanced Placement courses we take, standardized tests we prep for, and stringent accreditation requirements necessary for admissions success. All of these imposing outside demands are sometimes hindrances to true education. These are the kinds of “enemies” to knowledge/true learning that Siddhartha discuses. But our labyrinth project, like Siddhartha leaving the Samanas, is a rejection of all of those things for something much more tangible and useful. Applying the classroom discussions and readings from our course out in the real world, literally in the field, was invigorating. It was wonderful to get my hands dirty and create an intellectual and emotional space that drew on previously researched concepts. It felt more like true, applied learning than many of the tedious requirements of high school. In building the labyrinth, I more thoroughly understood the motivation behind the sentiments expressed in this passage by Siddhartha.

It was a representation of the want for a path of one’s own choosing and construction and an example of authentic learning and knowledge.

Labyrinth Reflection #2:

The first commandment for every good explorer is that an expedition has two points: the point of departure and the point of arrival. If your intention is to make the second theoretical point coincide with the actual point of arrival, don't think about the means—because the journey is a virtual space that finishes when it finishes, and there are as many means as there are different ways of 'finishing.' That is to say, the means are endless. 

 - The Motorcycle Diaries, page 36.

 This passage from the early stages of Che and Alberto’s pilgrimage in The Motorcycle Diaries is a refection of Che’s thoughts about the requirements of a journey.  In it, he discusses the two most important locations of any trip: its starting and ending points.  I believe that the concepts Che discusses in the above passage are relevant to our construction of the labyrinth in a number of ways.  

 Our own decisions and procedures for making the labyrinth started in one place, our point of departure, and ended in another, our point of arrival.  At first, we thought that we would use baseball chalk, chopsticks or screwdrivers, and/or string to construct our labyrinth.  After research and deliberation, we came to the conclusion that none of these methods would work. We decided that using field chalk would provide the best balance between ease of use and visual appeal.  Like Che and Alberto, we started in one place, but ended in another.  Just as Che mentions in the passage, the “means” through which we could achieve our journey, building the labyrinth, were “endless”—we had plenty of options that (likely) would have worked.  Thus, the actual final decision about what material to use didn’t matter as much as the process we took to reach this decision.  This process, which took the form of a Friday afternoon planning class, was one of the best moments of collaboration in our journey towards building the labyrinth.  We divided and conquered, which gave us the information we needed to point us towards our next step.  We all had a lot of ideas about how we could proceed, but our discussions were the journey necessary to reach a shared conclusion.   

 I also see the meaning of this passage reflected in the physical aspects of our labyrinth.  There is a starting place of departure at the outside of the labyrinth, which is the stepping-off point into the space of introspection.  The point of arrival, the center, is where the meditative journey through the labyrinth is completed and where the walker has “arrived,” in a spiritual sense, at their destination.  It is also, of course, the end of the labyrinth’s path of entrance.  But looking beyond that, Che’s observation that the point of departure and point of departure can be the same is manifested in the fact that our labyrinth has only a single point of entrance.  If one were to stay within the path the entire time, they would reach the center, turn around, and eventually also exit from this same point.  So in that physical sense, walking our labyrinth is an entirely continuous journey that originates and concludes in the exact same location, just like Che and Alberto’s journey.  

 The process our class took when constructing our labyrinth and our final product are both represented in this passage.  In these ways, our labyrinth project helped elucidate my understanding of this passage in The Motorcycle Diaries.  

Labyrinth Reflection #3:

Circumventing the stone labyrinth this morning was a very mediative final experience for our Pilgrimage class.  The wonderful silence of the process, broken only by the soft pitter-patter of the rain, heightened the sense of calm that I felt in the atmosphere of the Peace and Awareness Gardens.  I appreciated the labyrinth walk because it was a wonderfully introspective exercise.  The setting intensified my focus—I was able to zero in on the small currents and lines in the stone tiles, the miniature puddles in the floor’s indentations, and the gentle sound of the rain dropping on the top of my head.  As the rain intensified, I pulled the hood on my rain-jacket up, which blocked off my peripheral vision, making me focus on the labyrinth tiles and focus inwards even more than I already was.  The circuitous path was strangely still a relaxing elixir, though it felt like I was physically moving very far without actually moving much at all.  This interesting duality, which would normally annoy me (I imagine the road-rage I would get if I drove in similarly concentric circles to school), actually contributed a lot to the peace of the setting.  It made the journey less of a physical one and more of a metaphysical search inwards.

The experience walking the labyrinth was not just one that I had within myself; it was also a shared one, and a great bonding trip for our D-period class.  Passing each of my peers at each tiled turn and standing in the middle with all of them created a tremendous sensation of community and group-progress.  It felt like we had made multiple journeys together: to the Peace and Awareness Gardens, to the center of their labyrinth, to Arden for our own labyrinth, and throughout the semester.  As our last class, it also marked the end of this shared, semester-long journey.  

While walking the labyrinth, I was thinking about a lot of the meditation and mindfulness strategies in one of the books I read for my personal pilgrimage project, Search Inside Yourself by Chade-Meng Tan.  One section in particular, about generalizing mindfulness in order to apply its lessons to all aspects of life, stuck out to me during the labyrinth walk.  During my project, I found that sitting at night and meditating was relatively easy and also extremely calming.  I was able to find a place of calm and draw attention to events in my life I might have otherwise ignored.  What was much more difficult for me, however, was applying meditative principles to other parts of my hectic, busy life.  For this reason, the application passage from Tan’s book really struck me.  I felt like walking the labyrinth could be a nice conduit that would help me apply mindfulness to my everyday actions, which is something I am still struggling to do.  Because the labyrinth is simultaneously meditative and active, it can be a process that helps me “extend from mindfulness at rest to mindfulness during activity,” as Tan writes.  

I will continue to meditate while still and work on applying meditative concepts to my active-self.  The ideas of continuity of self and journey and introspection, which we discussed in class with regards to The Motorcycle Diaries, Siddhartha, and The Road, will continue to guide me in my pilgrimage project.  The symbol of the labyrinth will endure for me as a process and place to calm myself and refresh my mind when I feel I am drowning in the chaos of life.  

Pilgrimage Project: Creative Writing

A child returns home from school, but no one is home. It is getting dark. Exiting the house, the child begins to follow a trail along a river. When the child reaches a bend in the river, he can see a woman in the distance standing on a bridge overlooking a waterfall.  Something drops from the woman’s hand into the water. 

The child: 

I burst through the swinging doors between the dining room and the parlor, excitedly clutching my new treasure.  “Mom! Mom! Look what I found!”  The only response was the whack of the doors against the walls.  I threw my books on the carpet and sprinted into the kitchen.  “Mom?”  Only a meow.  Calypso, the homeless cat who makes his home with us, rubbed his tail against my leg.  “This is bizarre,” I thought aloud.  “It’s Day 4.  Someone should be home!”  Calypso clawed at my hand.  “No, Calypso.  This is mine,” I reprimanded him.  I clambered up the stairs and gave it one final shout.  “MOM!”  My scream sounded dead as it echoed emptily off of the dense wooden walls and old furniture.  I decided to go outdoors to investigate.  I didn’t see anyone under the gazebo or by the pool, so I ambled across the lawn and towards the woods.  In a way, the absence was opportune—without Mom home, this was the perfect time to explore, uninhibited, the vast openness of the forest.  Before I entered the trees’ dark embrace, I turned around and scanned one last time across the house.  Everything seemed fine.  I laced up my boots and jacket, and like a bullet I sprinted head first down the only trail I knew.  Branches whipped me as I ran by.  I kept running, time kept only by the pounding of my feet against the mossy ground, for what felt like an hour.  Eventually, the light began to fade as I ran along the river.  The air was damp with dew and mist.  As the trail turned, I stopped suddenly.  100 yards ahead, the woods abruptly ended.  There was a great clearing extending from the riverbank back towards town.  Without the impediment of the trees, I could finally see the river clearly.  In the distance, a magnificent mist rose from the waterfall that marked the transition from my rural stream to the town’s shipping hub.  Through the fog, I could make out a figure standing on the rusty bridge.  I rubbed my eyes, and a woman came into focus.  Holding something in her hand, she stepped towards the railing.  It looked like Mom!  And she was holding the other boot. 

The woman:

His body was contorted in an unnatural position.  The paramedics rushed over, dragged him through the car window, and laid him out on the ground.  I screamed a guttural scream.  “Step back, ma’am.  We have the situation under control,” the ambulance driver barked at me.  I did, slowly, clutching my arms to my chest.  The brought out an AED, but he wasn’t responding.  I begged loudly, “please, wake up!”  Still nothing.  The ambulance pulled forward and they took out a gurney and a stretcher.  The paramedics came over to explain that they were taking him to the hospital, but they didn’t think there was anything they could do.  I was in too much of a daze to listen, or to care.  The tires of the ambulance screeched as they whisked him away, leaving behind only the smells of his deodorant and burning rubber.  All that was left was the totaled car, a purple stain on the ground, and one of his shoes.  I slowly rose from my seat on the curb and approached the policeman examining the wreckage.  When I leaned down to grab the shoe, he yelled.  “That’s evidence ma’am!  Please leave the shoe on the ground.”  I paused.  Satisfied, he turned back around.  Before he realized his mistake, I grabbed the shoe and ran.  I starting running towards the hospital, but it was dark, and I kept replaying scenes from the car ride to school.   William had no idea his dad was back from overseas and would be picking him up after class.  What would I tell him?  Somehow, I emerged from the stupor of my grief and realized I was lost.  I stopped running and let myself breathe.  “If he was here, where would he go to calm down?”  It struck me—the river.  More calmly, I made my way to the bridge.  Many a night we spent here, smoking and talking and fishing until dawn.  I sat on the rail, absorbed in memory.  The mist brought me to, and gave me some semblance of sanity.  I realized the boot I was clutching was useless.  I stood up, stuck my hand out over the abyss, and let it go.

Describe something ordinary in an extraordinary light.

Covering 75% of our planet’s surface and comprising 60% of our body-mass, water is seemingly everywhere.  We’re cleaned in the three-atom molecule when we’re born, and the particles from our bodies run-off into subterranean aqueducts when we die.  I am fortunate to have access to clean water, and for me, water is more than the river of life that connects every living thing.  It is my fortifying sanctuary.  

I start every day with a shower and end it washing my face in the mirror.  The early-morning jolt and late-night cleanse keeps the rhythm of my life.  More important, however, is the serenity I find when I immerse myself.  Whether swimming laps or floating in the vast Pacific Ocean, in water I am alone with my thoughts.  I’m removed from familiar distractions—my phone, my friends, and outside sounds.  The repetitive churning of the waves and consistent rhythm of my swimming strokes create a tranquility ideal for introspection.  I decompress my muscles and mind by stretching my body and brain.  In water I reflect on conversations with friends and teachers, break down political events, and mull over fantasy football trades.  Water’s invigorating clarity enables me to distill issues with lucidity.  I know that wherever I go, if I find a pool, lake, or ocean and submerge myself, I will emerge feeling focused and refreshed.  

Water is my steady time-keeper, intellectual refuge, and restorative elixir.  It is a substance necessary for all life, and one I consider extraordinary.

Stories of the return are epic and magical. Odysseus endures hardships, war, obstacles and shipwreck before he ultimately evolves into the warrior who can regain his stolen home.  But a return doesn’t have to be from a literal journey or separation. In one of the West African folk tales about Kiriku, a child with wisdom beyond his years, a sorceress terrorizes a village until Kiriku finds out the secret to her cruelty. It turns out there’s a thorn in her heart.  When Kiriku removes it, she returns to compassion, forgiveness, mercy and love.  A return can be one of the heart, or to a point of view one had previously discredited. A return to health after illness, or reconciliation after an estrangement, can also form the heart of a story.

What “returns” have mattered most to you in your own life?  When were you separated from those you cared about?  Reflecting and taking notes on these autobiographical experiences will give you a wealth of creative writing material to explore. Brainstorm for ten or fifteen minutes. When you are done, use some of that material to write a story in which a character returns after a separation, either one that is literal or emotional.

Before Peter went to kindergarten, he didn’t know there was such a thing as a “country.”  Growing up in rural Appalachia, his primary education was in chicken-care and hog-handling.  He was an expert at fixing a broken bicycle and could tie five different knots before he was five, but he had no notion of an economy or a culture or a government.  He had his town, and that was all he needed.  A predator was a coyote, not a drone, and a new York was a fresh peppermint, not a city.  Money was a little green thing adults worried about.  Peter was disconnected from the world’s totality.  

All of this changed when his Mamaw forced his father to send him to middle school in nearby Belleville.  There, Peter saw a color TV for the first time.  He slowly learned to read, and discovered stories and people so different from his family that in his youth he would’ve classified them as aliens.  Each day at school opened his eyes to words and experiences that were once so beyond his imagination that he couldn’t have even dreamed them.  His horizon continued to expand with time, and he came to envy the opportunities that existed beyond his reach.  Eventually, his envy turned to resentment.  He grew to hate the economic and social provincialism that ensnared him in the politics and people of his home.  All he had was his town, and it wasn’t enough.  Peter continued to work through middle and high school, enduring each morning’s hour-long commute to school.  On the rare occasion that he was invited to spend the night at a friend’s, he had to wake up early to go home and do his chores.  He craved a car that wasn’t a truck and a house that wasn’t a farm.  He craved change.

Peter was inspired by an English teacher to write about his experiences.  The professor told him that if he continue to work hard, he could earn a scholarship to a four-year college and move out of West Virginia.  He labored tirelessly so that he could achieve his dream.  When a university in Boston offered him admission, he immediately threw his stuff in the back of his truck and drove to campus.  He didn’t realize that the term didn’t start until the fall.  

When the semester actually did start, Peter was entranced by his new surroundings.  Buildings that were more than two stories, rooms that could control their temperature, and people with accents all startled him.  His books did not fully convey the immensity of the world he had missed out on.  They also failed to convey the attitude of many of the big-city dwellers.  Written by urbanites, for urbanites, the rose-colored takes on modern living Peter had voraciously consumed lacked the capacity to authentically communicate with a rural perspective.  As a result, he was unprepared for the dog-eat-dog competitiveness of modern America.  He missed the small-town courtesy and local congeniality he had grown up with.  He was a small fish in a big ocean and no one cared that he felt that way.

When he returned home for Winter Break, he excitedly reconnected with his extended family and happily downed Mamaw’s cooking.  But even in his return to his normalcy, with his eyes freshly opened, he couldn’t happily come home.  He found himself analyzing and criticizing the conventions of his youth in the same way that his college classmates criticized him.  He saw naiveté and ignorance everywhere he looked. He was once again suffocated—this time by relatives who asked too many questions and stares that were far too reproachful.  He was stuck in-between a world that cared too little about him and one that cared and knew too much.  And so Peter didn't know what to feel. 

The Return - Autobiographical Entry edition:

The summer before last, I spent 25 days at Seeds of Peace International Camp with teenagers from Israel, Palestine, and other conflict regions. One of the few American participants, I acted as a conduit, reshaping and reframing perspectives to make a middle-ground tenable. Drawn by my sense of justice and interest in history, I expected a challenging and horizon-expanding experience that would give me a better understanding of the Middle East conflict. I was unprepared for the range of emotions I would feel and encounter. 

I was exposed to some of the most raw and painful stories imaginable. I ate, slept, and cried with peers who lived in UN refugee camps, had been detained by security forces, and had lost siblings to suicide bombers. I was woefully unequipped to deal with these harrowing histories. No one I previously knew had suffered the way my new friends had. I was embarrassed to share my comparatively lavish life. The biggest issues in my world—grades, sports, social drama—seemed remarkably petty. 

My most intense times at camp were the daily, two-hour, facilitated dialogues that dove into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These exchanges were physically and emotionally uncomfortable. In the sweltering humidity of the dialogue hut, tensions amplified. I watched my friend Tomer threaten to kill my bunkmate Mahmoud. I listened to Zeina blame Kfir for the murder of her sister. These arguments showed me the fragility of peace and identity. The anger made me wonder if throwing together antagonistic kids to play ice-breaker games was a worthwhile endeavor. 

My conception of self was also challenged. Palestinian stories opened my eyes to the duality of agony in the conflict. Though I never believed Israel to be sacrosanct, I was certainly a supporter, yet hearing the traumas of Palestinians my age was destabilizing. I was held responsible for America’s actions, suddenly a poster child for policies I did not subscribe to. Israelis challenged my religious devotion, calling me a “fake, American Jew.” I was in the vortex of impassioned confrontations that attacked core aspects of my being. 

Doubt seeped into the creases of my mind, but I stayed at it. We all did. The program pushed us to divulge our innermost thoughts and aspirations, and it worked. I saw barriers break down, impossible conversations begin, and respect slowly emerge. 

When I came home, I couldn’t return to a place of serene ignorance. I’ve continued to wrestle with issues of individuality and conflict. I’ve struggled to reconcile being proud of my heritage and disagreeing with Israel’s actions. In my family, where dinner conversations often turn political, I’ve recalibrated my views—now that I have friends in the region, the political is personal. A greater awareness of the cyclical misery of drawn-out conflict has made me more committed to social justice and more conscious of the ways in which I act as an oppressor. I view the news with a greater sense of worry and a further desire for accountability—casualty figures in the International section now have names and faces attached. 

I felt an urge to channel this internal dissonance into productive action. I sought organizations that grapple with similar issues at home, and found the Western Justice Center, where I've helped educators create mediation groups in communities across Los Angeles. The attacks on my Jewish identity ringing in my ears, I started the Jewish Students Union at my school to provide a space to discuss what it means to be a Jew in a predominantly Christian community. 

Seeds of Peace gave me a frame of reference. I try to weigh all sides, consider all perspectives, and avoid giving in to popular, overriding movements. I take what I hear, analyze it in the context of where it’s coming from, and balance it with what I know. Seeds provided me with the intellectual independence to choose my own positions, which I continue to draw upon today.

Pilgrimage Project Reflections:

Pilgrimage Project Plan

After meeting with you, I settled on a Pilgrimage idea that would allow me to work on creative, non-analytical writing.  I always find myself turning to the newspaper, to magazines, and to radio talk shows, which is shifting focus outwards for information to fill my free hours instead of reflecting and looking inwards.  Two books that will help me by prompting this inner-reflection are The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and your The Path to Creativity.  Another thing that could be helpful would be for me to change my New Yorker reading habits.  I read (nearly) every week’s issue on Sunday morning, but oftentimes skip the short stories, fiction, and poems if they don’t catch my interest in the first paragraph, and instead focus on digesting the profiles, letters, and political thought-pieces.  Rather than just focusing on “the talk of the town,” I should read through the creative pieces to become better acquainted with this style of writing.

I think that introspective, thought-provoking films that chronicle other people’s journeys into themselves would be helpful, perhaps including Into the Wild, Shawshank Redemption, or The Pianist.

Writing creatively on a schedule is, I think, the best way for me to achieve my goal.  I’ve already had a chance to do this a couple of times, but haven’t been as good about keeping up with it as I should have been.  I want to have a collection of something (not necessarily finished pieces, but just words and stories and reflections about something other than the news or current events) to look over at the end of each month from now until January.  I predict that once I get going, looking back over my written pieces will inspire new ones and keep the process going.  

Pilgrimage Project Reflection #1

The progress that I have made on my pilgrimage project thus far has mostly consisted of journal entries and time spent in isolation critically reflecting on my pilgrimage journey.  My plan is to spend more unstructured time away from outside impetuses and influences like my phone, magazines, the Internet, or family and friends, and instead decompress, unwind, and meaningfully reflect.  I do a daily journal before I go to bed which is a part of this process, as it is alone time where I can put the thoughts I collect during the day down onto paper, and I have also had two very nice, more productive, and longer sessions that are specifically intended for my pilgrimage project.  During these sessions my writing has mostly been self-reflective in a narrative form—recounting the meaningful events of the week, chronicling important conversations, and making connections between my actions and feelings.  I hope that in the future, I can begin to gear some of these sessions away from contemplation and towards free-flowing stories of my own creation that may or may not be connected to specific events in my own life.  I have also made progress in the media-consumption aspect of my pilgrimage project; I focused on reading the pieces of fiction in this past week’s New Yorker, which was an interesting change of pace.  I think that continuing to read fiction and creative writing, to consume movies about introspection and meditation, and to write with emotion will help me on my pilgrimage towards becoming a more adept creative writer.  

Pilgrimage Project Reflection #2
In class today, I worked on the reflection and the inspiration-collecting aspects of my pilgrimage project.  I began class by extending the usual five minute journalling session into a longer 10 minute journaling session where I reflected on my week and otherwise journaled as I do usually.  Since it was the first period early in the morning, I had a bit of struggle focusing my thoughts on my journal because I was still kind of jogging my brain to get my thoughts going.

After I finished journalling, I started to read a new book, which is a memoir, that I thought would be relevant to my own internal reflective writing process, entitled Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance.  I am interested in the subject matter of the memoir, which was an additional impetus for beginning it.  It is an exceptionally written chronicle of one man’s family history and struggles to escape his hillbilly ancestry.  It has a lot of parallels to East of Eden and the idea of self-determination, which I thought made it even more relevant and interesting.  It also chronicles the journey of the author finding himself, so I think it will help me a lot to begin to understand the art of the memoir and of self-reflection.

Pilgrimage Project Weekend Reflection #2

I did not make very significant progress on my pilgrimage project this weekend because of a family member being diagnosed with a serious illness, which diverted most of my attention away from schoolwork.  I did, however, find some refuge in my journal, which allowed me to get my thoughts down and remove some of the burdens I felt were building up inside my head.  It was a wonderful release to write with no sense of direction or purpose but to simply chronicle the many different worries, hopes, and feelings.  I will revisit these entries later to contextualize and compile them, and I am hopeful that they will provide a snapshot into my psyche at a particularly trying point in time.

Pilgrimage Project Final Reflection

Over the course of this semester, I have worked on journaling and creative writing.  The inclusion of a daily journal in our Literature of the Pilgrimage course was the first step I took towards regular journaling, and became a wonderful incentive for me to take a more pronounced look at how similarly meditative practices could positively impact my day-to-day life.  When we had to settle on a project that we would pursue during the course, I initially thought about doing something well within my comfort zone, such as original analyses of news stories or persuasive writing.  However, upon meeting with Ms. Hume, I decided to do something that I knew would challenge me more, and we settled on creative writing.  I discovered the intersection of my two pilgrimage foci when I realized that I could use my journal as a type of “running notebook” to jot down ideas and thoughts that I could later turn into stories.  My journal was also a place of introspection and self-analysis, and in thinking critically about my own actions and experiences I found myself thinking similarly critically about the characters in the books I was reading and films I was watching.  My initial plan was to spend one weekend per month sifting through the ideas I had in my journal, compiling them, and turning the best ones into stories.  Though I was not able to keep to this rigid schedule, I did end up creating four creative stories, about myself and about made up characters, that came about as a result of my journalling ideas.  Two stories were in response to prompts I found online (one from Ms. Hume at Cultural Weekly and one from a random creative writing prompt website), one was an extension of an exercise we did in class, and one was a reflective piece about an experience of my own that also responds to the prompt from Cultural Weekly.  I actually ended up using two of the pieces I created (in modified forms) as college essays, so my pilgrimage project had a metaphysical and also a very tangible impact on me this semester.  

All of the writings I created during my pilgrimage project are results of transcribing my ideas into my journal.  My experience with regular journal writing wasn’t only helpful for creating pieces for my project; journalling also helped me center my being during the stressful college application period and while coming to grips with my grandmother’s illness.  Meditative sessions were additional steps in my self-pacification and reflection journey.  

Though my pilgrimage project was supposed to be only about creative writing, it ended up showing me the very real value of journalling.  My project helped me meet academic requirements (by being a place to capture footage for this project and inspiring two college essays), organize all of my thoughts (in a very chaotic time for me and my family), and record crazy ideas and inventions.  Most of all, journalling helped me become more conscious of my inner-self and my place in the world.