Short Story and Hidden Evolution

Short Story
A boy walks down an abandoned trail.  It's quiet, only his foot steps and the wind can be heard.  Fall time is here, and the trees and the ground are vibrant in hues of orange and amber.  Once plump in for the summer, the trees now shed pounds to fatten the ground.  Walking along this scene, the boy keeps hearing sounds in the distance.  A snapping twig on his right, a wounded animal on his left.  One after the other, he turns his head towards the source, only to just miss their presence.  The wind begins to pick up.  The trees begin to wheeze, their leaves start to dance and twirl.  Twisting and turning, forming, the leaves shift from random to sequential, and move around the boy as a troupe of cyclones.  Clanking and clonking, they rise up and down along the path like a bunch of bullies.  The leaves soon begin to form patterns.  The boy recognizes this at once and begins calling out their outlines in his head.  It's a game of "I spy" with nature as the narrator.  First, he spots a large lion's head, then a flock of of birds.  The cyclones merge together to form a wall, or a canvas as the boy would like to think.  Shapes immediately begin to appear in the thick brush.  A tire swing, a car, the grand canyon, and maybe a house.  The images go away and multiple types of clocks appear.  Two wall clocks on the left, two pocket watches on the right, and a large grandfathers clock in the middle.  The grandfathers clock belches a violent chime and the leaves cave over each other forming a waterfall.  Out of the center of the waterfall walks out a leaf doppelganger of the boy.  The boy stares at this makeshift mannequin and it stares back.  They acknowledge they are the same.  Moments later, an adult leaf-man walks out of the same foliage waterfall and places his hand on the boy's head. The leaves blow off the adult to reveal a flesh-toned young man in his thirties.  The makeshift boy explodes into a random assortment of leaves, and the waterfall ceases to be.  The young man walks towards the boy.

Hidden Evolution
Contradictions.  Everyday, I change my mind on how I should act, what I should do, and how I should do it.  The day I stop contradicting myself, is the day I die. Life is a perpetual equation of ideas of the past and experiences that might change current pretenses or solidify its undertaking. Evolution does not stop at the physical, it only began there. I once read that "we've limited ourselves as the top of food chain, and thus, stopped evolution in its tracks."  I don't believe this.  Everybody is constantly evolving, be it their physical persona or mental state.  We continually stride to understand our surroundings and adapt ourselves to its will. Yesterday, I might have toast after reading an article about the benefits of wheat, but today I eat beets for its defensive ability against cancer. The material we digest results in the behavioral changes we proclaim and encompass. Reading a book might change one's mind about drugs, or open a door way to a more sustainable life. Ideas are power, and the better presented, the better used. Evolution hasn't stopped, it's just taking different channels.  Through literature, film, and stills, ideas can be presented in multiple mediums that can speak to the masses.  One by one, we find what works for us, and use it like a medicine. Prescribing daily to its doctrine.  We take information and evolve it to fit our own understanding. Our minds then disseminate its meaning to further its own agenda. We use analogies for comparisons to complete the sentences we once started. Evolution has not stopped. It's only buried, and wrapped up in our brains.

Summer Camps and Cyclic Love

Summer Camps
I never went to a summer camp.  I remember begging my parents to let me go, but they would not hear anything of it.  Maybe it got in the way of our family vacations, or maybe it got in the way of yard work my dad had planned for me.  Anyways, I feel like I missed out on a lot of adolescent development. Yes, I agree there is a natural course for things to work themselves out, but a catalyst would have always been welcomed. Even if it was an atomic wedgie or getting tea-bagged by the counselor. Maturity comes in many forms, from second base with Becky to victoriously climbing the tallest tree, then falling out and breaking your arm.  It comes with pain, embarrassment and glory.  Camp offers a healthy dose of all these things.

Anyways, I'm currently working on a new script with a friend and it's about summer camps. Since I've never gone to one, I've had to research. Watching movies, playing pranks on co-workers, and referencing vocabulary that just doesn't register for the average adult.  It's been a fun trip, and I'm still enjoying it.  For a preview, I've added a short description of two of the many characters I'm currently shaping.  Also if you have any good camp stories, please post them!!

Maggie:
She's 12 years old and idolizes her older sister.  She watches her everyday, jealous of her stage 4 areolas and punk rock shirts.  She's a rebel at heart too.  She wants to meet people outside her boring town; cool people just like her sister.  She finds out about summer camps. Here's a place she can fit right in with the older girls without her sister standing in the way. She'll mature, and learn all the Ins and Outs of boys and their ways.  Camp starts, but not everything goes according to plan.  She tie-dies things when she gets upset.

Simon:
Simon is your typical nerdy guy.  Fluent in obscure alien languages and pre-cuts his underwear before heading to school.  He finds out about a camp outside of town where he might have a chance to be cool.  He signs up, starts working out, and gets immediately ridiculed the first day of camp.  His best friend gets taken under the wing of one of the jock and becomes a bully. Simon learns a lot about himself, even gets some action.  His big comeback involves challenging the biggest jock to a game of ping-pong, one game that nerds can succeed.


Cyclic Love
It all started with a kid's game.  That game where you pick up a beautiful flower and remove the pedals merrily chanting "They love me, they love me not".  Slowly, one pedal at a time, the flower is transformed into a useless weed, lost of desire and enchantment. It was at the early age of eight or so we started preparing ourselves for a vicious cycle we did not quite understand.  How everything starts with a bang and ends with a crash.  A type of cyclic love, flower to flower.  It begins with something great, several weeks of excitement and getting to know each other.  This is very similar to the blooming of a flower in the Spring.  Then something happens, you either settle, and plant your roots, or start looking for faults.  And one by one, contemplating love and hate,  you pluck away until you have no beauty left. "They love me, they love me not".