Dreams
Copyright of Dallas Clayton (one of my favourite artists)
I’ve always had an affinity for stories. That interlocking of words—words that alone are ratty threads of no extraordinary splendour, but together weave a tapestry of unparalleled beauty—has fascinated me since a young age. My dad, a self-proclaimed history buff, used to regale me with tales spanning the centuries; Gustave Eiffel and his contribution to France’s landscape; Napoleon’s exile and shameful defeat; the Aztecs and their advanced civilization; the scandal and outrage of Henry VIII’s turbulent matrimonial history. He had a way of bringing those dusty corners of the long-forgotten past back to life, delighting my imagination with images of human struggle and conquest, of bloodshed and victory, of gore and beauty.
Living in one of the most historically rich continents on earth, I got to tread in the footsteps of those characters my father breathed life into, learning from the water-stained façade of Venice’s buildings, the geometric intricacies of Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia, and the well-worn floors of Empress Sisi’s Schönbrunn palace in Vienna. These snapshots of history, something most people only ever get to read about, invoked in me a passion for uncovering and discovering the stories of the human odyssey that history so aptly has to offer. This passion transposed itself into an unquenchable love for reading, a hobby-turned-obsession that made me who I am today. My mind was first creakily nudged open by Barbara Park’s Junie B. Jones, then carefully propped a little wider by J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, until finally my brother, who was in high school at the time and four years older than me, flung the door wide open by lending me his own IB curriculum books. Books such as Ishmael, 1984, Animal Farm and Into the Wild trickled into my conscience, broadening my worldview and introducing me to new ideas that I had never even paused to consider before. Soon my bedside stand became an amalgam of historical fiction, memoirs, textbooks, dog-eared (thrice-read) novels, and second-hand books. And the stack continues to grow and evolve according to my tastes. It is this initial hunger for knowledge, for words and meaning and the philosophies of a diversity of authors that drives my love of learning. By reading, I became a writer. And by writing, I push my learning past its limits. As one of my favourite authors, F. Scott Fitzgerald, once said, “You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say”. And that is what I have always strived for.
By taking that love of history my father passed down to me, along with some of the lessons I learned from reading, and tying it up with my passion for writing, I hope to be a catalyst for change. I want to not only discover the stories of people, but I want to be a storyteller—I want to be the voice for those who cannot speak or for those that don’t know how. I dream of hiding in the frontlines of war, hurriedly jotting down notes on a discarded scrap of a propaganda poster I found stuck to my shoe, trying fervently to catch everything for the piece I am going to write. Most little girls would dream of being a famous singer, a lawyer, a doctor, but I have always wanted nothing more than to be present at the brink of what is happening. I want to bring to light issues that are often overlooked or distorted by the media and allow for people to connect to the humanity beneath all of the messy politics and bipartisan bickering. I dream of risk and danger for the sake of a worthy story, for the sake of bringing salvation to the minority that had lost hope so long ago. I want to be a part of history. I want to help shape the story of the human odyssey and maybe document it on the way, so that someday, a little girl can be told by her father about another young girl who used her passion for writing to bring aid to hundreds.