#internal reflection

As they should

I’m a senior in film studies, a few months apart from graduating this living hell, and I was just studying philosphy at the school library with my friends, when some second graders we’re cool with enter the room asking for extras, they tell us how they’re doing with the pre-production of their first official short film and holy shit. They’re doing great. Their dinamic as a team, their organization, their energy and even their goddamn catering menu is great. The producer then asks why we aren’t in class, which at that period was “script workshop”

”We watched a movie, talked for a few minutes and then they decided to start playing party games. We decided to bail out” She looks at me like “okay”. All I could tell her was “Third grade isn’t real, we’re not real”. My generation is the first one to take film studies at our current building, we are the first ones to take third grade audiovisuals within our installations and everything that’s happening is completely improvised. (Take note that I’m from Uruguay and there are few places that teach film making, most being private and expensive. Our program comes from a state supported (basically free public college/highschool) audiovisual career that was moved from a larger building to our current one, the ITS. This new place was formely dedicated to other technical courses, the main one being chemistry, which applies to both the installations that are mostly labs, to the conservatives of the administration that think we’re all just plying around and being lazy for doing the artsy stuff)

Which y’know, meant we were guinea pigs, a bunch of people that were in it for different aspirations that ranged from photography, sports journalism, sound people, directors, script writers, actors, and the ocassional “I just wanna finish highschool” people, signing up for a program no one really planned, with subjects that didn’t make any sense and lacking primary subjects such as literature, art, philosphy. Teachers that had never been teachers before and were mostly script writers, film makers (WHICH ISN’T THE SAME, YOU CAN BE GREAT AT SOMETHING AND SUCK AT TEACHING IT) and a gal that was in charge of our base subject that took over 14 hs a week but didn’t know jackshit and we ahd to lecture her plenty of times on how she was being terrible and we weren’t learning a thing (she didn’t learn yet and the freshmen are suffering). And to this day we haven’t had a single decent math teacher. We got the first one kicked out gor being agressive, last year’s teacher failed literally an 80% of the class and just because she decided not to be in charge of the questions we get on our exams, we get the same exact questions as the chemistry students that were also failed from their math teacher who is actually a biochemist, pharmaceutic chemist and nuclear chemist. BUT OH GO FIGURE, SHE’S IN CHARGE OF FLIM STUDENTS TOO NOW

Which meant being subjected to an administration used to chemistry students being mostly chill and quiet and just done with existing (same, guys) and basically told us to fuck off whenever we asked for something like a permit to go shoot outside or just get a classroom to ourselves to shoot there or ask the other teachers to not walk right in front of the camera while we were recording. (Being fair, they weren’t prepared for us. We literally picked up a fight with the cleaning lady because she wouldn’t let us keep a log from a literal tree we had fucking adopted, and when the administration told us we could keep up but we had to take it somewhere else the whole group carried the log outside, three guys holding it up like a coffin and the rest of us just celebrating outside. The log is to this day a resident in one of our classmate’s aparment and a regular star of most short films they’ve made) Nowadays we are seniors and we can look back at the younger grades and realise how fucking improvised were our three years of film studies. We’ve fought the administration into realising our careers weren’t a joke or just lazying around, we’ve fought them into letting us take the cameras outside because filming every single location inside the same building and having every scene with a wall of bricks was so fucking frustrating. We’ve fought teachers into realizing they were abusive, and for those who haven’t learnt we just tell the stressed juniors to get up and leave their class, it wont affect their grades.  We’ve had some amazing teachers, done some amazing things, and had the weirdest fucking times, like literally I’ve seen classmates trading empty vodka bottles before entering class, stealing light tubes to pretend they’re lightsabers, trying to pretend that they’re not high as shit, using balloons as boobs for a whole day and getting not even a glance from teachers, bringing peppa pig toys to class and placing them on a desk in the front row, guns and so much more. But that doesn’t take away how freaking surreal those three years were. We see the kids that just joined in for their first grade, an only a half year into film studies they already know most of the things we were only told about during second grade after months in. They know how to do storylines, hold a camera, use the lights, edit, and are soon gonna learn how to do scripts. That’s a second grade subject. ¿What are they gonna teach them in second grade?, ¿What did we miss?

But ¿why is this hysterical? because I get to look at first graders being all hip and productive and working out their dinamics as a groups, and then the second graders doing amazing things and being mega creative with the same projects we were put to do.

new hearts new bones #23 winter 2017 a fire house collective effort zine

Stryker locks the door himself. He does not trust aides with moments like this. The room is small—bare walls, a single desk, a Bible laid open where it always is. No cameras. No congregation. No echo of approval to buoy his voice.

Only silence.

Stryker loosens his collar and exhales, slower than he means to. God works in mysterious ways. The words feel different without an audience. He sits.

The Bible before him is open to Romans, though he does not remember turning to it.

“Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?”

Stryker closes the book sharply. “No,” he says aloud. “That is not doubt. That is discipline.” His voice sounds thinner than usual. He moves to the sink, splashes water on his face, studies his reflection in the mirror.

For a moment—just a moment—he does not see a shepherd. He sees a man who chose clarity because ambiguity terrified him. Nightcrawler’s voice intrudes uninvited.

Perhaps He created us to see which one of us listens.

Stryker grips the edge of the sink. “I listen,” he says firmly. “I have always listened.” The mirror does not argue. That is worse. He kneels. Not publicly. Not performatively. Privately. The floor is cold through his trousers. His knees protest. He ignores it.

“Lord,” Stryker begins, voice practiced, “You know the burden You have placed upon me. You know the necessary evils I carry so others do not have to.” He waits. Nothing. The silence stretches—not empty, but unresponsive.

For the first time in years, a thought slips through the cracks before he can cage it.

What if I am not burdened? What if I am simply afraid… and calling it duty?

His jaw tightens. “No,” he whispers. “You are not silent. You are testing me.” The words do not settle him. They hover.

He thinks of Nightcrawler kneeling without compulsion. Without certainty. Without needing to be right. That, more than anything, unsettles him.

A faith that does not conquer… A belief that does not command…

Stryker presses his forehead to the floor. “Speak,” he says—not commanding now, but strained. “If I am wrong, correct me.” He braces for thunder. For conviction. For something. What comes instead is memory.

A younger Stryker. A quieter man. Hands shaking as he prayed for clarity and begged—begged—not to be ignored. He remembers the moment he stopped asking questions because answers hurt less. Stryker inhales sharply. For the first time, he does not know if the silence means approval… or restraint.

He rises abruptly, breath uneven. “That is enough,” he says, voice regaining steel. “Faith is not a conversation. It is obedience.” He straightens his collar. Smooths his coat. Rebuilds himself piece by piece.

But when he opens the door, the silence follows him out. Unanswered. Unresolved. Waiting. And somewhere deep within him—buried beneath scripture and certainty and strategy—William Stryker is haunted by a truth he will never admit aloud:

because the things i remember wanting for the future weren’t my things to want….i proclaimed i wanted to be a teacher because my mom was one and everyone told me i should follow in her footsteps. i wanted to be a mother because i helped raise my siblings and everyone told me i would make a good mom (even though the idea of motherhood made my stomach churn even when i was little). i declared my intention to be a good religious follower with the full belief that i might have to die for my faith one day because that’s what the grown ups in my life said might happen.

i have not become what my younger self wanted me to be, because that version of me was the shattered mirror image of everyone’s expectations for me