The thing about camp is that time just flies! It just whizzes right by you — it seems like the first day of camp will never arrive, and then it’s right there in front of you, all the smiling faces and pranks and poems and feelings and costumes and then you’re exhausted and the altitude is so much but also you’re hungry and SO ALIVE. Today we had to leave the mountain and therefore there is a heart-shaped hole in our bodies where hugging each other all the time used to be.
So: we made bow-ties, tie clips, flower garlands, metal jewelry, Chingona crafts and an entire ‘zine in a day. We did rock yoga, meditation, canoeing, archery, self-defense, Voguing, Beyonce’s Dance Grooves and Lit Challenges. We got better at songwriting, safer sex, makeup, traveling, cheerleading, sexting, rapping, kink, tantric sex and interior design. We talked about interracial relationships, gender, mental health, queer motherhood, coming out later in life and bisexuality. We did all that and so much more. You smiled until your heads fell off your faces and we laughed like kids and you pranked the shit out of each other and we played on teams that were all part of a family. WE HAD FUN.
This year at the Staff Reading I read an essay that I wasn’t sure would work, out of context, but it felt appropriate because it was about a lot of things, like trying to take myself seriously as a writer, mostly, but was also about the night I realized that if I wanted to live, I had to decide to live, and do life-like things such as “take care of myself” and “appreciate all the reasons to stay on this planet.” It was frightening to realize that all of it could disappear in an instant for no reason at all. A-Camp is a big one of those things I think about when I think about living consciously, you know? You always remind me why it’s important to wake up every day and decide to live and do this work. I mean, I’m exhausted and also I have acquired some kind of plague but all I can think about is YOU STRANGE GENIUSES AND HOW MUCH WE MISS YOU.
This thread will exist for us to process our post-camp feelings and try to extend those warm A-Camp feelings for another minute. What was your favorite part of A-Camp 5.0? Besides those amazing pancakes, of course. Also have you seen this hashtag or this hashtag. You people are so weird.
