This is Zemirah, a storytelling, bookbinding, puppeteering, torch-bearing denizen of the visionary earth. For many of us, as we grow up, the world dulls: colors fade, shapes flatten, and magic withdraws into the veins of the trees and the bellies of the stones and is locked there, perfectly forgotten. Magic is like muscle, or skill, or love, or memory; you use it, or you lose it. But it is very lucky for us all that some, like Zemirah, never cease their magic, or give up the sun, and the breadth of their creative action broadens, excluding nothing, like the rain which falls evenly upon all things.
Zemirah is a locust of creation at our school; she sews and draws, weaves narratives with her friends in the Table-Top Role Playing Coop, and submits herself to the rigors and delights of improv. She speaks with conviction, and listens intently. She is a kind and very thoughtful friend. She says, “you’ve got to look for what lights you up. In conventional school, you’re supposed to try to impress the system, by doing what it wants, because that’s what’s important – to the system. At this school, I am what’s important. I can do what I want to do, what makes me happy. It doesn’t mean I don’t do math, or I don’t write, but that’s not going to be what I focus on. In public school I wasn’t good at that stuff because I’m dyslexic; tests stressed me out immensley, if I didn’t do my homework, I would be scared to go to school. Here, I am good at the things I do, and I do them confidently, and I get better at them all the time.”
She goes on: “Since I’ve come to Sudbury I have an entirely different view on voting, and who’s responsible for things. When you’re very young, you assume your parents are right, and you agree with them, and you’d vote for whatever they vote for. But now I understand I am capable of learning and thinking and making my own decisions, and if I want to see something done I can do it.” You see? I told you she is visionary, and alive, and alert. Zemirah, we are truly honored to have you here, and so grateful to you for sharing with us the richness of the worlds you create with your eye, and your hand, and your heart.