Some Photos

Rebirth

8 days until AP United States History Exam.
11 days until AP Biology Exam.
13 days until art project due.
14 days until Spanish project due.
15 days until Math and English Exams.
18 days until the start of mini-term.
22 days until the end of mini-term.
23 days until SUMMER BREAK!

The promise of summer that is sung by the birds, dripping off in water droplets from the green foliage on the trees, hanging in the air with the sweet scent of golden sunshine…it is the only thing that is keeping me going strong. Without the change of seasons, I would be lost.

Freight

A Short Story
of invisible hope…

Nothing was fun anymore. Pippa had known this. For months she knew. For years she knew. She pushed this knowledge away with an upturned nose and a defiant sniffle. She was too strong for anything to get to her; she could deal. She could deal, she could deal, she could deal, she could deal, she could deal, she could deal…
That night she drove home in the nostalgic dark that comes after a splendid sunset. The kind of dark that mourns its own obscurity, that pines for Helios and Apollo and his sparkling ivory chariot, that casts a million wishes upon a million stars, that covers the world in its chill, dying hope. Pippa was like the dark.
She began crying on the highway. Her sobs were loud and obnoxious and she was glad that she was alone. Her face began to tingle violently. Everything had failed. Pippa had failed.
A CD played on low volume. The track name: Roundabout by Yes. The music vibrated like the murmurs and whispers of everyone she’d ever known: her old friends, her parents, her brother, her cousins, her mailman. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she felt sure they weren’t aware of her presence. Her friends skipped happily along the piano solo, laughing at the half-step fall from one note to the next, never knowing that she was watching pathetically from behind, wishing they would wait for her.
She couldn’t see the people in the cars around her, and she was glad—that meant they couldn’t see her sobs. She didn’t want her sadness on display. Right? That’s how it always was. But a strange, new thought emerged in her mind: she wanted to talk to someone, to wipe her snot on their shoulder, to feel the comfort of another human soul. In the end, Pippa never talked—not to her family, her friends, or herself.
Nearing home, she passed a dilapidated car dealership called Hollywood Motors. A man sat on the front steps smoking a cigarette in the moonlight. Pippa turned away and heaved another sob, wiping her runny nose on her sweater with weak arms. Farther up the road past Hollywood Motors were two overpasses covered in graffiti. One was still in use, but the other had long since been abandoned. The abandoned overpass housed rusty train tracks and an overgrowth of grasses and weeds. Someone had painted the word FUCK above a cartoon depiction of a dove along the side wall.
Pippa turned the corner and faced the overpass directly. She heard a low, earthy rumble and then a loud crash as the front of a steam train erupted from the word FUCK, seemingly from inside the grimy, industrial railway. The large chunks of concrete disappeared into the night as the glowing train made its way over the air towards her.
She wiped her eyes and squinted so that she could see more clearly. The train was missing several wheels and the windows were cracked open and the metal was chipped and dented beyond repair. From inside the windows came the most brilliant gush of yellow light she’d ever seen. It was as if this crumbling ghost train carried the sun itself inside its walls. Sunlight dripped over the sides like paint, shot out the steam cap like water, and pierced every glass window with swords so that it shattered, its pieces vanishing in midair like the concrete chunks. The train sped up, gathering momentum as it whooshed above her car, and more and more light invaded the dark air until everything was lit in an eerie neon glow like a prolonged flash of lightning.
She blinked and it was gone.
That night Pippa took a walk. The light was everywhere she looked. It leaked from her fingers and toes and flew, shimmering and fairy-like, from her mouth as she breathed out. Her radiance cast strange shadows in the crevices of the trees, in the overhanging branches that were wet with the dew of an unpassed storm, in the cracks of the sidewalk, in the shallow ravines of her hands.
The moon hung suspended in the sky, wavering between the clouds like a puppet, and all the trees’ arms and fingers grasped fruitlessly for its dull light, unaware that the sun itself was creeping through the soil, the roots, the branches…
Nothing was fun anymore, Pippa knew. So she turned back home and cried herself to sleep, her tree fingers grasping for the dull light of moon through the window, unaware that she held the sun itself in her body.

Dedicated to Amira, who actually reads my blog

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.
-Pericles

I think everybody wants to be remembered for something good. Am I wrong? The fact that so many people pass in and out of existence like shadows, the ash people of Fitzgerald’s Valley of Ashes, is really sad to me. But then we have to ask ourselves: did they really just live and then die? Perhaps there was more to them than we think. We just don’t see it because our thread of live is not interwoven with theirs. But this is, I think, the only way that I can conceive of a “soul”. To me the soul cannot be a physical entity, something that is left behind after one dies. It can only be the impact of ones actions in the world. On other people, other places, other things. It can only be the memory of yourself that remains after you’ve passed on.

Take all the famous people in history. We remember them. Why? Because they did things. Sometimes they did good things, other times they did bad things. But the point is, the reason that they are still with us in this world is because their actions had an impact on others. Is that, therefore, what we should strive for?

Jack London said: I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

How beautiful. Everyone should think about what they want to get out of life, what moves them, makes them happy, makes them feel truly alive and on fire like London’s beautiful comet… because surely there is more to life than just existing!

Store Wars: Attack of the Clones

Yes, you read that right. STORE WARS: ATTACK OF THE CLONES. Nowadays there is a Walmart, K-Mart, Target, or Walgreens (or all four) in almost every town in America. There are more than 3,900 Walmarts in America, and America is about 3000 miles across! That’s too many Walmarts, not to mention the number of other big box stores. What’s wrong with this? Big Box stores are just not interesting. They have almost identical inventories. We stop by them to get something that you can get at one of the others. There’s a little variation–Walgreens has a smaller inventory as it is a drugstore, not a all-you-can-buy blowout store. Target seems to be a tidbit higher class than Walmart, and Walmart higher than K-Mart. At least where I live. 

But seriously, these stores are like big huge monsters that have descended upon our Earth and are slowly but steadily destroying all hope of healthy diversity throughout cities, suburbs, and small towns alike. How does one fight big huge monsters? Big huge monsters that have millions of loyal clones, billions of powerful dollars, and are like vacuums that suck workers, companies, and shoppers into its vortex of cheap goods that come at an extremely high hidden cost. 

Doesn’t it seem like, nowadays, everything has high hidden costs? Or a hidden something. In the capitalist consumer industry of America, I feel like there is extremely little transparency. We don’t know where things come from, and it’s almost impossible to find out. We don’t know how worker’s are treated, where they get their goods, how they get their goods, how the goods are transported to the store, how they are addressing environmental concerns, etc. Of course marketing will tell you that they’re doing good. But marketers are excellent at lying. It’s like they’re taking a big towel, sopping wet with truth. And they take this towel and squeeze all of the truth/water out of it. What’s left is a cozy, warm, fuzzy towel that everyone is attracted to. What I mean, is, the essence of the thing is still there, but the details are not. 

Transparency should be a right of all consumers. We should all know exactly how companies, governments, institutions, etc. are conducting their business. And marketing should not be feeding this information. Journalists can sometimes do a great job on exposing an institution…but they can also go into their research with a clear bias, and come out with an expose that is “shocking” and coated with the author’s tone, style, and personal beliefs. What we need, I think, are facts. That are easily accessible. That are presented to you, on the product, in the product, or on the website, at the store center, etc. 

Would this ever work?

Rough Draft, Titles?

Untitled

I.
You know you’re going to die soon.

II.
The trees on the winter spiced horizon
Become blotches of cinnamon brown paint
Spread passionately, or carelessly—you cannot tell—
Into the canvas of sky. So things fade into one,
Ghost-like and sinking deeply into the frost-bitten ground,
Pressed by the drippings of ice white paint above.

III.
The flesh deteriorates, and you know you’re going to die soon.
If soon is a year away, or a day, you cannot tell,
You threw away the clock, possessed by some
Urge to just
Live.

IV.
Sounds, thoughts, memories fade, lost in a maze–
You too, cannot find your way out.

V.
You think you’re going to die soon.
People begin to comment on your fading youth,
The dying of a light that burned behind your eyes.

VI.
The sooner you realize you’re not dead yet,
The trees may fight against the ice and rise,
From the ground, with triumphant smiles
That you can hear from the other horizon.

Forgive me that I’m obsessed with the sky.