worry

I am not one to get stressed. In fact, I've hardly ever really been frantically stressed like many people I know. Of course, I always have about ten million minor worries, but I've never been the sort to freak out over a big assignment - just complain internally a little and then go with the flow.

But recently it hit me that I only get one chance to get into a good college and if I don't then well I could be screwed. And it hit me pretty hard and painfully and so I said, my goodness I have to get straight A+s by the end of this year to make sure I get into a good one. I have to do well on every assignment, study for every test until I know everything, and revise every paper over and over again until it is right.

I got an 82 on a test/quizthing the other day and almost swore aloud when I saw it in the middle of class. (And I never swear.) Then every time I thought about it I wanted to cry and was angry with myself and angry with the teacher for not having even explained more than just a little bit about what the test was on. And I know it should be put in the past because there is no other place for it.I'm just so worried. These fears make me obsessive and this obsession makes me compulsive and that's where I get to the very unpleasantness of the thing. I feel unprepared. I feel like getting into college is like a chess-game, in which a good player has to plan his every move far in advance in order to come out victorious. I am remorseful over the Bs and one shameful C that I got in freshman year, two years ago. In fact, I am remorseful over every B that has appeared on my report card all throughout high school, and angry that they have not only made an occasional appearance, because I mostly get A's with two or three B's. The blind ambition to get a row of grades above 94 on my year's-end report card is stressful.

But I realized that the schools I want most to go to are so selective, accepting usually less than 30% of their applicants, sometimes a lot less. I didn't know this before! I didn't know those were the ones I'd pick! How was I supposed to know, so far in advance? It seems like I should've known freshman year to get high grades to get into all honors tenth grade classes to get recommended for eleventh grade IB classes, of which in eleventh grade now I have none. At least I'm not going to mess up next year. It's going to be my most challenging schedule yet with APs and IBs and other such things. And then I worry that it will be a lot of work and I'd fall behind which I cannot under any circumstances ever do ever.

I've been so harrowed about it lately. For example, I got home from school today and read a letter from the school that got send to my house concerning a change in school uniform. See, usually, seniors are allowed to wear pastel colored blouses with no sweater or vest, while the rest of the students are made to wear plain white blouses with sweaters/vests over them. But next year seniors will be able only to wear blue shirts with a sweater or vest over them. I burst out crying. Yes, it is mightily disappointing to face another year of boring uniforms when I had looked forward to a little less dulness, but it's no reason to start sobbing. Really I wasn't in such a fit of nerves because of the uniform change but rather because of the stressfulness of all this and worrying about the mistakes I made in the past with not having gotten the best grades I could've gotten, and the imperative need to get the best grades now. And I know I'm not even applying to colleges for another, what, seven or eight months? But like I said, it feels like I had to start earlier than I am starting now with everything planned out just so to ensure success.

Success. It makes me jealous. My cardinal sin is fear and one of the many things of which I am afraid is failure. Fear leads me to jealousy and I envy those who strive to do their best all the time and who have planned since freshman year and who did take all those IB classes and who do get straight A's all the time. I'm jealous. I'm jealous and it's not good, for I should instead be motivated for myself without the poison of jealousy slipping in.

a child's spring

we are
yellow daisies in
sunning fields and our
hands are covered with ice cream.
we are
running high and fast through dreaming lands
and covering shade with the shaded hourglass
of time, it moves and we are
done before we know it and our
hands hold messy flowers and my
lips are parted in wonder when I
hold the seaglass up to the light.
I'm done
and the day is young
like we are extravagant,
and we are pretending, cheeks rouged.
why, my
high heels clip-clop along the dance floor
and i, i, I am wondering
we are
dreams of clouds kept; wispy-lockets
worn as keepsakes
shown to friendly faces,
we are.
newborn and delighted
to see the world, to learn to fly in
sunning fields, we are
yellow daisies.

cheers to the transcendentalists

Which writer has most influenced my own writing? It doesn't take long to decide on Thoreau in the lead, followed by a cast of fellow transcendentalists and preceding romantics from the nineteenth century back to the 1700s. But it is definitely a lot of transcendentalism. It's odd how I end up incorporating transcendentalism into - everything. Evidence: my research paper (theme: return to nature) and a paper on a poem by a British writer that is due tomorrow. "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" is one of my favorite poems by itself, but it just so happens that Yeats, in writing it, was influenced by Walden.

Yes, so, I love the transcendentalists. They are my favorite. They seem like one of the most joy-loving of the literary movements. (Thoreau - my favorite of 'em! - said, "Surely joy is the condition of life.") And so they have really influenced my writing quite a bit. As surely as one can look at a roaring drunk and say, "He's been at the wine cabinet again," one can look at me when I get especially lofty and say, "Oh, she's been at the transcendentalists again."

It is due to them that I came to make use of "Would that we..." and "Not to be [this], but instead to [insert lofty ideal here] - to be [adjectives like free, wondering, etc. etc.]." I've even slipped in a "would fain" every so often. And while it is Tolkien who was first responsible for my putting dashes between the parts of compound words (rose-bush... fence-post... counting-house, etc.), it is the transcendentalists who were mostly responsible for my trips of imitative lofty speech that come in quite a bit, in addition to my obsession with past groups of writers that started with the gravity of the transcendentalist "circle" in Concord. I owe a lot to them, really.

day of silence

I didn't plan on participating in the Day of Silence today. But then I came to school and said, Why not? So I donned a little blue ribbon and kept quiet all day. I only slipped up a couple of times with things like "Yes" to a teacher's question and "Thanks" when someone moved his bag so I could sit down. Other than that it was silence.

It was interesting. Being quiet made my perspective seem stilled. I felt kind of separate. I thought about the separateness - it was quite distinct - and. I understood. That many people feel that sense of being separate from everyone around them, at work, at school, constantly. It wasn't bad for one day, but I couldn't stand it for longer.

I think that was the purpose. For me. To understand a little better.

the counting-house

I really like this one. I wrote it around December, so I hope it's okay to still post in here.

"i live in a counting-house,"
said old sir.
with walls of iron steely-paint,
tripping, snagging on the stairs.
clankcla nk clank go the grem-vats
with the fog fitter skitter on the bare
black rug
and the counting for the chain-wrench
never never never never st o - p
...s.
clocks ticker ticker down the stair when goes left
find little tickers in your mind
fetter fetter fetter and the heart-welch chain-belt
goes never never never stop.
little steam-belt best-spelt lockey,
clicks shut best left understated
little little chain on the counting-house
rattle rattles never st o - p
...s.
"and i work in a counting-house,"
say the little fetters on sir's wrists!
stays cold the revolutionary, he goes
and he goes down the stair.

the writer's goal

I hate analyzing. Analyzing writing, especially poetry, is something that really, really irks me. It's like dissection to me. Making incisions in a dead body that used to be inhabited by a living thing has always been cruel. It's horrific. Analyzing a poem is not so harsh, but it seems like one is sucking the life out of it for "intellectual" purposes.

I am wary of intellectualism. Too often, it seems, it approaches things as though the world were objective: as though we were merely scientific, functional things, instead of spiritual beings. Objectivity? I plead for your passion instead. Exclamations or silences or - my preference: just a moment - about the beauty of something like "evening full of the linnet's wings".

One does not analyze the sunset sky; one looks at it and is filled with beauty. I think that that is the writer's goal: not to be put on a pedestal or inside a glass case for bespectacled academics to poke and prod at like a poor butterfly pinned by its wings - but rather, for the words to be still alive throughout the ages, seen and beauty-inspiring; to inspire the wisdom of the future, recall that of the past, and capture in elegance or candor that truth of the present time. That is my goal, at least.

fear, sin and silence

Poisonous, treasonous, heresy
Motivation, jealousy.
I am suspicious, and unknowing
While turning which-way ends forever
Into a mind of tangles twisting
Through the plummet-gate of fear.
A weary hand may touch the dark
But staring through the sky, I, harboring
jealousy, faithlessness, compulsion -
Earn my life's salvation from
a lonely, wayward, singing lark.




The same as the last piece (obviously) done in metaphor. ;P

flawed

My cardinal sins are jealousy, faithlessness, and compulsion. They are really all one: fear. Fear could be my mortal sin. It is consuming, painful, confused, doubtful, shocking, and any number of things. I am afraid of dying and so I am afraid of living. I am afraid of believing and so I have trouble with faith. I am afraid of not getting recognition and so I am often poisonously jealous of those who do get recognition. The last venial sin, compulsion, is a feeble, ineffective, and yet also consumptive way of fending off the knawing fear.

But it is remarkable how much a wonderful thing can make me, in a light and dancing moment, feel forgiven of all my sins. And then the mortal sin of fear realizes that it is mortal, and dies.

spygirl

I love to observe people. I like to think that I am an excellent eavesdropper. I sit in cafés and places and listen to others' conversations sometimes. I know that many people would think this creepy and stalkerish, but I don't do it to be a stalker - I spy because people are so interesting. I want to know what they have to say. I want to know their opinions. So I listen to the Italians at the bread shop who are talking about their most recent trip back to Italy. And the Japanese couple wearing matching olive drab coats, but each with a bright strand of Mardi Gras beads around their necks, at the ice cream shop with pretty paintings on the walls, talking to a baby. They're very interesting.

reluctant

I think that if I were ever to be a hero, I would be a reluctant hero. (You know, like Aragorn.) One who just wants life to go on simply and contentedly - not to live in a state of mindless bliss, but rather, to do what one wants to do, have one's own adventures, be independent, and have things remain simple. But this person feels duty-bound to something else - a great cause - and really wants someone else to save the world, but who then feels guilty about pushing responsibility upon another, and does not want to see the world or its people come to harm... Yes, I'd be a reluctant hero, if a hero at all.

I'm not a good leader. But I don't want to be a supreme leader. That does not mean that I want to be a follower, for to follow is not part of my nature. Rather I like to lead myself and walk my own path and if some friends want to walk with me, then yay.

But sometimes I worry that maybe someday, my own life would be disrupted by duty, that I would have to lead a crusade to save something dear to me. One should think that saving something dear would not be a burden. Maybe I'm just horribly lazy. Or terribly selfish. Or both.

Maybe it's just that I do things either all-out or not at all. I ricochet between extremes. Because I am afraid the middle will not be enough and I'll be self-accused of not having passion enough to be extreme. But then the obligation of being extreme comes back to harangue me and I feel like I am thrown up into a whirling and noisy - yet still - state, not knowing what to do.

I look at nature and am calmed, and believe, and know. A day in nature makes me feel as though I could be taught everything worth knowing by nature.

But then the electric whirlwind hits and I am worried. scared. That I'll have to protect what I hold dear to me and will not be up to the challenge, not wanting to lead, just wanting to do my own thing.

The thing is, I feel like - theoretically - I should save the world. But I do not want that responsibility. And I know that it is crazy to even think of taking on all things like that by myself because such a thing is impossible (and I don't even believe in impossible). I don't like to work with others, I like to work alone. I like to do my own independent thing. I am worried that someday I would be duty-bound. I am worried that I would sever all attachments in favor of a life of my own ambition and pleasure, doing nothing for the world or the people around me. I love the world and its people so, but I prefer small acts of kindness. (Like in Amélie.) Am I lazy, selfish, or is that just me? Is there something wrong?

This probably makes no sense to anyone but me.

modernity?

I am terrified by some people: the people who seem more like robots than humans; they have put their minds to technological advances and turned their vitals to steel and their veins to wires. Where are their hearts? - they must be in there somewhere. I do not understand how some people can look at the pristine Arctic and see a place to drill for oil, when I look at the same place and see heaven.

But am I a hypocrite? Do I not drive a car fueled by fossil fuels that were drilled from the ground in some other region? It is scary to trace the things that you use every day, thoughtlessly, back to their origins. (That's why I'm a vegetarian, for one thing.) All I want is for humans to remember their innocence, and the innocence of the world. I look at some people and am frightened by them: I wonder, when, where, why did they lose their innocence? Or did they ever have it at all? If not, why?

It is strange to think that New York City - crazy, massive, intimidating, concrete, sharp glass - was once forest-land, as peaceful as any present-day forest. I am sometimes torn between how things used to be and how they are. How they used to be sometimes seems more innocent, but sometimes not. One cannot look at the 1800s as only winding dirt paths through pastoral countryside, but must also remember things like bloody coughing tuberculosis ripping loved ones away incessantly - some progress is good, like cures for diseases - and if the internet didn't exist then I wouldn't have met a number of good friends from faraway places... Which way is it?

But I do believe sincerely that humanity is good at heart, and that everyone has a heart, when it comes down to it. I do believe that everyone will save the world over and over again. I do not think that the world has lost its innocence. One simply needs to hear wind-chimes to feel it.

past, present, and future

Nostalgia. It is present in the way the sun brushes white houses with wooden shutters and lush grass in the yard, a crab-apple tree nearby. It is children's laughter. It is our joy. It is the summer-afternoon feeling of childhood, about climbing the mulberry tree, and the water-filled birdbath in the jungle yard; secret passageways; secret worlds. Nostalgia is a dear friend.

It is inspiration. Love of the past, of memories, of the present, of the future in which more extraordinary and miraculous things will be. Nostalgia in the rumbling of carriage-wheels imagined over dirt paths winding through countryside, centuries ago. It does not seem so far away.