academics

I have been thinking lately that I might not want to major in English after all. I love reading books to the point of obsession - but I strongly dislike analyzing them. Reading literary criticism just annoys me 95% of the time - it makes me just picture the author either rolling his eyes or snickering at the far-fetched ideas and high-flown language of the critics.

I thought the obvious choice for me was English, because I read and write. But maybe there is a larger gap that I thought between the art of reading and writing and the study of reading and writing. I prefer art to study in every area. It seems like, often, there is an enormous gap between the art of the fiction writer and the careful analytical study of those reading his books in an English class. How many authors of the past would howl with laughter at the thought of their books being studied in classrooms?

Now I'm thinking of what else I could major in, and the thought is freeing. I was always leaning toward a minor or a second major in History, because when the subject of history is hit right I am completely captivated by details of the past and stories about how things used to be. Maybe, journalism, if I go to a college that offers it? I still don't know where I'm going to college.

If I weren't worried about getting a job that I love after college, I might major in philosophy, or more, theology. But there's not much to do with that other than go to seminary, I suppose. And that is something I am most indisposed to do.

I have a love-hate relationship with school, study, and academic things in general, I think. I like to learn. I don't like to learn through analysis, critique, and study. I like to learn through living. With English classes - I love to read. But when it comes time to critique a work of fiction and analyze it into pieces, I feel like the book must hurt from being torn apart so. The analysis and criticism seem to me so far from the dreams, the inspirations, the art behind the writing.

There are no fairies allowed in academia. That is my problem.

a conflict of simplicity

Ellie held a long-sleeved shirt up to her chest. "Mary. How does this look?"

"Too conservative. Why don't you ever wear anything… you know…" Mary held up a sleeveless black V-neck and posed by way of explanation.

Ellie rolled her eyes. "Um – no."

"Well, I like it," said Mary, retreating to the changing room with the black shirt. In a few minutes, she came back out, put the black shirt back on the rack – "Too big" – and picked up instead another T-shirt. She held it up and examined it – clever, she thought – printed across the chest was a sarcastic quip making fun of –

"Since when are you interested in making political statements?" said Ellie.

"I'm not," said Mary. "I just thought it was funny. I wouldn't wear it –" and she put it back onto the shelf, folded haphazardly, slogan hidden by the grey folds of fabric. "Anyway, I'm bored. You ready?"

Ellie nodded and put the long-sleeved shirt back where she had found it. Clutching her purse, she wove through the turning racks of clothes and stepped over discarded shirts in the aisles, feeling relieved when she arrived at the exit. She looked back and watched Mary stride forward, lithe in her tight clothing and tall in her heels, swaying her hips in the artful way invented by trendy clothes stores.

But Ellie smiled when Mary tripped over a sweater lying in the aisle.

-----

Sitting at a café after having shopped all morning, Ellie thought about buying shirts and buying identities, about Mary's four-inch heels and her own three-year-old black Mary Janes. It was fine, she thought, that Mary wore tight clothes, that she flaunted her thin figure – like it was fine that Ellie wore loose shirts and baggy pants and had not combed her hair that morning. What did it matter, anyway?

But she looked across the table at Mary drinking her coffee with non-fat milk and three packets of Sweet & Low, then down at her own cinnamon muffin and whole-milk hot chocolate – and thought about the little black top back in the edgy store – and the liberal T-shirt –

"I should've bought that shirt," said Mary, holding her coffee cup poised perfectly in one hand, the other hand fluttering about in the air. "It was funny."

"It was kind of dumb," said Ellie.

"But funny."

Ellie broke off a big piece of her muffin and ate it.

-----

Driving with Mary was always a little bit of an adventure. The sun glinted off of the other cars whirring by, and beat down through the windshield. Ellie put the visor down and sat back in her seat as Mary sped around a corner and turned up the music.

"I really should've bought that shirt!" said Mary, drumming the steering wheel with her fingers.

"Go back and get it tomorrow."

"Maybe."

Ellie turned her head and looked out the window, at the houses zooming by, colors, white and green and yellow, stretching, zipping past, the wind accelerating, turbulent against the glass.

"You always do that, you know," Ellie said.

"What?"

"Almost buy something, then regret not buying it. Every single time we go out."

"I know. I can never decide if I want something or not."

"But you always decide later that you really did want it."

"Sometimes."

The song on the radio ended.

"Maybe I didn't want the shirt. It was too political."

"I should've gotten that other shirt – the long-sleeved one," said Ellie after a little while.

"It looked kind of nice."

"You said it was too conservative."

"Oh, El – you can't trust what I say, you know."

-----

The sun was setting all in yellow. Ellie and Mary sat together on the cliff overlooking the pond, sharing a lemonade, feeling peaceful as the last light filled the water and flooded up the hill.

"Today was fun," said Mary.

Ellie nodded.

They were silent, sipping lemonade and warm sunlight. Ellie sat with her thoughts, calm, glad, really, to be with a friend. She thought about Mary's high heels, which she had taken off at the foot of the hill – she turned around and looked at them, lonely and dark in the shadows back there.

"I'm glad I didn't buy the shirt," said Mary.

Ellie only smiled.

She sat with a handful of memories – things, times, last year. Pretty soon they would be able to say things like, You remember when we were in high school, and this happened? Kind of strange. Ellie smirked; kind of cliché. But fun anyway.

"Hey. You remember those auction-things they used to do at school?" said Ellie eventually. Mary nodded. "Shopping reminds me of them. People grabbing for clothes and things. Trying to out-buy each other."

"I went to one once. The auctions. It was boring. I left early."

"Well, I never went. But I always imagined them a certain way. People holding up those plaque-things and bidding…"

"They had a big bucket of names and picked a random one."

"Weird… If there had been those white paddles I might've gone. And worn a skirt, you know, and white blouse – and lifted up my paddle –"

Mary laughed. "The students didn't, though – they couldn't bid. Only parents."

"Oh."

"It was boring," said Mary. "You would've hated it."

"Maybe…" Ellie pulled up a piece of grass and fiddled with it in her hands. "I always thought it was kind of weird, those auctions. All snobby with big-nosed ladies sticking up their paddles." Like bristling porcupines. "I thought everyone would secretly hate each other and outbid each other for spite."

Ellie glanced over at Mary – they were both smiling.

"That would've been kind of funny," said Mary.

"Hm."

"But really it was boring. They all wore nice pants, no skirts, no dresses – and sat chatting at picnic tables while somebody pulled the names out."

"I would've liked that, maybe. Picnic tables."

Mary watched a squirrel scuttling up a tree-branch, watched the pond-water ripple as something, a rock?, fell in.

"There was good ice cream once."

"Really?" said Ellie.

"But once, I remember, Jamie's dad went, and he got all mad, at everybody chatting about fashion and manicures and stuff while the names were being called." The squirrel disappeared into a gathering of green leaves. The water stilled. "But he had been talking just as much as them."

"What was he talking about? Pedicures?"

"Politics," said Mary. "He was always talking about politics – you remember…" Ellie nodded. "It was awful. He wouldn't stop. Even when Jamie walked away."

"She was nice – Jamie."

"Yeah."

Mary got up, went down the hill, and got her high-heeled shoe.

"Want to go back inside?" she said. "I just made myself want ice cream."

Ellie looked again at the pond, at the fading yellow of the sky and water, the deep stillness that would fade off into dark.

"Okay. Let's go."

She stood up and dusted off her jeans. Mary carried her shoes, walking away; Ellie started to walk but let herself run, grass sweet against her bare feet, careening down toward the bottom of the hill.

"Yeah," said Mary as Ellie came closer, "I'm glad I didn't buy the shirt."

on today's topic

Love: I said today that it could not be dissected, but a better statement would be that it should not be dissected. If someone says, "I love you," you don't ask why. It just is what it is. Love could be the most anti-intellectual thing there is, and that is what makes it beautiful.

...And difficult to write about. How exactly can one write about love without either waxing sickeningly sentimental or venturing into the terrifying arena of teen angst poetry?

Don't worry, I won't step over into either of the above. I've never been in love, so I have no experience from which to write about romantic love. The only thing I know so far is love for family and love for friends.

Friends - we criticize and make fun of each other, some of us get annoyed with others sometimes, and might fight, silently or verbally. We pass notes in the back of class and snicker over the priceless things that are private jokes - and every so often stumble in on something deep, like tripping through a half-open door, find out a secret, and comfort each other.

Going back to the topic about groups, too: everyone has his own group, circle, of friends, but each group has something in common. The jokes aren't nearly the same and neither are the secrets. But we have the idea, the essence, of friendship in common.

Love is quite obviously everywhere. Today on the ride home I played the Beatles song "All You Need Is Love". On the shelf in the front room sit my two favorite love stories, both movies, "Amélie" and "Benny and Joon". On music CDs all around are countless songs about love, requited, unrequited, in any variety or form or incarnation imaginable.

But it's also there in the arguments, the jokes, the criticism, the arch looks, of friends, maybe, at the bottom of all things. And simply letting love be, not trying to explain it, or analyze it, or pinpoint it - just letting it stay is the best way to avoid both soppy sentimental clichés and whining angst poetry.

taking the jump: waverly

I've been working a lot on Waverly, my novelthing, lately. And today I was typing up the bits I wrote in school today and rereading other parts and the urge slowly rose up in me to post part of it, to put a piece of it out into the world. As I write this I'm actually quite nervous about it. I've been writing Waverly slowly for almost two years so far and no one I know has read it. I dote on it and think about it so much and its mythology has become so real in my mind that it is incredibly close to me. But I also want someone to see it and to maybe say what he or she thinks of it...

So here goes.

This is only an excerpt - a longish excerpt which many people from D Period Creative Writing will probably skip over - but I'd really really like you to read it if you have the time.

Parts of it probably won't make much sense since, before this part, there are about 60 pages of set-up impossible to recap in a few sentences! So don't look for the plot because you won't find it in this wee excerpt. And don't criticize the lack of plot, because there is plot in the whole big story!

Some things to know before you start: Eliza is the main character, rather obsessive, a bit compulsive, and overall terrified of the world and clinging to comfort, but a dreamy nice girl really - May is her sister, sophisticated and living in the city, bold - Chalie is the made-up name of a small mysterious fairylike child who "follows" Eliza in a way. Waverly is the town where Eliza has lived all her life, a miniscule, sea-swept sandy place, basically the landscape of Eliza's imagination.

Phew.


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EXCERPT from Waverly



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Eliza was trying to write. But the pen felt heavy – writing by hand on yellow pages was so rightfully old-fashioned – but her mind was cold and coiled, fuzzy, like a blanket was wrapped around it.

So she wrote the first truth she thought about herself: She was always cold. "Was" or "is"? She felt faintly frustrated, but her mind was so cold inside, too frozen and mumbly to wrangle any thought to the top of consciousness. The pen went down and the paper away.

I am not a writer, she thought, trying out the feel of it.

Maybe I am a waitress, or a photographer, a journalist?, a… librarian…

I am not a writer.

It was fine for a little while. She felt no itch for a pen and no humming ideas willing themselves to be set down. But then her thoughts turned and folded in upon themselves, like they always did, and she was thinking before she comprehended about her own story, about which part was real and which part was not. She pictured the books she had imagined were published and the editor she had imagined herself to have known. She wouldn't have her picture on the dust-jackets. "My name is Eliza May Minton…"

It hurt! She finally picked a sensation from the jumble of muzzy thoughts, and it was just a dull throb of maybe pain. She tried to grasp at it anyway, but it was fading already.

That child – had she imagined the child? The night she had seen her last, a fairy. It had been snowing – but she felt so much colder now than she had then.

Eliza could see the things, she could see the dust-jackets, the brown-haired editor – she looked a bit like May – what about the child? But this was all nonsense, all more mumbling (when would there be something that wasn't mumbling?), all useless theoretical speculation. If she had been really crazy, actually hallucinating, she would have been able to think this jumble of thoughts without any guilt. But she couldn't stop thinking of the smell of Mr. Malchin's bookcase ------

Once May had sat in Eliza's blue chair, in what she called the "drawing-room", and she had said, "You are so reasonable, Eliza. You are so reasonable that you make absolutely no sense." Eliza looked at the empty blue chair now, and thought about how she always thought of furniture as so friendly. "You are so reasonable, Eliza…"

The most important thing was that, if she remembered, Eliza could drop her tangle at any time – but so often she forgot, and fumbled tying feeble knots for occupation, or to keep her hands warm. So cold –

Something thumped against the door. The newspaper – she saw the paperboy riding away on his bike. (If it were warm enough for bikes, why was it so cold?) She unfroze herself and got the newspaper, set it on the table, and suddenly – suddenly everything was fine. A sunbeam rested on the tabletop. The newspaper sat gently; the grey looked warmer in the morning light. Eliza smiled and sat down to read.

What do people do, Eliza thought, to look for something to do? She opened the paper's wings awkwardly and extracted what she never read – Business, Sports were thrown across the table. As she organized the remaining sections in stacks – what she would read first, what she might read, what she would maybe read if there weren't interesting things elsewhere – the table and its sunlight became strewn with newsprint. It made Eliza grin.

She read an article about iguanas, and a piece about curtains. She thought about how funny it was that she sat in Waverly reading words that had each been printed in a city. She scanned a front page feature about a man from – where? – somewhere in the Caribbean, an author – and debated reading the rest on page G-8 or skipping to the letter in the Editorials regarding a painting that had been discovered in the basement of a 200-year-old building, formerly unoccupied.

She thought – what do people do who want to decide something, but who are always cold and have fuzzy minds sometimes? Do they look in the Classifieds?, she joked to herself.

Would tomorrow be like this? Would this very afternoon be the same? It didn't matter, really, did it? The newsprint and the sunbeams had made her drop the tangle. Even a greyscale picture of a candle in the Home section was warming her hands now. She didn't have to go to the sea and let the winds buffet her into waking up, for once.


----------------------



Later, when the newspaper was picked through and read in places, when the morning table-sunbeams were older, Eliza closed the door behind her and stirred the sand with her spring-mud boots.


---------------------



It is like marsh-light, Eliza thought. Swampy, scraggly branches hung with seaweed in the glow-light – outdoor morning in Waverly by the sea. The grainy beach by the miniature cliffs seemed not a part of the town, but a separate space, a way distinctly out-of-way.

The suitcase kept clanging around in the back – curvy roads, gravelly turny roads. Eliza had not driven in a long time – she didn't like it – she didn't like the impersonal metal separating her from the real, lively world outside, not in nature, not in Waverly morning marsh-light. She thought, though, that she would be grateful for the boundary when she got to town.

The next town – the long-way town, so separate from Waverly, not the small town where the high school was, but the further one, the bigger one – she had gotten directions from May. How strange.

She turned a corner and saw a man walking along the side of the road. He had – he had a purple umbrella. Glow-light in the clouds must have meant rain for him, salty cleanly rain. Eliza thought of what would happen, perhaps, if she stopped for him, opened the door and let him sit down – how he would fold and collapse his pirouette umbrella outside then stand it at his feet on the car floor. She drove past and the road turned again.

It was kind of peaceful, alone on the road save for the umbrella-man back behind, in the early lightening air, soft. There was imagination in the moment, anyway. With the clouds and the little mossy soggy cliffs – Eliza felt like friendship, flowing.



----------



The lights were on when she drove in after sunset, late winter sunset in watery clouds. The inn – she had chosen it so – was at the end of the main road, tall and clapboard, old and shuttered – it had to have shutters.

She went in nervously, because she had to talk to the desk-clerk. The clerk had brown hair pinned up in the simplest of buns and smallish eyes – Eliza wondered if they ever opened wide in sunlight.

She never knew what to say to desk-clerks, though. What were the exact proper words, set down somewhere in a manual for her to read? She always forgot every time and when she left she would forget to write down what had worked. So she stumbled over questions a little and came out with, "I came to check in?" – but, Eliza reprimanded herself, of course the clerk – or was she even a clerk – no, a receptionist – already knew that she was checking in –

"What is your name?" Her voice didn't match her face – it was high and chippy – it threw Eliza off of her practiced rhythm. She paused and then recovered.

"Eliza May Minton," she said (like to that agent, well really, the imaginary agent had looked a little like this inn receptionist).

When the receptionist took the room-key off of its hook, Eliza was strengthened by the look of gold, and took the key kindly. And she let herself stay a little and realized she was there. The carpet was nice, and the ceiling was textured in a friendly way. Comfort was here, too, sometimes.

Her room would be her little sanctuary in a different town – she put her suitcase on the floor by the closet and sat on the bed with the flowery antique-sort of walls close around, forming a kind of bower dashed with wood-paned windows, the calm night outside coexisting with the glass. There was harmony, Eliza thought, in the little room. There was a glowing paper lampshade and flourishes on the walls, and she had a key for opening the big brown wood door.


------------------------



Chalie went into the crabapple grove to take off her wings. She lifted them over her head with a graceful movement and hung the wings upon a twisty and dwarfed branch.

In winter, when there were no miniature apples in the grove, the sandy bareness of the ring still felt sweet, still called up the taste of crabapples and the look of the fiddler crabs that scuttled sometimes underneath in summer. Chalie looked at her wings on the tree-branch, how they filtered winter sun, and filled their see-through calm with light-holding.

Begin, she thought. She took from her belt the birch-wand she had made last week and drew a circle in the sand, and scooped a handful of the grains, blew them all around, watching the drift and shimmer.

She looked up at the wings, then at the sky, the mystery. She felt a dream-thrill chase all through her and held the birch-wand close.

In the wing-light, the crabapple grove twirled and fluttered, the sand rose and swirled in child's-breaths. Whenever Chalie looked at the wings, she felt their stir in her feet and she had to skip a little and dance in a circle where the trees were spaced apart. She sung an on-and-off song while she turned around and jumped and touched the edge of the wings once. The wind swept a little whirl and shook some thin knobby branches, ruffled Chalie's clothes and conjured up the sand.

Chalie thought, I dance like the sand, and slowly the wind heaved outward, pulling away, reaching backward. Chalie sat by one of the trees and let herself settle to the ground like the sand and salty smell in the air.

It was magic, it was magic. Chalie thought about seashells and seaweed and driftwood, of wind stirring fancies and trees living in winter, dwarfed by the salty sea air. But, Chalie thought, the crabapple trees were still like kindly little old gentlemen carrying carpetbags. She giggled to herself and twirled her birch-wand absently in her hands, letting her eyes, her sight, drift, her breath flutter.

She thought eventually of her – thoughts always turned toward the story, the make-believe and the locked real, of Eliza. Chalie puzzled a little about it under the crabapple tree, and turned the images and memories of Eliza, the thoughts of what the secret might be, around like a lightwood birch-wand.

Maybe, Chalie thought, Eliza was older than she seemed. Maybe she sat in drapey garments at night and lit candles for a place over the sea. Chalie mused – Eliza's story must have had something to do with the sea. Eliza's way of walking and the sound of her bell voice were somehow like the sea – how, how? She seemed to call, like gulls maybe, and it was strange how swaying her walk looked sometimes; she swayed like the sea but was not sure where she was, like the sea was – Chalie's thoughts drifted in and pulled back like the sighing tide, the trace of the current.

Sometimes, when she thought too long about the sea, the salt made her feel just a little bit sick, and she had to stop and think of leaves. Did Eliza ever feel the same way in Waverly? Did she love the sea like Chalie did, but fear the ice of the water in most of the months?

Chalie started to hum. She was cold now, despite her big red jacket – maybe she should get up and run around again. But, as she looked down at her wand and up at her wings, she felt like it was time to go. On rising, she wondered a little why the crabapple grove looked so different now, but then she realized that the light had changed. The clouds were tumbling in over the sand dunes; it was sunset now. Chalie remembered how it had almost felt like spring the other day, but now this was the start of one day's winter night. What for the winter night? A blanket on the couch and slippers for her feet, and perfect childhood comfort.


---------------------



Eliza followed the long road with the calm sun pooling along its sides, like she had been told to do by a page of her atlas. The precise lines on the roadmap sitting in the passenger seat made things feel rather clearer than usual – Eliza looked around at definite things as an experiment, away from ambiguity.

Speedometer, arrow at 60 – clock, numbers square and lined, spelling exactly 3:45 – the date in her mind, February 27. And the ever-present backdrop to her direction, lines and labels in the road atlas, symbols whose realities Eliza could follow, on and on.

The thoughts in the middle of the road flowed like this, into each other – the clock, the date, the map – Mr. Malchin's bookcase – May's apartment, Waverly sandy beaches and grainy cliffs, blue shutters and receptionists – cars shining and ocean glinting. She glanced at the clock: 3:47.

Thoughts, presences pulled her along; distractions and the deep meaning of things pushed – until the exit came, number seven, and the road thinned and wavered up to the building. The brick front rose and opened up, and Eliza swerved into the parking lot, parked clumsily in an out-of-way space, near a sign: VISITORS.

She thought she would sit in the car for a long time and maybe turn around, maybe leave, no commitment. She was more scared than she had even anticipated. Actually a little bit faint – no – she felt witherly and cast far off…

But oh, shut up.

Open the door. Get out.

One step at a time. The car door closed behind her. She locked it.

The walk to the building was long, paved, shoe-step semiconsciousness.

There, there, there. The door, a big brown wood door, windowless. The knob, gold and a little bit chipped, in a good way. She felt stifled and scattery, electric with anxiety, in, in, in. Pause, inside – She opened the door.

A little tinkling oasis opened up to her. Light from a ceiling lamp filled the room, was caught by crystal vases and old ripply windows. The carpet cradled diamond pink and blue patterns, skipping across the floor, meeting mahogany chair-legs, stools, calm little coffee-table. At one end was a desk, and a man sat there, tall and dark-haired.

He did not look like Ben.

three cheers for informality

Tonight, I went with my mom and my best friend N to a formal-type of dinner for accepted students at a university. Not one of my favorite universities - so we basically just went for the free food (which was very good).

We got there at 6:30 because from 6:00 to 7:00 was the "reception", a vague term taken generally to mean an interval in which people "mix" and "mingle" and such. Not being the mixing or mingling sort, we got there at what we figured would be just the right time to find our table and wait for dinner. So we sat outside in the car for a while, joking and pretending to critique the outfits of the people we saw walking by, etc., being a generally sarcastic and lively bunch. N, unfortunately confined into wearing a skirt due to it being laundry day, comforted herself by pulling her black Harley Davidson sweatshirt over a purple blouse, and we were set to go inside.

When we got inside, though, we realized we should've stayed in the car until 6:45 at least. The proverbial "mixing" and "mingling" was a bunch of people standing about in a small room, each in their own small circle, exchanging platitudes and small talk. My mom and N and I found a nice solitary corner and hung about looking inconspicuous until a general migration of the crowd toward the doors signaled the start of dinner.

We found our table, Table 9, and sat down. Another family came to the table, joined shortly afterward by an official from the university.

As soon as dinner started, the feeling of stifling began. I couldn't eat my salad in peace and laugh with N about silly things because the other people round the table seemed so - unwilling to laugh! The college offical was nice, but still a little stiff. Throughout the dinner, she became animated once, when she was talking about her dogs (a topic encouraged by N). And the other "accepted student" at the table spent the whole entire dinner undauntedly sucking up to the college official in the most sickening way imaginable.

The whole affair was thoroughly stuffy and stiff and dull. No one cracked a joke or talked about anything real in a lively way. There was hardly anything genuine to be found because everything was so insufferably stiff.

N and I were consumed the whole time with a great longing to dance on the table, or throw a whole glass of water over our heads, or start singing raucously, just anything to bring some life into the place! When the dinner was over, we felt like someone had just untied us, and we could now take a huge gulp of air! We laughed and sung and twirled in the parking lot and jumped into the car with fresh vigor. All the ride home we talked loudly and agreed on how thoroughly glad we were that we were not stuffy or snobby!

The lesson to be learnt for me: wear bright colors, twirl about, laugh whenever possible, and never be anything but absolutely genuine. Or else risk the horror of falling into dull grey stiffness ever after!

the grouping

Cliques: the infamous high school structure. The obvious can be stated by anyone - through years of schooling, certain people gravitate to each other and group together. And those who are not in a clique, who do not 'belong' to anyone, drift around and bend their heads, eyes cast down. Correct?

Not completely. "Clique" is a negative word - it brings up images of snobbery and click-clicking high heels or fake fingernails - it has an association of fakeness in general. There are two leaders, and the rest are followers - conformists - unfortunate people with no identities of their own.

This is true in some groups, more often in middle school or the beginning of high school, when being the most popular and the most recognized is still an important thing to many adolescents. Sometimes middle school groups of friends seem to have no real affection or trust - they are just dumb alliances of convenience.

But, by the end of high school, most groups don't seem to be made for popularity or to maintain an image. Many of them are held together by real friendship. Yes, certain groups sit at certain lunch tables, and stand in the usual circle in the morning before the bell. Such things are often criticized, but how else would you have them, when you really think about it? In any even small-to-medium-sized class, it isn't possible for everyone to be friends with each other. Sure, it would be nice if everyone respected each other, but for all 94 people to compose one big group?

But, wait a bit. All 94 people in the senior class do comprise a group - the Prout class of 2006. There are many people in the senior class who have never had a conversation with each other, but if they were to meet after we've graduated, they would have something in common and would probably talk about it then.

Within this large group, there are smaller groups of friends - close groups - supportive groups - groups who can laugh and be serious and share memories and experiences. And within each group of friends, there are smaller groups - two best friends here, another three there - they all converge to form the large group, but separate in the same way when it is time to choose partners in class.

The layering of groups continues in the other way too. The group of the senior class is part of the group that is all of Prout, and all of Prout is part of the group of all Rhode Island high schools, which are in the group of all American high schools - and it keeps spreading outward toward the realization that the whole population of Earth is actually a very large clique.

Who is the leader? A leader in the small group will not still be a leader in the large group - and the leader may change tomorrow, depending on the circumstances of the day.

But actually, it doesn't really matter. Why dissect these things, anyway? It is friendship, and most of the time it is deeply genuine. The anatomy of a friendship does not really matter. We're all part of some group - the largest group - by virtue of simply existing. Let preteens stumble through quests for popularity and attempts at connection to the right people. And appreciate those who have come out of it with a bit of maturity - at least enough to love their friends, no matter where their percieved position in the group lies.

afternoon world-scope

"A leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole. Each particle is a microcosm, and faithfully renders the likeness of the world. . . . So intimate is this Unity, that, it is easily seen, it lies under the undermost garment of nature, and betrays its source in the Universal Spirit. . . It is like a great circle on a sphere, comprising all possible circles; which, however, may be drawn, and comprise it, in like manner."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, 1836


Sit. Absorb.

It is cold out. A whipping wind hurls drifts of wintry air about. Sky is full of big, layered grey clouds - and every so often yellow stripes of light in the distance. Coats buttoned tight and windows firmly shut - heat circulates inside.

A gym class volleyball game: the tall boy screws his face in frustration and takes the game too seriously, trudging around the 'court' and feeling as though he knows what he is doing better than the others. A tiny girl stands precariously in her spot and reaches out her spindly arms as the big yellow ball comes whirring over the net - she yips and misses. The boy looks over his shoulder and rolls his eyes.

In a tucked-away classroom, papers rustle and furl and every so often tear. A book is placed on every desk, and between every different cover, roughly sixteen times, Ophelia dies and Hamlet goes insane. The students turn their pages and scribble down messy essays with blue or black ball-point pens; they search the book for the right quote to use and pause to remember the proper citation. In each of the sixteen copies of every single page, someone speaks and no one hears.

Behind another door, someone is thrilled. Someone is anticipating, glancing at the clock several times in a minute, tapping a foot and shifting positions, crossed legs, rise up, sink down - and look out the window. The tree-branches look beautiful and wise. In one room, or many, someone is in love, or someone has maybe found something lost.

In the lab, a physics test. Three tables and desks in the aisles: students bend over their papers and scratch with their pencils the answer on the calculator-screen; draw diagrams and puzzle a little on paper. Right out the window, construction workers go about doing their job. One of them is whistling - whistling, whistling. The tune picks up and trips along, and drifts in through the window. A student finishes the test and hands it in.

Somewhere, flowers bloom. And further north, snow falls, the temperature freezes. Somewhere it is night and someone is having a midnight snack. Somewhere it is midday and a child is running through a field, going somewhere deep in imagination.

Somewhere, everyone is doing something. The Christian arranges flowers in a shop and checks to see when he can go home. The pagan tires of studying for a math exam, and the atheist sips an iced coffee. The attorney at his desk imagines his grandmother's lasagna, and the artist tries to get an annoying pop song out of her head. Behind the counter, the cashier thinks of Italy. The man who does not know what he is wraps his scarf around his neck in the cold.

A carousel turns. A baby cries and a young girl sings, "It is all connected."

spring's prelude

The very beginning of spring can be detected only in moments. A shift of light deepens the blue of the sky and enhances the shades of yellow, pink and red along the roadside. The stretch of wispy clouds suddenly seems less winter-spindly and more breezy and young. A certain sound trips along the street that feels like sandles along cobblestones and laughter by a fountain, the taste of ice cream when standing barefoot in the grass.

A schoolbus floats up over a hill, the yellow buttercup-deep, windows airily reflecting tree-branches that just seem more green than grey now. When the bus stops, a child gets off and is met by his mother. She straightens the slipping-off strap of his backpack and he walks up the driveway. Not a skipping or running boy - but the thought of the color of buttercups makes the step of children seem lighter.

It is 3:06 PM, but a different sort of 3:06 PM. It is sunnier than it was last week. The sideroads are more luminous and clear than they were last week, the atmosphere more full of song-hint; the trees along the way lead to some skyfilled point in the distance.

At the turn of a corner, the clouds change. The sky ahead is billowing-grey, and the pond-water is tin-colored and dull. Red stoplights sway.

shh, it's my PROCESS

* The ever-challengeful Chelsea challenged me to write a bit about "my PROCESS". I therefore combine her challenge with an entry I've already had in my head.

When writing fiction, sometimes I'm never sure how much of my own experience to put in. As expected, my experience is limited, because I'm only seventeen and still in high school and haven't seen much of the world. But I do have background and experience and something to say in certain areas and I try to take those elements and bring them to my fiction.

If you read one of my stories, there is always something about it that is true. Most of them are not based on true events, but they are all based on true emotions, or true questions or issues. There is something of my own experience, life, and emotion in every one of my pieces of fiction.

Sometimes I'm not sure how far I can go in branching out into what I do not know. I've found it easy to write stories where the characters are my own age, but doing so is very limiting at the same time. Waverly is the main example because the characters are all older than I am - not by much, but enough. Am I getting things wrong? Are the characters too juvenile? I won't know until I get older, I guess. But making those characters my own age would completely ruin the story because theirs is by no means a high school story.

On the other hand, sometimes I am also unsure about how much I want to put into a story that is complete truth. Most of my poems are based on true events or emotions, but veiled in metaphor - occasionally to conceal, but often because I find abstract metaphor arouses a particular feeling or association better.

Stories are different because they are less abstract. There is a plot, there are characters; stories are more complicated. Sometimes I've thought of something directly from my own experience and realized that it would make a good story, one that I would probably want to read - but have not written it down because I've thought, That is not for a story. It's a feeling of trespassing, of not wanting to put something in a story because it seems too untouchable in a way - not in a bad way, just in a, that is real, not story material way. Of course art imitates - and captures - life, but - well, I guess I'm still trying to figure that out.

I also don't set certain things down in stories sometimes because I don't feel ready for the task of capturing them in the right way. My monologue-thing for creative writing could be an example - it was true, but things could be read from it that were not true. In some ways, the truth can create fiction. As fiction can create truth.

Part of my "process" of writing is to take things in and let them wander around, then try to conjure up the words to capture these things - emotions, senses, places, people, times - in the right way. When writing, I don't worry about what is the perfect word to use; I start writing just to get things down.

Then I go back and revise - countless times. I type things up on the computer and print them out, and bring the papers around with me - to school, mostly. When I feel like it or when I'm bored in math or physics I whip the paper out and reread it over and over again, scribbling in the margins, crossing bits out and adding new bits in, revising like mad. Then I start over and do it again with the same piece of writing until I feel like I've gotten it the way I want it. Some poems I've posted on here have gone through seven or eight revisions (like "The Black Night's Alchemy" or "Confessional Poetry"), while some have barely been revised at all and stand in their original state because I like them that way (like "Most Subtle Migration").

That's the literal "process", I suppose. And the more subtle process is the gradual and abstract blending of fiction and truth, of spiritlike images and wordy facts, sifting and shifting together to form something... something.

moment

I love Sunday mornings. Sunday is the only day of the week when I do not have a definite time at which I have to get up and go do something. I hate being busy, which is why I don't have a job and why this year I don't belong to any clubs or things at school. But every morning there is something to do - except for Sundays.

Sunday mornings are the loveliest. I have a cup of hot cocoa or tea and read lots of articles from different and interesting places and watch the sweet bright sunbeams slanting onto the floor. I don't think any thoughts or worries about college or after-college or moans about schoolwork or miscellaneous jabberings about how I am always cold or should devote more time to Waverly or whether I really want to be a writer or not.

This is a moment. I realized the other night that there are about two and a half months left of school. We are all going places and things will never be the same as they are in high school. They will be better - but not the same.

I want to hold onto the past and embrace the future. It is possible, but both are hard to find sometimes... No one knows anything for sure except the moment.

Life is beautiful. Celebrate.

the meaning of life, and such

Bronson Alcott, father of one of my favorite authors (Louisa May Alcott) and close friend to my absolute favorite author (Henry David Thoreau), was an interesting character. He was a transcendentalist "groupie", hanging around with Emerson and Thoreau and Margaret Fuller and the rest of the new philosophers living around Concord, Massachusetts, in the 1840s and '50s.

In my favorite biography of Thoreau, The Days of Henry Thoreau by Walter Harding, a sort of recurring joke is Bronson Alcott's failed schemes. He was known for having an enormous amount of ideas but no practical-application skills whatsoever. He had the idea of helping Emerson build his summer home - which turned out so messily that it was dubbed "Tumbledown-Hall". More famous is Alcott's failed attempt at a utopian community called Fruitlands. Those who saw these communities fail saw that they failed because the inhabitants were very adept at sitting about all day musing over philosophical problems, but had no proclivity at all for hard work like planting fields or raising animals. (Fangirlish side note: I love Thoreau for being against utopian communities.)

In Louisa May Alcott's autobiographical Little Women, the mother is based on Louisa's mother, strong and independent yet nurturing and kind at the same time. The father, however, is a different man from Bronson Alcott. The father in Little Women is an intellectual, but his philosophical pursuits are more of a sideline to his real devotion for his family. Bronson Alcott, however, neglected his family because of his self-made identity as a philosopher. He would try out philosophical or psychological sorts of experiments on his children (Louisa and her three sisters) to see what would happen. The family experienced hard times financially because of Bronson's lack of work ethic.

I love Louisa May Alcott. She supported her family with the money she earned from writing and from editing a children's periodical. She seems to have been so strong and able, but still artistic as a writer.

I'm going somewhere relevant with this, though, I promise.

I tend to get quite philosophical quite often, and have in past slipped into such deep musing and questioning that I didn't do anything - didn't write, didn't create, just sort of stagnated for a bit. But now I see the terrible error of doing that.

I think that Louisa May Alcott might have thought something like, philosophizing is fine, but at the end of the day, come whatever questions about the meaning of life or nature of divinity, someone still has to do the washing and make dinner.

When I see suffering, in the newspaper, on television, in history books, I tend to stop, to stumble and fall, to feel like: how can I keep going about when there is the question of why God allows it? And sometimes when I am sitting there and start thinking about the origin of the universe and worrying that I do not know, I just feel like hiding somewhere to keep it all out.

But I am realizing now that the real thing to do is to live, to love, to create, to learn, to grow, to laugh crazily, to make things better for everyone else, to believe, to worship in my own way. It is good to think about philosophical things - it puts us in touch with the ever-elusive Something - but tangling ourselves up in existential crises doesn't get anything done and wastes time we could be using to live.

on mathematics

The usual question of 8:30 in the morning - aka A period AP Statistics time - on a weekday is: What am I going to do in math class today?

Doing things that are not math in math class has, these past twelve years of learning arithmetic, become a sort of art. For one, I always try to sit in the back, preferably behind a tall person, so that I can go unnoticed. In past I have tried to read novels if I was seated behind someone tall and sometimes it worked, but often I felt guilty for not paying any attention at all. So nowadays, what I do commonly is compose intricate doodles and patterns in the margins. But lately, though, I have been using math class in quite an industrious way. Time to write! Nothing else to do, might as well work on Waverly.

I do feel a little badly. Just a little. The teacher is trying to teach math, but I just cannot rouse that much ill feeling about my lack of attention. I hate math. I can muster no interest whatsoever for anything mathematical. There is no emotion in a math problem and numbers are not friendly like words are. The only exception where I like numbers is dates - 1854 is boring like most numbers but when used to describe a year is evocative. But anyway. I hate math. I can't pay attention to it because of my utter lack of interest in it.

But I am wary about my grades, so I pay attention enough to keep at least an A-. Most of the time I reread the math book to understand things or look it up elsewhere. I just can't maintain attention in class! Especially when there is valuable writing to be done. Today I think I wrote quite a good bit for Waverly and turned the story in a bit of a new direction. Much more worthwhile than learning about histograms and the formula for variance!

Math can also be a good time for general speculation. Looking out the window of that tiny room at the construction trucks or, if they've moved for the day, the sun and clouds over the barn. I drift off into wonderings about the transcendentalists or lovely remembrances of an article about religion I read the past weekend. I get rather annoyed when I am pulled back by some mathematical fact or theorem or axiom, hard and rigid, seeming so dull and impersonal compared with the cloud-thoughts I've just been thinking.

reality

I see stories everywhere. A lot of the time I love it. I am never bored alone in a public place because I make up stories about the strangers around me - perhaps a table of old men are talking in Italian accents; I think up a whole history of how they ended up across the sea - perhaps a sharp-looking businesswoman sits nearby; I imagine wishes for her. These strangers never know that I have created double lives for them.

And I see stories in imagination. Characters emerge and push through doors and walk past windows, giving me glimpses of something. And I write to grasp just a bit of the Something. As long as I can remember, there have been stories, characters, images, sounds, and I have felt such an irresistible, tantalizing pull to recreate them, to give them lives outside of my own mind, to bring them into the rest of the world.

I see things that are not there - or are. I actually take it as an insult when people call fictional characters "not real" - I think they are real - just maybe not real in the same way I am real. I can't grasp the thought of Lizzie Bennet or Jane Eyre or Mr Pickwick or Cassandra Mortmain or Hester Prynne or Anne Shirley not being real at all.

And places - Narnia, Middle Earth - I don't believe that they are "not real" either. They are real - in a different way. Writing fiction is not about inventing things from nowhere, but rather concerns delving into different shades and layers of reality.

So I don't really think there is such a thing as seeing things that are not there. They are there. To me, statements like "fairies are not real" or "dragons are fake" or even "Pemberley is not a real place" are in a way arrogant. Who are we to say what is "real" and what is "not real"? We do not make the rules. All we can do is say, Who knows?, and thrill to the mystery.

canned indifferents

Oh so typical - I sat there today saying and thinking that I hadn't been writing poems for a bit (aka a few weeks) and that I was not in a poem-y mood at all. Then, a joke with Mogget and a challenge from Chelsea later, what did I do but become inspired to write a poem?! Such is the way of fickle artsiness.

Here is a weird poem. It might seem very much like something it really is not.




canned indifferents

"I bring before you," said the judge,
"A man of diverse crimes.
Engaging in
Satirical philosophies, and
Stentorian apologies;
he is a man most snared."

And the congregation looked;
they wondered what was coming next.

But the nut-haired boy in the back
thought about the portrait
that hung upon the wall,
small-framed: not a saint.
Why though did the philosopher
who wrote of such diverse
crimes and inhumanities
Smile in his picture?

Scales on a brown back:
The young priest tapping his book
in nervousness.
The choir's eyes - watching him;
He needed to deliver -
something pure, he thought:
ambrosia?

But outside, out, out, out,
the thunderclouds contrasted
with heavenly blue lights.
And someone must be thinking
how nice it will be
to feel the rain

The judge began. "Did he care enough?
Wheedle enough
or Borrow?"
But the jumble fell
cat's-cradle-wise

And the people stirred
wading knee-
deep in little pools
in reverie
One said, Simplicity
and They decided
tomorrow could just be
happy.

   felt
they did not know
but it was all
okay

honesty

Lately I have wanted honesty. In writing, action, thought, and just life. What is dishonesty? Not just lying, saying words that contradict the way things really are, but living untruths, consciously or unconsciously. Most of the time it is unconsciously. I percieve many things that are not honest in this sense; I mean, not true, or true in one sense, but leaving behind other truths.

Okay, that was all mumbling. What I am trying to say is - lately I have looked forward to living truly, simply, joyfully. And have been slowly climbing out of the craving for prestige. I am learning more about what I want to do and how I want to live. I don't want to be caught up and tangled in titles, appearances, noise and complications. I just want to live honestly and be joyful each day.

And that mumbling opening paragraph up there was not completely honest. I cover things in symbols and crypticism in writing - it is what I do. And in some ways it is A LOT of fun and makes things terribly interesting. But sometimes it just prevents things from being said.

Anyway.

I used to think that being extraordinary would have to mean doing something Big and Important in the traditional sense - being a Leader, you know.

All of the college brochures say they are looking for Leaders, all of those scholarship essays say they reward Leadership. What is that? The person who has a list of ten activities, all of which they have led as president or vice-president or team captain, who has a report card with nothing ever below a 96, who does 400 hours of community service each year? Maybe. I haven't figured it out yet. People with qualifications like that, I've seen, often get the prizes. And those who give the prizes never know that the rewarded overachiever is perhaps, in daily life, something of a snob who hangs around with popular friends and looks condescendingly at everyone else.

So you never know. Sometimes it is hard to tell if something is sincere. Did this person participate in those ten activities because she was devoted and loved doing them, or did she sign up because they would look so well on her transcript?

Many of us seniors have done the transcript-enhancing bit of participating.

And I wonder if it is the same when we are out of school. Well, it can be. People do things often because it will make them look important, get them more money, or more prestige. Sometimes they completely forget what it was they really wanted when they were children, before they started worrying about how others viewed them.

I just want to live without the concern for how things will look to others. I think I am getting closer. My friends know, of course, the crazy things I tend to do throughout the day, and know that I don't worry about what strangers will think of me.

But it carries over into the whole College Decision business. At the beginning of the year, what I wanted was for people to be impressed when I told them the name of my college, to get recognition, to have people think I did something right. But now I am teaching myself not to care. That things will be fine if I make them fine.

My parents, who have a talent for giving incredibly good advice, told me right from the start of the getting-into-college business that my college education will be what I make of it. That I could go to a fancy school and be unhappy if I didn't belong there, or go to a not-so-fancy school and be fine if I filled every experience with opportunity - or vice versa.

For a while, I spun off into the desire for prestige and recognition. If I was not recognized for something, I would be angry, would feel jilted. But now I see clearly that the recognition from others does not matter at all - it is my intuition about what is right for me that really matters, and the light feeling of being completely honest with myself.

Honesty: what do I honestly want? I have lived for a while in ambiguity and confused myself about what I wanted, but I think I am coming out of the daze. I want to eliminate elitism from my mind. I want to "greet each day with joy", to be crazy if I want to, to be quiet if I want to, to spread joy, to wear bright colors, to celebrate nature, to celebrate every day, to create ceaselessly, to worship. I want to further explore a particular religion and seriously consider whether it is right for me. I want to uphold my virtues of purity and goodness and optimism and humor. I want to learn how to make beautiful things that bring something genuine into others' lives. I want to remember it is not for me to judge what qualifies as impressive and what does not. I want to not get lost in speculation, and perhaps to speak to myself in shorter words, and to remember that I am a dreamer, and it is my work to create dreams.

What do you want, honestly?

tooooouuuuurnament!

So today I competed in my first karate tournament. On a normal Sunday, I would probably be just beginning the day at 12:00 PM, lazing around the house starting to think about what to do during the day. But today, by 12:00, I had already performed a weapons form and a regular form in front of judges and spectators, stood waiting and watching my friends compete, and been swept up in the excitement of a tournament.

I hadn't wanted to go because I knew I would be so nervous. I didn't want to give up my traditional idyllic Sunday morning reading newspapers and drinking hot cocoa for the stress of a karate tournament. But I am quite glad that I did it - I'm glad that I didn't have a choice (the tournament was a requirement) or else I might have missed it.

It was loud and full of action and movement, nothing still. It was overflowing with emotion and excitement. There were about twelve different rings, each one stocked with imposing-looking judges, scorekeepers looking important with their record pads, students practicing and being nervous and zipping about trying to hear the announcement for when their division is going on - and teachers giving them preparatory talks and words of advice and support - and families and friends sitting in the spectator seats cheering. I liked the energy of the place and shocked myself by having fun.

I wasn't as nervous as I had thought I would be. I was nervous on the ride down to the tournament, but once I was inside waiting for my turn the nervousness faded. Maybe it was chased away by the excitement in the room, or by the encouraging words of teachers and friends, or by the sense of camaraderie felt by seeing my fellow students from the dojo all being equally nervous.

My best friend Nikki went before me and I cheered for her and the other student from our dojo in her division, Ben. Eventually, it came to my division and one of the judges called out, "16-17 Intermediate Weapons Forms!" I went up into the ring with Andrew, another boy from my dojo in my division. We went up and waited with the two other competitors, whom we did not know. The judge took our cards with our name, school, and division written on them and then called out the first name - mine!

So I went up and went through the tirelessly-practiced introductory ritual - bow to the judges, give a little speech about who I am and what dojo I am from and what I was doing - and then I bowed again, backed up, and started the form.

This was where I surprised myself by having fun. Instead of shaking to the point of almost dropping my bo like I thought I would, I enjoyed doing the form! It was my favorite form and I tried to put all I could into it. It was over sooner than I expected and I bowed out of the ring to let Andrew in next.

The day went on like that - watching my friends compete, watching strangers compete. Eventually I did a non-weapons form that was not as much fun as the weapons form, just because I like weapons forms better. It really was a good time and an interesting experience. It lasted from 8:30 AM to 12:00 PM but it felt like a whole day.

I'd do it again. :)

WAVERLY!

Waverly is my novelthing. I started it about a year and a half ago. It is an idea repository, pages overflowing with many partially-formed ideas. I love the main character, Eliza. I can see her - it sounds strange - but she seems real to me. And it is like she is the one encouraging me to write the story.

It's not so long yet. A bit more than fifty, sixty pages. Three parts. A trinity motif. Religious undercurrents and scientific anxiety. Dreams, dreams, dreams. Sandy air, stitched cushions, shortbread, wispy-haired girls and ridgepole stories. Sometimes I think I don't know where it is going. How can I get a plot in there? Where do I want this thing to go? Then I write something in it and it continues becoming. I have to redo the beginning. I will edit it later, when it is done, when it is more. I like it. It's close to me, the landscape of imagination as manifested in the setting and characters and what they say and do.

I think, I'm too lazy to write, I'm a hack!, I have no original ideas today. But the truth is, I'm only seventeen years old. I am a child. A high school student. I chase myself with tangled questions and whywhywhy and the truth is, I don't know anything. And that is such a relief.

I think I have to know where everything is going. I think I have to do this this and this to get where I should be at a certain point in time. But I don't, I don't, I don't. I only have to live, now, do what feels right and what feels the most pure, and stop trying to undo the nonexistent tangle. I only have to stop thinking about how good it will look to everyone else so I have to do that, or how other people might laugh so I shouldn't tell that.

I'm tired. I'm going to college (URI) tomorrow to visit a very close friend and must get up early for an exciting day. I might go to college there after all, who knows? I don't. The thought used to disappoint me but it doesn't so much now, not because I am settling, but because I don't know anything. That didn't make any sense, but I know what I meant. Anyway. I'm going to reread one of my favorite books, yes, Anne of Green Gables, and stop pretending to be serious.

opinions and elitism

People love to express their opinions. I love to express my opinions. I think it's terribly fun to argue my opinions against someone else's - not because I necessarily want them to convert over to my side, but just because it's fun to exchange ideas in debate. But above all other means of expressing my beliefs to others, I like writing.

Writing about my beliefs makes my beliefs seem more real and lends them a form, and sorts them out before me. It's why I write so much about religion - because I think so much about it - and because my beliefs are so amorphous that writing them down makes them seem more tangible. That is the purpose of words, really: to make the intangible seem tangible. But words always fall short; they can never capture something fully. They can come close, but there is still a huge gulf between "close" and "complete".

But I was thinking about it - about why everyone loves to express their opinions so much. If we see something with which we disagree, we take pleasure in jumping all over it. Is it an excuse to argue, to breach decorum momentarily and go at someone in words? I don't think so. I think it's about intangibility versus tangibility, and trying to give things forms and definitions, to sort them out.

I don't want everyone to agree with me. Okay, on some things I do want everyone to agree with me. I would love for all potential world leaders to agree with me that war is stupid, for example. But I would hate it if everyone agreed with me that Thoreau is the greatest mid-nineteenth-century American author. And even on some more important matters - I would hate it if everyone agreed with me that original sin is not necessarily the cause of suffering. I would hate if if everyone agreed with me on what is good literature and even on the use of proper grammar.

I really dislike elitism. Partly because I tend to buy into it. Sometimes I feel a bit guilty reading a "non-literary" book because the elitist thing to do seems like reading only classics or academically-approved volumes. And the college thing is the big one. I have no idea about college - if the big names matter or not - but I tend to fall prey to elitism there too. Deep down, I do want people to be impressed when I tell them where I'll be going to school next year. I don't like that I want that.

Elitism is about wanting to impress, yes, but also with upholding an opinion to the point of, often subconsciously, viewing other opinions as holding less value than one's own. Where, then, does asserting one's opinion step over into elitism?

DO read: elizabethan english

Okay, I am going to be REALLY annoying in this post. But I am called to rise to grammatical duty!

If you did not know already, I am a dork.

Lately I have witnessed many, MANY people (in most cases, dear friends to whom I mean no offense!) MISUSING Elizabethan verb forms in their posts and comments. And it bugs me so I am going to compose a little guide here for you all. -_-

First, this isn't something as a response to any fellow bloggers' recent posts, but the form of English dating to the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 1559-1603, the form that Shakespeare used, is called Elizabethan English. NOT "Old English". I've heard many people sayings things like, "It's so hard to understand Shakespeare's Old English." If you want to read Old English, you will have to go about a thousand years before Shakespeare and plod through Beowulf. English that looks like our English except for thees, thous, and differing verb endings is NOT Old English, it is Elizabethan. *hrmph* Elizabethan English is actually considered early Modern English. Again, I'm just a grammatical snob and mean no offense.

Proceeding.

THOU is the subject form of the second person pronoun. Use it when it is the subject of the verb. Example: Thou art a fiend. In this sentence, THOU is the subject, the thing doing the action. The verb is "to be", and THOU is doing the "be-ing". In Elizabethan English, THOU was used to denote familiarity or affection, while the other second person pronoun YOU was used for strangers. If I were to address Mogget in Elizabethan, I would call her THOU. If I were to address the random guy walking down the hallway, I would call him YOU.

The plural of thou is ye or you. The possessive is THY when followed by a consonant and THINE when followed by a vowel. Example: Thy book - thine apple. The same works for the possessive "my" - my book, mine apple. The plural of the formal form of the second person pronoun is your or yours.

THEE is the object form of the second person pronoun. Use it when it is the direct or indirect object of the verb. Example: I smite thee. In this sentence, THEE is RECIEVING the smiting as the direct object of the verb "to smite". For an example of THEE as an indirect object, look here: I give the apple to thee. The apple is the direct object, and THEE is the indirect object because it is recieving the direct object.

Now for verbs. o-o

I will just post an example of a verb chart of regular verb, then explain more generic verb endings.


TO RUN

Present tense:
I run
Thou runnest
You run
He/she/it runneth

Past tense:
I ran
You ran
Thou didst run
He/she/it ran

Future tense:
I will run
Thou wilt run
You will run


When using "THOU" as the subject of your verb, as "EST" or "ST" to the end of the verb. "You smite" turns therefore into "thou smitest" and such.

When using "HE", "SHE", or "IT" as the subject of your verb, add "ETH" or "TH" to the end of the verb. "He smite" turns into "He smiteth", for example.

When using "I" as the subject of your verb, it is the same as in our daily English. I run, I smite.


Here are some irregular verbs:

TO BE
I am
Thou art
He/she/it is
PAST TENSE:
I was
Thou wert

TO DO
I do
Thou dost
He/she/it doth

TO HAVE
I have
Thou hast
He/she/it hath

Another point of note: DO NOT USE CONTRACTIONS as a general rule. There is no "THOU WON'T" or *cough* "THOU SHAN'T". Instead write out the verbs completely: "Thou wilt not" and "Thou shalt not".

I hope this will be of assistance. Excuse my grammatical fanaticism. I just hate to see dear pronouns and verbs abused! Please do respect language as a living and evolving entity and try to be historically accurate. ^_^ Language in all of its periods is an art and using proper grammar appropriate to the historical period whose mechanics you have chosen for the expression of your idea is a way of giving the proper respect to the life of language.

In other words, watch your language, you muddy-mettled knaves. XD

From, your friendly local prudish verbal fanatic.

frailty & strength

One summer night, when I was thirteen (almost fourteen, I would have told you then), my best friend Nikki and I ate chocolate-covered espresso beans and stayed up all night, hyper-ly talking and joking. At approximately 3:00 A.M., I decided to join karate.

Nikki had joined karate a year before and was tired of being the only girl in the class with no friends to talk to. I thought it might be fun, a new thing, even though I had thought before that I would never be caught anywhere near anything athletic. I don't really know why I said I would join exactly. It probably had something to do with the amount of espresso and chocolate in my system and the excitement of a summer night sleepover. But in the morning I told my mom I wanted to start karate. She was, understandably, shocked. Me? The bookish one who trips over her own feet and shoots at her own team's goal when forced to play sports in gym class? Join karate?!

That decision would be a major one that changed a lot of the next four years. I joined. I was terrified. The instructors were nice, but firm. You couldn't get out of doing anything they told you to do. Respect was imperitive and so was obedience. I was a white belt in karate and a freshman in high school. The lowest of the low! But I really liked it after a little while. I liked testing for a new belt twice a year and learning new forms. I hated sparring, fighting my classmates with pads and helmets, but liked memorizing movements put together to make a form, what they call a kata, because the movements were artful and precise and looked like a dance - albeit a violent one, but I didn't like to think about the violence!

I still take karate today. Whenever I tell anyone, they are shocked. I am small in stature and appearance, I look younger than I really am, and most notably, I am not one known for aggression. Actually I'm known for passivity and being completely the most non-aggressive person anyone has ever met. A pacifist; a bookworm, not an athlete! I go out of my way to avoid confrontation and solve conflicts by discussion, not aggression! So everyone has many reasons to not believe that I do karate.

I find it funny myself. I know myself and know that doing karate doesn't fit in with much of what I define myself to be. I've an independent, nonconformist spirit - but karate requires discipline and obeying everything the instructor says. I'm a pacifist - I would literally never even think of squashing a bug. I'm terrible at sports.

I wrote the other day in the "lies" post that the main lie I tell myself, though, is that I am frail, too little and meek to have any strength. And I told Mogget the other day that the main criticism that I get from my karate instructors is being too meek and not showing any power. I get berated all the time for not yelling loud enough, not hitting hard enough.

But I also know I'm not that frail. Get into a verbal argument with me and I will actually like tirelessly trying to convince you that I'm right. Insult Thoreau around me and you are in for a long and fervent verbal lashing! And, dork that I am, I really do take a special pleasure in arguing for the sake of grammatical correctness and proper spelling and sentence structure and if you misplace a semicolon I will probably jump all over you for it and have fun doing it...

But besides my enjoyment of verbal adeptness, I know I'm not that frail in other aspects too. I'm not frail enough, for instance, to be afraid of being different and afraid to stand up for what I believe in. I am not afraid of either of these things and do not let the opinions of others dictate what I will do or say or be. I am a dreamer and do not let the arguments against idealism change my outlook. I am innocent, and in some ways childish, but I have had to go through things that taught me lessons and made me 'stronger'.

I guess it comes down to this. Sometimes people have called me a "mouse", because when I was little and actually up until around eleventh grade, I was terribly shy, terribly afraid of others' opinions, and was known all throughout elementary, middle, and part of high school as "the quiet girl", and if anyone calls me that to this day I get angry. I don't want to be a mouse. The analogy that gets used most at karate for how we should do our forms and display our power is being a "tiger". I don't want to be a tiger either. Tigers are beautiful and scary. They are fierce and attack poor little animals. I don't want to be a tiger. I want to be strong in a more quirky way. Like a flamingo, for instance. They are bright pink but just stand there on one leg minding their own business.

Okay, I know anthropomorphizing can get really annoying so I'll stop with the animal analogies.

What I mean is: I am realizing that I am not as frail as I think I am. That the perception of frailty is something to hide behind - appearing frail may protect me from getting hurt because people don't want to make "the quiet girl" cry. I can hide behind the supposition that I'm too shy to do something when I am really scared to do something that would be a wonderful experience if only I let myself out. The perception of frailty holds me back. It keeps me from growing and learning.

As far as karate goes - some days I hate going. I try to think up excuses to get out of class and when I have something to do on a Tuesday or Thursday night I rejoice because I don't have to go to karate. But really, I don't regret at all that I signed up after deciding to take karate on that caffeinated night. I've learned a lot about myself and about others and have met the kindest instructors. Sometimes I drag myself through class and do a horrible job. But every so often, I do something right. I yell loudly and hit forcefully and get complimented and clapped for and feel like I let 'something out' in some way.

I'm going into a tournament on March 12 because it's a requirement. I thought I would just go and get it over with and probably lose but at least it would be done and I wouldn't have to think about it any more, I'd go in thinking I would just lose and that I was horrible to prevent myself from having to make an effort. But that's dumb... I can try to do something, to pay attention to my form [I'm doing weapons and normal forms] and put everything into it and learn from the experience rather than wasting the time.

I'm not as frail as I, as others, think I am. I'm not "the quiet girl", the mousy girl, the one who is too afraid to show anything, to be anything. You don't even know how much I hate being called "the quiet girl"! If someone says it it makes me want to yell and scream that I'm not, I can be loud, I can argue, I can be crazy! I guess it's time I stopped hiding behind the excuse of frailty, then.

compulsion

Mogget challenged me to write a gothic horror story in the tradition of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, ie, disturbing but not at all gory or anything. I hope this will suffice Mogg as a reponse to your most inventive challenge! I thought a while about it and tried the idea in different ways before deciding to do this.





Compulsion



I think that I am going to make toast.

But maybe I shouldn’t. If I have a whole piece of toast now (but I want two!), then maybe I’ll have a habit of overeating later... But how good it would be to sit by the fire with toast –

if I didn’t think about the flames. No, no, NO, don’t go there. It’s so strange. You know, it’s like I have to quickly build a barricade to stop these scrambling, itchy thoughts – so annoying – how they tumble on each other and short-circuit here and there, getting more confused, more tangled… until my consciousness is hemmed in by the criss-cross threads and I can focus only on the small area before me…

It is not an illusion!

I am going to make toast, then. No use worrying about completely, entirely foolish things. It was thoroughly absurd of me even to question it.

I put the bread in the toaster. Two pieces, why not? Then I open the refrigerator and see the butter. It sits on one of those shelves in the door, the one labeled “dairy”; the refrigerator came like that; how nice that is. But I can’t pick up the stick of butter, unopened. Not today.

Some days, I can take out the butter without thinking about anything. But sometimes, days, I can’t lift the package from the refrigerator, because the blue dot on the label might be a sign of something bad. Those days when I remember the dot, before I lifted the butter, I would have to think three times of the mountain-path in back of Maria’s lodge, and then tap once (or twice, depending) on the shelf. Sometimes I do it but sometimes I am just too tired.

I don’t feel like rousing my mind to that short-circuit focus point to do it today; I can go without butter.

So I make my toast dry. It’s not quite as good but – I must not think. I can’t sit by the fire today. But I remember such a nice time by someone else’s fire – hold that thought and do not think of the flames. STOP!

This toast is quite good (even without the butter – no! don’t think about it, will you?!). I am careful not to drop any crumbs. NO – don’t drop crumbs, you can’t! If crumbs are on your shirt above the waist, because the kitchen cupboard did not fully close, it might mean something awful… I can’t say, don’t make me say!

Maybe I could have put some peanut butter on the toast. Maybe I will. But my mind feels so cold right now. I think there’s a draft. Maybe I’ll get up and get a sweater. But I can’t make myself move just yet. I feel detached sort of, maybe more like numb, not really… I can’t keep a thought… Every wandering notion fades off into dull drone. I think I might be getting a headache.

Should I make tea? It would be good, jasmine tea… I look at the clock. Darn it! It is 1:02, and I can’t make tea before 1:30, especially since I thought about the color of the tea-leaves wrong…

I take the last crunchy bite. No more toast. This is very sad- NO! Do NOT think about impermanence!

Honestly, sometimes I feel like hitting myself with something right over the head, I annoy myself so much. It hurts, the thoughts that freeze me so many times every day, but I can’t stir myself to move.

Oh no… no… no! There is a crumb on my collar. How?! I was so careful! This can’t be. I have to do something. I jump up and whimper and flay at the collar. Don’t let it drop! Where can it go? Think it away… on a spaceship… but then it’ll be in space, still there… think it disappears… but where does it go? Does it have to go somewhere? No, no, no! It’s gone – but – DON’T think about it!

Oh – I was wrong. The crumb didn’t mean that. Now that I’ve retraced my time and redone it – I could exert my mind for this and get stuck – it was fine. It’s fine.

sci-fi riddle challenge

This is my response to O Our Noble King's challenge: to write a sci-fi riddle. I fear I strayed out of sci-fi into fantasy but I hope it may still suit our Most Beneficent King.

Whoever guesses the answer to the riddle will in all complete seriousness get a wonderful special prize from me, to be presented in school the day after I read the comment, approximately.



For a moment, my lady’s limbs are feeble,
and she tumbles in the safety of a private little sea;
she murmurs soft to me, her double,
Saying sweet with tiny dewdrop breaths:

I think it is now time to battle the dragon,
To exert the hands and arm-lengths
And unwrap the warm and coiled presence
Sleeping in my thoughts.

So I come in with sometimes-quiet splendor,
Draped with radiant glints and wooly fastenings.
I lift her from her tidelike burrow, her midnight loveliness.
She turns again and wearily still whispers in my mind.

random bits

Snow, snow, snow! I love it. In fact it is one of my GRAND PASSIONS. Snooow!
It is snowing!

What do I want to write about? I have no idea. Maybe a poem later. I wrote the sci-fi riddle challenge but probably must edit some. Later.

Message for O King - I know that purple cloth on a dark cross means meekness and solemnity! I probably shouldn't have thrown that bit in with the Easter paragraph, but I was writing quickly. -_- Don't renounce your title as king! Wear it proudly. And philosphical debates are fun. ^-^'

ash wednesday

I like Ash Wednesday. I don't know why. I have never participated in the ash-getting as a non-Catholic so that's not why I like it.

In elementary school I was the only non-Catholic in my class in a Catholic school. Every Ash Wednesday, everyone had to get ashes. I almost got in trouble a few times because I didn't have any. The teacher would come up to me and say in an accusing voice, "Did you wash your ashes off??" And I would have to meekly squeak out, "I'm not Catholic!" My friends sported their charcoaly crosses on their foreheads all day and it was funny to see them looking so different.

It still is interesting. I mean, to walk through school all day and see so many people with black crosses drawn on their foreheads! One would never see such a sight on any usual day. But it is a special day where it is not only an accepted thing, but the thing to do, on Ash Wednesday. That's one reason why I like it.

Actually, I like the season of Lent. I really do. I don't consider myself Christian anymore, though I still respect the Christian faith and believe in some of its points (love thy neighbor as thyself). And I don't believe in making oneself suffer to come closer to salvation. I believe, for me, that instead of adding to the suffering in the world in even a tiny way, I should bring joy instead in every season.

But I like Lent. I like the textures and colors, purple drapes on the dark wood crosses. I like hoping and waiting for Easter Sunday, the most spring-y of spring days, airy and light with pastels and flying fabrics. Full of hope and joy. I still go to church on Easter, the only time of the year my mom and I go - to a tiny country church where my mom grew up where the minister (a woman) is so kindly and friendly to children and such.

I guess I like Lent because, to many, it is such an important time. I like that they see it as weighty, that people all over are observing it so fastidiously. Not my cup of tea, sacrifice and grey, but I would hate it if everyone else stopped observing Lent.