Nothing Much
Sorry for those people who actually got used to me updating fairly regularly. What can I say? I'm a tease. But anyway, this is one of this pointless "*poke* still alive?" updates.
My brother is long since gone and I don't really have any feelings about it. I'm learning to deal with the junior workload, but of course come April/May with SATS and AP tests prepare for a bit of breakdown.
And I've discovered (and by discovered I mean introduced to) Regina Spektor and The Unicorns. Not to be hopelessly internet nerd but "<3". And I've rediscovered David Bowie. How could I have forgotten how much I loved him?
And I've taken a don't ask don't tell stance on relationships. Sorry, but it's my business, and I'll choose to share it with who I will. Questions will be politely ignored.
And if you're just dying to hear more Edward, may I suggest critiquing my narrative? Every other fag gets to post their writing, why can't it? It's a crappy imitation of Sedaris I admit it, but by sole virtue of still reading this, you obviously have nothing better to do.
It is comforting how easy it is to live under a veil of cynicism and pessimism. For me, the witty quips come effortlessly, allowing me go through life without ever truly applying myself. Hope has no place in that existence - it merely impedes cold practicality. For most of my quazi-adult life (if ‘quazi-adult’ is not too ridiculous a characterization for the turbulent teenage years), I’ve decided to take serendipity as it comes, treating it as a pleasant surprise, but still wary of the worst that can and will happen. Experience has shown the cynical quip to be a marvelous defense mechanism, which I still retreat to whenever some event strikes too close to my heart. There are infinite justifications for living this way, and an equal number of assaults on the blind optimist. “Pessimist is word invented by optimists to describe realists,” was my personal favorite. However, that optimist has one thing the pessimist will never have. Surely no amount of disappointment can come close to balancing out the thought that one day life will be better than it is now...
There is something ungodly about 4:50am. For some, it’s just exceptionally late, which is fine. However, with the start of the school year, I am flung into the majority that find it to be intolerably early - the kind of early in which functioning can only be forced through generous amounts of caffeine and steamy hot showers.
I should awake to some soothing classical piece never before heard by a member of my blasé generation. This music should be a quiet wrap up to NPR’s Evening Music, before switching to Morning Edition at 5:00am. That is the routine I grew accustomed to from the restless nights of summer. Instead, an obnoxious racket dares to blare out of my two-sizes-too-large speakers, attached to my overpriced sound system. You know the system I’m talking about. Everyone has one. It can do everything from mend spilt ends to cure most types of cancer if you can only figure out half the buttons.
I’m unsure as to what’s going on; perhaps this is merely a dream, or more likely and extension of one creeping into my waking world. Thinking back, the former seems the only possibility. However, for a brief instance in time I could’ve sworn that some odd mix of gangster rap and Latin pop dared to enter my ears. I struggle to turn it off. Why can’t I remember how to turn it off!? I am a fish out of water, hopelessly flopping around trying to right myself. In a brief moment of clarity I remember that machines can not function without a power source. I pull the plug.
Two measly hours later I awake again, groggy and disheveled. Was that all a dream? A quick glance in the mirror, and thus at the dark circles on my lifelessly pale face, evidences otherwise. It’s a Tuesday. I hate Tuesdays. I hate Tuesdays with a fiery passion usually reserved for Mondays. In fact, Tuesdays have actually stolen the hatred that I once had for Mondays. Now I like Mondays, which should be a testament to how much I truly despise Tuesdays.
Maybe it’s because Tuesday is the only day of the week where I don’t spend fifty three minutes seamlessly transferring between bossing people around and doing nothing in Film Making. Maybe it is because it’s the first day of the school week that I’m forced to sit through two hours of Chemistry, a class which was never again a source of joy the moment the novelty of the correct pronunciation of my teacher’s name wore off. Maybe it’s because I have to sacrifice my free first period for a lab day. But none of these things bother me as much as the eight minute attendance and announcement period. After working our malnourished minds to the point of collapse for two periods, this man, this beast, has the audacity to make us work that extra eight minutes. That eight minutes is nap time damn it! You don’t take it away from me. I truly do hate Tuesdays.
But I can’t go through any of that before I stop hitting snooze and get out of bed. It’s only what, thirty steps to my shower at most? I can make that in my sleep… I might have to. I will the steamy water to rouse some inner fire in me - some energy that I’d forgotten about but is still there just waiting for me to tap into. I think about that one Wagner opera that must’ve had the modern gangster rap/Latin pop fusion piece. Screw all that stuff he wrote about the Jews being “the worms of the Earth”, and basing the money-grubbing Dwarves in Der Ring des Nibelugen on my ancestors. Now I’ve got a better reason to hate Wagner. He interrupted my beauty sleep.
I’m jerked back to reality a half-hour later. I’m wet, I’m late, and I’m still pondering which opera uses gangster rap. Logical thinking gets the better of me for the first time all morning. I can’t go back to bed, I don’t have time to shave, and Wagner died almost a century before the concept of rap even began to develop with a bad Blondie song. What’s the fastest way to get to the third floor A wing from outside the school? What doors will fellow students feel socially obligated to open for me if I just pound on them for long enough? Which staircases don’t remind me of a Tokyo subway at rush hour?
I hazily manage to get to my class, still wet and disheveled. My mind fumbles over what I’ll say. Will I just slip in as my teacher gives me a critical, furrowed browed frown? Perhaps it’d be best to say that I went to my non-existent first period class, at which point I remembered that Tuesday is a lab day, so I darted up here as fast as I could. Maybe I should come in glaring at him for making me get there as early as I did. I’m just thinking how wonderful that role reversal would be when I round the corner. The entire class is waiting outside the door, sitting and talking hopefully of the breakfast they will soon be devouring with their newly freed two periods.
This is a wonderfully joyous setting. We have the mental masturbation over the notion of breakfast around good friends, united by the hatred of the Periodic Table of Elements. We twenty-odd teenagers mock fate sitting outside that classroom at 8:13am. The spirit of camaraderie is palpable. Together, the strength of our mutual wills, untied to one goal, can fulfill our fantasy. Nothing is outside the realm of possibility. We joke about where the teacher has run off to - wistful images of him lying on a bed somewhere, with lopsided limbs and a stream of drool running from his mouth, his hand on snooze. Maybe he completely forgot about the lab; after all he still can’t remember our names even though he put us in alphabetical order weeks before. Maybe he’s coming up the staircase right now as we laugh and joke. Maybe the sight of him is akin to seeing the Grim Reaper. Maybe he sucks all the hope out of us with his mere presence. Maybe the sugar we’ll be burning in half an hour will at least give us the illusion of the breakfast we so hoped for. Maybe that’s the lesson I’ve been taught all my life about what happens when I hope.
Weeks later I sit casually in English; it’s one of the rare few classes I can sit casually in. No one tells me my posture is off, or to put my feet on the floor, or that the chair’s backboard is actually meant for my back, not my crotch. The one (and by the one I mean the love of my day/week/ (or if I’m particularly romantic) month) has just left me without explanation other than standard barrage of “I’m screwed up,” and “It’s not you, It’s me.” This has temporarily shattered my normally vivacious self. Not even my friend’s prods whenever the teacher asks for a volunteer to read can shock me out of wallowing in my own self-pity.
I spill my emotions onto a piece of notebook paper, oblivious to the essay we’re reading. They’re scrawled over each other to be made completely illegible, so no one can see that my inner workings often resemble a Death Cab for Cutie song. The same prodding friend writes down “Hold fast to the mast, my friend, and the storm will pass.” As pseudo intellectual and unhelpful as it seemed then, I managed a half-hearted smile. However, I knew that proverb’s truth all along, but was just unwilling to accept that my own immediate feelings were not the most important or most defining aspects in my life.
That egocentric notion stalks me, and I can only assume others, depriving us of the most basic hope. It is that hope that allows anyone and everyone to overcome the disappointments, in pursuit of something better. In that simple sentence, written to obtain a half-hearted smile, was contained one of the most basic principles to live by. Do what is needed in times of grief to hold on, and it can only get better. That shall be my new mantra to live by. That is the only mantra to live by.
My brother is long since gone and I don't really have any feelings about it. I'm learning to deal with the junior workload, but of course come April/May with SATS and AP tests prepare for a bit of breakdown.
And I've discovered (and by discovered I mean introduced to) Regina Spektor and The Unicorns. Not to be hopelessly internet nerd but "<3". And I've rediscovered David Bowie. How could I have forgotten how much I loved him?
And I've taken a don't ask don't tell stance on relationships. Sorry, but it's my business, and I'll choose to share it with who I will. Questions will be politely ignored.
And if you're just dying to hear more Edward, may I suggest critiquing my narrative? Every other fag gets to post their writing, why can't it? It's a crappy imitation of Sedaris I admit it, but by sole virtue of still reading this, you obviously have nothing better to do.
It is comforting how easy it is to live under a veil of cynicism and pessimism. For me, the witty quips come effortlessly, allowing me go through life without ever truly applying myself. Hope has no place in that existence - it merely impedes cold practicality. For most of my quazi-adult life (if ‘quazi-adult’ is not too ridiculous a characterization for the turbulent teenage years), I’ve decided to take serendipity as it comes, treating it as a pleasant surprise, but still wary of the worst that can and will happen. Experience has shown the cynical quip to be a marvelous defense mechanism, which I still retreat to whenever some event strikes too close to my heart. There are infinite justifications for living this way, and an equal number of assaults on the blind optimist. “Pessimist is word invented by optimists to describe realists,” was my personal favorite. However, that optimist has one thing the pessimist will never have. Surely no amount of disappointment can come close to balancing out the thought that one day life will be better than it is now...
There is something ungodly about 4:50am. For some, it’s just exceptionally late, which is fine. However, with the start of the school year, I am flung into the majority that find it to be intolerably early - the kind of early in which functioning can only be forced through generous amounts of caffeine and steamy hot showers.
I should awake to some soothing classical piece never before heard by a member of my blasé generation. This music should be a quiet wrap up to NPR’s Evening Music, before switching to Morning Edition at 5:00am. That is the routine I grew accustomed to from the restless nights of summer. Instead, an obnoxious racket dares to blare out of my two-sizes-too-large speakers, attached to my overpriced sound system. You know the system I’m talking about. Everyone has one. It can do everything from mend spilt ends to cure most types of cancer if you can only figure out half the buttons.
I’m unsure as to what’s going on; perhaps this is merely a dream, or more likely and extension of one creeping into my waking world. Thinking back, the former seems the only possibility. However, for a brief instance in time I could’ve sworn that some odd mix of gangster rap and Latin pop dared to enter my ears. I struggle to turn it off. Why can’t I remember how to turn it off!? I am a fish out of water, hopelessly flopping around trying to right myself. In a brief moment of clarity I remember that machines can not function without a power source. I pull the plug.
Two measly hours later I awake again, groggy and disheveled. Was that all a dream? A quick glance in the mirror, and thus at the dark circles on my lifelessly pale face, evidences otherwise. It’s a Tuesday. I hate Tuesdays. I hate Tuesdays with a fiery passion usually reserved for Mondays. In fact, Tuesdays have actually stolen the hatred that I once had for Mondays. Now I like Mondays, which should be a testament to how much I truly despise Tuesdays.
Maybe it’s because Tuesday is the only day of the week where I don’t spend fifty three minutes seamlessly transferring between bossing people around and doing nothing in Film Making. Maybe it is because it’s the first day of the school week that I’m forced to sit through two hours of Chemistry, a class which was never again a source of joy the moment the novelty of the correct pronunciation of my teacher’s name wore off. Maybe it’s because I have to sacrifice my free first period for a lab day. But none of these things bother me as much as the eight minute attendance and announcement period. After working our malnourished minds to the point of collapse for two periods, this man, this beast, has the audacity to make us work that extra eight minutes. That eight minutes is nap time damn it! You don’t take it away from me. I truly do hate Tuesdays.
But I can’t go through any of that before I stop hitting snooze and get out of bed. It’s only what, thirty steps to my shower at most? I can make that in my sleep… I might have to. I will the steamy water to rouse some inner fire in me - some energy that I’d forgotten about but is still there just waiting for me to tap into. I think about that one Wagner opera that must’ve had the modern gangster rap/Latin pop fusion piece. Screw all that stuff he wrote about the Jews being “the worms of the Earth”, and basing the money-grubbing Dwarves in Der Ring des Nibelugen on my ancestors. Now I’ve got a better reason to hate Wagner. He interrupted my beauty sleep.
I’m jerked back to reality a half-hour later. I’m wet, I’m late, and I’m still pondering which opera uses gangster rap. Logical thinking gets the better of me for the first time all morning. I can’t go back to bed, I don’t have time to shave, and Wagner died almost a century before the concept of rap even began to develop with a bad Blondie song. What’s the fastest way to get to the third floor A wing from outside the school? What doors will fellow students feel socially obligated to open for me if I just pound on them for long enough? Which staircases don’t remind me of a Tokyo subway at rush hour?
I hazily manage to get to my class, still wet and disheveled. My mind fumbles over what I’ll say. Will I just slip in as my teacher gives me a critical, furrowed browed frown? Perhaps it’d be best to say that I went to my non-existent first period class, at which point I remembered that Tuesday is a lab day, so I darted up here as fast as I could. Maybe I should come in glaring at him for making me get there as early as I did. I’m just thinking how wonderful that role reversal would be when I round the corner. The entire class is waiting outside the door, sitting and talking hopefully of the breakfast they will soon be devouring with their newly freed two periods.
This is a wonderfully joyous setting. We have the mental masturbation over the notion of breakfast around good friends, united by the hatred of the Periodic Table of Elements. We twenty-odd teenagers mock fate sitting outside that classroom at 8:13am. The spirit of camaraderie is palpable. Together, the strength of our mutual wills, untied to one goal, can fulfill our fantasy. Nothing is outside the realm of possibility. We joke about where the teacher has run off to - wistful images of him lying on a bed somewhere, with lopsided limbs and a stream of drool running from his mouth, his hand on snooze. Maybe he completely forgot about the lab; after all he still can’t remember our names even though he put us in alphabetical order weeks before. Maybe he’s coming up the staircase right now as we laugh and joke. Maybe the sight of him is akin to seeing the Grim Reaper. Maybe he sucks all the hope out of us with his mere presence. Maybe the sugar we’ll be burning in half an hour will at least give us the illusion of the breakfast we so hoped for. Maybe that’s the lesson I’ve been taught all my life about what happens when I hope.
Weeks later I sit casually in English; it’s one of the rare few classes I can sit casually in. No one tells me my posture is off, or to put my feet on the floor, or that the chair’s backboard is actually meant for my back, not my crotch. The one (and by the one I mean the love of my day/week/ (or if I’m particularly romantic) month) has just left me without explanation other than standard barrage of “I’m screwed up,” and “It’s not you, It’s me.” This has temporarily shattered my normally vivacious self. Not even my friend’s prods whenever the teacher asks for a volunteer to read can shock me out of wallowing in my own self-pity.
I spill my emotions onto a piece of notebook paper, oblivious to the essay we’re reading. They’re scrawled over each other to be made completely illegible, so no one can see that my inner workings often resemble a Death Cab for Cutie song. The same prodding friend writes down “Hold fast to the mast, my friend, and the storm will pass.” As pseudo intellectual and unhelpful as it seemed then, I managed a half-hearted smile. However, I knew that proverb’s truth all along, but was just unwilling to accept that my own immediate feelings were not the most important or most defining aspects in my life.
That egocentric notion stalks me, and I can only assume others, depriving us of the most basic hope. It is that hope that allows anyone and everyone to overcome the disappointments, in pursuit of something better. In that simple sentence, written to obtain a half-hearted smile, was contained one of the most basic principles to live by. Do what is needed in times of grief to hold on, and it can only get better. That shall be my new mantra to live by. That is the only mantra to live by.