Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

(It’s two in the morning after a band competiton. I may regret writing some of this in twenty four hours. Bear with me.)

Part one: Being a teenager and being grown up.

I think the struggle (or one of them…if you can even call them “struggles”, whatever) with being a teenager is trying so hard to be mature and grown up. That’s how you end up with your grown up serious relationships, your grown up existential crisis, your grown up music, and your grown up haircut. You want so desperately to be seen as grown up that you just…overdo it.

And I think we’ve all heard our parents remember their teenage years, wanting to relive the experience. We all want what we can’t have.

Part two: NaNoWriMo

Finally figured out what I’m doing. It’s kind of the same thing I always write, but whatever. I’m doing it.

Really, I’m doing the same thing but in a totally different way.

This was a bad idea. I need sleep. I just wanted to put those thoughts out there.

Goodnight.

-Laura

Pandora

Poetry

1) And the Cantilevered Inference Shall Hold the Day by Michael Blumenthal

I’m not particularly crazy about this poem. The first time I read it I thought it was pretty good and it just gets worse and worse as I read it. This is pretty much how I feel about all Michael Blumenthal poems, really. See: Light, At Thirty-Two. I mean, it’s pretty and everything but I feel like he’s just rambling and then going in and putting some line breaks in it.

I do like that one line though.

“Nothing
I can say to you here can possibly convince you that a man
as unreliable as I have been can smuggle in truths between tercets

and quatrains on scraps of paper, but the world as we know
is full of surprises, and the likelihood that here, in the shape
of this very bird, redemption awaits us should not be dismissed

so easily.”

2) Crow’s Elephant Totem Song by Ted Hughes

Kind of a weird one, I know. There isn’t a particular line in this poem that I really like, but I do like all the descriptions. The “half-rotten stumps of amputations”, how they “vomit laughter”. That one especially is so good.

Weird, but I like it.

3) Mirror by Sylvia Plath

“I have looked at it so long I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.”

I love Sylvia Plath.

Admittedly, I’m not that attached to The Bell Jar. It’s not that it’s bad, it just didn’t really interest me as much as I thought it would. I love Sylvia Plath’s poetry though. It’s just so good. All the time.

4) Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Probably my favorite poem of all time, and I think it might be just because of that last stanza.

Poetry is awesome. Seriously.

That’s all. I’m done. I can’t think lately. Like, I can’t think about anything to write here. I’ve been writing like a mad person lately, but nothing I can put here yet. Mostly because it doesn’t exist in the digital world, but also because it’s not done. And I take a long time to finish things.

This was an effort to start doing this again. I feel like this is good for me. It’s like social interaction, but not like social interaction at all, so it gives me some kind of illusion of social interaction.

Anyway, like I said, I’m done.

Goodnight.

-Laura

A Few Words

On September 12, 2008, David Foster Wallace killed himself. Yesterday was the first anniversary of his suicide.

I didn’t know David Foster Wallace existed before he killed himself, so he’ll always be dead to me. I didn’t lose anything. But I have to wonder what I would’ve felt if I did know about him before he died. And honestly, I think I would feel the exact same as I do now.

Because I didn’t know him. Reading what someone’s written does not equate to knowing them. It’s still edited, and you’re still showing the parts of yourself that you want other people to see. Everything a person writes is written with the intention of someone else reading it.

So I don’t miss him. I can’t miss something I never had.

And because of this Infinite Summer thing, I get to watch this whole community of people miss and miss someone that they didn’t really know. You know he wrote a great book, and maybe those words changed your life. Then miss those words. Miss the words that no one will ever get to hear. Miss that feeling you got when you first read them. But don’t miss him. You can’t.

Goodnight.

-Laura

Things are better out here than they might seem.

I don’t have anything to say.

English Class

So recently I was in a car with some friends (I use the term lightly) because I was getting a ride home. One of these people said that they like their English teacher because “she understands that kids don’t like reading”.

There are multiple things wrong with this. (1) some kids like reading, i.e.: ME. (2) IT’S ENGLISH CLASS. YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO READ.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

I’m sorry I complain about this so much, and I’m sure you’re sick of hearing it, but I can’t help it. This is my biggest pet peeve.

I don’t like math class, but my math teachers don’t “understand that I don’t like homework”. They don’t do it for me. And if they did, everyone would think that’s ridiculous. So why is it somehow acceptable for English class? It’s part of your work. The teacher apparently reads out loud to the class and explains every stanza as she goes (it’s Beowulf). Yes, reading out loud is beneficial, but mostly to seven year olds.

It’s part of an English teacher’s job to teach you how to read properly, and reading out loud, practically spoon feeding them, is not going to help. The truth must come out: literature is a dying art. Go to any bookstore and see what people are reading, what’s being put up on the shelves, what’s venerated as being “good”. It’s not literature. People aren’t taking books seriously as they have in the past, and one could argue that it’s because of this crappy teaching.

I’m not targeting this particular teacher. I have another friend whose English teacher said that Animal Farm was about talking animals. It’s a travesty.

I just don’t see why people, high schoolers in particular, take math and science so seriously, but snub English. It’s important. Take away literature, and what are we left with? Words are the only ways in which we can communicate feeling*. Can you tell someone how much you love them through a parabola? Does emotion pour out of your balanced equation?

The answer is no. You can program any machine to figure out practically every math problem in the world, but no machine can understand Robert Frost**.

In math class, I can’t say that the teacher is thinking too much into the Pythagorean theorem or something, so why should you be able to say that an English teacher is thinking too much into Huckleberry Finn?

That’s all I have to say.

Goodnight.

-Laura

*Not entirely true, I know. They’re the only ways in which some people can communicate feeling.

**I told this to my brother and he responded with, “not yet”. I maintain the opinion that we SHOULD NOT do that. Hasn’t anyone read Isaac Asimov?

Quick List

1. School is swallowing me whole. It’s the second day, and I already feel like I’m overwhelmed with work. I think I just need to calm down, but I’m seriously in panic mode.
2. Speaking of school, THE HALLWAYS ARE FREAKING RIDICULOUS. I CAN’T DO THIS.
3. Bought two new books today. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace* and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. I couldn’t remember what I wanted from the bookstore, and I just remembered that I was going to actually buy some Flannery O’Connor because she is practically my life and I am SO JEALOUS that all these people are reading/talking about/writing about it in their English classes.
4. Speaking of English class, SO EXCITED for next semester with my three hour power block of English and creative writing. Despite some unfortunate factors regarding the students in that second class**, I am still unbelievably excited. This will probably morph into horrification (it’s a word, I checked) once I actually have to go to it.
5. Weezer’s new single is so kick ass.
6. I really want to at least apply to a summer writing program this winter. I don’t know if I’ll even get in, but it can’t hurt to try. There’s one a Kenyon that I’m obviously going to be interested in, and there’s another one at the University of Iowa. Iowa is kind of far away, and I don’t know if my parents are going to be cool with that. They probably will. Whatever, it probably won’t even matter.
7. AP Chemistry is ridiculous. SO MUCH WORK.

Goodnight.

-Laura

*I need Oblivion, Everything and More, and Girl With Curious Hair to complete my DFV collection. I’m not buying that speech he published. It’s saved on my computer, that’s enough for me.

**I hate calling it “creative writing”. I hate it. That’s also why I will never major in creative writing, and why I’m hesitant to even consider grad school, even though the grad program at University of Iowa is the same on that Flannery O’Connor went to. I just don’t want to say “I have a master’s degree in creative writing”. Bleh. OVERTHINKING/THINKING WAY TOO FAR INTO THE FUTURE.

The word “lonely” never comes up.

(Been feeling kind of crappy lately, so I didn’t want to do this. Sorry about that.)

“Adolescence is best enjoyed without self-consciousness, but self-consciousness, unfortunately, it its leading symptom. Even when something happens to you, even when your heart’s getting crushed or exalted, even when you’re absorbed in building the foundations of your personality, there come these moments when you’re aware what’s happening is not the real story. Unless you actually die, the real story is still ahead of you. this alone, this cruel mixture of consciousness and irrelavance, this built-in hollowness, is enough to account for how pissed off you are. You’re miserable and ashamed if you don’t believe your adolescent troubles matter, but you’re stupid if you do. [...]

But when does the real story start? At forty-five, I feel grateful almost daily to be the adult I wished I could be when I was seventeen. [...] At the same time, almost daily, I lose battles with the seventeen-year-old who’s still inside me. [...]

The double bind, the problem of consciousness mixed with nothingness, never goes away. You never stop waiting for the real story to start, because the real story, in the end, is that you die.”

-The Discomfort Zone by Jonathan Franzen

The book itself was not actually that good. The beginning was good, but once he started talking about his love affair with bird watching, he lost me.

The first Jonathan Franzen book I read, How to be Alone, was really good. At least I really liked it, but it seems that a look at the GoodReads page for the book, I am in the minority*.

How to be Alone is a collection of essays from the mid-nineties and argues for the virtues of being alone. You can see how this could appeal to me.

To clarify: I’m not anti-social. In fact, I’m really kind of pro-social. To a degree. I like meeting new people and I like going to parties and I like talking to be people. I’m not opposed to socialization in the slightest.

But I hate things that social people like, it seems. For example, cell phones.

I hate being able to be reached at all hours of the day. So I turn it off or I don’t bring it with me. Then I get yelled at for not having my phone on me, or not picking it up, etc.

Sometimes I just want to be left alone. I don’t want to be having four different conversations going on at the same time. I don’t need that. Maybe other people like it. I don’t.

A lot of people guy this guy elitist, or out-of-date. One review argues that the world is a different place since 9/11, and since these essays are written before that, they’re obsolete. Which is completely ridiculous. I mean, how many books were written before September 11th, 2001? Are all of those books “obsolete”? What about all the books that were written before American even existed? Yes, the language is a bit outdated, but that doesn’t mean the content is less relevant**.

I am interested in the virtues of being alone, but it seems that I’m part of the minority once again. Perhaps why this book isn’t really well liked. People seem to think that being alone is bad, but there’s a difference between being alone and being lonely.

And now we reach the point where I’m pretty sure that I’m not making any sense. Just read it. You probably won’t like it. I like it. The end.

Goodnight.

-Laura

*My favorite part of the reviews are the people they recommend the books to. “Elderly techno-phobes”, “boring magazine enthusiasts”, and “anyone with an hour to kill” are featured here. Good to know what demographic I’m reading in. I like on the page for Twilight, a lot of the recommendations say things like “No one, not even my worst enemy”.

I have to say that posting a two-page long diatribe against a book on its GoodReads page has to be probably one the most pathetic things I’ve seen a person do.

**See: Catcher in the Rye.

Why I’m Usually Angry, Part Two

I need to clear something up.

If someone asks me a question that requires me to express my opinion, and I answer that question with an expression of my opinion, and then you counter that with a separate argument, I will retaliate. After that retaliation, you cannot use the argument that “all opinions are valid” because if you really cared about the integrity of other people’s opinions, you wouldn’t have argued against mine in the first place.

Just because I’m apparently a notoriously mean person, or that I say things with a mean inflection does not always make you the helpless victim. I can be attacked too. Being against me does not automatically make you right, or good.

Thank you.

-Laura

Throwing Up

(Went to the Howard County fair with Val and Val’s brother, John. It was awesome. Val almost threw up on the Tilt-a-Whirl.)

I don’t like air conditioning.

I have a freak allergy that gives me hives when I get cold. I don’t mean that sort of internal cold that you sometimes get during the winter months, I mean cold air blowing on your skin. You would think that this allergy would be the most severe during the winter months, but I spend the majority of my time indoors. The indoors are heated during these months.

During the summer, however, restaurants, movie theaters, cars, and people’s houses are blasting cold air through the vents and packing the tiny spaces with as much freezing air as they possibly can. I only wear sneakers because if I wear anything else, I get hives on my toes. Cars are the worst because the vents are pointing directly at my arms or fingers and soon the areas are inflamed with itchy bumps.

Due to the this fact, I haven’t closed my windows all summer. And because of this a spider has taken up shop in a corner of my room. I’m not a huge fan of bugs. I’m not afraid of them, exactly, I just don’t like them. They’re not pleasant. I have entertained the idea of killing the spider, but I’m not very good at that. I usually just don’t want to get very near the spider.

So lately I’ve been living in cohabitation with this spider. I thought about naming it, but I don’t think that would be a good idea at all, since I want it dead.

I’m going to reshelve my books again. I’m going to go back to separating them by fiction, nonfiction, plays, and poetry. I’m also going to take on the task of cataloging my family’s entire library and actually organizing it, because looking at our bookshelves with Shakespeare crammed next to Janet Evanovich makes me want to hurl. I’m also going to the library later today. Hoorah for books.

I say goodnight all the time, and I’m going to say it again even though it’s four thirty-five in the afternoon.

Goodnight.

-Laura