Month: October 2017

 

I collect dirt on Tuesdays

to annoy my parents on Thursdays

As I ram it down my throat twenty minutes before a family dinner

“Too full to eat another bite”

And then pat my stomach for good measure

No one questions the dust beneath my fingernails

Or the sand that coats my teeth

“A new fad you’re too old to understand”

Laughter

My finger wiggles its way between my lips as my teeth rip through two months of hard work

spitting the remainder on the floor

“So can I leave”

They don’t stop the forks from hitting the plate with a loud crash

or the smacking, spit flying across the table to land on my unwanted chicken

I stir it with my mash potatoes, pretend its a new dressing

Its better than gravy I can assure you

My mind seems to say,

before I shovel a spoon full into my mouth

I let it roll around in in my gums  before swallowing

it goes down in pieces, no smooth transition

“Delicious”

A fork is pointed towards me, saliva coats its tip

I lick my lips

“Yeah, it took me all day to finish, I knew you would like it”

Laughter

My leg jumps at the sound hitting the table with every audible chew

chattered tooth, mingling with metal

I can hear an earthquake rumbling up my throat

But I swallow it down, like my morning vitamins

less healthy I know

But what else could I do to soothe my nerves

exploding like fireworks underneath my skin

I drink more water

Someone made a joke about my past mistakes

Laughter

I pop my  neck and feel it sprain

Not before I laugh too

it’s bitter to my ears, too loud, too much
So, I stop the laughter with a piece of casserole

that seems to drip down my chin messier then I intended

Laughter

My sister finishes, silverware banging on an empty plate with purpose, silence,

an announcement: “I’m finished first”

No, words just subtle acknowledgment

The chair imprinting holes in the floor screeches back

Another does the same and another

I count below my breathe four in total

There is no noise,

the silence becomes friendly

It sits with me for the remainder of my meal

Its funny I know choked by noise

to be caressed by the quiet

but even I couldn’t resist the small giggle escaping my clenched teeth

Soft

Just a whisper above a breathe,

but sweet in this empty  space

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guys. Lolita is such a great movie. There’s just so much wrong within it. Immoral relationships, toxic romance, a man on the run, incest(possibly), it’s just so great.

The movie kind of makes you feel bad for the male lead, Humbert Humbert, when in reality he is a pedophile preying on a young girl. He’s portrayed as a misunderstood man trying to rekindle a love he lost as a young boy. We seem to always sympathize for those who have lost and that’s where you must start to remember that Humbert is a grown man, preying on a little girl.

To make matters worse, the movie sexualizes the heck out of Lolita herself. She’s about 14 or 15 years old, a fire ball, and a free spirit. Just a sassy teenager enjoying her days. She’s portrayed as a young girl who’s basically too grown up for her own good and is made out to be the ring leader of the whole show.

Throughout the movie Lolita seems like the mastermind behind all of the events, and in some way or another, she partially is, but it is also the fault of the Hum himself and there’s no denying that.

I honestly wish i could just tell you all the entire movie here in this blog but i’d rather you guys watch it AND/or read it and tell me your views on the issue.

http://www.onlinefmradio.in/videos/showvideo/Lolita-1997-Full-Movie-x6kLJVytJY1i

https://gomovies.pet/film/lolita-9614/

https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/234330/mod_resource/content/1/Vladimir%20Nabokov%20Lolita%20Penguin%20Modern%20Classics%20%202000%20%281%29.pdf

Long-distance friendships are difficult. You cannot be physically there for them, you can’t help them when they’re sad, when they want to go buy something for another friend or a particular event that they need nicer clothes for. You can’t hang out with them on the weekends or the days that seem like you just need to go on a drive with that friend that makes you feel as though everything is just fading away, and you have no problems in the universe and that nothing can ever bring you down again. There is no going to the movies or the mall, just because you’re friends, and that’s what you do. No traditions that you two always take part in that you made up yourselves, no sleeping over at one another’s houses. They can’t meet your new cat or look at your newly dyed hair in person, and cameras never quite catch the color just right. You can’t run through Wal-Mart together, just for the hell of it or drive through a fast food restaurant together or introduce them to your parents properly. It’s extremely difficult to give them birthday presents or Christmas presents or little Valentine’s Day notes because you’re the only Valentine each other needs, so instead, you have to substitute for writing her something because she’s always said she loved your writing and sending her a picture. Which never feels as satisfactory as you want it to. There are no late night drives to that place you always go to or any going to concerts together or all but dragging them along with you to some event or another you were forced into attending so you won’t be as bored with them there as you know you would be without them. Never have you felt that sense of overwhelming joy and contentment as you sit with your best friend with them or what it’s like to know you always have someone and somewhere to run to when you need to be anywhere but your own home. Instead of hearing constant nagging about how you go out so often, you get to hear your parents complain about how you are always inside and on your computer or your phone. And no one seems to realize just how freaking hard it is when your best – and nearly only – friend is thousands of miles away and that, yes, it is possible to form a connection with someone whose face you did not see as soon you met them and that you can only talk to through some type of screen. And how, what you desire most in the world is to see them, hug them – just be with them. But you can’t because they’re so far away.

Firstly, let me just explain my argument before I get called heartless or insensitive(which I certainly do agree with).  I do like animals in general; what I do not like is the idea of domestication. I think animals are useless as “friends” to humans in households- that’s not why they exist. When I state that I absolutely cannot stand puppies or kittens or toddlers or even the sweet-sticky-cuteness of both of these relatively appreciated creatures, I mean it. Why is that a bad thing? I have reasons to back up my statement, the first being:

• We tend to elevate the aesthetics that come from animals, and we ridicule them to millions of pictures, scratchy outfits, and high-end dog/cat food. We are not able to ask what these animals want, whether or not they hate ear scratches or throwing a ball monotonously back and forth; we cannot speak for these animals (obviously).
• We are allowed to eat cows, chickens, etc., but not dogs or pigeons? Is this not discriminating to the poor animals we have no heart for? That being said, I have nothing against eating animals, but I think that is extremely odd that we condone the mutilation of some animals for food, clothing, etc. and just keep others as pets.
• Secondly, pets are useless besides trying to get away from actual human connection and instead opting for a chill cat or hyperactive Yorkie. I don’t want to be misunderstood, but I think some people grow up to become “cat ladies” just because they despise human connection or feel like no one will accept them as who they are. Does this mean that this “cat lady” has cats that love her? Who can figure this out if pets can’t speak for themselves? Maybe we are hurting animals by domesticating them more that we are helping them.

Side note: (Guys I think pets are okay I just really have no other reasons for hating “cute” pets besides me just thinking they are grotesque.)

My next confession is on children- those disgusting, annoying, absolutely nasty little heathens we take pride in calling our own. I cannot stand small babies because I don’t like the idea of two people having the responsibilityto fill a newborns’ head with whatever kind of education, ideaologies, mantras, etc. they choose. This is how serial killers are formed. Don’t get me wrong, some parents do a great job of aising their child to be a responsible citizen in a community; others raise their kids to be sexist, etc. and when the child grows older that’s  all that kid will know.

Also, have you ever realized how insanely dirty children are? Toddlers eat anything that will fit into their mouth, from stale popcorn on the floor to Legos. That’s terrifying- I think that they are just warming up to learn how to eat people.

Guys, I really enjoy you all’s work. No story or poem is like the last and I truly enjoy the difference in the voices of you all. I love the diversity and the number of auras and personalities there are in the writing. I’m literally reading the work of different authors and falling in love with all of their work every day! You all are an inspiration to my work and I draw energy from each and every one of you. You all have a gift, which in essence is the same, but under the surface, you serve different purposes. I’m truly grateful to have been gifted with such a beautiful people who are all gifted individually. I even enjoy the quirks of each and every one of you. No Junior Literary is like the last and as a unit, we all live in harmony. ღ

I really want to be an artist.  I want to be a creator of worlds that are indistinguishable from our own.  I want to push storytelling to its limits and twist it with the real world in ways so that it might as well be reality because when something is indistinguishable from reality, what stops it from being reality.  We use our perception of the world to determine what is real, so when our perception cannot distinguish fact from fiction, the two cease to have meaning because each term only exists to distinguish itself from what falls under the other.  I, of course, am not the first person to want to bring fiction into reality through art, but I was surprised to find one place where this has been attempted.  Professional wrestling is an art form that typically attempts to stay as believable as reality.  Within wrestling there is a code called Kayfabe.  It basically means that if two wrestlers have an onscreen rivalry, that rivalry has to be artificially extended into the real world.  The two people cannot be seen having lunch together because that would break the illusion.  They are understood to be playing characters, but the separation between a performer and their character is much looser in the world of wrestling.  Often times a character is just an exaggerated version of the person that is playing that character, and they can even share a name in a lot of situations.  This makes their real world selves into a part of the art that’s being created through their characters.  I would love to make art that is this intimately bonded with the real world that the two are on equal levels.  A master of this was Andy Kaufman.  He built up a persona for himself as a wrestler that only wrestled women and was “the world’s greatest inter-sex wrestler”.  He maintained this persona in all interviews and convinced a majority of people that this was actually who he was, but it was really all just for the sake of comedy.  Most of the women he “wrestled” were in on the joke and weren’t actually hurt, but the audience did not know this.  Reality is determined by what the audience is allowed to know.  Another example of twisting reality and fiction comes with the book series, “A Series of Unfortunate Events”.  The series is credited to Lemony Snicket though the author’s real name is Daniel Handler.   Lemony Snicket is a character within the world of the series, and this character is expanded upon in other books.  Within the world of the series, the character Lemony Snicket wrote the books that chronicle the lives of the Baudelaire orphans, and so the readers are introduced to the books as having been written by this fictional author.  This allows the reader to further buy into the story and the world being created whereas they’d be taken out of it if they saw that the books that the character Lemony Snicket claimed to write had the name Daniel Handler printed on the cover.  All of these examples are somewhat dishonest, but they all serve a purpose of convincing the audience of the stories they are experiencing.  Usually, when experiencing a story, there are certain walls that are clearly marked and never crossed in terms of what is real and what is not, and in books that line is usually drawn somewhere close to the book’s cover sleeve.  When these expectations of truth are taken advantage of, entirely new levels of immersion can be reached without the audience ever even realizing that they’re being tricked into being more invested.

I talk a lot in Spanish class. Usually during the morning, when the room maybe has about five people or less, considering I get there at least fifteen minutes earlier than most. My ritual goes as follows, I walk in, set my stuff down, and then go sit by my friend. Who I have had the privilege of sharing a class with. When I get to her desk, I like to sit on the ground beside her, 99% of the time there is a seat opened right next to her but I prefer sitting on the ground anyway because to me it’s more comfortable that way. Sometimes I’ll just sit an scroll through my various social media apps and she would do the same. Until the days I want to talk, which is all word spew, in no particular order, way, shape, or form. I just talk to my heart’s content and she would listen without any complaints. Now recently, I’ve had the most peculiar thoughts and I have shared them with her. On days like this, she likes to record me and document my words on snap chat. So, ill give you all the rundown of my latest conversation that my Spanish class had caused. I’ll call this the Butterfly conspiracy. I was sitting in class, zoning out from lack of sleep when my mind traveled back to the time I watched that one sponge bob episode with the butterfly. The one where they zoomed in on the butterflies face. Which at the time was the worst thing I have ever seen. While I was thinking about this I said, while muttering to myself, “Butterflies are evil”. MY friend heard this, her immediate repose was to ask “Why?” like any other person would. I said something along the lines of “Their creepy, weird and eat people”. At the time that came out of my mouth, I didn’t even register half of the words I just said. My friend, of course, was curious and prompted me to explain further. So, I explained to her my thought process about said sponge bob episode, She told me that wasn’t enough to hate butterflies. So wanting her to see my side of the story, I made a conspiracy theory involving, whales, butterflies, and dolphins. I picked those three because I hate whales, I’m terrified of dolphins and I consider butterflies too nice looking to rule them out as evil. The main point was, dolphins and butterflies feeding whales human skin to make them grow bigger so one day when they were big enough, they can fly out of the ocean and take over the world. How could the whale fly out of the ocean? Simple, the butterflies would grab hold of the whale and lift it out of the ocean. Now hear me out, I am fully aware that the chance of any of that happening is extremely low, I get that, but we should never rule that possibility out. Anything could happen, and now you know if you see a whale a butterfly and a dolphin together. Run.

I want to discus something that the people of the south don’t really appreciate my opinion on: gun control. Now, here’s where I hear that I’m young and I don’t know what I’m talking about. Another argument I get often is that I’ll regret not having a gun when the wars start or when someone comes knocking on my door in the middle of the night. News flash: war will not be fought with guns or men, we will all be dead in a moment by the mass nuclear weapons that other countries have in their possession. They will not need men and women to do the dirty work of killing each other. They will merely press the big red button and poof, we’re carrion.

I debated writing on this subject because of the different opinions that people have on it. But, as one of my former posts stated, artists’ freedom and all that. So here goes nothing.

My mind has always been adrift when thinking about gun control. I live in a very conservative household and my opinions are very often outnumbered, but seeing as my family will not be reading this, I’ll give my opinion.

There is no excuse for the Las Vegas massacre. None at all. Being 16 and on multiple occasions seeing the headline “Biggest U.S Shooting in History” is outrageous. Why are more people not angry about the lives being lost to senseless murder that can, and should, be controlled. I often here the excuse of the 2nd Amendment, but that was created when guns only held 1 bullet, not 300. More people are endangered now. It’s not a single person having to stop and reload every time they find a target, its 1,800 bullets a minute. 1,800 for a single portable machine gun.

Why do people think they need guns so badly? If they have no reason to own them than to hunt game, then they are unnecessary. People are scared of boogeymen that are not actually there, or wouldn’t be if men and women were not allowed to needlessly own killing machines.

There’s the other argument in the case that  it isn’t the gun doing the killing, but the person behind the trigger….

I truly wonder how we have managed to survive so long as a nation with such a closed mindset. If the gun is not doing the killing then what is? If the killer did not have the gun then would they have still found a way to murder so many people? Possibly.  But how can we know this without proof?  We can’t.

The people that do the killing are sent to  jail, if they’re caught, but what about their weapons of destruction? Is it  kept in police jurisdiction until it’s deemed useless to the case and then sold back out into the world? In some cases, yes.

My point is: I’m angry. And I’m sad. So terrifically sad that something like this could keep happening and nothing is done. Things need, no, have to change for this country to grow.

I really miss the thrill of being at a concert. Of standing up for hours that it makes my knees ache as if I had been running for a number of days, but not even noticing the presence of that pain. I miss adrenaline pumping through my veins like gasoline in a high-powered vehicle. Of waking up at five in the morning, staying fully awake for the nearly eight-hour drive to another state and remaining awake until about midnight the same night. (And not to mention, only sleeping about three to four hours the previous night because I’m so freaking excited.)

This summer, I went to a concert and saw two of my favorite bands playing at the same time in Houston, Texas – Avenged Sevenfold and Metallica. It was the best night of my life, and the entire day was filled with anticipation, extreme excitement and impatience for the long drive up there and the wait once we arrived at our hotel. I went with my dad because he is the one to blame for my particular taste in music; while other kids grew up with The Wiggles and Dora the Explorer, I grew up with Metallica, Guns N’ Roses and many, many others. So when my dad suggested we go see Metallica – my number one favorite band – this summer, I legitimately thought my heart had skipped a beat.

Once we got to the venue – about an hour or two before the doors opened, might I add – I thought that I was dreaming and that my heart was going to burst out of my chest from the excitement I was feeling. We stood outside, in the blazing Texas heat for about an hour before people were allowed into the gates. And I am not fond of warm weather, much less hot, trust me. But I was standing out there, happy as ever, waiting for our chance to have our tickets scanned so we could go inside. And of course, once we got up there, and our tickets were scanned, the small device the guy was using to scan them started making this repeated beeping sound that means the ticket is not valid. Not on my own, just on my dad’s. Let me tell you – I was freaking out. As soon as I heard those four beeps, the only thing I felt was the sensation that I was going to cry.

Well, after about fifteen to twenty minutes of walking around, being lead from here, to here, no, over there, we finally got inside and sat in our seats – and the anticipation continued.

Now, I’d been to two other concerts prior to this one, and never have I ever been so happy to be surrounded by thousands of other people, screaming, singing, and completely forgetting about their problems for the moment. And I absolutely hate crowds, but this was different. I was with people who enjoyed what I enjoyed, loved the music, the band, and we could all just be one, no matter who we were or what our background looks like – the Metallica family was one that night. And James Hetfield (Metallica’s lead singer) said something that I will never forget in my life. He said, “Metallica doesn’t give a shit. We don’t care what you look like, who you are, where you’re from, what skin color you are, what you do or don’t eat. We are all family here; we are all the Metallica family.” And that is the best thing I have ever heard a celebrity say to those that idolize them and also one of the many reasons that was the best day I have ever had in sixteen years.