Month: November 2017

Often I realize that the people here with me now, will not be with me forever. The people who I will grow to be friends with. The ones I will create inside jokes with. I will spend countless hours working on Coffee Houses and creating poems with these people only for the memory of our friendships to dissipate.

We will probably have movie nights together and go on Literary Trips. We may spend late nights together studying for science tests or choral reading our writing texts books. But are we truly friends? Can we truly be friends if we can so quickly forget each other?

Maybe we will keep in touch after our graduation. Maybe we will all go out to each at Golden China and go thrifting like we did for our first of many Literary Trips. Maybe we all will tell stories and relive our high school years together.

Or maybe we will forget the two years we spent together. Maybe we will forget to tell our children the stories from our years together. Maybe we won’t return for our Reunions.

Who can really tell where things will end for us?

city with no children // arcade fire

there were never very many kids in my neighborhood.

there was the girl who lived down the street. the first friend i made in a new town and the first one i lost in a new town before they moved out of the neighborhood. we used to listen to the beatles on the bus together and ride our bikes around the neighborhood. in fifth grade, we’d even tried to write a book together about what it would be like to be in middle school. her way of telling me we weren’t friends anymore was to write about it and let me read it in our book. i threw every single handcrafted page in the trash.

there was the family next door who had a three year old little girl. i used to watch her learn how to ride a bike while her dad trailed behind her on the sidewalk and in the car-crowded street. one day, her mom’s car wasn’t in the driveway anymore and she was gone, too. the next day, her dad’s car wasn’t in the driveway anymore either.

there was the five year old girl across the street with a baby brother i taught how to fist-bump. i watched them as their parents finally got married and the baby brother learned to walk and she was starting elementary school. i remember watching their dad pull out of the driveway one night, and his tires never touched it again. the mom used to sit outside the garage and smoke at night, and i watched as the garage became emptier and emptier until there wasn’t even a car parked out front.

there was family who moved in a little later was a daughter that was closer to my age and her two younger brothers, one five and another just one. i used go over to their house across the street all the time, watching as the four year old collected rocks and bugs and as the baby learned to walk and talk, and we found out their cousins did theatre with me and my brother.  we never saw each other very much before the whole family moved to georgia for their dad’s work.

there was the kid who lived behind us who was in my brother’s grade. before we had a fence that divided our two yards, my brother used to walk through the backyards and spent the nigh. and sometimes the three of us would walk around the neighborhood and look for cool rocks until he stopped talking to my brother. i don’t know if he still lives behind us or not, and neither i nor my brother have tried to find out.

everyone around me could recall suburban nights when they were kids, stories of riding bikes around their big spaceous neighborhoods or hanging out at each other’s houses when they were younger. even as we all got older, they could reminisce about being little kids in suburbia and get that little kid glint in their eye with that little kid smirk.

i never had the big spaceous neighborhoods. i never had the little kid glint or the little kid smirk or the little kid friends that never moved away and took my blooming blossoms of suburbia with them.

 

Sometimes I think about my future.  I know that I will try to be a writer, but I also know that what I write is not what has been traditionally popular.  I’m afraid that I’ll try to be a writer but will never be successful because of what I write about.  My favorite band is probably the Beach Boys, and my favorite album of theirs is Pet Sounds.  Pet Sounds is a near masterpiece, and I love every song on it.  Critics have said from its release that the album was incredible.  Despite being called nearly perfect, it sold far less than Brian Wilson had hoped.  One reason for this is that the music was entirely different from anything that had come before it; it was even vastly different from the other music the Beach Boys had previously made.  I feel like that might be what happens with me, but I won’t even be called great by few and retrospectively called a genius.  I feel like I’ll just be buried.  I know for a fact that I cannot change who I am as an artist.  I know that I will never sacrifice my artistic integrity for money.  My art is what is most important to me.  If I had money, I’d use it to fund my art.  I would not make art that does not represent myself to just to get money that I’d spend to continuously make things that I don’t care about.  I know that this is not the kind of philosophy that someone that wants to be a successful writer in this time should have, but I cannot change that about myself because it is so much of who I am as a person.  Maybe I’m lying to myself.  Maybe I’m making art that I know won’t be popular on purpose.  Maybe I’m building a wall.  Maybe I just want to be able to say, “Oh, that was never supposed to be popular,” so that when my art never becomes popular, I can have something to blame it on, so I won’t have to take responsibility or say that I failed to make something good.  I’ve been depressed lately, and I don’t really know why.  I’ve just gotten to a point where if I were somebody else and I met myself, I don’t think I’d like me.  I don’t know how to change this person that I am or if I should or if I just don’t want to.

Here’s a list of some of my favorite animes!!

Rosario + Vampire is literally one of my favorites! It’s probably one of the best out of all that i’ve watched.

The description is as follows:  . The story revolves around Tsukune Aono, a boy who inadvertently enrolls in a boarding school for monsters. He quickly befriends Moka Akashiya, a vampire who soon develops an obsession with his blood, and later meets other monster girls who soon take a romantic liking to him.

• Moka Akashiya is the vampire title character. She is highly regarded by her schoolmates for her beauty and academic ability. She enjoys biting and drinking blood from Tsukune’s neck. When her rosario is removed from her necklace, she undergoes a personality change (along with a physical transformation sequence in the anime) to a ruthless, arrogant and skilled martial artist who easily beats opponents with powerful kicks.
• Kurumu Kurono is a busty succubus student who originally plans to enslave all the boys at school with her kiss. Overshadowed by Moka’s popularity, she targets Moka’s object of affection, Tsukune, by using her charm ability but fails. After Moka defeats her, she falls in love with Tsukune because he shows her kindness, and pursues him exclusively as her Mate of Fate. Over the course of the series, she learns to value her friendship with Moka and the other girls when they help her out in situations.
• Yukari Sendou is introduced as an 11-year-old genius witch, complete with witch hat and heart-shaped magic wand, with a “little sister” personality. She scores at the top of her class, but is ridiculed by her classmates for being between monster and human. She idolizes Moka, and initially hates Tsukune for garnering Moka’s attention. However, after both Tsukune and Moka save her, she falls for Tsukune and dreams of a three-way relationship with them.
• Mizore Shirayuki  snow fairy who joins Tsukune’s class in the second term. She is typically seen with a lollipop in her mouth, which is actually a special coolant. In her first school term, she confesses her love to gym teacher Okuto Kotsubo, but when he takes advantage of her, she freezes him and gets suspended for the term. She obsesses over Tsukune because of his news articles, and stalks him regularly, eventually joining the Newspaper Club in her second year.

It obviously sounds interesting, if not a little odd. My favorite characters would be Mizore and Moka, they’re complete opposites of each other and they keep the show rolling. I really don’t want to spoil it for you, so please just watch. 8/10 https://www.funimation.com/shows/rosario-vampire/

 

My name is not mine to claim.

It is a thing given to me – forced upon me.

It is something I have absolutely loathed my entire life and wished that I could change since I was eight.

It is a thing of strain, of distress and discomfort.

My name is a broken record that somehow still manages to play through my parents’, my other family and people I know’s mouths,

despite its cracks, tears, the missing pieces and the fact that it was lost many years ago.

It is a thing that is supposed to be a part of me,

and yet, I cannot help but feel that no one around really cares to listen

and notice how I close my eyes, grit my teeth and flinch when they say that name –

how every time I am forced to say that name, my tongue feels grimy, my teeth clamp down on it and my stomach twists with nausea.

It pierces my insides and forces me to hear my parents saying it, when it knows I crave it to be gone and that we could all just forget about it;

I wish it could be seen that I am sick inside, the name having gotten into my system so many years ago,

infecting me with its contents that would make any human being feel unwell.

Brewing inside of me for so long that my body has become its permanent home,

the cancerous cells inside of my mind and my soul –

the very bane of my existence –

have been tormented for so long that I know no else besides this pain I feel from the abyss of hurt and suffocation.

It is a demanding, horrendous nuisance that will forever remain in its home that it has buried and settled itself into.

It will be there until I drop –

until my heart stops, my mouth no longer inhales or exhales, and my pulse is moving as steadily as the staircase I walk down every day.

My name is something that will forever stay with me, no matter where I go, who I meet or what I do.

It will always be there, lingering, screaming yet whispering itself to me:

Taylor.

Waiting:

Is this a joke,

being played to me, by me?

There’s no crack or split, no lighting

No skin shredding winds

No stillness, there is still moment

No disaster warning

because there is no disaster

Just life being life

And people doing things people do

There is nothing, there isn’t anything

but still something

sticky

dropping down with a purpose

Down my body,  and into my chest

It sits there for maybe a week

Maybe, but not at all

it can’t burst

it doesn’t rupture

just bubbles up

And goes back down

Throughout out the day

but it feels necessary

in a familiar type of way

It keeps my insides intact,

Even though it weighs me down

It might just be my head

gaining its feelings back

By giving me a numbness

That burns behind my eyes

I wrote this poem because I was hella depressed, and felt really bad about life and everything. I truly just wanted to crawl up in a ball and never wake up again. I know this isn’t something new ever teenager gets likes this but honestly, it was pretty bad this time around. I try my best no to make poetry when I’m sad because it seems like I’m trying to get something out of it. When in actuality no one ever sees my secret poetry collection of sad things. No, that it actually exists or anything. Haha…, Anyway this one is very recent I wrote it in a tent out behind “JI” because I really didn’t know what else I could have done. If it seems confusing it’s because it is. My emotions were everywhere at that point and trying to talk to people about it seemed like too much of a bother. I just let myself think and let it flow out.  Which I suppose that could be the best way to write poetry, by letting yourself word vomit. I mean, I don’t know if any of you guys actually do that or not, but I just find it interesting how I can only do that when I’m in some type of mood extreme. Whether it be happy or severely depressed. Just one of those random out of nowhere traits you figure out, like juggling while you left pinky toe rests in a vat of hot cheese. I’m not saying I can do that or anything, but I know one of might be able to if you give it a try. Like honestly if any of you can actually do that I will pay to see it, that seems pretty cool.  Anyways’s if you finished this blog post look up “BTS” they are a really cool K-pop band that helps me a lot when I’m feeling sad. Peace

 

 

So I was thinking about running for president.  But I’ll only have one platform: Tennessee.

We should basically just quarantine Tennessee.  The only real worthwhile contribution the state has ever made that is even scraping subpar is the pick-up line.  But basically, we section it off, and then we make everything in Tennessee $10.  Absolutely everything.

Think about it.  It kind of balances out.

Houses? $10.  (But you can only have ten.)

Any sort of food? $10.

Medical operations? $10.

Price of gas per gallon? $10.

I say we quarantine it and see if it works.  And if it doesn’t work, Tennessee burns in anarchy, and we just let them go at it, you know?  Like let them set up their own government if they want to, whatever.  It will probably take them a while to figure out that the government is coming to stop anyone.

Why isn’t the government going to intervene?  Because no one can go in or out of Tennessee.  You don’t want them buying things for other than $10 or people giving them stuff or them buying things for other people.

Also, there are only 10 dollar bills.  I say that it will work better than any trickle-down economic theory.

Plus, it will be pretty neat to have a new joke for Tennessee that isn’t a pickup line.
“What kind of dollar bills do you have?”
“The only dollar bill is the ten-I-see.”

Amazing, right?  Then Tennessee isn’t completely worthless.  Granted, Mississippi is going to have to find a new “vacation spot” that isn’t basically Mississippi.  They’ll have to, I don’t know, actually go somewhere new and experience new things instead of going to Tennessee just for the sake of saying you went somewhere.

The armpit of the country will turn into a frick frack amazing social economic theory war zone.  How cool is that?

I mean, you’d have to weigh the cons and pros of living there.  Everything is only $10, but so are inexpensive things.  There’s also a lot of anarchy, which I count as a major plus.

I would volunteer Mississippi to be the guinea pig, just because it’s a terrible state, but the whole point to sectioning off Tennessee is the same.

Then again, maybe we can start making some six dollar bills for Mis-six-ippi.  At least then we’d get something other than some annoying song.

And that is why you should vote for Z Money as president.

(I would go contact my senator and tell them my amazing idea, but I think they’d steal it.)

About two days ago, the topic of childhood misconceptions knocked on my dorm room door once again.  The topic snuck into the room and we began conversing about our own experiences as children.  Today, I am going to share a couple of those with you.

3.      Binder Clips and Football Shoulders

Okay, first off, binder clips.  Now, these bobbers never had much of a purpose to me besides looking like tiny purses that couldn’t hold much.  As I got older, they became torture tools used against me by my sister.  And what did they call them? Binder clips.  I’d never seen them used on binders, therefore, they were irrelevant to their name in my perspective.  Then one day in second grade, I watched as Mrs. Brown, rounded belly and all, bent over to grab a box of those clips.  She then proceeded to gather papers from the printer, clipping them together then turning them opposite ways.  Portrait, landscape. Portrait, landscape.

That was that was when I realized their purpose.  Still, I did not understand their name.  That is until a few days ago that my roommate, Madison, offered one to me.

“Um, I’m good.”

She put the clip in her hand down.

“I never actually understood why those were called binder clips,” I admitted.

“Oh.  It think it’s just because paper clips hold small amounts compared to how much a binder clip holds, hence binder clip.”

My mind had been blown.

_______________

“Touchdown!”  the football-announcer-guy half screamed into the microphone that wired into the speakers just behind my left shoulder.  I looked at it, my shoulder.  Then, I looked back at the field.  All of the football players were different in sizes and shapes.  The one thing, besides uniforms, that stuck out was their broad shoulders.  Why were they so big?

I looked back at my puny shoulder.  In all it’s bony glory, it still did not compare to the swollen uniformity of theirs.

Were they full of fat?  No, it had to be muscle.  I mean, you’d think it’d be muscle.  What if they were all muscle on the inside with a sheath of fat surrounding?  If so, then do they jiggle like the bump of Mrs. Brown’s stomach?

I imagine a football player, so caught up in the excitement of winning, tearing off his shirt and waving it around like the American flag, his enormous shoulders flexing at the raise of his arm.

This thought made me shiver.  Poor football players and their ugly shoulders.

shaking you off of my shoulders would be a burden lifted,

a deep breath out i know i’ve been holding,

(you’re crushing my frame)

my soul was never supposed to be the color of the night sky,

my mind should never have searched for comfort in the stars.

i shrank from the sun’s rays,

afraid it’s light would find its way into my viens,

boiling my blood and scorching my bones.

(maybe it could burn you too)

i never realized the catastrophe you hid beneath your skin,

maybe because i was busy hiding mine too.

our secrets lay behind bloodshot eyes,

yours more chaotic than my own,

(that’s what you told yourself)

i’m tired to tell you to stop spilling sugar,

all over my wounds.

(the sticky residue is starting to itch)

 

 

Pride

It comes in many forms, take grip onto the soles of our feet; it either holds us firmly in the ground or keeps us stuck in stubbornness to the point of arrogance. Taking pride in something or someone is a noble thing to do- it takes confidence  and courage to stand up for something and be the only one fighting. However, pride can turn peoples’ brains. It can sway ideas and linger of the new possibilities ahead if you decide to let your love of something overshadow what is right and wrong. The overflow of emotion that coincides with pride: love, fear, hate, anger- each are used as a tactic to win an argument. Prideful arguments are usually seen as a competition rather than a discussion because the entire talk is emotion-based, not factual. Taking pride in someone for their actions can be a positive thing, whereas talking someone up because you are proud of them, just to give yourself an edge or more power in a conversation is negative. Having pride in your work for example, as a painter, can be promising for your career. The flip side of this is when you are not humble enough to accept given criticism. Say someone doesn’t like your art. Say there are improvemtns to bwe made. Humilty needs to be shown in these situtations, just make sure that you do not confuse pride with worth.