The Meaning of Never

Being a typical middle class NYC teenager; both adventurous, always yearning and desiring to see and know and feel more, while still fairly sheltered and inexperienced, I am thankful to admit that I do not know the meaning of never. I have not felt never, I have not seen never. While it is true that I'm already too old to ever be a professional dancer, ice skater, horse-back-rider, or gymnast (which I still find sad, though I never considered any of them as a career choice), I am constantly told that I can do, be, think, see, have whatever, whoever I so desire. My entire life is ahead of me. And though there are occasional breakdowns over fear of missed opportunities, virtually nothing in my life is a definitive never. I am only able to imagine the life of my great aunt who will never regain her vision, or the little boy from my church who stood and talked about his 9 year old sister he lost to lukemia. He will never see her again. I try to imagine the pain inside of my father's friend who once made his livelihood through his greatest passion; piano, until a terrible accident crippling his hands, but I cannot. He will never play again. That would be, for me, to never act again, never write again. I cannot fathom. And though I do feel guilty for my inability to ever fully empathize with any of them, share some of the hurt, I'm so thankful and lucky to know that, as The Elegance of the Hedgehog taught me, I don't feel what they feel, carry the burden that they do; I am safe, privileged, blessed. I do not know the meaning of never.

It was initially proving to be quite difficult writing a blog post as I usually do, using a single quote or theme, with this book seeing as though almost every other chapter is titled "Profound thought #__", and practically the entire book is thought-provoking and eloquent. I found myself, at times, underlining so much it was ridiculous, and beginning to worry about how I would manage to pull off this entry, practically deciding to simply not write anything at all and to just move on to my next book. In the last five or so pages, however, a single idea hit me harder than anything else had. It was said by Paloma Josse, a bright 12 year old from a wealthy family who comes the the conclusion that life is vain and useless, planning to end her own on the day of her thirteenth birthday. Upon coping with the sudden death of Renee, the concierge of her building whom she had only just begun to grow exceedingly close with, Paloma realises that her own plan was vain in and of itself, and that she did not truly comprehend what it would mean to die, to experience never; "For the first time in my life I understood the meaning of the word never. And it's really awful. You say the word a hundred times a day but you don't really know what you're saying until you're faced with a real 'never again.' Ultimately you always have the illusion that you're in control of what's happening; nothing seems definitive" (page 324).

Technically speaking I am, in ways, quite similar to Paloma; young, privileged, naive and unaware of things that I am so sure I know, dramatic, and quick to draw grand conclusions, plan great events without looking so clearly at the larger picture or the actual implications of what those things may mean, may result in. This is what angsty teenagers do; even the talented and intellectual ones like Paloma, even the startling normal ones like myself. It's hard to pinpoint the precise moment that one grows up or comes of age, and it is most always a series of moments or events that individually shape what the adult you will be, but this, I think, is part of it. To know, realise, fully comprehend the meaning of never. To understand that 'never say never' is a rule often hard to follow, that there are things that happen, that exist, which, by their very definition require never. To see an ultimate and definite end to something, to feel true regret; it's what separates the children from the adults, the free from the burdened. And though I think I'm a marginally more self-aware, I'm still lucky to be able to say that by the end of this book, by the end of this entry, while I have my shallow never's of lost chances that really don't matter and melodramatic exaggerations of what never is, I am still free.

"Write Till You Drop" by Annie Dillard

I first felt as though I was encroaching on a private moment as I read the essay by Annie Dillard handwritten out sentence by sentence across a hundred or so pages of a leather bound journal. It belonged to my friend Olive; a gift given to her by her ex-playwright mom's boyfriend, Ed, who hoped that it would inspire her as a writer, as it once did for him. I did feel guilty initially for making myself a part of something I wasn't necessarily supposed to be a part of, even if she had offered it over for me to read. But as I progressed through the piece and the lovely brown journal that I wished could be mine, sitting in the corner on a Saturday afternoon while our friends in her bedroom played guitar and laughed too loudly, everyone began to fade away and I forgot about ever having felt bad. The essay was meant to be read, and I was surely meant to read it. Thank you to Annie Dillard, and to Olive and Ed, because one more person has been inspired.

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Write Till You Drop
By ANNIE DILLARD

People love pretty much the same things best. A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all. Strange seizures beset us. Frank Conroy loves his yo-yo tricks, Emily Dickinson her slant of light; Richard Selzer loves the glistening peritoneum, Faulkner the muddy bottom of a little girl's drawers visible when she's up a pear tree. ''Each student of the ferns,'' I once read, ''will have his own list of plants that for some reason or another stir his emotions.''

Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.

Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?

Write about winter in the summer. Describe Norway as Ibsen did, from a desk in Italy; describe Dublin as James Joyce did, from a desk in Paris. Willa Cather wrote her prairie novels in New York City; Mark Twain wrote ''Huckleberry Finn'' in Hartford. Recently scholars learned that Walt Whitman rarely left his room.

The writer studies literature, not the world. She lives in the world; she cannot miss it. If she has ever bought a hamburger, or taken a commercial airplane flight, she spares her readers a report of her experience. She is careful of what she reads, for that is what she will write. She is careful of what she learns, because that is what she will know.

The writer knows her field - what has been done, what could be done, the limits - the way a tennis player knows the court. And like that expert, she, too, plays the edges. That is where the exhilaration is. She hits up the line. In writing, she can push the edges. Beyond this limit, here, the reader must recoil. Reason balks, poetry snaps; some madness enters, or strain. Now gingerly, can she enlarge it, can she nudge the bounds? And enclose what wild power?

A well-known writer got collared by a university student who asked, ''Do you think I could be a writer?''

''Well,'' the writer said, ''I don't know. . . . Do you like sentences?''

The writer could see the student's amazement. Sentences? Do I like sentences? I am 20 years old and do I like sentences? If he had liked sentences, of course, he could begin, like a joyful painter I knew. I asked him how he came to be a painter. He said, ''I liked the smell of the paint.''

Hemingway studied, as models, the novels of Knut Hamsun and Ivan Turgenev. Isaac Bashevis Singer, as it happened, also chose Hamsun and Turgenev as models. Ralph Ellison studied Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. Thoreau loved Homer; Eudora Welty loved Chekhov. Faulkner described his debt to Sherwood Anderson and Joyce; E. M. Forster, his debt to Jane Austen and Proust. By contrast, if you ask a 21-year-old poet whose poetry he likes, he might say, unblushing, ''Nobody's.'' He has not yet understood that poets like poetry, and novelists like novels; he himself likes only the role, the thought of himself in a hat. Rembrandt and Shakespeare, Bohr and Gauguin, possessed powerful hearts, not powerful wills. They loved the range of materials they used. The work's possibilities excited them; the field's complexities fired their imaginations. The caring suggested the tasks; the tasks suggested the schedules. They learned their fields and then loved them. They worked, respectfully, out of their love and knowledge, and they produced complex bodies of work that endure. Then, and only then, the world harassed them with some sort of wretched hat, which, if they were still living, they knocked away as well as they could, to keep at their tasks.

It makes more sense to write one big book - a novel or nonfiction narrative - than to write many stories or essays. Into a long, ambitious project you can fit or pour all you possess and learn. A project that takes five years will accumulate those years' inventions and richnesses. Much of those years' reading will feed the work. Further, writing sentences is difficult whatever their subject. It is no less difficult to write sentences in a recipe than sentences in ''Moby-Dick.'' So you might as well write ''Moby-Dick.'' Similarly, since every original work requires a unique form, it is more prudent to struggle with the outcome of only one form - that of a long work - than to struggle with the many forms of a collection.

Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles. The problem is structural; it is insoluble; it is why no one can ever write this book. Complex stories, essays and poems have this problem, too - the prohibitive structural defect the writer wishes he had never noticed. He writes it in spite of that. He finds ways to minimize the difficulty; he strengthens other virtues; he cantilevers the whole narrative out into thin air and it holds. Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts? Can the writer renew our hopes for literary forms? Why are we reading, if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage and the hope of meaningfulness, and press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and which reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking. If we are reading for these things, why would anyone read books with advertising slogans and brand names in them? Why would anyone write such books? We should mass half-dressed in long lines like tribesmen and shake gourds at each other, to wake up; instead we watch television and miss the show.

No manipulation is possible in a work of art, but every miracle is. Those artists who dabble in eternity, or who aim never to manipulate but only to lay out hard truths, grow accustomed to miracles. Their sureness is hard won. ''Given a large canvas,'' said Veronese, ''I enriched it as I saw fit.''

The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring. It is the sensation of a stunt pilot's turning barrel rolls, or an inchworm's blind rearing from a stem in search of a route. At its worst, it feels like alligator wrestling, at the level of the sentence.

At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your fists, your back, your brain, and then - and only then -it is handed to you. From the corner of your eye you see motion. Something is moving through the air and headed your way. It is a parcel bound in ribbons and bows; it has two white wings. It flies directly at you; you can read your name on it. If it were a baseball, you would hit it out of the park. It is that one pitch in a thousand you see in slow motion; its wings beat slowly as a hawk's.

One line of a poem, the poet said - only one line, but thank God for that one line - drops from the ceiling. Thornton Wilder cited this unnamed writer of sonnets: one line of a sonnet falls from the ceiling, and you tap in the others around it with a jeweler's hammer. Nobody whispers it in your ear. It is like something you memorized once and forgot. Now it comes back and rips away your breath. You find and finger a phrase at a time; you lay it down as if with tongs, restraining your strength, and wait suspended and fierce until the next one finds you: yes, this; and yes, praise be, then this.

Einstein likened the generation of a new idea to a chicken's laying an egg: ''Kieks - auf einmal ist es da.'' Cheep - and all at once there it is. Of course, Einstein was not above playing to the crowd.

Push it. Examine all things intensely and relentlessly. Probe and search each object in a piece of art; do not leave it, do not course over it, as if it were understood, but instead follow it down until you see it in the mystery of its own specificity and strength. Giacometti's drawings and paintings show his bewilderment and persistence. If he had not acknowledged his bewilderment, he would not have persisted. A master of drawing, Rico Lebrun, discovered that ''the draftsman must aggress; only by persistent assault will the live image capitulate and give up its secret to an unrelenting line.'' Who but an artist fierce to know - not fierce to seem to know - would suppose that a live image possessed a secret? The artist is willing to give all his or her strength and life to probing with blunt instruments those same secrets no one can describe any way but with the instruments' faint tracks.

Admire the world for never ending on you as you would admire an opponent, without taking your eyes off him, or walking away.

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

After Michelangelo died, someone found in his studio a piece of paper on which he had written a note to his apprentice, in the handwriting of his old age: ''Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time.''

An excerpt and an idol and a reason why I write.

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

-The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, chapter 7

I have tried to describe this feeling on countless occasions, but was never quite able to in the way that she does. I could try to tell little aspects- the world rushing by me or missing every opportunity I watch come along or wanting and wanting and wanting so badly that I feel like it physically hurts. But alone, I think, none of these suffice. Now that I've read how she says it, I can almost explain what it is for me- wanting an English degree from Merton college at Oxford, but still needing to studying theatre at NYU or Yale, I want to live in a small apartment with a balcony in Montmatre Paris, or a little cottage in the English countryside and feel incredibly chiche and romantic, but also, I'd love to stay in New York. I want a little girl who looks like me, but I swear I'll never settle. I want to be a runner and a writer and a performer and a free spirit and someone grounded and to be this person and that person, but then I want just a better version of myself. I feel my life unraveling before me, every step defining the next one, every choice leading to something larger, feeling that I must make these decisions fast before time runs out, but never being able to. I know that logically I cannot have all of this- be in two places at once, be five different people at once, have ten different lives at once- but illogically I think I'll never be happy without it, and unable to bring myself to a choice, I eventually see it slipping away, smell the figs of what could have been my future rotting.

What is so brilliant about The Bell Jar isn't the story (though that is brilliant as well), it isn't the language (though that is most definitely brilliant as well), rather it is Sylvia Plath's ability to feel for others and write what they cannot- it is her incredible insight into humans and emotions. During The Bell Jar instead of feeling like an outsider, reading Esther's story, thinking- like the others- that she just a young tragic woman who lost her mind, I found myself rather tied up in her world. Suddenly she wasn't insane, they were- the doctors and the therapists and her mother and Buddy and the other girls in the asylums that she was sent to. They were all mad, but she was fine. Suddenly, I was with her at every appointment in the offices and waiting rooms, I was there for her during each heartbreak and treatment and breakdown and failed attempt at death. I was looking through Esther's eyes at the rest of the world. It made sense when she thought that every last stranger who passed her by most definitely had some grand plan to harm her, I understood when suicide seemed logical, I believed her when she said that she hadn't slept in fourteen nights. Her mother didn't, her doctor didn't, but I did.

There is a reason why this beautiful, eloquent and tragic novel has survived, still relevant to anyone who may read it, some 50 years later. Yes the times have changed- that much is clear from where the story is in women's rights and medical breakthroughs, but hurt, confusion, joy remains the same- what happens in us, I think, never changes as rapidly as the outside world. Though I am not suicidal and our lives are as vastly different as our ages, I feel as through Sylvia Plath understands me. Each human struggle is individual, but the presence of them in everyone remains the same- Plath is able to simply take that presence and create something incredible that not only connects to everyone, but that forces them to feel. That, I suppose, is what makes an artist.

This is the gift I want to have.

The Book Thief Quote

"There would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing"

I tried to write a whole long response to this line, but it ended up turning out far too similar to my Glass Castle post, so I'm not going to put it up. Taken from The Book Theif when the main character is given a journal to write in and told not to punish herself too much for having hurt someone else, this perfectly illustrates where Liesel Meminger and I connect-- on writing being a way to process and think, on writing being brutally honest- reflective of life and where it stands at the moment. We connect not on stealing books or more tangible and visible aspects of our separate, respective lives, but rather on a mutual love for words, infatuation with literature, and on her idea of a library filled with books and pages being such a happy place. Though the length of this post will make it seem as though I have not gotten much out of this, I have. And though I didn't want to repeat myself in a long ramble, I just had to do something with this line.

I wish I were Rory Gilmore.

Rory Gilmore from the tragically cancelled show Gilmore Girl’s is the perfect girl. She is the sweet, personable, mature, driven, smart, graceful young woman. She is small and effortlessly beautiful. She’s got big strikingly blue eyes and can have any boy that she wants, but will never take advantage of it. Rory Gilmore was accepted into all three ivy leagues that she applied to. She goes to Yale but doesn’t have to worry about the money because her wealthy grand parents will pay. She knows who she is, what she wants, exactly where she’s going and you can’t help but to be so sure of the fact that she will, without a doubt, get there. And, more commonly known, (aside from her ridiculously fast talking) Rory Gilmore is the girl who has made a best friend in her insanely perfect mother. She’s the one with that flawless relationship that I- and I think so many others- will always envy more than her small waist or her big blue eyes or her brains or the way that she’s so responsible. I want that more than, I think, pride or maturity or comfort of relatives with money or comfort with myself. Because as much as I love her personality, determination/drive, sweet looks, and frame of mind, really the show's not about that. As much as I love Rory's Grandpa and Luke the softie and Suki's clumsiness, it's not about them. It’s about Lorelai and Rory Gilmore- about their relationship. It’s about a daughter who can, after a terrible day, go home and cry to her mom about it- even in that awkward stage during which she should hate her. It’s about a girl who shares inside jokes and favorite junk foods and secrets and gallons of coffee and heart breaks with her mother.

I have this vivid speck of a memory from when I was seven years old. I’m curled up next to my mom- I used to, even then, like to fall asleep with her in that massive-seeming bed. I didn’t care to admit it to friends because that was the age where everyone wanted to seem older, more mature, more grown-up, and sleeping with my mom was not going to help with that image in the eyes of classmates. We’re both on our sides, facing each other- heads tipped down, foreheads touching slightly like young lovers. She has one arm around me and closed eyes, but mine are wide open and I’m staring intently at her face and thinking about how pretty she is and how I want to be like that someday. Then she squints a bit like she does when her glasses aren’t on because she has such awful vision and whispers to me “Promise you won’t turn against me when you’re older?”. I’d seen the way she fought with my sister and I’d seen the TV shows portraying parents as the enemies in the eyes of a teenager. Knowing that would never ever be me, I nod “Of course”. Then she closes her eyes again and smiles a bit, slightly giving in to sleep "Promise you’ll cuddle in here with me always?”. I grin at that “Definitely”.

I don’t know why I think about that moment so much, why it means anything to me, why I even remember it. I guess it's just a bit of nostalgia, regret, something I miss, a moment I'd like to change and while there are many of those, this one, for some reason, stuck. I often wonder, though, if my mom knew that I wouldn’t keep my word. It’s not fair to ask a seven year old to stick to a long term promise- especially one so hard to keep- and I can’t seem to decide if she knew that and wanted only to be comforted by my response, even if she could anticipate that it wasn’t true. Or if she really did believe me, no matter my age or maturity level. Either scenario kind of breaks my heart to dwell on.

Now I’m fourteen- I don’t sleep in my moms bed anymore and I think that I have done something like turned against her. I don’t remember the moment this happened, and I wish I did, because maybe that could help me pinpoint what the problem was, even if I had no way to reverse it. But despite it all, I still have those moments where I want to run to her massive bed and crawl into her safe arms, where I'm convinced that if I did so, things would be ok- even if only for that small moment in time. But, somehow, I can’t seem to do it anymore. I want to think that if I could only be Rory Gilmore- if I could only have that relationship, if I could allow myself weak moments, be a bit less stubborn, then I’d be happy. If I could only have good priorities and dark hair and big blue eyes and determination and a best friend of a mother, then I’d be just fine.

I’ve realised that there are no ‘Rory Gilmore’s. It’s taken me far too long, but I have realised it. And while there are girls with dreams and aspirations, girls with pretty hair and big blue eyes, girls who go to fancy colleges, girls who are proud and confident but modest and honest and sweet, girls who do what need to be done and don’t forget to enjoy themselves, even girls who have an (almost) perfect relationship with their mother and aren't afraid to admit it, I think it’s fair to say that there aren’t many who are all of that, who have all of that. And despite loving this show more than maybe life itself, I resent the Gilmore’s for putting me through so much before I could find the reality out for myself.

I don't usually write about Harry Potter because I tend to think that it's too brilliant for my words... but I guess this is more about life than him.

***Spoiler alert for those who haven't read the seventh book***

“Does it hurt?”
The childish question had fallen from Harry’s lips before he could stop it.

I know you've read the book, because I put a spoiler alert for those who haven't (and they should've immediately quit out of the page before their eyes accidentally slipped over a few words). But if you've forgotten, this is what Harry asks his parents about death in the Dark Forest when he is on his way to give himself up to Voldemort towards the end of the seventh book.

It took me a long time to figure out what exactly made this line stick with me. Often the kind of sentence that wedges itself into my brain like that is 'deep' or beautifully metaphorical or will inspire me in some way. Often these kinds of lines are obvious in what made them stick to me. But this wasn't. This was so plain. This seemed topical, no hidden layers- it was just a simple question. A pretty fair question, really. Why did this stick out more than a sentence during Snape's last memories or part of Dumbledore's past? Why did it double my tear production, keep me up at night, make me think and think and think about I-don't-know-what.

It didn't hit me until a few weeks ago. Sitting on a plane with a finished book, a dead ipod , and a computer with no internet, I began to type. I wrote three little entries about nothing much really, just about my life or about moments that I thought needed to be captured, theories that needed further developing. I wrote about things that seemed more fitting to be in the pretty notebook lying at the bottom of my bag, but, somehow, came out better when I typed. One such moment that I tried to recreate and think slightly deeper about was this, you won't understand what exactly it is or who exactly I'm talking to, but I don't think that I'm going to try to explain:

-I just want it all to go away.

It was a whisper of an answer that slipped through my lips before I could stop it. Like when 17-year-old Harry asks his parents- at the end of the seventh book- if death will hurt. A childish question. A childish answer that happened all too quickly. It was a thought that made itself into audible sounds forming words without my permission- something I thought only happened in movies and books to characters who weren't real. It left my mind and then my mouth before I had the chance to realise it. Before I had the chance to take that thought and disect it- keeping only the vaguely acceptable parts as though to have some traces of truth left behind- and mix it with what she wanted to hear. Before I had the chance to carve and chisel and polish it into something that was not a thought in the rough, but a mature, insightful, and smart answer. Before I had the chance to create an articulate, adult-like response that showed the growth and acceptance I had been faking.

That was what I did with questions and answers and comments. That was how I talked, communicated, lived. I took every instinct and changed it to what I instinct I was supposed to have, and then into what I was expected to think or say. I remodeled my words to match the face that I was wearing, the wall I had put up, the other girl I was pretending to be. What would she say? What would she think? Then suddenly with one sentence, seemingly simple in wording and length, my cover was broken. I was suddenly vulnerable because this was my real answer. Not my fake response that the other girl inside my head had fabricated. This was my raw and true and honest answer. It was stupid, foolish and immature, irrational and far too hopeful. And it was mine. It was real. It showed that I was not mature, not insightful, not articulate- but, rather I was childish and weak and cowardly. It allowed a peek inside of me, into who I was, how I worked- something that was never meant to be seen or heard. I had, for the first time in what must have been forever, let someone in. Not to say that I hadn't let people in, because I had- friends and such- but this was letting her in on an entirely different level, in an entirely different way. And that, in and of itself, was terrifying.

Harry Potter lives in a world and a time where he is the most wanted boy/man/person alive. His parents are killed before he can remember them, years later he find out about and is reunited with his last remaining family member only to see him killed shortly after. The teacher who he thought to be his biggest supporter and defender, the only man he thought could understand him and protect him was now dead as well. He couldn't be with the girl he loved for so many reasons a teenager shouldn't have to face, had been hiding and running for months, had put his closest friends in danger. They'd all ricked their lives for him and, just moments ago, three had died, in part, because of him. Now he was walking into the forest to surrender and be killed. All before he's even eighteen. And though I often felt that Harry got annoying and slightly big-headed at times throughout the series, I think we can all agree that he has a lot on his plate. Yet he always seems to be brave, tough, persistent, and filled with answers- if not in the inside, in his actual thoughts, then at least on the surface for everyone else to see. He always played that part, depicted that image.

I'm not trying to say that Harry Potter is fake, because I don't believe he is. And in that small moment, I'm not even trying to say that I'm fake, because I don't believe I am either. But I think that, as humans, we often put up walls to protect ourselves or to protect others or for any number of reasons we come up with. And that could mean having a brave face so that the people around you can feel safe. It could mean telling someone what they want to hear so that things are easier, cleaner for them and for you. So that you can be the person you want to be, the person they want you to be, even if only on the surface. It could mean not letting yourself cry to prove to god-knows-who that you are not and never will be weak. But then I think, as humans, we also all have a breaking point. I think that we all, at some point, have a moment where the wall falls down- when you just need to cry or you feel so fake that you can't stand another moment of it or, if nothing else, you just forget and it happens before you can remember. We let our guard down, or it comes down without our permission. For some people, probably, it can happen in a bigger way- an outburst, or a breakdown. For Harry and I, it came in a short line, a simple spoken sentence that could, to others, almost go unnoticed. He, like me, had built up an image and a character for everyone to see- a personality that he had gotten himself into and was now committed to keeping up. Then suddenly in a simple question, he had (maybe even accidentally) shown a different side- perhaps a truer side- which wasn't weak or immature or cowardly. It was only human.

This book hurts.

I don't know why I never read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak- I'd certainly heard a lot about it. Maybe it was my being guilty of judging the book by its cover that wasn't exactly suggesting "my type" of book or maybe it was the specific people that had recommended it to me whose opinion I didn't trust or value or believe that I'd agree with or the concept of death as a narrator I'd heard about that implied an ironic black humor sort of book- definitely not my taste. But then with about a month left before starting high school, I had the novel idea of going online to check for any summer assignments that should have been already completed. And lo and behold, I was supposed to have read The Book Theif. At first, this was a burden seeing as though I wasn't keen on the idea of the book in the first place and being long, it rather interupted my other nerdy reading plans for the last few weeks of summer. However, though I expected to have to force myself to pick it up and read in order to ever finish, it turned out that I rather had to to force myself to put it down for a a 20-minute meal break every once in a while. I devoured the book, often reading a few hundred pages in one sitting. This may have had something to do with the fact that, while reading it, I had two nine hour flights between Alaska and New York on which I couldn't fall asleep and only read/wrote for hours on end. But whatever the reason, those 552 pages flew by far faster than I ever could have imagined.

Set in Germany during the 1940's, you know that this book hurts without me even having to even say it. It revolves around Liesel Meminger- a young German girl- and her learning about, then shortly after falling in love with words, books, writing. She is a girl who goes through more in ten years than anyone should have to endure in a lifetime. Her story is narrated by death- a character who helps you see into people in a way that no one else could. He, while collecting souls of the dead throughout the world in a time when there seems to be more to collect than ever before, follows Liesel through her childhood, often revealing what will happen or who he will visit next, long before it takes place in the story. The language is beautiful, every moment is poetic, and each image is strong.

So I have forewarned you- this book hurts. It hurts simply because of its setting and its protagonists struggles. It hurts because death is the narrator who tells you what will happen before it does which makes a different kind of pain. It is no longer a quick shock that stabs your heart. No, it's suddenly slow and excruciating. It is waiting for what you know is coming, watching around every corner of every page for it to come. It is standing by and knowing what the characters you love don't, it is wanting to tell them and not being able to, wishing to scoop them up out of the story and save them, but you can't. Like things so often are, though, what makes this hurt the most is also why it's so beautiful- the characters and how you are able to see into them. Because this isn't an ordinary book with 2-dimensional, rather undefined supporting characters. There is so much depth, not only in Liesel, but in her mama who curses like no ones business and her papa who plays the accordian better than anyone ever could and in the young jewish man that they hide in their basement who lives to hear her weather reports and her friend Rudy who wants to be Jesse Owens and in the mayor's wife and the angry woman next door who spits on her door step. There is depth even in the boy that they steal apples with and a kid from school named Tommy and the stern nazi who owns the candy store. Every single character is endearing and good somewhere, every single characters finds a little crack in your heart to wedge themselves into. Even death. And that hurts so much, somehow, because when you find yourself loving so much, you suddenly have worlds more to loose, immense amounts of more potential pain to be caused.

This post has done the book no justice and barely began to organize or complete my thoughts on it, but I don't think that I'll ever really be able to do that. It is one of the most endearing, original, haunting, and heartbreaking books that I have ever read. I cannot find words for it.

When I can't talk, I write. And things make a little more sense.

I thought of telling him of binary numbers and the Glass Castle and Venus and all the things that made my dad special and completely different from his dad, but I knew Billy wouldn't understand.
-The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

That's why she didn't bother to explain it all to Billy or, later on in life, to a professor at her college or the elegant woman in the restaurant. Why she couldn't tell teacher's at school about not having enough to eat, potential friends- or even enemies- about what her life was, about what her home was, what her family was. Because they just wouldn't understand. The cracking, leaking, freezing ceilings, empty cabinets and drunken rages weren't something that she could sum up in a small talk, describe in a simple conversation. Neither were the midnight 'skedaddle's to neighboring states to escape police or tax collectors or gangsters. But, neither were the walks in the dessert, the stories her dad told them, the paintings her mother made, the incredible bond that those four kids shared. Neither were the christmas where she got to choose her very own star for a present or the faith that she had in her father, weak as it may have been growing.

I find myself in a stage of life where, like so many typical whiny teenagers, things don't really make sense. I often have a hard time sorting out, explaining aspects of my own life to myself much less to other people. My mind is a messy jumble of thoughts that, like my bedroom, I cannot seem to keep in order and I try hard to make sure that these thoughts remain as thoughts because should they slip out as spoken words, I don't think that anyone would really understand, including myself. That being said, if I held it all inside my mind, building and piling up, doing nothing, going nowhere- despite being young and all- I think I might explode. So I write. And although I'm not working on a book like Jeanette Walls, I can publish something to my blog that no one reads or pencil it in in a notebook or type something up in Google docs and let it sit there and do nothing with it but somehow understand now that it's all written out. Because although I may fumble with thoughts and feelings and spoken words, once I'm sitting at a keyboard or waiting with a pen in hand, I have no trouble at all in whatever it may be that I'm trying to decipher.

This book is the exact epitome of why I write- it is a way for Jeanette Walls to explain what can't be said simply- the kind of thing that only fits when written. It's a way of describing her childhood so that others, and maybe she as well, can understand. Maybe I don't read enough, and this is really just the point of all memoirs. Even if it is, there's something beyond special about this one. Even writing, I can't seem to even begin illustrate just what this book is, what makes it so strikingly beautiful- if it's the voice or the people or the language- but I think that it's some of everything that makes the best stories. Not being as good of a writer as she is, I'm unsure of how to justify why it's amazing, but really and truly it is. So, just go read The Glass Castle- you won't regret it.

The Diving Bell and The Butterfly

I read The Diving Bell and The Butterfly on a friend's recommendation partially because I trust their taste, partially because I needed a new book to read, and almost fully because of Jean-Dominique Bauby's incredible story that it tells and how it was managed to be told. After suffering a stroke that resulted in locked-in syndrome, Jeam-Dominique was left completely paralyzed- imprisoned in a body over which he had no control, without any sort of contact to the outside world aside from blinking his left eye. This 132 page book was written by him using only his left eye to blink letters to someone typing. And although I knew that it would inevitabley be heartbreaking, I didn't expect a beautifully written, insightful, thought-provoking, and life-changing book out of this. What captured me the most was his memory of small moments that he missed, little pleasures from his old life that would never carry over to his new one. Here are two excerpts where he talks about that:

The delectable moment when I sink into the tub is quickly followed by nostalgia for the protracted immersions that were the joy of my previous life. Armed with a cup of tea or Scotch, a good book or a pile of newspapers, I would soak for hours, maneuvering the taps with my toes. Rarely do I feel my condition so cruelly as when I am recalling such pleasures.

For pleasure, I have to turn to the vivid memory of tastes and smells, an inexhaustible reservoir of sensations. Once, I was a master at recycling leftovers. Now I cultivate the art of simmering memories. You can sit down to a meal at any hour, with no fuss or ceremony. If it's a restaurant, no need to call ahead. If I do the cooking, it is always a success. The boeuf bourguignon is tender, the boeuf en gelee is translucent, the apricot pie possesses just the requisite tartness. Depending on my mood, I treat myself to a dozen snails, a plate of Alsatian sausage with sauerkraut, and a bottle of late-vintage golden Gewürztraminer; or else I savor a simple soft-boiled egg with fingers of toast and lightly salted butter.

Last thursday, I sat inside a cafe across the street from Ms.51, wasting time before a rehearsal that I had to be at at 2:00. School was out for me already as graduation had been the day before, but there was another week left for the younger students. I sipped my iced coffee and wrote in my notebook and felt very grown up, watching the sixth and seventh graders out to lunch- yelling to their friends, strolling into the restaurants and delis where the people knew my order. I heard them each complain as the whistles blew and they slowly trickled back into the building we all considered to look like a jail and I realized what I had taken so for granted and what- they too- were overlooking. I couldn't help but be jealous of each and every one of them for the extra year or two that they would have there that I wouldn't. And when I went to pick up my report card and the teachers were all in a straight row of chairs that I wasn't allowed to pass- a row of chairs blocking off the entrance to what had been my second home for the past three years, the ugly brick building with broken lockers and bars on the windows and hideously painted walls that I'd spent only 194,400 minutes inside of and that held so many of both my worst and most enamoured memories- only then did I realize what was over, what I had lost. It wasn't until then that I realized that these small comforts of my middle school were- not soon to be, but already behind me- it wasn't until then that I realized how strongly I relied upon these comforts or that they existed at all. It hit me so suddenly and painfully in a way that not much does.

I don't mean to compare my experience with moving on to high school to Bauby's condition because it- of course- doesn't compare on any level and I don't claim to think that it ever can. As shallow as my struggles are next to his, this book has made me realize what defines happiness, what is goodness. It's not having a perfect life. I don't think that happiness comes with what anyone pictures or is convinced will make them truly happy. No one has a perfect life, because even when they get what- in their mind- will most definitely make them deeply happy, they want more- that's just human nature. I think that happiness is having little spurs of goodness to sustain you for that moment in time before the next one. Happiness is his warm bath and appreciation for food- happiness is having a school where I know faces and I love teachers and I'm on the top of the heap. Happiness is the forty minutes of freedom we were given with our friends out to lunch that I won't have in high school, it's going into Cafe Martin and not having to tell Martin what I want to drink. Happiness is simple things that are easy to overlook look and are far too often forgotten.

And I'm terrified of this- of time or not having enough of it, of taking life for granted or just taking the small, important moments for granted. Because I don't think that anyone can be happy if they don't see the good in pieces of their life until they've lost those pieces. I don't think that anyone can be happy when filled with the regret of having having overlooked something- no matter the size or importance- that made them happy. I think that it's about more than stepping back and looking at things in prospective and trying to realize your good fortune, or trying to see it all with an optimistic point of view. I do that- or at least I try to. I don't think the idea of optimism or gratefulness is something that people forget about, it's just something that- in the moment- is much more difficult to commit yourself to than it seems. Maybe it's because we lose faith in ourselves or in other people or in the world or in life or in whatever religion we claim to be faithful to. But this underlying fear that comes with almost everything I do or say or think or feel is that I somehow won't have control over it- as if something will dictate my thoughts, monitor my words, change my actions, take authority over my feelings. As if something will keep me from appreciating these moments given to me or not let me recognize the good things in my life. Something will hold me back, something won't allow me to be happy. Or maybe I'm just afraid that I won't allow myself.

This is why I read.

Two nights in Paris is not enough, now all I can focus on is how I must go back

I took a corny picture, I wrote a corny post. Oh well, I happen to love chliche's.
...This started out as being a poem, but I'm not really sure that that's what it is anymore.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am in love with the world.
Not travel, but the idea of travel.
I am in love with Venice and India and Scotland and Santorini and New Zealand.
I am in love before first sight.

I have this feeling in the pit of my stomach- this urge- this pull to lie out somewhere in the English countryside where all I can see for miles is green and all I can hear is a stream trickling or a far-off cow mooing. I yearn to wander through a Parisian street market, buying strawberries and roses from a woman who does not speak my language or ride a horse across the shallow waters of a beach that is too beautiful to exist beyond a computers desktop background. I need to explore some old vineyard in Italy or castle in Ireland. I have to run across a field in Africa, climb through a forsest in Costa Rica.
I need to see the things that cannot be real, that I can not fathom, until I see them.

Not even so glamourous though.
Really, anything will do.
I could ride across the U.S. or just stay somewhere upstate. I need somewhere that's not here- a place with no people or different people. A place with trees and fresh air and good food that I don't have to worry about eating. A place where I can be someone else or myself or whatever it is that I want to be, when I figure that out. Because more than scenic beauty, I need freedom.
I've got what every kid gets at some point- a strong, lasting case of wanderlust.

Sometimes, when my mood is high, and my imagination is wild, I can turn my backyard into a secret, overgrown garden. The old wooden bench becomes a precious, weathered antique and our small tool shed is a cottage with its own story- vines growing up the walls and wild roses at its base.

Sometimes, at night, as I lie in bed and feel the summer breeze slither through the sheets to me and hear the occasional cars passing by, I can close my eyes and imagine the bottle of red wine and slice of french cheese lying next to me- I'm suddenly 22 years old. My window becomes the open doors of a balcony in Montmartre, Paris. Distant chattering is some french dinner party in the next building over.

Everything is perfect.

Then, I open my eyes to see my block in Brooklyn, New York lying beyond the lace curtains and my heart sinks. The distant chattering is my neighbors coming back from a late show, the cars are all American-made. The breeze- which I'm sure, is not nearly as wonderful as the one in Paris's nights- comes through, not a balcony, but a window which, even open, traps me and confines me inside the house and the life that is mine.
Until I close my eyes again.

Slow down.

When I flipped to the end, I honest-to-god didn't know it was over. I scanned the next page and saw that blankness- that absence of words- and the feeling that came wasn't so much sad as it was confused. I waited for the empty, hollow-ness that always came with the end of a beloved book. But, it never come. Maybe then, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings wasn't so beloved to me after all. Or maybe the end of the book just didn't feel like an ending. It stopped abruptly and out of the blue just as a new chapter of her life was being opened- almost as if Maya Angelou had collapsed, mid-paragraph, pen still in hand, unable to finish her thought. That's what it felt like. But then again, that's what this whole book seemed to feel like to me- one event after another, one place or thing after another that you just keep thinking you'll get attached to. Person after person gets introduced into Maya's life and they just seem so prominent for that moment, that you keep hoping they'll be important or that you'll get to know them and love them, but then, before you know it, they're ripped out from under you, gone from the story. And you just keep wondering- what happened to him or her? Where did they go? When did they go? Did I miss it? Every chapter in her life seems to begin and end in all too much of a hurry and before you know it, she's gone from 7 years old, living with her grandmother in Arkansas to 16 in California with her mother and very own baby boy. All that happens in between is this great big blur, and you find yourself wanting to know more about that best friend that she once mentioned or the woman that introduced her to literature and changed her life or the people she stayed with when she was 15 and didn't have a home. You want to know more because, when they were mentioned, they seemed so vital- at the time, they were all that mattered. And then suddenly, they were gone as quickly as they seemed to come.

That's why I sort of hated this book, at first. I expected it to be more poetic, more smooth but everything seemed to come out jumbled and sudden and out of place. Only now- now that I've finished it and put it down and started to move on- only now do I realize that this unpredictable, erratic seemingly mess of a book wasn't poorly written or not well thought out. It was like one long stream of consciousness, but in the best way possible. The way in which this book was written so accurately symbolizes coming of age- it so precisely describes growing up.

The other day, as I was going through my insanely disorganized room- cleaning it out to prepare for repainting the wall from a light peach-y pink and yellow theme to a more dignified, mature, deep red- I came across a number of old notebooks and journals. And as I read about my teachers and friends and problems that seemed to consume my life at the time, I realized that I didn't remember any of it. I didn't remember why I had been mad at Ms.Dina or what the wonderful present that Mackenzie had given to me for my birthday was or who on earth Jane was. I barely even remembered anything about the year that my best friend spent in Puerto Rico- something that I'm absolutely positive consumed every second of every day in third grade. All of this that I'd written about- complained about, cried about- things that crumbled my little heart or things that brought me to life, things that my world spun around- all these things were so quickly forgotten. Just six or seven years later. All that was left were these little snip-its, brought back to life and drawn into my mind again by my writing.

And I realize that- just like Maya- I'm growing up, perhaps slightly too fast. Me not remembering my elementary school years is like Maya jumping through every moment of her own growing up experience in her writing. All of the sudden, these things that meant so much are gone- these shallow things that consumed my life are forgotten. And sometimes I wish, just like with the book, that I could rewind and live through everything slower, get to experience it all again fuller. More poetically, more smoothly. Because now all I have are these little glimpses- like passing by my younger years through the window of a moving train- the view is sharp and inconsistent and everything is rushing by so fast that I only have time do catch tiny glances, snapshots. I want to slow down and get to know the people better and see the places closer and encounter the problems more fully- I need some time to smell the roses. Because I feel that, just like Maya, my life is swerving forward uncontrollably and I'm practically grown up.

And I shouldn't be.

Not yet.

This didn't really turn out as I planned...

"I was eight, and grown." -I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

That was really the moment that made me realize it.

Because before, I hadn't quite given any thought to her age. Or maybe I had, but when Maya Angelou put it in words like that- in such a simple and direct sentence- that was what really made me step back and acknowledge that yes, she was eight. An eight year old was actually having to go through this. She was grown. Already. She had to be grown. She was forced into being grown. But, she was only eight.

Maybe it was never mentioned, or maybe I never noticed it, or maybe I simply blocked her age out of my mind because I didn't want to think about it. Because it was just too painful a thing, given the circumstances. Maybe I'd assumed that she was older because everyone else's characters were. Lily from The Secret Life Of Bees was 14 when she starts her coming of age journey, Melinda from Speak is 15, and Holden from The Catcher in the Rye is 16. It's just not fair that she has to be eight. But she is, and I overlooked it. And now here it was, staring me in the face.

When I was eight, I was happy. I was running in the backyard and imagining all it could be if I squinted hard enough. Eight years old was dancing in my kitchen or daydreaming on the couch because there was really nothing else for me to worry about doing. Eight years old was simple and easy and safe. I never imagined the kind of troubles that Maya had to go through, much less faced them myself. I couldn't even fathom a world in which someone my age was scared about money or new clothes. A world in which I would be worried about my parents not loving me or my grandma hitting me or anyone sending me off to live with someone else. I could not imagine a world of constant fear, of hiding- even at home. Of lying to my brother or keeping secrets that I wanted so desperately to tell. A world that had no safety, even for little eight year olds. Maya's world.

It hurts me so much that Maya never got those moments of little-girl giddiness or freedom. Maya never got to run in the backyard screaming with glee and have no chiding for it. She never got to sing too loudly or hit too hard or jump too high or make any mistake- she never got to be a kid, because when she was eight, she was already grown. And that breaks my heart.

Now, I'm fourteen.

I can make my own plans and do my my own homework and tie my own shoes. I can ride the subway by myself, and next year, I'll be doing it every single day 2 times a day. But, I'm not grown. I'm definately closer than before, and though it seems like I know everything there is to know and have grown up as much as is possible, I don't think I have. I'm not grown, and I won't be for a while.

I have fights with my mom over feelings and arguments with my dad over opinions. Because, finally, I have my own opinions. I've gone through all the typical events that mark me going from a girl to a woman. I'm growing up- who knows how fast or slow or when it will be over but, I'm not grown, I don't think.

And if I am, I don't know it. I don't know it because I never had a moment that said in no uncertain terms that I was done growing. I never had one single event that determined the end of my childhood. Maybe I will have that moment, maybe it's still to come in my future. And, maybe I won't. Maybe I'll ease into adulthood, grow slowly. Maybe I already have, too slow to notice.

But as I watched Maya standing in court in front of her family and in front of the man that took away her childhood in her very own home, I knew that she was right- she was grown. She was terrified and confused and far from ready to be an adult. But, she had to- ready or not- she was grown. And if there was anything more painful than that, it was watching her realize it.

Why Teenagers Don't Want To Wake Up In The Morning

I would be fine alone.
And I was.
Until the morning. When, only half awake, I tried to think why I was alone in the bed. There was a leaden feeling. It was the same leaden feeling with which I woke on mornings after John and I had fought. Had we had a fight? What about, how had it started, how could we fix it if I could not remember how it started?
Then I remembered.
For several weeks that would be the way I woke to the day.
-The Year Of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

I love sleeping more than practically anything else in the world. Maybe it's because I'm going through a staying-up-late-sleep-deprived phase that puts me in a constant state of tiredness, making sleep a precious commodity that I crave more of, always. Forget parties or concerts or running around the city at all hours of the night, acting twice my age- I’d much rather go home and take a nap, any day. This makes me sound incredibly lazy, but that’s really not what it’s about. Sleep lets me run away in my thoughts or from my thoughts. When I'm up at 4AM for the 5th time that week, completing a project that should have been done months ago, or waiting to see a TV show late at night, what keeps me going is the wonderful thought of how I will, eventually, be able to lay down my head, slip under the blankets, curl up into a ball, and fall fast asleep. The covers are always soft and safe and every line in my brain or heart is blurred and smudged. I’m in my own little unconscious world, unaware of anything happening around me or inside of me. It's this peaceful, carefree sensation that beats every feeling in the universe.
I can't be touched.

Until I wake up.
And the covers get pulled back.
And my mind slowly sharpens.
And everything comes crashing down.

Like Joan Didion-- when her husband dies and every morning she wakes up and that hard truth dawns on her once again. Every morning the covers are pulled back and her mind sharpens and she digs through her brain to remember everything that breaks routine, everything unnatural, everything that her unconscious, carefree self would never fathom- like John dying.

And the feeling that comes every time that that happens is unbearable-- the forgetting and remembering of the things that hurt the most. Because it's said that everything heals with time, all pain lessens as the hours and days and weeks pass. But how will anything heal if every morning is a fresh realization? How will the pain ever fade if you are hit each day with the initial shock of the very first time that it happened?

That's what I found most heartbreaking about this book- the way Joan would momentarily forget whether it was from falling asleep or just time starting to wear away the truth. Then she would wake up or see something that jolted her memory and it would all come rushing back in a second and she would have to face it all over again. It was as if each time this happened to her, every ounce of progress she had made was erased or forgotten and it was "back to the drawing board". Throughout the book, I was terrified for a character that I'd come to love so dearly because it seemed like she would never be OK, she would never feel OK when it was always "one step forward and two steps back".

Recent events of my life and just the fact that I'm fourteen has left a distance between my mother and I. It's hit like a meteor, practically over night, splitting the earth in half, leaving me on one side, and her on the other. What I laughed at and couldn't seem to understand as a little girl, what I swore would never happen, has happened. My mom and I have lost our relationship. I can’t handle her and she can’t handle me and neither of us know how to say that. Maybe it’s a phase, or maybe it’s forever. But, whatever it is, it’s here. The other day, when I could hear her steady breath and low snores from the next room over- when I was sure that she was sound asleep, I crept into her room to say goodnight. I used to do that every night. I used to kiss her cheek and she would pull me down for a hug and say something along the lines of "goodnight" and "I love you, beautiful girl" and "I'll see you in the morning". But I haven't kissed her cheek in weeks and I can't even remember the last time we've hugged.

I tiptoed to her side of the bed and leaned down and whispered goodnight and when she stirred, I expected tears or emotional ranting or a confused stare- all that seems to define our strange relationship lately- something I'd bite my lip at and awkwardly stalk off, not knowing quite what to say or do. But she looked up at me with the ocean blue eyes that stood out when she wore grey, the eyes that I’ve always envied, and they were tight and squinted like someone who had been staring at the sun for too long- slightly confused, but at the same time like she’d been expecting me. A slight smile played across her face- only one corner of her mouth turned up, sending ripples across that cheek. Then she closed her eyes again but kept the smile, and for a moment I thought she’d fallen back asleep.

Then I heard a whisper come of “goodnight” and “I love you” and “my beautiful girl”, in the same, ordinary way that it always used to. And for that moment, it felt like we were one of those pairs of mother and daughter who had a relationship again. Like what were before, like things had never changed. Like the days from years ago of sleeping curled beside her and cuddling and my imaginary rule of being safe from anything as long as she was there had never ended. Like we'd fixed it all or maybe just rewound.

Then I snapped out of my thoughts and looked down at her and remembered that she was half asleep- that she was having a barely-conscious moment. The kind where you wake up and for a minute, you forget what has happened- what life-changing thing has happened, or you forget that you’re supposed to be upset about something or angry at someone. And so, for a moment, you act like it’s not there, because for that second, it isn’t, not for you. And suddenly, I knew that she’d wake up the next morning and never remember this at all. And that things would go back to how they were- emotional and teary and frustrating- free of half smiles and squinting eyes. It would be like it had never happened.

I realized that just like Joan Didion, she would wake up the next morning and forget everything that has come between us over the past few months. She'd forget because the non-existant bond that we now have is completely irrational- it's something that no one could fabricate or imagine in a perfect state of sleeping. So, she'd forget, even if only for a split second and maybe start to call me in for an opinion or just to ask the time, before she remembered the unspoken rule telling her that she couldn't do that. It would come crashing down- the truth- and standing over my mom, looking at her ignorant-seeming blissful face was like staring into the sweet eyes of a small child that I knew would be hurt and I couldn't do anything about it, I couldn't even warn them-- I could only stand and watch it happen. And that was almost more painful than being the "Joan Didion", being the one to have the realization all over again time and time again, the one who has to pull back the covers and sharpen their mind, the one whose pain seems like it will drag on forever. Because watching pain can be harder than feeling it and on the outside looking in is an impossible position.

Oskar Schell Would Be Eighteen Now

Osama Bin Laden is dead.

And I'm not really sure what to think about that.

Last night as I slipped into bed, I heard my mom exclaim the news and run downstairs to watch coverage with my dad. But I was tired and there was school the next day and I don't think that it fully sunk in exactly what his being gone for good really meant. I just wanted to go to bed.

Then today, it was all the buzz in social studies class as people relayed their different versions of what they heard had happened so much to the point that I barely even believed it was true anymore. And when I got home from school and sat down to the computer and saw the headlines on Firefox's homepage and on the cover of The NY Times and rolling across the bottom of our television screen, I realized how fast everything was happening- so much so that I barely had a moment to think about all of it. I knew that I should be thrilled and excited and in the mindset that justice has been served to someone who deserved it more than anyone else in the world. But, as last nights coverage of the thousands of people who went down to ground zero at the earliest hours of the morning to chant "USA" and the national anthem and celebrate the extermination of Bin Laden like it was new years eve, I couldn't help but think how barbaric it was. I know that I should have found the video to be heart-warming and inspirational as I looked into the joyful faces of people who had been so personally scarred by his attack on The World Trade Center. But when I saw their streamers and horns and raised fists and American flags, it seemed like the saddest thing in the world for our country to be celebrating the death of this person as much as we are. Even after what he did, even after who he hurt, how many he hurt, and the cruel ways in which he hurt them.

He was still a person.

Right?

And then I couldn't help but think about how if I- as someone was barely at all personally affected by 9/11 and is likewise not personally harmed or could benefit from Bin Laden's death- was so shaken up and confused by all of this, then how would someone like, say, Oskar Schell react?

Oskar would be 18 now.

Oskar Schell- an adult.

What an impossible thought that is.

Would he be the same? Confused and searching for answers like he was 10 years ago? Would he think the same as me-- that it was wrong to have killed someone no matter who they were?

Or, the more likely of the two, the obvious answer, the response that is only in his natural human nature to have, the thing that makes me almost agree with Bin Laden's killing-

Would he be at Ground Zero- chanting and shouting and grinning at the fact that his dads killer had finally gotten what he deserved?

8 year old Oskar Schell.

So confused.

So scared.

Searching for something to make sense.

To fit in.

To justify it all

Would he be one of those people? Those people whose faces I thought to be barbaric? Is that who they all were-- just "Oskar Schell"s? Angry parents and sons and daughters and husbands and wifes and sisters and brothers and friends who were so hurt and broken- who were changed for good because of what Bin Laden did, whose once happy, carefree 8 year old smiles had been turned into the stone cold face of an angry adult who rejoiced in the killing of another human being?

I can't bear the thought of Oskar Schell being the face that represents all of those people, but I know that- were he real- it would most likely be the side he took. Because it's easy for someone like me who is shielded and unharmed from these horrors to say that killing is bad. But, in reality, how does someone who's childhood was stolen from them ever forgive the person who took it and their father away?

The ending of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, being one of the saddest endings of any book I've ever read, tied up no loose ends. It just further expressed Oskar's vulnerability and anger and confusion about every heartbreaking thing that happened to him in a powerful and affecting way. It showed that he never healed.

We would have been safe

It showed that maybe he, like so many other victims of this tragedy, never would heal.

It confirmed and supported that Oskar would not forgive and forget- he, instead, would be rejoicing over the death of the man who took that precious safe feeling and reality away from him

As I look into the faces of the people who celebrated at Ground Zero last night, I have to try to imagine seeing Oskar Schell and think to myself "would I maybe support them if he was there?". Because, essentially, they are all people just like Oskar Schell, for all I know. Their story is reminiscent of his own. They are people who have reason to be there, even if I don't agree with it. I have to try to see it all from their point of view.

But even then, does standing and celebrating in the spot where it all began really end it? Will killing Bin Laden give anyone closure? Will rejoicing over it ease anyone's pain? And, I don't know the answer to any of that because I've never experienced it before, but in my humble opinion, it really won't. Still, I think it's impossible for someone to go through that and come out in that positive mindset. I can go and preach about this all I want, but the truth is that if I was in their situation, I'd probably do the same, think the same, act the same. Wouldn't I?

What We'll Do To Spite Our Mothers

Is it okay to do blog posts on TV shows as long as Ms.Robbins is in love with the show?

Note: The underlined blue words are links to videos of scenes I'm talking about (my form of textual evidence) and the time in parenthesis refers to what part of the video it happens in.

My inspiration to write a blog post on My So Called Life came from here; please read it, it's amazing.

‎"Lately i can't even look at my mother without wanting to stab her. Repeatedly." (5:00-5:10)

Every girl has felt this way before. Don't even try to deny it. And it doesn't mean that you're insane or sadistic or homicidal-- it just mean that you're a teenager. Mother/daughter relationships are so complicated and so confusing and next to impossible to ever explain. What I love about Angela Chase from My So Called Life is that she always can for us. And if she can't explain something, she'll explain just why she can't seem to explain it. From obsessive friendships to the kind of love where he doesn't even know you exist, Angela describes every moment of female adolescence perfectly-- and she doesn't leave out mothers.

I don't think that you can leave out mothers in a TV show about being a 15 year old girl, because no matter how awful or wonderful, present or absent, protective or lenient your mother is, she will affect your teenage years in a huge way. Hands down, flat out. Because she's your mother.

When I saw the first episode of My So Called Life, I felt like someone had read my diary and made it into a script. I was Angela Chase and Patty Chase was my mother. No question about it. Just like Angela, my friends would exclaim how nice she was and just like Angela, I'd mutter that it was only because they were there. Just like Angela, I'd refuse to clean my room or eat a balanced meal because I knew that it would give my mother too much satisfaction. Like there was some war going on between us that I had to win and she didn't know about it, and maybe I didn't either. And lately when I look at her, I feel like stabbing her. Repeatedly. And half the time I don't even know why.

Just like Angela.

But sometimes, I have that knot in my stomach, that urge to run to my moms room and crawl into bed next to her and cry and cry and cry and not have to explain anything and for her to just hold me and make everything better again like mothers do.

Just like Angela.

I don't think that anyone purely hates or loves every aspect of either of their parents- just like no person is fully good or bad- it hits somewhere in the middle. Angela creates that perfect balance of feelings that everyone can connect to. She hates her mother, she loves her mother. She's introducing her to Jordan, she's not talking to her. She's listening to her, she's disobeying her. She misses her, she can't even stand the sound of her voice. She's being a moody, indecisive teenager.

And that's why I'm Angela and my mom is her mom. That's why every girl who's ever watched this show has immediately declared that, they too, were Angela more than anyone else who claimed the same, and that her mom was their mom more so than each anyone who might've thought the same. Because they each have at least one quality that cannot go unseen in any mother or daughter. Because Patty Chase is the dedicated, loving mother that's only human, that makes a million mistakes because of it, and that cares all too much if her daughter stays out late. Because Angela is all of us, she is the perfect example of a flawed, angry, blissful and at times, lost teenage girl. Because she shows us we're not alone. Ever.

How We Deal With Grief

The last few weeks of my reading life have been an absolute dream as I started and finished two of my now favorite books of all time- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer and The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. My month has been a marathon of beautiful writing. Although these two books are very different from one another in terms of genre, character-type and writing style, they do share one common and dominant theme- grief. Oskar experiences grief when his father is killed in 9/11, and Joan when her husband of 40 years dies of heart failure.

What struck me so immediately about the character of Oskar Schell was his matter-of-fact attitude and way about everything. Even his fathers death. And watching a nine year old boy not only lose his dad, but address it in the same way that he would address the weather report was almost more painful than if he had sobbed nonstop throughout the story. Because that was his way of dealing with grief- keeping it inside, not dealing with it. Oskar makes sure that everything is clean and tidy on the outside for people to see by not letting out the messy inside thoughts and words and actions and feelings which, I know from experience, is so much more painful. And you have to think about it- was Oskar making this concious decision? Was he choosing to keep it in for the sake of, say, his mom or grandma? No- he's nine years old, his dad just died- he doesn't know what to do or think or who to turn to. He's polite and smart and just not the kind of person who can lash out or break down or show people what he's really going through. He doesn't keep his father's last voicemail's a secret to spare his mother any more pain, he does it because he's terrified and confused and guilty. Because so much responsibility and so much agony has been placed on his tiny shoulders and he's only nine and the only way he knows to deal with grief is what automatically happens- and that's nothing. Because nothing happens if we don't make it happen, and Oskar, not knowing what to make happen, does nothing.

And so it stays inside.

And that's how he deals with grief.

And he's only nine.

And that breaks my heart.

Then there's Joan Didion, whose story is equally heartbreaking in a completely different way. Before I read this book, my theory was that grief was easier as you got older, as you came to expect and anticipate the deaths of friends and spouses who were, like you, nearing the ends of their lives. But this isn't true at all because as Joan says, when you're so in love, you don't see yourself as growing older,

"For Forty years I saw myself through John's eyes. I did not age. This year for the first time since I was twenty nine I saw myself through the eyes of others. This year for the first time since I was twenty nine I realized that my image of myself was of someone significantly younger".

She had spent two thirds of her life with this man, and just because he had to die, didn't make him actually dying any easier. When you come to depend on someone for everything, when you come to realize them as a literal part of you, when not a single day goes by that you don't see this person, talk to this person, touch this person, hug this person in 40 years, how big is the hole they leave behind? And how impossible is it to fill?

But what stands out the most, to me, about her book is that it's a book. That she relived and re-experienced every moment of this event and every feeling that followed for years to make this book. That she published it, releasing to the world her innermost thoughts in the most raw, personal, heartbreaking and beautiful way possible. That this is her way of dealing with grief- the only way she knows- writing.

"Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden, to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind"

"Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief was we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself."

"Life changes in the instant, the ordinary instant"

-Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

And Joan Didion is so right.

Because no one expects death or grief- not how it really turns out to be, at least. And no one knows how to handle it when it does come.

Not even the seemingly most clever and scholarly nine year old boy that ever lived.

Not even the 70 year old woman who's intelligent and experienced and put together.

No one.

Because our minds use logic to make an image of what we think something will be like or feel like or look like, and there is nothing logical about grief. Because as much as we may plan or organize or try to control how our lives will play out, what happens happens. And when faced with crisis, it's hard to stick to your plans.

Revised and Published "Sometimes I Wish I Could Forget"

So, this is the New and Improved version of this:

Time is relative. When you're 14 years old, the last 4 years may have seemed like the longest, best, worst, most important, most painful, what-ever-it-is years of your life. Then, as a 50 year old, your life has been steady, settled for a while and the last four years seem unimportant, a nonentity. A senior in high school may think that the year can't go any slower- that it seems like a lifetime before they will graduate when, in the big picture, this year is only one tiny fraction of their life. We all live and die, and go unnoticed by many. Four years mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, but at the same time, can define someones entire life.

Now, take a moment to think about the last four years of your life. Think about what they meant, what they did, how they changed you as a person. Think about what things would be like had they never happened, what you would be like if they simply disappeared. One moment they were a piece of your history, a chunk of your memory, part of what made you you, and the next thing you know, they were just gone. It would be as if a part of your life never even existed, you suddenly re-winded. This is what happened to Naomi Porter.

She hit her head on slippery steps and in a split second, four years disappeared. Anything from after the age of 12 was simply erased from her memory- her mothers affair, her parents divorce, her boyfriend Ace, her best friend Will, her love for yearbook and tennis, her ability to drive, her lost virginity, her new house, her half sister- everything. The most eventful, vital years of her life were forgotten. Her world had become a mystery- why did she drop that class? Why did she fall for Ace? Where did she wear that dress? How did she have her hair? Did her father have a girlfriend? Did she like the girlfriend? She begins to search for clues to piece together her history with. She had to trust people to tell her pieces of her past, and to tell them honestly. Naomi's life became a complete nightmare of question and wondering. At the same time, though, her amnesia had given her a fresh start. At sixteen years old, she had basically no past. She could choose to simply start over, be a whole new person. She didn't remember the old one, and no one would know that it ever existed. When Naomi finally does remember everything, she hides it. She doesn't tell anyone that her memory is back because, she doesn't want it to be. Starting over felt good, why face the reality of her messy but true life if she didn’t have to?

This book, Memories of a Teenage Amnesiac, makes me think about what it's like to forget. Is it better to forget your mistakes? To live with no history? To start with a clean slate? Or, is the point of life to live with the decisions that you make? At one point in the book, Naomi comments that she thinks perhaps the only reason that her significant other, James liked her is because she has no past, because the present and the future can be what she chooses, what she wants them to be. There are times in my life when I think that nothing could ever get worse. When I feel as if a mid-life crisis is occuring 30 years premature and all I want to do is just give up on everything and everyone. I would kill to erase my mistakes. I would do anything to go back in time and just start over. But maybe everything does, despite how cliche this may sound, happen for a reason because if it didn’t, there would be no argument as to why Naomi shouldn’t forget. She just would, there would be no hesitation because there would be no reason why she shouldn’t.

In sixth grade, I said something awful about one of my closest friends that I’ve had for as long as I can remember. The thing is, I didn’t even mean what I said about her, and she overheard. I remember what made me feel the worst about it was that when I called to apologize and tell her it didn’t mean it, I didn’t want to lose her, yadda, yadda, ya she wasn’t angry-- just really hurt, sad. And, I’ll never forget how her voice sounded because I’d never ever heard it that way before and that made everything a million times worse. I remember in that moment, hating myself more than I ever have before, being so ashamed of what I’d done that still to this day, the only person that knows is my mom. I remember a list of things I would do to take it back going through my head. A stream of items or words or people or foods or anything I would give up if I could go back in time and have her back.

Anything.
Anything to loosen the tight, dry knot in the back of my throat or fill the empty, aching hole in my stomach.
I had become desperate like anyone in a similar situation would be.

But, I couldn’t. There was nothing I could do because I’m only human and I don’t have a fairy god-mother or Hermione’s time turner. Because I’d done something that so many had done before me and so many will do after me- made a possibly life-altering mistake. And I regretted it deeply but, like the others, I would have to live with that.

So what’s the upside to this? Why, if everyone wants so badly what Naomi has the opportunity to have, should she not take it? Because I made up with that friend and she’s still at my house practically everyday eating my families supply of cookies. Because, while what I said will always be there, we still have our run-around-like-4-year-olds-on-a-summer-afternoon kind of juvenile relationship. Because, since that day, I have tried as hard as I possibly can to not say a single bad thing about a friend behind their back, and it’s worked for the most part. Because I learned an important lesson in a painfully hard way but because of that, I’ll never forget it. And, if I did, who knows how many times I would’ve made that mistake again. Sometimes I think when you do something wrong, you just get a strike and a bit of luck and everything is OK. But, if you forget and keep on doing that thing, you’re out of luck and strikes and nothing turns out OK. Because, “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it” and though this quote is overused in my writing that’s only it’s so true and so, so, vitally important to remember.