Filed under: Essays/School, Poetry | Tags: all, grade, jcc, life, music, now, poem, Poetry, school, song
(A poem we have to write for JCC English about our futures… aka where we see ourselves in five years)
Rough draft of her song
All she could hear was a symphony
All she could hear was that sound
All she could think of was
Where
to
go
When she stood on stable ground.
All they could know was she’s going
All they could know was she’s gone
All they could hope was
That
she’d
grow
While she was singing her song.
Al she could breathe was the music
All she could breathe were those notes
All she could do to live
Was
to
sing
And hope that the world would know love.
All she could say was I’m trying
All she could say had been sung
All she could want now was
To
go
home
Now that music’d been made for so long.
All she could love was still standing
All she could love had held on
Now the words that she said to them,
“I
love
you”
Were sung softly as time played along.
Filed under: college, Dreams, My Day, My Explanations, Ranting | Tags: applications, boys, busy, college, damn, dreaming, Dreams, eastman, free, gas, God, goddamn, gowanda high school, jamestown community college, jcc, jesus christ, job, life, love, mom, money, no way, pumping gas, relax, school, stress, stressed, suck on that, today, weekend, work
Seriously, college is all I think about now. College and life and death and dying and Goddamn I’m sick of it. I’m ready to be done with college and I haven’t even started it yet. I’m hoping that’s a good omen in the long run, though, because that’s the way I felt about prom exactly and I ended up having a blast.
But there’s just so much stress involved. If KT tells me one more time “you need to relax” I’m going to punch Colton in the face, because if it weren’t for him she’d be the same as before.
But life is life and it changes and so do people so I’d better suck it up and move on. God.
At least I’m talking to boys, though. That might help me relax (Jesus Christ).
Relaxing isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing, though. I’m supposed to be working, supposed to be doing everything I can to beat my way into a great school.
My mom told me today that I’m going to end up pumping gas. She told me to go to JCC for free. And meant it.
I’m just not even going to think about that. There’s no way. Just no fucking way I could go there. After all of my dreaming, all of my hard work, to throw it away, for that place?! I know I probably don’t know what I’m saying when I say this, but I’d rather be in debt for the rest of my life and do what I love than go somewhere to learn how to do a nine to five job and get plastered every weekend for free.
God. And there’s just no way I could throw away everything I’ve hoped for and thought of and wished for with all of my heart. Just because of money.
I know money’s important, and my mom would say I’m stupid and have no concept of it because I’ve never had to get a job, never had to make the money to support myself.
Well I guess I’ll figure that all out next year, won’t I? I haven’t gotten any experience with it so far, huh?
The way I figure it, I’ll either sink or float next year. I’ll either succeed or suck and come back home to pump gas.
But I’ll be damned if I don’t try to be all that I can. It’ll be like the dream where I died and watched everyone standing around, shaking their heads and mourning, “What a waste of potential.”
Well, here’s news. I’m not dead.
And I have all the potential in the world. I plan to put it to use.
Suck onnnnn that.
Filed under: Dreams, Events, music, My Day, My Explanations | Tags: accomplished, afternoon, alive, ass, audition, bad, because, blessed, blog, broken, call, cheerleader, cheerleads, choir, chorus, conference, conference all state, conversation, creative writing, dammit, damper, day, days, dedication, difficult, each minute, ecstatic, eight, emma, enthusiasm, every time, everyone, excited, exhausted, exist, experience, feel, five, football, for sure, franklinville, game, good, great, guitar hero aerosmith, hard, hard work, heather, heather holden, here i come, high school, hopefully, hour, hours, indication, jcc, kiener, last first, lerew, life, live, long, magnificent, mail, material, measure, michelle, moment, moving, mr. lerew, mrs. ripley, musetta's waltz, night, nothing, nyssma, offer, one, one hundred, passion, practice, productive, proud, puccini, quando m'en vo, quench, ready, ripley, school, senior year, service, singing, some, sop 1, soprano one, system, texted, thirst, tired, today, tomorrow, tonight, vehicle, voice, watch out, whammy, why?, women's choir, working, world
It’s been a long day, even though I don’t know why, really. I beat Guitar Hero Aerosmith on Hard, so I felt accomplished.
The broken whammy bar started working after what might be considered one of the most magnificent hours of my life.
Today, I received a packet of papers in the mail. Within those papers, I was informed that I’ve been accepted into the Conference All-State Women’s Choir.
Soprano One, son.
I texted Emma.
Emma and Kiener called me. Emma told me she was calling Lerew.
I called Mrs. Ripley. Mrs. Ripley was ecstatic. Mrs. Ripley says she’s going to tell everyone she knows.
I texted Heather. By then it was eight at night and I was on the way to Franklinville for my sister’s football game (she cheerleads) and I didn’t want to hold conversation across spotty service areas in a moving vehicle. Hopefully she’ll call me back when it’s good for her, and if I don’t hear from her by tomorrow afternoon, I’m calling for sure. I’m so excited.
Nothing could put a damper on that news, except I’m tired. I’m just downright exhausted, so my enthusiasm is going to be shelved until tomorrow. I’ll siphon it back into my system then and do something really productive. Earlier today I decorated and established my JCC and creative writing binders, and got the rest of my materials ready and in my bag for school. As of tonight, there are only five more full days before my last first day of high school.
I just want to live it. I feel like I say this every time I blog, but dammit, I want to feel and exist in every single moment I’m blessed with. I want to feel alive, I want to experience everything good this world has to offer. And some of the bad, because otherwise there’s nothing to measure the great against.
If today was any indication of where hard work and practice and dedication and passion can get me, though, I don’t think I’ll have too difficult a time living each minute of my senior year. I worked my ass off for that one hundred on the audition paper. Puccini might have been proud of me, even.
So. Conference All State, here I come. And everything else. Watch out. I have a craving, a burning thirst for life. I plan to quench it.
Filed under: Random Thoughts, Writing | Tags: battle, bitch, boobs, bromden, crazy, cuckoo, cuckoo's nest, east, electro-shock therapy, english, epic, essay, est, flew, institution, jcc, jcc english, ken kesey, kesey, lipstick, literature, lobotomy, mad, madness, mcmurphy, merry pranksters, nest, one, one flew east, one flew over the cuckoo's nest, one flew west, orange, power, ratched, result, struggle, thought, thoughts, transorbital lobotomy, ward, west
“…one flew west. One flew over the cuckoo’s nest” (Kesey 239).
Ken Kesey’s riveting novel definitely opens one’s eyes to a time and place that normal society almost never thinks back to. The sixties, a sanitarium, and men fighting– to the death, sometimes– in a battle for their own dignity.
I recently finished writing and revising my essay for JCC English, and in doing that and from reading the book I have opened my mind to so many strange facets of society that I hadn’t before. Lobotomy– permanently damaging (NOT helping) someone’s brain– was popular then. So was electro-shock therapy, which is essentially electrocution for the “insane.”
In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the ward nurse Miss Ratched runs the place with a brutal, iron, ice-cold fist. “…I see her sit in the center of this web of wires like a watchful robot, tend her network with mechanical insect skill, know every second which wire runs where and just what current to send up to get the results she wants” (Kesey 30). Then in comes the indomitable Randle Patrick McMurphy, a sane man who thought the ward was safer and less rigorous than the work farm he’d previously been on. The epic (at least to my mind) struggle of a man fighting for his fellow man against the cruel power of the institution makes for not only good reading, but a stimulation of the mind… a kind of minor electro-shock that sets off other little-shock-thought-processes.
What was McMurphy fighting for? What was he fighting against, really? A bitch with huge boobs and strange orange lipstick? Or a gargantuan power determined to kick the defenseless?
Although the result of McMurphy’s battle for change is unexpected and alarming, and certainly disheartening, I found myself bizarrely reassured by the end. The casualties encountered on the way to the final product that was the ward had not really been in vain, after all. One flew east, one flew west… Madness overtook the patients and they could fight it or give up. They either committed suicide, or were killed, or were discharged or left. But in the end, the point was, they all flew.
Kick Drum Heart 