Sunday, June 23, 2013

Official Blog Notice

Oh, dear. This frantic month I am afraid my "daily"updates have fallen behind, and now I am going off for two weeks. I pray that you, my loyal followers, do not forget me. I will return. And when I do, I fear that no one will be checking for new updates; let me give you a date. Check back here the evening of July 7. I'll be here. And in my new blog I will answer one question. If you have a question please comment below. I'll let this page fester for two weeks, and see you soon.

XOXO
Yours always,

Chloe Lev

Friday, June 21, 2013

Gallery

I went to friend's mother's organization's head's art show today. It was far away in more ways than one. The criteria for entrance into the program? Having cancer. I was disappointed when I heard, because I would love to get a little closer to the beautiful weavings and devastating photographs pinned to the wall of a Chinatown YMCA. They were not behind any glass, but they were behind a multi-year layer of struggle that I had no idea I was two steps away from. Three pieces: "Identity Theft" (losing herself with her hair), "Mammogram" (losing herself with her breasts), and "Quality of Life" (losing herself with her happiness.) She went to China thirteen years ago, to an orphanage, and found something. And kept it all.

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Manicure

I've never had a real manicure done until today. It smelled like lavender and acetone and looked robin's eye blue and as glossy as a Red Delicious apple. A packed salon served as the backdrop for my first, including an acquaintance and her sister, as well as a group of six third graders who proudly looked through magazines for perfume samples, shooting now and then, "I found one! It's totes adorb, but too much pink." My massus found them sweet. I found them disheartening. Deadlines for growing up into a superficial American keep getting pushed forward, don't they? Heavens, I was getting a manicure.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Wasabi

My friend goes by Wasabi, through me at least. I asked her if she wanted to and she said yes. I don't think I've referred to her formally since. My other friend goes by Mouse, according to everyone, and I hold myself accountable - although it was an easy miracle, she's short and the common nickname for her proper title is Mickey. Alas, I am no nickname genius. I describe what I see, animate and otherwise, and occasionally I forget that my thought are only words and there are actual people hiding beside them. I miss my good friends S and M, but I don't get discouraged because I've met some great new people that walk, talk and are duplicates of real people but have a sprinkle of mere there, a bond. Same reason some know me as Chloster, ChloMo, Chlobear, Cookie. Bond, brand, duplicate - we all have too many dopplegangers to count.

Monday, June 17, 2013

Out of Body

I know the final is tomorrow, but I can't feel it. Like I've been underwater too long and my brain and eyes have gone numb. The calendar is winking at me from down the hall, but I just keep looking back to the computer screen. And toothbrush I'm chewing as I type these words. At least I've learned a lesson: Do what you need before you go diving in cold water, and get cold feet. It's also weird that after tomorrow everything will fade together into one heat wave, no one to see or talk to except the random strangers I'm shoved into an upstate bunk with. I'll miss everyone, and the swimming lessons. It's a thrill, to be numb, for a day.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

To A Tee

Most people think golf is something old men enjoy on Sundays at the country club. (Most people are right.) However, it doesn't mean that golf isn't something teenage girls enjoy on Sundays at the beach in Queens. On Father's Days especially, it's important for x, y, and z to line up in the less-old-than-he-thinks man's favor. His shoulder is hurt, and I caught him wincing over his follow through. My mom, too, is burdened with an elbow condition so that the right arm to touch, hold, or hug is always the left, and without swinging. I am the new generation. I am the old man, or the old soul, or something that can inhabit the walls of a pitching wedge or 7 iron. I will become that haunt.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Terrify

I've never understood why everyone is obsessed with horror flicks and movie theater screams and recounting nightmares to an admiring crew until I became Netflix-obsessed with Pretty Little Liars - not a good idea for a pathologically plagued girl such as myself. Nevertheless, hardly a second passes without me wondering who just called Emily or where Aria is driving alone this time. It's almost comical, the aboutface that's made me stare at a screen all day. Will I sleep? Ah, insomnia is a curse. But the problem with lying awake in bed is that I might have to think about the fact that this morning my mom asked me if I still told complete strangers my grades (no). Actually, she didn't even ask, she assumed the answer was affirmative. I'm changing, and she can hardly see it. I can barely see it. I want a better mirror.

Friday, June 14, 2013

Kitten Eyes

There's the puppy dog face abound, but do we ever wonder where a kitten watches and how? While watching Downton Abbey with my mom, Merlin decided to creep up next to up but stopped purring when he saw the computer screen. Solemnly, he sat, and watched for a full episode. Nonresponsive to petting and coos, his ears perked slightly at Lady Mary and flattened at mention of Thomas (for good reason). I can rest assured that my kitten and his face have at least some good sense.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Discord

This blog is out of order, and so I am. No more is every day simply a few emotions to reflect back onto this page. Now posting is the last thing before I go to bed, sometimes too tired to remember. Why? It's the end of the year. I remember the first day of school waltzing into my Spanish class late and whispering to the eighth grader across the way, "Where's the main office?" They told me they had no idea. I convinced myself with letters and stories and pop quiz trips to the auditorium and room 251 that I would know by the end of seventh grade. That I would establish myself as one of those ancient statues the Greeks could no bring themselves to break down into Hellenistic trash; have a standing appointment at eleven for lunch, a place to go after the last day of school to celebrate. Yesterday was it. Some went to the beach, some to another beach, some to a candy store...

My blog is broken because I went home. Because I felt empty and there was nothing to reflect. I spent the afternoon scrolling further down on social media pages and looking at everyone else's smiles. I wondered where the future self I had written to in September has gone, and where I, the other future self, will go. (Somewhere, I hope.)

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Beakers

I never understood before this year that there is something more to my relationship with science than sitting in a room... in a chair... and falling asleep and someone drones in the background about ENzymes and ANGIosperms. This has been my experience, until now. But the teacher who converted me is going off to learn more, and I'll be stuck in another room's chair learning less. It's weird, I guess; I'm usually so weepy, and this time I was the one dry-cheeked kid who awkwardly stood in awe of how incredible Ms. L is. She said this is why she became a teacher. It's why I became a student, too.

Monday, June 10, 2013

Voice

Isn't it funny that my voice died right after I needed it? I'm a stammering, throaty, hoarse mess on the phone; I can barely imagine what people think when they hear me scratching through the line. I've made too many phone calls today, and been too embarrassed to leave voicemails waiting in an invisible box. Isn't it funny that when I had my voice this weekend, there was a whirlwind of hope catching me up and dragging me off to Oz... People told me I was "a Disney princess," "going to be on Broadway," and I was crashing up...

But physics states it all: What goes up must come down. What goes into an invisible box must be taken out, but there is nothing but obligation keeping the recipient from walking away.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Four Poster

I have a new antique four poster bed sitting in the middle of an empty room with a warped floor and I am lying on it. For two years now it's been nesting in a southern storage unit, untouched and in the dark. The wood tightened a bit in the colder seasons yes, and relaxed in summer, but all in all nothing changed. Until my big-time mother maneuvered a truck all the way up the coast on three lane highways to our new house, and told some one-day workers where to place it. She didn't tell them to put it in the corner so they left it by the window, in the middle of an empty room. It's old, new, full of spirit, empty and alone, it's an oxymoron in a piece of furniture and I picked it from a handful of one to be my own. I couldn't reject myself.

Friday, June 7, 2013

Asterix *?$!@

When you are younger, you can hear everyone whispering in the background telling parents not to worry, that children go through a long phase where they simply feel the need to say everything that's been stuffed inside their throats when their mouths get covered to keep it in. It is natural, one says, to curse for attention, to curse to seem mature and cool. And then we move on, and people forget that those once repelled words and phrases ever bounced back. We don't remember that we ever assumed that woman swearing on the bench was crazy. The taboo has become acceptable because we, teh few who tried to fight, soon grew tired of interrupting every sentence. But a dress rehearsal? A lost scene change? And someone cursing? I'm too old to reprimand you and too young to try and guide you away, but you better not do that for my cousins. They are younger than attention-seeking pirates stumbling up school bus stairs. They are younger than covering the mouth for fear of release. They are an ear-covered, semi-swaddled, innocent, unbroken glass toddler pair. But soon enough, they won't be.

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Green

Everybody is tinted green, but I must be a fluorescent lime. My jealousy is out of control. It seems like everybody around me knows just how to dance: time step, keeping everything under control and not losing track of minutes and hours and days spent vegetatively thinking, sprinkler, showering everyone with flirtatious remarks and witty smiles with perfect teeth, running man, getting out of a problem before they are buried alive. And I simply can't get the rhythms right. I have two left feet, and K3 makes sure I know it. It's probably a good thing. This way I won't enter a contest and lose.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Concert Dress

We call them, however it might sound, our blacks. Long black shirts, with no decals, no detail, no attempt at interest. Black skirts or pants, ankle length (or with black nylons). Black shoes, which I forgot, so I had to trudge onto the stage in my black socks. First period today was science with a side of fresh for torment substitute, who quizzed us relentlessly on a topic we never studied: the electromagnetic spectrum. At least I think that's what it's called. We learned, between trying to say each other's names during attendance and pointlessly flipping through our notes looking for answers, that black is the absence of light. But nothing can be truly black. A raincloud hovering ominously over a city - darkest gray. Me today - impending disaster, ready to snap... I snapped... but the absence of light is nonexistent in my life. There is, no matter what K3 says, ALWAYS hope.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Averages

In the end, the result of your high school experience comes down to the cold calculation of which way the wind is blowing via compass points; e.g. there are only 13 averages. Unlucky thirteen. You can get up to an A+, but only if you only stay above 97. You can get down to an F, but... I don't want to think about that. No matter how many friends you have, no matter your reviews in the school paper, no matter anything else that floats around in the ether there are thirteen distinct planets, from biggest to smallest, and if you run out of water on the farthest one from the sun, sucks for you I guess. You know what I need? A space shuttle, stat.

Monday, June 3, 2013

Tech

Today at rehearsal, there will be moving pieces throughout the stage, blocking my way and the light and one of the fire exits. (Oh well.) I won't be sure where to stand or what to do in the oddest set I've ever been a part of, yet another door on hinges spinning back and forth and looking for someone to bang into. It's like the walls have minds of their own, as though they want to undermine the entire show and turn us on our heads. I won't know where to stand, but I certainly will know where to be: beside everyone else, working to undermine the set back over itself again, and crack the whip in favor of an excellent performance.

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Somewhere is Here

I heard in Art History class that the idea of a Muslim reflecting pool is that the reflection of the actual world representing the otherworldly heaven. A reflecting pool is manmade, but does the same apply to a lake? Because the lake I've spent the weekend in front of has shown me exactly the color blue of the sky, and the underwings of a bird, and the shape of the sun before it sets over the mountains. I was just wondering if that exactly is the otherworldly, if I am living in a state of perpetual perfection and I just don't know it. Things don't seem perfect at all. But maybe perfection doesn't exist and a bit of happiness at last is as good as it gets.