Blasted

I'd never been to a concert until today. I'd asked. My parents, with their cautionary fingers, warned so long ago, "You don't WANT to go to a concert. It will be so loud you won't be able to tell where the stage is and where the door is. You'll be trapped, without identity, in a world of left and right and drums and guitars. You won't be able to hear the words." They were right about the last bit. They were right about everything. But it was a pleasant pandemonium. I loved the way we all laughed when they checked the mic. We sat down when our feet hurt from stomping and our thumbs from snapping and our palms from clapping - perfect. Yes, they were right, I didn't know who I was, but I was sure who everyone around me was. I could tell you all their names, but then you'd live in the moment, halfway there without fully understanding the chaos of hearing a million songs you've never heard and not knowing when you're supposed to scream. Let it suffice to say that there were six of us (plus two alone in an aisle below) and we shouted until we couldn't breathe.

Explosion

Every morning, I wake up with something... interesting.... sitting on my head: my hair, tangled and browned from the night before. I brush it; I rub antifrizz stuff through it. And then I get to school and it looks just like it did when my alarm went off. I run my hands through it and try to pull it over my shoulder, tangles getting stuck on my fingers and thumb. And then I get home and it has exploded it can't be controlled.

My hair is life. That sounds superficial, let me rephrase. My hair represents life. There's always a calm before the storm, and after the worst of hurricanes - or, in hair's case, days, it's always back to normal in the morning. See you in the morning.

Mac Lab

I worked on my electronic mandala for about an hour, creating tiny purple wedges, copying them, turning them, trying to form a curve around the center. It was only at the end of the hour that I realized that I could have simply made a purple circle and moved the layer back. Oh well. Yeah, I didn't take the easiest course of action, but the end result was beautiful.

*smiley face*

I didn't finish. It's okay. I finished what I needed to.

The Elusive Yellow Dress #2

"The Elusive Yellow Dress" is the name of my very first blog post. When I wrote, I hated myself. I had no hope at all. The entire purpose of Improbability in the City was to vent. In the first few days, I only had around ten views a day. That's built to an average around 55. At its highest, 147. Today I wore a yellow dress and it reminded me of the person I was three months ago. I was scared. (Still am.) I was hopeless. But that can in its own way be a good thing because you can't fall any further down. I had no idea what to do. And neither do I.

But I have changed. Three months ago, I never would have worn a bright yellow dress.

Accidentally

If you don't remember how I feel about secrets, please go back into the archives and read "Deepest." Good. Moving on. I despise the way that secrets drip their way out of washing pots and pipes and find themselves in open space for anyone to find. So I was careful this time: 2 close friends, enough to keep the holes from spilling through. But things happen, simply by accident: Not by them letting the water spill but by me sloshing it around. Add one for the time she asked me why I was so upset - makes three. Add one for the way she shouted her hypothesis aloud and I needed to shut her up - makes four. Add one for how she'd been guessing for ages, and I really couldn't lie when she finally figured it out - makes five. Add one for the friendly torture she'd inflicted upon me, with clues, pokes, and reputation crushing, in order to get me to give it away - makes six. Add one for no ideas, and doubts about where the intel came from - makes seven. Add one for he just knew and I was tired of talking about it - makes eight. Add one for he told her flat out, right there in the hallway, and I panicked - makes nine.

If three's a crowd, I wonder what on earth nine is.

Turn To Verse

Give me thirty minutes. Give me a thumping emotion making a noise in my ears, impossible to ignore. Give me a pen, a slip of untouched paper. Give me a few blue ink lines across it to mark my thoughts off. I will give you a sonnet.

Because Shakespeare is the genius I've never lived up to. Because Shakespeare is the inspired force behind my drive. Because writing in iambic pentameter lets you organize what you really mean. There is only one missing piece: I'd never, ever, show them to you, X. You'd never look at m the same.

Skipped

It was an accident; I know, in all actuality, it was a natural accident. I know that no one intentionally ruined my scene. I know that no one meant to glide over me like a lowly beetle. I know. Believe me, I know that J6 feels terrible, and I tried to reassure him I was fine. I don't know if anyone believed me. In a fit of rage I kicked my already loose flat so kick it ricocheted off the ceiling. Over the past two weeks, I have worked for about 45 hours on this play, and there were plenty of rehearsals before that. I do almost nothing throughout the entire show. I have one shining moment. And they skipped it.

And I wonder if I'm doing the same thing to myself. There was a moment at the Halloween dance where I felt something. I felt perpetually happy. I felt at peace. I felt alive. I spun so fast that I couldn't tell where I was, but I could tell who was around me. I could tell I had finally done something with myself and come into my own body, like zipping up a VISIBILITY cloak around myself. But maybe this is the time of my life. I should be taking a risk, while I have the chance.

Anonymous

One of you is reading this blog. I don't know who you are. You comment as "Anonymous." You comment as though you are my best friend. It's out there, somewhere in the ether, your hair, that I wish I could grab to pull you back to me. It's exhilarating to have a cheerleader, even if I don't know them. Everyone keeps warning me: Blogs put your personal information at risk! Blogs put your life on display! People in Germany are stalking you! But I'm being safe. I haven't revealed anything important -  well, anything concrete and important. And is it crazy that I'm relying on Anonymous to boost my self-esteem? I'm not denying it. I just want you to know, Anonymous, your comments aren't going out my ear. They are sticking like post-its on a wall. A wall once impassible. Now covered in little windows.

New Shirts

I've never been popular. It is not in my nature to be popular. I have grown out of wanting to be popular. It isn't who I am. So therefore, for better or worse, I have never had the feeling of being part of the in crowd. Of walking down the hallway with a group to look for. Of knowing a place, particularly and specifically, in the midst of a busy school. When we got the shirts for the middle school play, and we had to wear them today, I suddenly walked to class and waved to people. They hesitantly waved back. But regardless, I knew them. Our too-big blue cast tees pulled us out from everyone else, like walking light-up arrows pointing at each other. But it's not me. It's fake. I prefer to be myself, and not someone's partner in crime.

Acknowledgement

I would like to publicly recognize my new friend Y. I started talking to her a few days ago and simply couldn't stop. She actually cared about what I was saying, unlike my friends who are beginning to grow bored of my always-the-same questions for them; she listened to me as I spilled a nameless heart to her in little moments that we had time to spare. It's an interesting thing, looking up to someone. You think they're always right, and they have to assume they are to avoid the guilt that goes with leading someone astray. There is no one to check the balance. There is no way to know what I should do next. So Y, thank you, if I can really thank anyone at all.

GHOS_

If you are intellectual youth in the city and you have never played the game GHOST, you have never understood what a game is. For those of you unenlightened folk, GHOST is basically a spelling game, where a series of players take turns saying one letter, attempting NOT to be forced to say the last letter in a word. I used to be exceptional at this game. Then the deaths; then the double rehearsals, darting back and forth; then the drama; then the night upstate; then everything else - needless to say, I'm too tired to effectively concentrate.

I played with T and L today. Whenever I play with T, three wonderful and very annoying things happen: A) He wins. B) He forms an alliance with the other player against me. C) He knows the etymology of every word. Regardless, I lost. I lost because I couldn't remember the words masculinity, geriatric, and ricotta.

I have to get used to this perpetual sense of exhaustion. I have to become accustomed to losing at GHOST, and everything else. It all depends on who you're playing against. Now I'm in a new environment. Now I'm playing against T.

Curiosity

One of the biggest themes in "Still Life with Iris" is curiosity. I could learn a lesson or two from the main character. Always asking questions, always risking everything for double or nothing. Sometimes I know an answer so well that I am afraid to hear it said aloud, so I don't bother asking in the first place. Sometimes I worry that if anyone has to actually tell me the answer, it will change. I can live with knowing. Or, I could. But now I'm starting to wonder what would happen if I did ask the questions. It's killing me to go day to day basing everything on a possibility, as close and as far as the ground eight floors below me, but nowhere near as stable. What ifs are not good for my health.

Exhaust

I was so tired that when I got up from the thrice-painted floor I couldn't walk in a straight line. I was so tired that after standing onstage for about twenty seconds I had to collapse onto a nearby platform. I was so tired that I couldn't smell the hairspray being messed with inches from my face. I was so tired that I couldn't find the gap between the curtains where I could walk backstage to lie down again. I was so tired that I let myself be a normal middle school for once and gossip a little - don't worry, I wasn't mean! I was so tired that when L asked me what I was thinking about, my biggest secret, and my obsession, I couldn't remember the answer. I could only remember that they were all the same thing.

P.S. Now I remember.

Night

They talked forever on the night hike, into the field and down the road, and I could feel the life flowing away from the area, the magic disappearing, if it was ever there. Even when we reached the hill, they kept chattering and catcalling into the darkness. A few of us wanted the magic. I guided us to the edge of the clearing. The moon was the size of my palm, as smooth as the skin on a baby's. Together we stood and watched it not move. We talked about being small. A said, as M sang "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," that we were all so tiny, like waves in an ocean. "But each wave rises and crashes on its own," I said.

Taconic

We're off on the class sleepover for a year, one night in cabins in the woods to get a taste of each other and the natural world. I've heard so many things about the trip: You'll be bored. Best time of my life. Interesting things will happen. But despite the varied opinion, I have my own cringing worries. The last time I went on a class sleepover, my cabin was composed of me, my best friends, and a couple of popular people who didn't fit in the same cabin with their friends. The good thing: There are no awful cliquish people in my class. The bad thing: I can't stay isolated to one class out of nine forever. Eventually I'll have to venture away from my comfort zone and see the world - or at least the other end of the grade hallway.

E

Taking a math test is little cause for panic on a usual basis; there are no facts to memorize, only concepts to master. But this test was different. The results will determine my math education for the next four years, and possibly beyond. We arrived to the room at eleven, at which time the exam was supposed to begin with closed doors. They instructed us to take out a pencil, and I saw green slips of paper fluttering like dollar bills from my teacher's hand - the Scantron sheets. I realized with a sinking feeling that I had only prepared with a pen.

Back I dashed through the hallway, screaming for a pencil with might. No - no - no - only got one - no - yes. R produced a yellow pencil and I gratefully grabbed it, scurrying back to the exam room. Turning over the pencil, I noticed a small marking on its base - a number three.

It brought me back to the terror I felt at the end of fifth grade when I accidentally did my standardized tests in number three pencil. They were my qualifiers for the school of my dreams. And then I thought about what those tests got me: the school of my dreams, and absolutely no sleep. And I wondered why I was so anxious about not getting into advanced math when I should be worried about the other outcome.

Green Space

There's a spot a few blocks from my house, right by the subway station, which looks out at the most gorgeous building in my neighborhood, old and crusted with detail and rented by all the big names for film shoots, and sits beside the Hope Hill, as I call it. The Hope Hill is planted with the daffodils Amsterdam sent after 9/11, and each spring they bloom among the ivy and trees. The canopy of leaves ahead blocks out the sun and forms a little cocoon from the outside world.

Waiting for my father, I sat down on the bench. For the first time since Janet's death, I took a deep breath and let the muscles in my stomach, in my shoulder, in my heart relax for a second. Science fair is over. I've done what I can for the math placement exam. Now it is time to breath in daffodil smell on Hope Hill.

Collective

My cousin E told me about the fainting incident in Texas when I told her about the meltdown series. (Last week in my class, about three quarters of the girls broke down sobbing and were inconsolable. Five, including me, cut English to go to the guidance counselor. Even though she forced our teacher to excuse us, we were given a pop quiz the next to make sure we'd been paying attention in the class - that we had missed.) Apparently, around my age, girls are extremely social and look to each other for guidance on what to wear, to say, and how to act. In Texas, a girl fainted at her school. Suddenly, all the girls were fainting. Physically fainting, although medically there was no explanation. It went on for months like this, the girls' minds forcing them to faint inexplicably. This, E suggested, was akin to the meltdown series.

Sometimes it feels like it's over. We no longer cry during lunch. We manage to finish our projects - or at least hope we will. But I still feel the perpetual sense of helplessness throughout our little group. Wednesday is looming: Science fair in the morning, then performing our melodrama, the math placement exam, callbacks for the school play, rehearsal for the other school play, lacrosse practice, and a baseball game. We cower and try not to think about. That's my explanation for the calm: No one is thinking about it. If we were all thinking about, we'd all be fainting, wouldn't we?

Boy

You don't have to say it; I know I missed another day of blogging. Sorry. I was distracted by all the people at my aunt's baby shower asking me about my blog. (They like it.) I was distracted also by the enormous stork balloon tied to a chair, and the miraculous bump in her belly. Until three years ago, I was the youngest of my twelve cousins. I always read the Four Questions at Passover. Made sure to leave the note for Santa on the table. But all that changed when O was born, then C3. Next, who knows? A miraculous bump that grows and grows and then disappears again, although somehow, the matter has multiplied. It happens all the way. A little bit of knowledge becomes an encyclopedia, a little bit of talking becomes a speech, and a little bit of love becomes an eternal adoration of the little thing.

Silently, Not

Today was the National Day of Silence in support of LGBTQ individuals who are silenced in their everyday lives. Although my school greatly supported this plan, even excusing participants from participating in class, one girl in my class - J3, I believe I called her - was very pointed about the idea before it was announced school wide. Several emails were hustled around about the purpose, the means, and the verdict: Yes, I'll be a good person, or no, I'm too lazy. I said the former and did the latter.

That seemed to be everyone's problem today. It's crunch time, like we're all stuck in a room with a bomb in it and we have only a little time left to crack the code to survival, so we can't afford to make another mistake. Not being able to ask questions about the major project in science? Being forced to play a game in Health without making a sound? I gave in. Pathetically.

Today was like a boysenberry. On the outside, they look quaint, docile, and ripe. One bite, and you'll stop eating. Unless someone dies first. So I'm sorry to all those people who will eat the boysenberries of hatred and abuse because I couldn't keep from saying, "Sorry."