I Should Have Known That

A poem for my AP Lit class. We were assigned to write about our high school experience and thoughts on being a senior (I know I'm a senior!), but I  stretched the topic a bit. Oops. Well at any rate...

In trigonometry last year, my name was vacuum cleaner

Because I sucked

and puckered my lips in disgust like a lemon eater

We each have our mess as I should have known

Maybe then I could have been shameless in asking

For help in solving those darn inverse equations

I referred to freshmen seminar as the “unsharpened pencil in my side”

Because it was oh so dull

and thought to myself with self-righteous pride

That after watching paint dry it must be boring task No. 2

It was two years later when I finally learned

To look for the edgier corners and sides

My friends in the hallways always called me space

Because that is where I go

Or so they say, though I might never know

I hum between classes under my breath

and seem too distracted to consider the homework question

Though I swear I don’t try to be rude

I’m not sure what titles I will take and give this year

Because I am not clairvoyant

And though I would fancy the symbol and status

Of being a great prophet or wise oracle

I’m quite content to ride these bumps and bends

By the end of this year, you never know what I might know by then

language barriers

If I spoke Spanish I would drive to the border

To warn that this country is full of pinwheel people

Spinning upside-down faster than anything with blood should

Here might not put you back in working order

And if only I was fluent in French  

I could appreciate poems by the late Rimbaud 

But then if I mastered German instead

I could curse out the Nazis in their native tongue 

I wish I knew how to do Sign Language too

So no one would giggle when my voice cracks and squeals

But then they would mock my skin’s cracks and peels

Maybe I should stop trying so hard

Etgar 36: Aids Quilt and OKC Bombing Memorials

Oh, wow, haven't posted on here in a while. Hello friends, I've been back from a trip across America called Etgar 36 for a couple weeks now but blogging about it is such a daunting task that I've put it off. But no more! I went on adventures and I need to write about them. This particular post is about two memorials I visited, though I saw quite a few more than these. Feel free to share your thoughts in comments!

The Names Project Foundation is an organization dedicated to spreading awareness and providing education about AIDS through what is known as the AIDS quilt, a constantly growing memorial quilt to those individuals who lost their lives to the disease. Each panel is dedicated to one person, and the wonderful thing is that when I first walked into the Names Project headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, I didn't understand why these people were stitched together at all. It was our first meeting and I was fixated on my inner monologue of "Shit I don't know anyone, no friends, friendless, must make friends...," so much so that I hadn't cared to ask anyone why we were there.

When I walked into this place, I assumed it would be something of an office building with cubicles and coffee only to find these gorgeous quilts adorning the walls, with more panels folded on shelves or flat under humming sewing machines. I looked for a trend across the colorful squares: Ethnicity no, gender no, religion no, race.... Except for the actual lines and shapes that made up the fabric, no such pattern existed. And then I figured it out: AIDS. How appropriate is was, the woman speaking with us explained, that a quilt so big and diverse be created to educate and spread awareness, because AIDS can infect anyone and affects everyone on a global scale. The quilt was different from some the memorials we would visit later on. It celebrated the life of individuals, not the death of HIV positive victims. The quilt requested that I mourn and remember, but it also asked that I live and grow.

Almost a week later I found myself at the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial, a distinctly different experience from the one I had at the Names Project, and I think much of that comes from the way the memorial is structured. Two gates stand at opposite ends of the memorial, The eastern gate with the time 9:01 and the western gate timed at 9:03. The gates of time symbolize the minute before the attack and the minute after it, the the last minute of innocence and the first minute of recovery. Between the gates stretches an expansive pool of water, hardly moving at all. The unequivocal stillness of it reminded me of a heart rate monitor that flatlines, like the dead hearts of those 168 people at 9:02.

We visited the memorial that morning but after a couple of hilariously pathetic rounds of  bowling we went back to experience it at night, all lit up. I got a chance to walk up the rows of chairs with glowing glass bottoms, each bearing the name of a victim. A few people with brains and hearts that should have objected to their plan were responsible for those lives and the empty chairs that should be filled with working adults on important phone calls and gossiping parents with children fidgeting in their own miniature seats or climbing down them to play and giggle with each other.

After a few minutes the group gathered together with our director. He said he didn't have an explanation for why the chairs are empty, or why our shoes are full. Some people live and others don't get to and he said he doesn't know why. It's okay that we don't either, that no one does. It was okay to be sad at the time, okay we goofed off at the bowling alley, and okay to feel happy again tomorrow. So I figure it serves us well to overcome the guilt and grief of our existence. God only knows why, but we are alive and that is much more than okay. If we don't learn how to live, we might as well be an empty chair, or the panel of a quilt.


http://www.aidsquilt.org/ - These people are really incredible, check it out if you have a few spare minutes

http://www.etgar.org/ - The trip I went on has a website! And this post is me explaining what the trip is.

Photos are not mine, they belong to a couple of my friends. Thanks guys :)

Inspiration and Motivation

I have a flight to catch tomorrow morning that begins my summer trip, but I figured I would leave you with one last post before I head off and the amount of blogging I'm able to accomplish becomes questionable. Here is a by no means complete list of music, poetry, and people that I draw inspiration and motivation from.

Bigger Than My Body - John Mayer
This song inspires me to be more than I'm capable of, and I love that.

You Gotta Be - Des'ree 
When I was a baby this is the only song that would get me to stop crying. The minute my parents popped in the CD I shut right up. They were thankful for that. This song still motivates me to keep fighting when I've nearly given up.


Scratch and Dent Dreams - Eric Darby
Very creative poem that inspires me to pick up the things I gave up on (like soccer, which I'm starting again in the fall!).

The Information Man - Buddy Wakefield 
More abstract but at the end it all comes together. He is a riot, his delivery is perfect, and the poem is a real celebration of humanity!

The Doctor (You know, like Doctor Who)
So not a real person as much as I have tried to convince myself otherwise, but how could this guy not inspire anyone? He's an alien who travels though space and time, is witty, charming, and compassionate! He's far from perfect and often makes huge mistakes, like, the universe could collapse kind of mistakes, but he fixes them. And he cares. I might be in love. But crushing on a fictional character is probably better than crushing on dead people (cough Jeff Magnum), or murderers, or something.

Vlogbrothers - 
This may seem like an obvious choice to most of you, since most of my traffic comes from people who stumbled over here through Nerdfighteria. But how can I not include them. So much of who I am is defined by than channel. They've brought me so many odd facts and funny inside jokes, but the most valuable thing they teach me every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday is how to wear myself with pride, which is the most daring, stunning outfit anyone can put on.

When A Star Dies

This poem is basically about a star who stole too much light from the other stars, so she was banished from the sky by a wise moon and forced to live in the body of a little girl. I think this is worth saying because it's easier to appreciate someone's poetry if you know what the hell they're talking about.

in a cul-de-sac the same as every other
a girl ties fireflies together with blades of grass.
their striped bodies stacked like toy blocks,
or their faces pressed together, forming multi-point stars.
she likes to watch them stumble and see how far
they get before wincing, they collapse in her hands.

but after they sleep she weeps to the moon
for expelling her to the dim and doom
of a poorly lit house made of bread and sawdust
and answers to questions she never asked
in the first place, she was a lustrous omnipotent flame
with a name the whole galaxy knew.

in a universe like every other, they still see her
the common as comets commoners
and the fireflies choking beneath delinquent fingers.
they watch infamy burn slower than time can.
night is her most ironic fun house mirror
a reflected reminder, the loss of a winner.

EXCITING HAPPENINGS (and lice)

A few things have been brewing since we spoke last.

I finish school tomorrow, but I still have an algebra/trigonometry test to take which is simply no fun at all. I'm eagerly anticipating the announcement that Jo is going to make which is connected to a new website she launched called Pottermore. I’m less eagerly awaiting the arrival of my SAT scores. I thought I had Lice because three bugs fell out of my head. My Mom's friends came over and combed through my head for over an hour but I'm clear. So that's good.

More importantly, I am going on a trip across the country for five weeks! I leave on Sunday. It's part of a program called Etgar 36, which provides a group of Jewish teenagers the opportunity to travel across the United States and hear from political leaders, artists, activists, and educators about hot topic issues that the country is dealing with currently. To say I am insanely obscenely excited about this trip is a huge understatement. Social action is totally up my alley, and after taking U.S. history this year, I feel like I will be able to appreciate everything I see so much more. We hit 22 different states and do a bunch of fun things besides the educational stuff like theme parks (I’m a rollercoaster junkie), movies, and shows. And we go to a Poetry slam! I have always loved poetry and more recently developed a slam poetry obsession, so I'm very excited to see some slam poets perform live!

The downer of this trip is that I won't have my laptop with me. I will have my droid which has fairly good internet access but is pretty difficult to type on comfortably. So basically, I don't know how much blogging I'm going to get done. I'm going to have so many wonderful things to write about, but I'm not sure if I should wait till I get back and do a few blogs based on my handwritten journal entries, or if I should try and update with the iffy technology I will have at my disposal. Also, pictures will be pretty much impossible to provide while on the trip, but I could upload some when I get home. Any advice on what I should do?

Let's chat again before I leave, okay? And I'm going to try and finish a few poems I've been working at.

Best Wishes,
Jaime

Dear Gym Class...

For my 4th quarter Gym assignment (yes we get Gym homework), I had to write about my "thoughts on the Physical Education program over the past 3 years of your high school experience." This is not what I wrote, but it should have been.

Dear Gym Class,

I know you just rolled your metaphorical eyes at me for addressing you as "Gym" rather than your less common and much more pompous title, "Physical Education" but honestly dude, get over yourself! You're indisputably the least important class in the curriculum which gives you no right to demand a longer name than any other course on my schedule! What a waste of Ink! You leave students all sweaty and smelly and since a substantial portion of the high school population does not know what hygiene is, we must all brave the narrow, malodorous hallways.

Look, it's nothing personal, you and I just don't get along and frankly, I don't think we ever will! Your mandatory attendance and unnecessary assignments that require sports knowledge I will never posses only makes me resent you that much more! Maybe you are just trying to help, make the student body healthier and more active but...well...you don't do that. At all. How much actual exercise does 40 minutes of softball give the student who stands in the outfield the whole time texting? Or the the one who is thinking up Haikus during Field Hockey? That last one is me by the way. I am not a rolling ball of fat, and I managed that without your lame attempts to combat obesity.

My thoughts on Physical Education? You want to hear what I learned from you? You taught me that getting picked last and getting assigned to a team by the teacher because your one of the remaining few who was not picked is practically the same thing, except in the latter scenario at least someone pointed to you and said your name. I now know that volleyballs gravitate toward my head like it's the most massive object in the room or something. It never is unless measured in Harry Potter trivia, in which case my head is almost always the heaviest. I learned that the only sport I can perform with some skill is Pickleball, a pretty goofy sounding sport to be good at. I learned that boys are way too into you. I'll see you next fall gym class, I won't be missing you one bit.

Much Love,
Jaime