Poetry--A New Escape

Hey Everyone,
So I know it's been awhile.  Trust me, I know.  But at least you know that since I'm not here, talking to y'all, I'm at least doing my homework!!
So my next dozen posts or so are going to be either
1) Poetry I love
2)Original poetry
or  3) me yammering on about different types of poetry and how fabulous it is.
Right now in school I'm taking a two hour daily poetry class, and it has shown me how awesome this underrated, under-appreciated art is.
So I'll be posting more often, and I hope you enjoy the poetry!!

Give-Thanksing

     Thanksgiving is one of the oldest commonly practiced holidays and can be traced back to the Mesopotamian harvest festival, Akitu.  In North America it can be traced back to the Protestant Reformation.  In Canada the first Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1578 by an explorer named Martin Frobisher.  He held his Thanksgiving in gratitude for surviving the long journey, not for the harvest.  In England, before 1536 there were 92 church holidays and 52 Sundays that people were required to go to church or take off work.  They often had to pay for expensive celebrations on these holidays with money they didn't have.  However, in 1536, during the reign of Henry VII, there was an English Reformation and the holidays were reduced to 27, but some puritans got rid of all of them, including Christmas and Easter.  With the holidays gone, the English set up days of fasting and days of feasting to please or repay God.
     Many different cultures and religions combined to get us where we are today, and we are still growing and evolving as a culture.  No matter what you believe in, Thanksgiving is a day to remind us of how much we have.  It is a day to get together with the people you love and feast on delicious food and fulfilling conversation.  It is a day to thank each other for being in our lives.  I hope all of you have a wonderful day full of feasting and comfort and happiness.     Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

Lazy Dayz

It's kind of ridiculous how much of my happiness is based on school.  The best days are the ones I have no homework.  I count down the days until breaks and weekends and drag myself out of bed on Mondays.  But this week, for Thanksgiving, I have the whole week off!!!
I keep remembering this at random parts of my day and I get happy all over again. 
And because of this whole open week ahead of me, today, instead of doing my homework and stressing about tomorrow, I got to sleep in and go surfing.
And so, at 2:30 in the afternoon on Novemeber 24, I was floating on my surfboard in the Pacific Ocean and appreciating just how good I have it.
I may not have the new iPhone or a laptop or the newest clothes, but everything I have is of extreme value to me, and the less I have the more I love those things.
Moving to Cali has taught me to take less value in material things and more value in memories and relationships. 
I know that when I grow up I want to be very mobile and able to leave at any second.  i want to be able to travel around without toting around a bunch of empty reminders of memories gone by.  I would love to just have a box of pictures i could take out and look at instead of having physical souveniers.     
But the problem with that is I'm not a big fan of taking pictures. :)

Sickening Cliches

I hate how, no matter how hard I try, everything I do has already been done by someone else.  Everything I feel has already been felt and everything I say has probably already been said.  I feel like such a repeat of everything before me.  What can I do that is truly unique?  What can I do that I'm the first person to do?  Is there anything left in the whole entire world that hasn't been done, made, or discovered?
        How can I truly be my own person?  Is there anything? Anything at all? 
        Lets make an example.
        Feelings.
        Whenever I tell someone I'm having a bad day they either say:
1)  "Teen angst, bro, it sucks."
2) "That time of month huh?"
3) "You want to talk about it?"
4) They say nothing, and only look at me like I need to get it together.
I just need someone who says,
"I feel you.  Here, beat me up if you need to."
That would honestly be amazing.
Cause if someone tells me I can beat them up, it's like they're giving me permission to do something, which I hate even more, so I'll beat them up even harder.
And then, I realize, after they are good and bruised, that my anger was a combination of all four of the above things and I am, in fact, just another angst-y teenager that wants to just talk about it and eat chocolate and watch chick flicks.
That fact makes me question my feelings.  Are they legit? Am I actually upset for any good reason? (Is there such a thing?)
Or are my feelings just the usual symptoms prescribed with each dosage of life?
I wish I had been warned of these annoying symptoms when I signed up for this whole deal.


 

636, 174, 28

I've changed my mind.  The greatest distance is not time.  It's the 1,957 miles from Costa Mesa, CA, to Viroqua WI.  On google maps they told me it would take 636 hours to walk that.  174 hours to bike it.  28 hours to drive.  That's not that much.  If I could drive and go without sleep or food or bathrooms for that long I could be in Viroqua by 9:30 tomorrow night.  It's mean to myself to think about that.  And it's ridiculous that today, of all days, I'm thinking about this.  I had a really good day today.  Today at school was a great day.  We finished chemistry so we have no homework and I was in a really good mood and everything was funny.  I've been really good about this for a while now.  I haven't been sad at all.  For some reason I came home and my happiness turned into anger which turned into tears which now has me sitting here in front of a computer screen writing to no one.  I have no one new to talk about this with.  If I was this sad in Viroqua I would go in the woods or go to La Maison.  But here the woods are unfamiliar and don't have my things.  There's no stream.  There's no sunshine tree.  There's no one I can talk to about this here, besides my family and it's different because I've already talked to them about it enough.  Everyone here has been at this school their whole life.  They don't know what it's like to leave your most favorite place in the world, a peaceful little town full of memories and stories in the Midwest, and be dropped down in the middle of a city full of trash and harsh edges and the newest and fastest and best.  I mean seriously people, why do you care so much about who has the new iPhone??  seriously.
If anyone out there is reading this, I'm sorry.  I'm sorry you had your time wasted by my rant.  I have these moods sometimes.  By tomorrow, when I'm surfing before school, I'll be thinking how ridiculous I was to write all this junk.  But it's what I'm feeling right now so I have to write about t or it'll only get worse.  Thank you to anyone who cares enough to read it.    
I just spell-checked this and it said "Viroqua" is not a word.  The words I thought when I read this are not nice so I won't put them here.

Where the airplanes equal the stars.

I survived the first week of school, believe it or not. The first two days involved a three mile uphill hike.  I'm not even exaggerating when I say it was straight up.  It literally was straight uphill.  We arrived to our campsite exhausted and practically dying from heat stroke.  There was not a single tree in sight, But somehow we managed to find a bit of scrub to lay under.  It really wasn't that bad of a hike, it was just the combination of the heat and our packs that made it so bad.  The next day for breakfast we had cliff bars and apples and made our way back down the mountain.
The view from atop our mountain was amazing.  You have no idea.  We were above everything,  to the left the city lights, to the right, the city lights, straight out in front of us, the ocean, and Catalina Island.  Above us, the endless and vast stars. The sea went on and on, and on one of our breaks up the hill, one of my friends said, "I know this sounds really stupid, but the ocean is really big."
The next day, when we reached the bottom, we all went to the ocean and fell into the waves.  After laying there and swimming for a couple hours, we all shouldered our packs once again and made our way up the beach to the Shake Shack.  There we all got hamburgers and malts and appreciated civilization and ice cream.
Once the trip was over, I went home and slept for hours, waking up very sore but thinking maybe it's not so bad here after all.

First day of school-Peace out!

Grace is studying hard at home.

Excited for homeschooling!

Long Days, Short Week

Last night the air smelled like salt.  Like salt, with a hint of nostalgia.
Yesterday we brought my friend Zoe back to the airport.  She is the one who made the Good Life music video with me.
She came here from Viroqua last Saturday and left yesterday.  She was here for a whole week.  Before she came when this was all still planing I thought a week would be plenty, that I would be able to say good-bye to her after seven whole days.
But the week went very fast, and as she said, "Long days, short week."  Which pretty much summed it up perfectly.
We filled up our days easily; I taught her to surf and she got a tan line.  We went to the Hollywood Walk of Fame and took pictures of everything and anything.
We watched the sunset from the Huntington Beach pier and took more pictures.
And when Saturday came she packed up her things and got on a plane and went home.  And mostly I was jealous because she gets to go back to Viroqua and I don't.   Because she is going to be starting school with my friends.
I gave her a list of their names so she could say hi to them for me, hopefully the message gets delivered.
I'm sure it will.
But when she got on her plane and called me four and a half hours later to say that she had landed I realized how close Viroqua really is, I could just get on a plane and be there.
But in two days I will be starting school here, going on a camping trip with all these people I don't know but will be my friends for a year, maybe more.
And when I think those words I feel equal parts nervousness and excitement.  Because when I was back in Viroqua I was always wishing for an adventure, for change or something new. And here I've got it.  
So look out, Waldorf School of Orange County.
Here I come.