Cobbled Streets

Right Now

Today

Tonight

53°F

FEELS LIKE 53°

56°

HIGH

44°

LOW

Partly Cloudy

Light Rain

Partly Cloudy

For eight years I wanted to go to Paris. I drew pictures of Paris and asked people what Paris rain smelled like. I searched the internet and learned all about Paris and then the places Parisian excursioners travelled after Paris.

Maybe Holland would have had prettier flowers and cleaner streets and kinder people, but I knew that before I ever went to Paris. Paris didn't need me the way it may have benefitted from Van Gogh, but I guess I needed Paris in the way I needed vitamin tablets. I needed Paris in the way I didn't know I needed. 

I visited the Louvre, but I didn't paint there. I tried the baguettes and madelines, but my favorites were still the cupcakes and strawberries. I looked through the museums at the modern art and scoffed at the dots on the canvas. Browsing the guidebooks were a past time in the hotel room, but I never visited the expensive restaurants. 

Paris wasn't about lectures or films or museums or the tourists. Paris was about left turns, rainy evenings, and the small apartments of the french. Paris was about cobbled streets and crowded streets. Paris was about the .0315 percent of the world's population who live there but never about the 2.8 percent who visit the Eiffel Tower. Paris was never about the eiffel tower.

Paris was not a city. Paris was a weather report of 54 degrees and slightly cloudy but looking up tomorrow. Paris was the "Désolé, nous somas firms" sign on the bakery that made me go to the next street over where I tried the best water I've ever had.

From the carrot and the water in the outskirts of the city, I wave salut to the city of Paris. Thank you.

Slam

I grip the stars in my hands and the galaxy slips from my finger cracks. Fate says "there goes pizza and Saturday nights" and 6 o'clock says "there go the formals and home cooked meals." And all the while the calendars say "look at the playgrounds! You can't see the swings? They are too far away."

I didn't decide to gamble with fate until I was old. I have no idea what the inside of a sleeping bag looks like on a park bench at night and that's why I will never know what it is like to be the man from Downtown Salt Lake City... But I know what a pen feels like and I know what cold pillows feel like, but hey! that does not mean I know what it is like to release the oxygen tank. I don't know a lot of things but I know what it is like to sail the skies.

Tomorrow is coming, ladies and gentlemen, and so is fate, and so is 6 o'clock. And even though calendars will still be here, so will yesterday and thank the stars that tomorrow will be here too.

Insecurities

I remember getting glasses in kindergarten. My mom had to walk me in to class because I was so embarrassed. I remember the days that I had to wear a sticky eye patch at home and how I wouldn't go to Chuck-E-Cheeses with Ben because I was wearing my eye patch and a dress so obviously I was a loser.
In third grade I scored a goal during a soccer scrimmage and I was so excited because it was the first goal I had ever made. It was the wrong side.
One time I asked a question in fourth grade and the whole class said "she talks!" and that made me feel so dumb that I never spoke again.
My fifth grade teacher was afraid I didn't have any friends and I was afraid I didn't have any friends, too.
In sixth grade I told my teacher I hurt my ankle so I wouldn't have to play dodgeball against _____ __________ and ____ ____. That was probably a good idea.
I ate lunch by myself mostly every day in Junior High. I pretended I was waiting for somebody but I was not. I only packed half sandwiches because the skinny girls ate half sandwiches.
When high school started I still changed in the bathroom before PE instead of against the locker wall.
I sat a few lunches in the library and read a few books on friday nights.
I remember the days that I felt really lonely, but also inexplicably happy. I don't know anything about rooftops with boys or convertibles with music, but I know a lot about how to use a semicolon and how to be really happy. High school is not a full circle ending but a progression (and thank goodness for that).

How to never blog

1) Develop a really awful case of skewed priorities and grading scales
2) Never check skyward or take anything seriously
3) Do things like check out eight books at the library, but read none, write eight blog posts on your computer, but publish none, or set eight alarm clocks, but wake up to none.
4) Delude yourself into thinking that your high school life's cumulative sleep hours are more important than good grades.
5) Miss a lot of inspiring lessons
6) Get a job and never sleep
7) Take too many hard classes
8) You don't have anything worth saying anyway, so you may as well shut up. Thank you and come again.

How to write a really good blog post:
1) Visit somebody else's blog. Try the links on the side.

High School

Travelling

I hate one hundred percent of the things I post and wish that I could publish something else. Paris was really nice and I found some great tourists- that's one of the advantages of hostels- and the streets are full of fortune cookies and wrappers, but the Louvre was too expensive and the stairs too tiring. There are a lot of stairs in Paris.

Wishing on airplanes

I did infinity amazing blackout poems, but I do not have a camera device and honestly, it wasn't worth it to track one down. So instead, I tracked this lovely bug down on the internet. It's a little inspiring.

Friend of a Friend

This is for the journalists, the jocks, the pre-high school lovers, the ninth grade partiers, the lonely lunch goers, and the juvenile juice box drinkers. This is for those who don’t know who you are like I don’t know who I am. This is it: Life is simple.

I have hoards of advice I could give you because I have been collecting it for years, but this isn’t from your mom or your sixth grade teacher or a fortune cookie. This is just from me, and I don’t know what I am talking about. Nevertheless, this is about high school.

You will find unusual friends in unusual places if you let it happen. Some of them will leave footprints in you heart and some of them won’t, but all of them will teach you something… even if it is about anime or sci-fi novels. It is glorious, but I know that it is also frightening to let that happen.

You will find the thing you love the most when doing the things that scare you most. I think overcoming resistance will make your passions stronger.

I know your life is harder than mine, but if it is worth anything, I have been collecting advice for years. 

Queen of Spades

If I ruled the world, there would be incinerators in all the ladies’ rooms and nobody would crack joints ever. We would all read more and build more concert halls. The nutritionists would include Cheetos with oats and buckwheat at the bottom of the food pyramid along with orange juice and ranch dressing.

We would learn to double-dutch before graduating from elementary school and every child would go on one roller coaster before every birthday because then maybe we would stop being so afraid to grow up. 

Nobody listened when I spoke the first time

Your heart hurts? Well I'm thirsty. The world is fair and so is war.
The funniest thing I ever said was a chess joke in an Australian accent, but I can't tell it to you.
Tonight my cousin was all "Hey dad? Should I get a hoe? and his dad said, "Is it a good hoe?" and we all laughed.

To the years ahead

• Travel by myself with no itinerary
• Move to the East Coast
• Donate blood
• Find Platform 9 3/4
• Earn a masters degree
• Receive a sincere thank-you letter
• Serve a mission
• Get Married (stay married forever)
• Adopt a child
• Harvest corn (and other vegetables)
• Build a tree house in backyard
• Dye my hair red (I have always envied gingers)
• Read the Book of Mormon in a week
• Spend a month living off the land
• Play in a symphony
• Buy land
• Sew a quilt
• Accomplish a goal with no exceptions
• Drive on the freeway by myself
• Become published
• Complete a 1000 piece puzzle (I hate puzzles)
• Cry at beautiful music
• Go sailing
• Go on a backpacking trip
• See the Northern
• Eat a meal with a homeless man
• Teach in an inner-city school for one year
• Visit a third-world country
• Learn to play the cello: play Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Minor because it is beautiful (but really hard)(so maybe a simple sonata will suffice)(maybe)
• Learn to speak fluent French
• Ride in a hot air balloon
• Learn to waltz
• Pull an all-nighter
• Meet J.K. Rowling
• See a musical on Broadway
• Send a message in a bottle
• Work on a farm
• Bowl over 100 (ha)
• Go rock climbing outdoors

Collection of Haikus!

I wrote a few poems

With only three lines in them.

Share yours as comments.

I would rather not

Wake up tomorrow morning

For a day at school.

Organization:

Oversimplification-

Unbelievably.

At Graduation,

I will smile and cry a lot.

It is coming too soon.

I haven’t brushed my teeth

In forty-eight hours now.

Such is my spring break.

Stegasauruses

Aren't actually extinct

I wish I had one.

In Loving Memory

Now that that has been established

We were only human, after all.

It’s harder than it should be.

She liked the smell of flames.

They couldn’t put Humpty together again

We cut down the cherry tree

Then go ahead: Say something profound.

Someday I will be old, too.

I’m afraid of the dark.

Not as funny as I thought.

We sing sin, we dream big.

Thinking our strength is our weakness

I can still kiss you better

London Bridge’s falling down, falling down.

When Adam delved and Eve span

Required sacrifices not willing to make.

Mom makes better peanut butter sandwiches

Stand alone in a crowded room

If you want something, go get it

After all, tomorrow is another day

Everybody wants to go to heaven

I left a million dollars in—

Birds are like Stars

We have these wishes of things we can't say or can't want. We can't decide if we really even wish it literally, but we do anyway and we can't say it so we just wish it and fold paper birds as we try to catch the wish. We try to fold paper birds and hang them up in front of our faces- but the only way to hang a bird is by its neck between it's mouth that speaks and its wings that fly. Wishes can't be hung.

Self-Diagnosed with a Blood-Brain Barrier

If my heart cells and my brain cells all contain the same DNA, then why do they want such different things?

There is an angel on my shoulder and a devil in my foot and I’m told what to do, but go somewhere else. I can’t keep running from my ear, because that is exhausting. I just haven’t figured out how to untie my laces yet.

But maybe my soul's all right but my body's all wrong.

 

Song of the Little Cripple at the Street Corner, Rainer Maria Wilke

The Someone's that made me

My dad can never remember song lyrics and neither can I.

Like my mom, I smell books before I read them and close my eyes to feel music.

I like science like my sister, but she will always be better at it than me.
My other sister and I both had really weird friends as children… we were probably un-admittedly friends after all.

My brother hates cutting his nails and hair like I do.

I am passive-aggressive just like my grandma.

I have the same sense of humor as my aunt and stubbornness as my cousin.

My chin, hair, eyes, chest, and politics all come from my mom’s side of the family but I get my pop culture, feet, and hobbies from my dad’s.

I was made before I was born, with bits of me here and bits of me there. In my long ancestral line, somebody before me donated their kneecaps to my legs and their love of words to me. I am a coalition of all that is past, a representative of all the Thems. If Ethel and Wilmur could just touch me now, they would know that they were real too.

I ran out of Pixie Dust last week.

This is me, this is all you get. Shadowed eyes, twitching foot, wrinkly hair, hypochondriac, colorless lips, this is what I am.

She is not spiritual enough, so they give me guilt. She’s not charitable enough, so they give me checklists of community service. She’s not rich enough or fulfilled enough, so they give me a job. She’s not smart enough, so they give me too many classes and all of them are too hard for me. She’s not musical enough, so they give me opportunity. She’s not kind enough, so they give me impossible people. She’s not happy enough, so they give me stress and money. She’s not wise enough, so they give me stacks of unfinished books by my nightstand. She’s not alert enough so they give me an earlier alarm clock. She’s not skinny enough so they give me mirrors and food. She’s not strong enough, so they give me a backpack to put all the things in and they say here, this will strengthen your muscles. Yesterday they found a girl collapsed on the side of the road and she was wearing a backpack.

It’s 11:34 and I am so tired. I could probably stay awake for several more hours given a few Oreos and warm socks, but I have never been so tired. I am behind in everything and am stretched so thin. I feel as if I can only give half of myself to any endeavor and that everything I say is a compromise on something else. I feel like a failure in every direction and my schoolwork is definitely not conducive to real life, which is obviously something only an American teenager would claim. First-world problem #57: I have too many opportunities. I am so exhausted of this pace. Nobody wants to hear me complain either because I chose all of these things. I hand picked them every one. While my idealistic mind wants to experience everything, my body is too tired. I don’t want to drop something, I just want help.

I can’t do anything more: this is what I am, this is where I am. But what if I knew that I was so close? That if I just tried a little harder, I would be enough?

Pumpkin Eater

I don't believe in writer's block, but I kinda believe in exhaustion or whatever. If you are a male, please read the following:
  I would like to get married one day, so if you 1) want to live in London someday and 2) enjoy cheetos and 3)honey on toast and 4) romantic era composers and 5) semi-sarcastic eyebrows, I'm your girl. If you don't mind cheesy fingers or sticky counters or concertos or passive-aggressive communication, you, similarly, are my man.
My little sister thinks she will marry before me and she is most likely correct.

Ode to the most exhausting week, ever, which is next week, in which I don't intend to sleep.

A Poem: 
(*)There are 81 days until graduation.

snap snap snap snap.

*this is the first time I have been excited. I am still terribly sad. I'm feeling a bit BEREFT already, you know?

Of car keys and vulnerability

I lost my invincibility on the corner of 1100 North and 5300 West. 

I slammed doors a little harder and turned a little sharper before that with my back to the tax collectors and the price of gasoline. Back then I didn’t wear sunglasses when I looked at the sun, but now I have to use them for the moon and the stars and ice included. It’s too bright, and the light burns my eyes the way that gasoline and air bags burn skin. I make sure I walk heel-toe now. Heel-toe, heel-toe, like my dance teacher said. Because otherwise I might trip. I swear I read food labels more, too- just never the ones on bags of Cheetos. And don’t ask me how many bottles of toothpaste I have gone through. It’s a personal issue these days.

I thought I had it going on with my clipped finger nails and curled hair and car keys. I drove myself to the bank and cashed a pay check. You can bet I was on the top of the world. I thought that maybe this was courage and I was sure it was maturity. Everything the sun touched, I could touch and it didn’t matter how sharp it was. I mean, my skin was tough and I don’t really feel anything anyway.

I swear the grass would turn towards me when I walked outside the way that it grows to the sun. Everything I touched could turn to gold- sharp or dull, bright or dull. Obviously that was true when I ate Cheetos or whatever because those are already gold… but I knew it could happen to the piano and the novel and the scan-tron and the audition too. I had power in my fingertips and my eyelashes and probably down to my leg hairs. Nobody could stop me.

And then on the corner of 1100 North and 5300 West, I stopped myself and I said: what? why? how? And that is the day I became breakable.

To Whom it May Concern

Your refrigerator is in Alaska.

In the mean time, please try this recipe and tell me if it is delicious. I have a recent fetish with Cheetos. 

1 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup clear Karo syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
16 ounces crunchy Cheetos cheese-flavored snacks

Directions:
Bring butter, sugars, syrup to boil stirring constantly for 5 minutes while boiling.
Remove from heat and add vanilla and baking soda. Stir well.
Add Cheetos.
Spread out onto ungreased cookie sheet.
Cook at 250°F for 45 minutes to 1 hour -stirring every 15 minutes.
When cool enough to touch, break into pieces.

It looks supersick but I think it might be good.

[Recipe found from http://www.food.com/recipe/richys-exceptional-cheeto-dessert-345017/photo by ~~**Amanda**~~. She has other delicious recipes on her page :) ]

I Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident

I know that you are afraid this isn’t politically correct, aren’t you?

I am afraid I have some terrible news for you: We are all sick and we are all allergic and we are all keeping secrets.

I am afraid that society is disintegrating. He’s religious? Cut him down.  Excuse me, tell him he isn’t open minded. He has morals? Tell him he is old fashioned. Welcome to the 21^st century , ladies and gentlemen! They say. Welcome to America where the lazy live long and the unrepentant are forgiven.  This is glorious, this is Oz. This is food rolled in plastic and pills rolled in plastic, this is debt hidden in our sleeves as if it a material thing to wrap.

I am afraid the earth is seriously ill. I am afraid we assume that the lightning can't catch us just because the police couldn't. It can.

 

 

But don't you fear now. I am afraid of being caught too. 

I am afraid of being forgotten for who I am, but remembered for who I was. 

I am afraid I don't feel enough because I didn't cry when I was supposed to. I was afraid you would catch that.

I am terribly afraid of potential. It used to give me hope because I couldn't even see the end of my promise, but oh how I am scared of heights these days. I was not prepared to fall that far. 

I fear that fears will always follow me... that maybe the things I love and the things I fear will always be drawn to me because they are a part of me. 

                 

I am afraid I have some terrible news for you: You are afraid, too.

I am afraid I have some wonderful news for you: There is less to fear than there is to love. 

The truth is a beautiful and terrible thing: try not to tread too lightly.