Sailing Flight

I remember how we walked
Down the dank wooden dock
Giddy trepidation,
Gilded by fear and surreality.

I remember white and clean
The tenets of this memory.
White, the boat and sky and vision bleached,
Clean, the air and aura.

Skimming over water
Blue and black and green
Buffeted by cool, dry wind,
Somehow wet and warm as well.

Stopping and sinking
Into waves of humidity
Stepping into plastic strappings,
To keep us somehow flying.

That day, somehow, I wore a tee shirt
With sleeves that didn't lick my elbows
It was white and stiff with pool chlorine,
And I took off my skirt to fly.

Up we rose, as the boat fled beneath us
Drawing us after with a rough rope of twine
We giggled and shrieked, my sister and I,
Our legs foreign, bare in the open.

Behind us, suspended in the heat of the height
A yellow balloon blossomed in the humidity
The distant boat or the false flying sun,
Which kept us afloat, I cannot recall.

And then it was quiet,
But the warm whisper of wind
We hung in the white and drank in the solitude,
Thick and rich as tears.

We sank back to earth
Ten minutes later
To the porcelain pocket in steely dark ocean,
Our rope and balloon disappearing.

How much smaller and colder
The earth seemed just then
How busy and noisome and angry,
To the sterile silence of sky.

I put on my skirt as the others took turns
Riding the milky expanse
They came back enameled, each one of the four,
In clean silver sweat and the residue of clouds.

And especially I remember
As we clambered to the mossy dock
How unnerving it was,
Recalling the sky.

The day was different
And I was different
I remember most clearly of all,
Since the moment I sailed the uppers of water.

Twenty-Four Hours

Today, I sat the first half of my English Regent, and as a result wrote one of the ugliest, most insipid essays I can imagine remotely feasible. It was based on an article and chart about "irrigation and food production", and it was so horribly, wordlessly dull that I'm aching with boredom just remembering it. The other essay I had to write was on a passage read to us about vaudeville. English 12 has now destroyed any tender feelings I may have harbored towards that horrendous little miming, ethnically and socially diverse, universaly appealing entertainment stunt.

Oh, I hate Regents. Every single one, every single time is always like this. So deep and concentrated extends my loathing that I, who could give Hallmark a run for sentimentality, can barely summon up a shred of nostalgia at the thought of taking my last Regent. I cannot wait until this time tomorrow. Less than twenty-four hours.
Yes.

Tomorrow, I have to take the second part. At least it's a particle more stimulating. A thematic essay based on an article and poem incorporating 'literary terms' (another hideous contrivance), and a focus question that could be on absolutely anything.
Twenty-four hours.

(On a much, much happier note, JK Rowling has given birth to her third child, a daughter named Mackenzie Jean Rowling Murray. Best wishes to Jo and her family!)

Completion and Snow are Relative Concepts

I think (think) I've finished the yearbook poem. I'm still not sure about the last four lines, though.

A dream is an internal thing
A personal endeavor.
The hope, desire, will or wish
That stays with you forever.
Yet dreams are but the building blocks
The trickle to the stream,
Insubstantial as ambition
As incongruous as steam.
For reality to blossom
From imagination's bed
Guard your dreams not only in your heart,
But also in your head.
From there your path is smooth and clear,
Built not of clouds but stone,
For success smells so much sweeter
When you can taste it as your own.

In other news, I have two feet of snow outside my house and I have just been informed that school will resume as scheduled tomorrow. And I have no boots. Add 'impossible' to my list of relative concepts. Positive thought for the day: I am still taller than the snow.

Edit: Revised the last four lines.

From there your road begins in truth,
Built not of clouds but stone.
For success is sweet in growing,
But is purest when it's grown.

Dabblings

Don't laugh at me, but I'm writing a story. Or trying to, anyway. It's based on Purim (not exactly original, I know) and I really need feedback from people who aren't blood relatives of mine. Please tell me what you think, I'm very insecure about my fiction.

The straw mat of the palanquin was draped in bright silk, but Haddassa could feel the rough wicker weave through the delicate gauze. She shifted, lowering her head back to the slick pillows and tried to feign the lazy grace that had personified her companions of the past year. Gritting her teeth, Hadassa grimaced at the tense, rigid lines of the body that refused to adopt any semblance of calm and moved into a sitting position.
Instantly, the two wenches by her side began twittering in forced anxiety. Was she in discomfort? Did she need refreshment? Was the heat effecting her? Anything at all she might require, she need only request...
Haddassa demurred quietly, waving the girls away. Needs were relative, she had learned early in her life. The palanquin was stifling even in the waning heat of the Arabian twilight, and the rough weave of her frugal dress chaffed every loosely draped inch of her body, but these were familiar, almost welcome discomforts. Haddassa would gladly have tripled these paltry inconvenience if it would only quell the helpless terror percolating to a boil within her. Not since the previous night had she been able to snatch a single quiet moment for herself, and she had spent much of the night enveloped in such a state of frantic prayer that she had quickly fallen into an exhausted, dreamless sleep. Desperate for distraction, Haddassa began to slowly relive the day so hastily past. She had not been roused until a full hour after sunrise, when the most delicate of morningscents permeated her awareness. She opened her eyes slowly and instantly regretted the reflex as she took in the scores of eager maids and manservants crowding her room.

So- should I continue?

Have a good Shabbos!

The Reek of Rejection

Sigh.

Yesterday, I received my first Seminary rejection letter. And it stings.

I don't know why this is getting to me. This was my last choice school. I made a split second decision to apply. I don't, and I didn't ever, even want to go there! It's much bigger than the other schools I applied to, and the curriculum is much more academically focused then what I'm looking for. My interview was dull and brief. I even had a strong suspicion I hadn't been accepted. And it isn't as though I have nowhere else to go- B"H, I've already been accepted to my first choice school. I need absolutely nothing from this place.

But still, when I found that ominously slim envelope in the mail pile... It really hurt. What did I do wrong? I sent them one of my best essays- didn't they like it? My grades are pretty good- wasn't it enough? True, the interview was no epiphany, but I didn't do anything wrong- did I?

And the letter they sent was so brusque and cold. "Dear Miss M, We enjoyed meeting with you but unfortunately due to the large volume of applicants we will not be able to admit you at this time..." Nobody even signed it at the bottom. It felt like I was chaff they were blowing off, as if they were bored with me.

And I feel so guilty for being upset. I know there are dozens of girls who will be rejected by schools they really want to attend. Girls who aren't accepted anywhere. Girls who's parents won't even let them apply in the first place. What right do I have to be dejected over one adverse letter?

Sigh...

This too shall pass.

Cold

I hate the cold. Oh my gosh, do I hate the cold. That awful, cloying, creeping shiver that pounces on and through any surface less than a quarter of an inch thick and makes the Abominable Snowman want to crawl into bed with the a moan, pleading the fifth. Uhg. Still, I didn't quite believe my mother when she mentioned that today was projected to be the coldest day of the year. Please, it was 25 degrees- nothing could possibly get colder than that!
The joke was on me, apparently. Not only was my thermometer slipping into single digits when I woke up this morning but the windchill was lounging at an absurdly obnoxious -4. (What vindictive meteorologist came up with windchill anyway?) Neither of which would have irked me as much had my sister not awoken with a nasty splash of the flu, meaning that I had to walk to school and back alone deprived even of the minimal diffused warmth to be derived from any company whatsoever. Mmm, and I also found out I have yet more work to do on the school Literary Journal that my fellow editors and I have been slaving over since last May and submitted for review in September...
Ah well, at least my midterm went alright. To do: study for my second to last final, think happy thoughts!

The Play's the Thing- or is it?

I love electrifying plays. You know the kind, an experience that grasps your heart in it's fist and dangles you from the gilded ceiling until it lowers you down and cackles gleefully in your ear. I saw Twelve Angry Men on Motzei Shabbos, and oh my, was it phenomenal! The acting was supreme, the set was brilliant and the whole experience was just perfect. Best of all, my amazing mother somehow got third row orchestra seats... I honestly couldn't stop babbling until we reached the car.
It's funny, but I've never (in all my 17 years of vast experience...) found anything that gives me the same kind of intellectual, emotional high that seeing a play does. A special book can come close, but it still doesn't envelope me as unequivocally as a play does. Still, if I had to choose between the two, I think I would have to take the books. The headiness of a play is nearly priceless, but it's still worth less than the intimacy rewarded by a good book. (Oh dear, just look at me vacillating again!)

Place Holding Poetry

Just a little poem I came up with about a week ago...

If sun should mount the stars at night,
And aught but clouds the dew alight
When right is left and wrong is right,
Then fear has fled for death of sight.

Oh, and the begining of one I'm trying to write for yearbook;

A dream is an internal thing
A personal endevor.
The hope, desire, will or wish
That stays with you forever.
Yet dreams are but the building blocks
The trickle to the stream,
Insubstantial as ambition
Incongruous as steam.

Photographic Memory

Tonight, I continued my as of yet unsuccessful quest to find photos to fill my yearbook page. In doing so, I stumbled across a picture from last Chanukah, though it seems like much, much longer. The picture is of me and another girl (whom I barely know) framing someone in the center. This girl is tall, thin and porcelain pale. She has frizzy, wildly uneven dark hair- hair that has its own cognition. She is wearing a silk Oxford shirt with thin multi-colored stripes, and a bright red neck scarf spills onto the shirt in an artful flair.
Instantly, this girl is different. She is a startling contrast to the two subdued creatures framing her. At a glance, it is obvious she is an artist. In her clothing, in her eyes, in her her long bony hands that fall like albino spiders over our shoulders. Study her further, and you will read the fierce intelligence in her eyes, and a flair for words which puts me to shame. She is larger than life, a Greta Garbo incarnate who answers only to the highest of authorities. She is brilliantly gregarious, a carnival mirror reflection of reality. And it is here that I begin to pull away.
This girl is my polar opposite in every cognitive process conceivable. I am the base to her acid, the salt to her pepper. Her presence is like cumin and jalapenio in my mouth, bringing fire to my eyes and my brain. Her body swings and her hands flail as she talks, so fast I can hardly hear her. She listens to my mean, measured responses like a child greedily eyeing candy, and then off she goes again, a blur of red and white my eyes cannot follow. Oh, the places we will go, she and I, San Francisco and Manhattan, an unincompasable capacity of imaginary purchases stacking up in heaps beside us. Even as she speaks, the urge for silence and space narrows to a single point of concentration in my brain. Maybe she has to go. Maybe she should call her mother. Maybe she should catch the train. Anything, anything for quiet and peace and a reprieve from the sizzling guilt building in my soul.
I know this girl, and I know she knows me. How she must ache at my cruelty, my intolerance, my lassitude. But... what can I do? My friend and I, we are the same poles of a magnet. Our very similarity, out shared interests have forced an invisible wedge between us. One of us must flip, reverse our polarization, if ever we are to again become compatible.
The only thing is, I've never been terribly flexible. And I find myself wondering, do I want to be?

Vicariosity

I've recently been pondering the odd state of vicarious trivial sorrow. To be more specific, why am I sorry that Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt have separated? I don't know them, they don't have children, and they certainly don't care about my problems. The success, failure or even mere existence of their marriage has no effect on me whatsoever. Aside from a cursory "Oh, too bad" (if that), I shouldn't even be thinking about it. Oh well. I think I've been mulling this over because I've just finished that sort of book that is so tragic and realitstic you end up completely wrung dry of emotional strength. It's fantasy (of course) but the characters are so lifelike and compelling, they stay with you long after you finally close the book. (And I do mean 'finally'- this last one was about 1180 pages long.) So I've just been sobbing over horrors befalling people whom, not only do I not know, but don't actually exist. I guess it all works out in the end, though- fiction is fiction, and Jennifer Aniston can still say she was married to Brad Pitt!
Oh, and in other news, Idina Menzel has taken her last bow as Elphaba. We'll miss you, Idina!

Quotation annotation

"We're almost there and nowhere near it. All that matters is, we're
going."
- Gilmore Girls

All right, so I didn't quite imagine starting off a blog with a quote from a WB show, but it's I think it's interesting. Hopefully I'll come up with something a little more original in a bit. Till then...