To Say Thank You

This post has to do with the power of kindness and the devastating effect it has on a person's life. More specifically, it is about a certain person whom I met some time ago. About two people, not including myself, will know who I am talking about, and if either one of them ever reads this I'll eat my sock. I was going to use a random name generator (which gave me the name "Sean") to refer to this certain person, but then I thought, Screw it. Sean is not necessary.

Anyhow, picture it. He is a senior. I am a sophomore. By all rights we should have absolutely nothing in common, and yet somehow we do. At least I think we do. We develop a friendship of sorts during the week/week and a half that we know each other, and by the time this period is over, we promise to stay in touch. Which we do, after a fashion.

Being the hormonally charged idiot that I am (was) I fall in "love" with this mysterious person, and attempt to set up a meeting with him, to no success. Our friendship remains entrenched in the virtual world. Gradually his e-mails become less and less frequent, I hear less from him in general, until one fateful day last April he appears to drop off the face of the earth completely, and I have heard nothing from him since.

At first I was angry, then sad, then completely depressed. I could not believe that this person, who I trusted more than almost anyone else in the world, could just stop communicating with me. It hurt me more than anything else I'd ever experienced in my pitiful little life.

But tonight, I was going through his old e-mails, and it hit me. This is the most thoughtful and kindest person I have ever met. Seriously. The day after he gets in a car accident? E-mail. How does he handle all my whining and complaining about sophomore year? Sends me advice and encouragement. We trade writing samples, and he writes (of course) nothing but good things about my writing. At one o'clock in the morning, after he witnesses a curiously timed lightning storm: e-mail. My Lord.

And of course the biggest thing about all of this is that, unlike any other senior boy I've ever met (sorry to anyone who reads this) he talks to me at an adult level and as an equal.

There was one time when I called him at nearly eleven o'clock at night, when the house was dark and empty and I had no one else to call. I only intended to listen to his voicemail; to hear another human voice was really all I needed. But then he picked up. The minute or so of conversation we had was enough to save me. It takes a special kind of person to keep their temper when they are bothered by a younger teenager at eleven P.M.

I don't have his phone number, and he doesn't answer e-mails. He went to college out-of-state. If I could reach him at all, I would say, Thank you. Thank you for being my inspiration through the most difficult months of my life so far. Thank you for your words, your patience, the times you laughed at me when I could not laugh at myself.

And, even though you have probably forgotten me by now, thank you for saving my life one dark and silent evening. This is the sort of random act of kindness that completely changes someone's life.

Throughout sophomore and junior year, I've been discouraged and about to give up so many times. Each time, the thought of him and where he is now is enough to keep me going. Maybe one day I'll end up where I want to be, in my dream college somewhere far away from here. Maybe one day I'll have a chance to say thank you.

For now, all I have left is bittersweet nostalgia and a torrent of words I have been saving up, syllable by syllable, possibly never to be given to their rightful owner.

It all boils down to this.

Thank you.

Run

ANOTHERPOEMOMGYAY.

----

I run
when the sky turns to water
and merges with the flat grayness
underneath
I run
in the darkness
down streets lined with
sugar-frosted houses

timing my breath
to the ebb and flow of distant muscles

In between last light and first light
I run

even if the running is mostly in my mind,
where I am unwound from my heaviness,
where I sail freely on feet that are not
or maybe were once
mine.

I run.

Quotes from Tongues Long Vanished

On my last AP quiz, I got an 83%, of which I am desperately ashamed. I figure the reason I do so poorly is because I don't really "get" history. Sure, I understand the facts and such, but I have a hard time connecting what happened then to what happens now. I need to remember that these were REAL PEOPLE with actual THOUGHTS and FEELINGS. Enter shock.
Here are some quotes from my history book that kind of made me think twice about calling history dead and dry:

"I have come to believe that this is a mighty continent which was hitherto unknown...Your Highnesses have an Other World here." -- Christopher Columbus (Really, Chris? Really? You're trying to impress nobles of another nation and all you can say is some vague almost-compliment about "an Other World?" If I was them, I'd be more than a little confused.)

"Who of those in future centuries will believe this (destruction of the Native Americans?) I myself who am writing this and saw it and know the most about it can hardly believe that such was possible." -- Bartolome de Las Casas

(Compared to the following quote by Charlotte Delbo about the Holocaust.)

"I'm not alive. People believe memories grow vague, are erased by time, since nothing endures against the passage of time. That's the difference; time does not pass over me, over us. It doesn't erase anything, doesn't undo it. I'm not alive. I died in Auschwitz but no one knows it."

"A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking pit thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit (Hell) which is bottomless." -- King James I (At least SOMEONE had his head screwed on right!)

"The Negroes are so wilful and loth to leave their own country, that have often leap'd out of the canoes, boat and ship, into the sea, and kept underwater till they were drowned, to avoid being taken up and saved by our boats, which pursued them; they haveing a more dreadful apprehension of Barbadoes than we can have of hell." -- A random sailor. (I'm afraid I have to agree with what one of my classmates said about the miniseries Roots; it almost makes you ashamed to be white.)

"There is a saying, that we should do to all men like as we will be done ourselves...But to bring men hither, or to rob and sell them against their will, we stand against...Pray, what thing in the world can be done worse towards us, than if men should rob or steal us away, and sell us for slaves to strange countries, separating husbands from their wives and children?" -- Mennonites in Germantown, Pennsylvania (Sentiments which have been echoed time and again, across the world.)

And finally, an excerpt from a child's hornbook:

NOW THE CHILD BEING ENTRED (?) IN HIS LETTERS AND SPELLING, LET HIM LEARN THESE AND SUCH-LIKE SENTENCES BY HEART, WHEREBY HE WILL BE BOTH INSTRUCTED IN HIS DUTY, AND ENCOURAGED IN HIS LEARNING.

THE DUTIFUL CHILD'S PROMISES:

I will fear GOD (I love how GOD is always capitalised) and honour the KING.
I will honour my Father and Mother.
I will Obey my Superiours.
I will Submit to my Elders.
I will Love my Friends.
I will hate no Man.
I will forgive my Enemies, and pray to God for them.
I will as much in me lies keep all God's Holy Commandments.

And what happens to the Undutiful Child?


...well. One doesn't talk about such things.

I'll keep putting up interesting stuff I come across throughout the year.

The Daily RANT...

So, I'm sitting here idling on my fifth of approximately twenty-five thousand essay questions, which are all due on Thursday, worrying about the SAT, which is only a month away, and cursing my laptop, which has a shimmering stripe right down the middle of the screen.

But, you know what? None of this is my worst problem.

No, the worst problem currently facing me is...DRIVING. God, am I the only one who freezes in absolute horror every time I plunk my fat little butt behind a steering wheel? It's terrible. I control this huge machine, which is entirely capable of killing up to a hundred people including me, and the only thing between me and utter destruction is MY REFLEXES.

Okay. Let me repeat this again. MY REFLEXES, which are approximately equal to the reflexes of a sloth who has been buried ten miles underground in a nuclear bunker. Wow. It's a wonder people don't just start screaming when they see my car.

I hate driving. Hate, hate hate it. Probably no-one cares, because no-one actually reads this blog. But wow. If I could remove one element from my life, it would be cars. Because everyone needs to use public transportation anyway. Hell, I would use public transportation if it weren't for the fact that my school has no bus, and also it's pretty much impossible to hitch a ride from Phoenix to uptown Scottsdale. But we're getting into a whole other issue there, which I don't feel like going into on the interwebz, thanks much.

On the other hand: Only three-odd more months until winter break! :D HOW DOES ANY JUNIOR EVER SURVIVE? AT ALL? THIS IS UTTERLY RIDICULOUS.

Rant, rant, rant. Rantrantrant. RAAAAAAANT.

To Want

*Note, this inspiration was taken from a most excellent book called North River by Pete Hamill.

-----

To want. Everyone's first verb.

This is the glue to the paper of
all first sentences,
the slim grasping thought that
documents our first glance up
from the mud.
To want,
the story of all humans
in a syllable,
of all things, really,
but humans distinguish themselves
by pointing out so clearly
and with such longing
the underbelly of inspiration.

I want, too.
I want. I want. I want.

Fragile Strength

In the time between one second and the next,
after the alarm clock goes off
but before the world stops spinning,
I find myself alone in the silence
which is no longer taken for granted.
I close my eyes, letting my spine
recollapse into the forgiving hug of my bed,
seeking again the fireworks blackness of sleep...
...but only for the time it takes to pull myself
closer to the beginning.
My feet seek the floor, tendrils from an uprooted tree,
even though they ache like no tree
has ever done.
The cage that holds me cracks with
every breath I take. My neck pulls
to one side,
determined, painful.
This is the way it has always been
when the sun and I meet each other
at the moment of my lifting
and ride out together
to conquer the expected promise
of the day.