God, World, I’m Sorry If We Fail You

We’re just a group of kids trying to do the right thing by the world and by our hearts. Sometimes it doesn’t match up. We try to live each day like we’re dying and still take responsibility for our actions. Most of the time we don’t measure up.

All we can do is try, day to day, moment to moment. To believe without bleeding, to fight without losing our way, to make it to somewhere worthwhile. It’s not that easy, and we’re not perfect. We’ll screw up, we’ll fall short.

Please, if you see this, cut us some slack. Cut everyone some slack. Especially yourself. We’re all still young in that we’re all searching for something to believe in and the only thing we can do about that is try our best, even if it’s not that great.

You’re not alone. It’s all the same underneath.
Take a step back, let yourself breathe. It’s okay.

Some Days You Know Everything Will Be Okay

“Will you just shut up and live?”

Tyler came back on August 3rd. August 5th, I saw him for the first time all summer. There were still sparkles on his backpack from my skin, even though it was three months after I’d fallen asleep on it in the back of a biology classroom.

When I woke up that morning, each individual limb felt like a geometry textbook–heavy, useless, and completely not worth the effort it would take to drag it around. I nearly lost my right contact and didn’t even have time to make coffee to nurse my insomnia hangover. My mind was a haze and I could not remember what happened the evening before, only that it had resulted in getting five hours of sleep on a summer night. Life was a mess. I was a mess. I had too much baggage and too little space.

You know how you take comfort, during the craziest times in your life, in the thought that you’re alone in your confusion? That your friends are leading stable, familiar lives back home, and will be there for you to return to?
It never works out that way. At least, it didn’t for us.

We swapped a glass full of milk chocolate granita almost as fast as we swapped secrets, skipping from faraway Europe to life stateside in a matter of seconds. The phrase “and I thought I had it bad” soon became overused. Almost three hours of nonstop talking had occurred before a massive helping of sugar-coma-in-a-bowl shut us both up.

On the way home, we applauded random passersby in the 42nd Street subway station, paying particular attention to uptight pricks in Brooks Brothers business suits with too much in their briefcases and too little time. On the E train, we hopped from one car to the next every time it stopped, dreaming of mayhem worthy of the Step Up 2 opening dance sequence. Switching to the 7 train, I tried to have a normal conversation with him while fully aware that he’d constructed a shirt penis and belted his backpack to his pants.

This is the guy I trust with everything?

But of course.

About a month and a half into summer and the only thing that turned out as planned was that we changed. Apart. Yet still in the same direction, ending up in the same place. Which, when it comes to people you care about, is the biggest stroke of luck you can hope for.
We didn’t have any answers after the day was done. Hell, we had more questions. But it didn’t matter, because we had the real answer, the one to the question neither of us needed to ask. And because of that one answer, we believed that all the other things would eventually make perfect sense.
The answer? No matter what happened, we would have each other’s back.

At the start of the day, tomorrow in its uncertainty was bleak and terrifying. At the end, it looked promising, every possibility breathing mischief; because you know what your life boils down to, every time, every tragedy?

Your friends.

Welcome home, Tyler!
I think the city missed you almost as much as I did.

3.7.09 : Falling In Love, All Over Again

[Block to Writer's Block: Jack]
Soundtrack:
Consequence – The Notwist
What New York Used To Be – The Kills
Glow – UNKLE
Right Round – Flo Rida
The Sun Ain’t Shining No More – The Asteroids Galaxy Tour

[ - Earlier text exchange -
J: How was NYU?
K: Interesting. People were one-dimensional so far, but teachers were nice and one of them was really fucking cool. I've already made a piece that I love. Far better than the class, though, was the neighborhood. It was magnificent. I explored today for an hour and I wasn't even with a friend. Can't wait to hang out there on Saturdays now]

Yeah, I loved it.
Oh my god the NEIGHBORHOOD. You know those adorable little bookshops you read about in the old classics and in modern magazines where vintage is synonymous with cool? Okay, no, you don’t, but I do. At least, now I do. I’ve been IN one of them.
I think it was called Mark’s Bookshop. Apparently I’m getting worse and worse at remembering names, but I sure as hell remember where it was and what it looked like. Obviously I was unable to resist the pull (the last time I went to a bookstore that wasn’t Barnes & Noble was in Aspen, Colorado, 200…6?), so the natural impulse was to walk in, whereupon I saw a stack of The Onion newspapers before I’d so much as opened the second door. Instant credibility!
Ahhhhh, the smell, the setup. Sprawling rows of books in totally uncoordinated sizes oozed with a downtown charm that made Barnes & Noble seem as despicably chain-store-y as McDonald’s. It was, well, magnificent. (I haven’t outgrown that word since Juno. Although I guess my overuse is kinda blasphemous considering she was talking about sex.)
Anyway, I digress. Ty’s been trying to get me to read Lord of the Rings so we can do a roleplay on it (for all you sickos out there who don’t understand the beauty of the art, that’s not some synonym for cybersex. Some of us actually enjoy writing in our spare time). He even read the greater portion of the first chapter of the Hobbit to me over the phone, which was–well–<insert a word of accolade that does NOT start with an m and end with a t. What’s wrong with my mental thesaurus today?!> (This is the part where I stop sounding like I’m talking to Jack. Jack, if you’re reading this, which you most likely are not, I’m sorry–NO! Bad! Don’t you dare even THINK ‘don’t apologize’!) I figured I should reward such effort with, well, some kind of result. So I looked for the books. Tolkien. Not Ziegesar. Mark was bound to have it.
Horror of horrors! It didn’t. Or at least, I couldn’t find it. It went from, like, Till-something to Tolstoy. Straight to Tolstoy. Nevertheless, I had to resist the urge to make a purchase–not having read “War and Peace” let alone “Anna Karenina” is arguably even more blasphemous than using an adjective originally intended for sex to describe everything that is pleasurable in life. But it was too high up and I was too lazy to clamber clumsily on top of the stool (even though it was, like, right in front of me) in my polka-dotted black skirt and Henri Mendel graffiti boots, so I managed to walk away. Watchmen, however, was considerably more difficult to resist. I am not a comic/manga person–never have been–but after seeing that movie, I simply can’t pass it up. However, the scrooge within prevailed and I managed to leave it under the “Urban – NYC” category (which, by the way, makes no sense to me–what was it doing there?)

Scrooge or no scrooge, I still didn’t manage to walk out of there empty-handed; the March 2009 edition and consequently my first copy of Nylon magazine (cover: Kristen Stewart) accompanied me, and is now spread before me on my desk. For all of you Twihaters who will instantly condemn her for being involved with the franchise, I suggest you read the comments, in which I’ll post an excerpt from the article (I think she says ‘fucking’ even more than I do). Okay, so at $3.99, it had a hefty recession price, but fo’ serious this shit is beautiful. It makes my prized Teen Vogue/Allure subscription seem like Chiclets. And it also provided resistance power when I walked past two Starbucks in, what, three consecutive minutes? So technically I saved a buck and prevented excess calorie consumption.
Literature is good for the soul.

-Later-

I wrote that much about a bookstore? No wonder I never get any blogging done.
The remainder of my day went downhill from there, sadly, and I’m too exhausted to go into detail. I discovered heaven in Kmart, sat outside for an hour and slept outside for another while John Liu announced he was running for City Controller (in addition to seething in silence as Falun Gong staged another pointless, illegal protest that made me want to get on my tiny American feet and hurl profanity-laced sentences brimming with intimidatingly advanced vocabulary at their poorly educated faces), received the April issue of Teen Vogue, went out to dinner, had a lemon lollipop, procrastinated, and had an intriguing conversation with the subject of this blog whom I am now leaving the computer to call.

I love run-on sentences.

- End of Day 7 –

P.S. The weather today (upwards of 60 degrees) made me

Magnificently

Happy

The Problem With My Voice/14-going-on-15

I’ve finally understood why I was so discontent with the way my blog was turning out.

I’d forgotten the point.

A blog should read, in a sense, like a journal entry, not a school-approved essay–and injecting a profanity midsentence isn’t enough to make the distinction. As opposed to writing with a voice–my voice–I was churning out posts that read like summaries. Hence why the blog became an obligation as opposed to a source of enjoyment. It’s almost involuntary now; I open this “new post” URL and I start writing as if I’m going to fucking hand it in and get it graded.

Enough.

I don’t want to go through my blog and feel as if I’m going to publish it. I want to hear my voice. Rhetorical triangle. Speaker. Audience. I’m talking to YOU. So why don’t I sound like it?
It’s tough, though, to make this sudden shift- LISTEN TO ME! I still sound like I’m writing an essay!
… ! Lightbulb moment ! Why don’t I pretend as if I’m speaking to a specific person? This’ll go hand in hand with my blog revival project–the seven day countdown to my 15th birthday.

14 being my favorite number, it makes sense that my 14th year on the face of the planet was the psychopathic joyride it turned out to be. But I’ve only got seven days left to be fourteen. Ever. There’s no going back, and I feel like it deserves to be commemorated somehow.
So I’m going to record each day to some degree.
Now to decide who to write to on each day…

3/7 – Jack
3/8 – Nira
3/9 -
3/10 -
3/11 -
3/12 -
3/13 – Myself

I’ll fill up those spots as I go along. Hope it’ll work.
Fingers crossed.

Another Lens To Peer Through

It’s a sign.

After Tyler hung up last night*, I lay there staring at my ceiling, not feeling the slightest bit of fatigue. Irritated at the wasted time, I plugged my cellphone in and hopped out of bed to grab a copy of the New Yorker. Thanks, Ivy.
EDITION: September 22nd, 2008
I’d waded through a couple pieces on the Babar book series, a childhood favorite, and the parallel between an author’s life experiences and his work before landing on an article about Spike Lee. It was twelve pages long, eleven without the title photo.
I was originally planning to skip over it in favor of a lighter read, but I was intrigued by the shot of Spike on the second page. He had on a serious expression that most would find intimidating- I found it endearing. His shirt was black, with white letters proclaiming “OBAMA IS THE NEW BLACK”. His stance was simultaneously very forward and laid back, with one foot propped up displaying an Air Jordan sneaker (there was a reference to this later on in the article).

Some would find his expression intimidating- I found it endearing.

He looked like the type of person I would genuinely want to be friends with.

By the end of the article, I was caught by a sudden desire to direct. This was nothing new- I’d considered the role of director before, an interest rather than an already-developed talent to add to my “jack-of-all-trades”. However, I’d very quickly dismissed it because, well, there were so many other trades and interests in this collection that I’d already honed to better degrees.
Last night, this obstacle struck me as very stupid.

So?

Spike didn’t know he wanted to direct until later on in life, and was most likely talented at quite a few other things, sports included. Look what he became.

—-

The next morning, I dragged myself out of bed, very much looking forward to an uneventful day of rest- the first in perhaps a week. I wound up in my dad’s room, going through his closet and replacing some ties that had somehow slithered off their designated hanger and onto the floor to mingle with the hairballs.
As I was checking his suit jackets for stains, something prompted me to look upward. There were boxes, piled one on top of the other, a couple depicting unopened childhood toys, another… a camcorder? My interest piqued, I grabbed my dad’s chair and promptly hopped on top of it, intending to bring down whatever I found.

Among my discoveries were a doorag (W-T-F?! My uber-asian father…?), a leather baseball cap with which I was very pleased, scarves, a neon pink scarf which I intend to style as a skirt, and not one but TWO camcorders.
Perhaps I’m just overanalyzing as usual. But discovering two camcorders the morning after I read Spike’s article and resolved to look into film?

I slid my hand behind the strap, wrapping my fingers around the camcorder and flicking the switches with my index. It felt good.

*”Last night”; 2/2/09

Poetry That Sings

Townsend Harris High School
Chamber Music – 0
Kari Wei
1/20/09

I have always been the bearer of a divided heart.
Music, of course, was my first love. How could it not be? Born to a mother who taught miracles on the piano and coaxed four-part harmony out of tone-deaf senior citizens, I was a part of music before I was even out of the womb. It filled my ears before they’d fully developed and dictated the rhythm of my tiny heart. I was a child of music, a daughter of sound, and- at least in the years of youth- I was never allowed to forget it.
When I was three and music held my undivided attention, my mother informed me I could no longer ruin all her blank notebooks with my inane scribbles. I threw a tantrum. Then I discovered literature, which quickly became on obsession. Soon after, I retrieved one of the old, now-forbidden notebooks. This time, words took the place of squiggly lines, and neither parent had anything to say about it. Just before 4th grade, I was awarded my first computer, an old but faithful Apple clamshell laptop. My pianist’s fingers adjusting quickly to the new keyboard, technology tripled my speed as a writer and, by the time I was ten,  I had typed up a whopping seventy-five half-completed novels.
Time dragged on. Though I did not seem to grow any taller, the evolution of my interests and mannerisms made it obvious that I had definitely grown older. The hours once spent poring over my stories were now occupied by other activities. I traded in my beloved clamshell for a trendier  Macbook. My mother passed away, uprooting life as I knew it- I moved back to Queens to live with my father. More often than not, I ignored the siren call of pen and keyboard.
But the voices in my head simply would not shut up. Desperate for a way to satisfy them with my very limited time, I turned to an outlet I’d discovered when in 2nd grade- poetry. Despite having consistently received large amounts of praise on my poems, prose was always my choice as a writer when left to my own devices. Pressed for time and with a mind too cluttered to form storylines that made sense, I revived the poet within in the years surrounding my mother’s death-  just in time to encounter a new conflict.
Having entered the stage where my future was constantly being discussed, I was presented with an eventual choice. Music? Or literature? A couple years have gone by since I was first asked this question. I still have not found the answer. However, somewhere along the line, someone mentioned songwriting. Of course, the role of a singer-songwriter; a marriage of both of my loves. My favorite musical outlet is song, and circumstance/necessity has turned me into a poet rather than a novelist. It was a flawless suggestion, but when I sat down and gave the idea a try, I came up with a blank slate. Which taught me yet another lesson; creativity cannot be forced.
With two months to go until my 15th birthday, I am still as indecisive as ever. But I do not forget that, amid my confusion, I still have a full collection of my own poetry- to which it will, hopefully, never be too late to find a tune.

EUPHORIA

True to the scent I spontaneously chose this morning, I am euphoric.

I have just, in an unexpected twist of achievement, passed Ms. Nix’s exercise series.

OH JOY
THERE IS A GOD

I Am So

worried and angry and helpless that I feel sick all over again.

Life
Goes
Straight
Down

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 – Freewrite

Prelude (First Band, English)
“Happy Inauguration Day.
President Obama, you will be forced to make some tough decisions. Follow Bruce Wayne’s lead and make the right ones, because even if short-term America resents you for them, long-term world history will remember you. Well.
They didn’t start dissecting Lincoln’s second inaugural address until long after he was dead anyway.

Townsend Harris High School
1/20/09
Writing Process – 6
Kari Wei

*written on Microsoft Word*
This fill effect is called daybreak, which is actually quite fitting for the occasion.

Inauguration Day.

 

          A new day dawns for America- and for the universe. Because no matter how far we have fallen in the public eye, this is still the greatest country in the world. We are the focal point in the international eye. Our glass ceiling, albeit still intact, has 18 million cracks within it. Our president- our president- is a half-African man, and a full American man.

            President Barack Hussein Obama.

            President Barack Obama.

            President Obama.

            Washington. Jefferson. Madison. Lincoln. Jackson. Kennedy. Johnson. Reagan. Clinton. Bush. Obama.

            Welcome to a new day, America. Welcome to change. For better or for worse, we are moving- forward or backward, we are moving, and this man has both hands on the steering wheel. We, America, we, the people of the world, the next generation and the future of the universe, pledge to follow you wherever you may take us.

            You are both the white knight and the dark knight. You will maintain a beloved public image while simultaneously making the right decisions even when they do not please everyone. You are Barack Obama, 44^th President of the United States of America, the leader of the modern world. You will uphold our constitution, our bill of rights, our spirit, and our hearts. You are the colors I use to write this (red, white, blue). You are the flag. You are America, and America is you.

            Good luck.

This is what I love about the internet

Two random things I discovered today that warmed the heart.

a) In an article about celebrity roommates that I clicked on while procrastinating:

Christopher Reeve and Robin Williams

At Julliard, roomies Robin Williams and Christopher Reeve vowed to always be friends and help each other throughout life. Both held true to the promise, as they remained close. Williams even covered some of Reeve’s medical expenses after he was paralyzed. Of course, being Robin Williams, he couldn’t stop there; after Reeve found out he couldn’t walk again, Williams visited him dressed as a doctor and pretending to be his proctologist, reportedly causing Reeve to smile for the first time since the accident.

b) Link from Tyler