penser seulment

I thought I had a really cool title for my novel yesterday, but it turned out to be a fluke. I was sitting in English class falling asleep from the heat, when, as my head slipped down, my eyes beheld this phrase etched into my desk:

Living is the best revenge.

I immediately liked it. It would fit perfectly with my plot, because I could interpret it in a way most people wouldn't think. But then I googled it. It's apparently already the name of some album by some band. Oh well. I don't want to get into any legal trouble anyway.

I like that phrase, though. I don't think it applies in all situations, but I do think that when life gets you down, the best thing to do is to keep on living. Have you ever had something bad happen to you that was so heavy that you wanted to just give up? Have you ever wished that people thought you were cool, or been ridiculed for being unique? Have you ever been told that you just weren't good enough?
Living is the best revenge.

Oh, and by the way, I am currently learning guitar. I know a full twelve cords. watch out world!!!

Currently Listening Matrix Revolutions (Score) By Don Davis Navras see related

So, funny story again, I"m in a computer lab in the Spellmann center, and once again, Xanga is the only thing not blocked. Ah, good old fallback xanga.

welp, toodles.

Want to hear a funny story? Well, I'm in the computer lab in Young right now, waiting for Stephanie to find whatever it is she's looking for on the internet. I'm bored, so the first thing I did was go to check myspace, right? Wrong. Lindenwood blocks myspace in this lab. Well, maybe facebook will work, right? Wrong. They know about facebook too. Boredom overcomes me, what shall I do? Wait! Maybe....YES! They don't know about XANGA!!! I've beaten the system yet again!!!

It's the simple things in life.

Currently Listening B Collision By David Crowder Band see related

Huh.

It's been forever since I've used this thing. So many mornings, so many nights....

You know, sometimes you get so lost in your own thoughts that you have to write them out. Sometimes you have to see it. Maybe you don't fully know it in your head, but when it's on paper - then you've got room to think the rest of it through. It's why I write. You make a character, you paper-mache his skin on, and then you fill him up with all this stuff. The characters aren't really you, only you can be you, but they're ideas. Ideas personified. There, in this world of your own making, you can let them go, discover them, know them deeper. And you're not making them up, you're getting to know them. That's how good books are written: the author is just as suprised as the reader. Once you've let these ideas out, they come into their own right. Ideas are irrepressible, they spread from person to person, and every time they are judged good or bad. And you go through the whole work of crafting this book to get it out of your head and onto the paper where you can see it better - and you begin to know yourself a little better. You begin to realise that these characters that you've invented have always been around, they're older than you. You see that all the other authors and poets and scops met them, long ago. You've just paired them in different ways. Dickens met the man called Crime a long time ago. Austen was good friends with Love. Chaucer was old chums with Society. All you did was put Crime, Love and Society in the same room and watched what happened. Now we know. The truth is there are only a few themes, only a few ideas, only a few strains of pure inspiration. Love and Hate, Innocence and Corruption, Drive and Apathy, Glory and Demise. You find these characters woven through literature like roots through dirt, leading, always leading somewhere. Man has one story, and we are all protaganists. All of Time has one Thesis. You just have to decide if your chapter in the story is going to be an epic or a tragedy. Are you Macbeth, who succumbs to his own treacherous flaws, or are you Arthur, who uses his strengths to influence those around him. Will you side with Evil when you really should side with Good? Every good reader knows what will happen. Justice is another theme in this essay of Time. Evil will have equal reprocussions. Those ideas inside your head are pretty powerful now. They've taken you right to the edge of Eternity. You'd better sort them out. Need a pen?

Linus

Thoughts beneath a fallen willow.

Hmmm. It's been 539 days since I joined Xanga. I even remember the day when I first joined. It was in August, just a few days before school started. I remember because my first blog was about how I was missing my first day of school. I suppose that must have been the beginning of my Junior year. Here I am going off to college. Man, time goes fast. I've only been alive for less than two decades, and look at everything that's already happened!!! Ten years is a very long time, but it passes faster than you can believe. Ten years ago, I was eight. I was in Mrs. Gross' second grade class at Castilo elementary. She was nice. I remember we read a book about a baby who hid brocolli under the carpet. In my class, there were kids named Matthew, but I can only remember two, Matthew Crady and Matthew Elliot. I'm pretty sure they were both in Spectra with me. If I remember right, that was the year we experimented with stop motion animation. We discovered some amazing things in Spectra. I can only remember one of my teachers' names: Peggy Hauffel. I think I heard somewhere my other teacher has died. I don't know. I remember playing cops and robbers at recess. Jacob Rudolphi always caught me, and I was always a robber. Matthew Thornhill (another of the four Matts : ) ) was usually a cop. I remember playing on the gymnastic bars. I could do a full flip. I think it was called the banana. There were swings, big ones, and I liked to jump off of them. There was also a field for soccer, but I avoided that. I wasn't that good. More interesting were the woods directly behind the playground, bordered by the horse farm. We made up rumors that a mad criminal in a yellow rain coat lived back there with two hounds, and that he would shoot any tresspassers. Man, we scared a bunch of girls with that one. Katie McAllister (for a while I couldn't remember her last name and thought it was Crutchfield: that's someone else I knew later), she helped me invent that one. She was  a good friend. Maybe my first crush. I was angry when Nathan Meritz convinced her to play soccer instead of the swings with me. I remember a boy with cropped blond hair. I think his name was Lanley? Robert Lanley? Or was he the other Matthew? Yes, I think he was Matthew Lanley. Or Longley, I don't know. But I remember I convinced him to get a Bible, that it had really cool stories in it.  I don't know that he actually got one, but he told me he had made it all the way the story about the boat and the flood. I remember for a while I brought my own Bible and read to him once or twice. I felt bold, having it in a public school. I wonder what happened to him. A girl whose name I think was Sheila encouraged me to witness to him. She eventually came to Living Word for a while, but she's since moved on.

I remember an assembly where Fredbird was late so a teacher taught us to count to 100 in Spanish. I remember that they sold strawbery crunch bars at lunch. I remember that you had to know your student number for milk. I read the book The Giving Tree that year. I learned from a sign in the Library that it takes 13 muscles to frown. I impersonated a weather man in a play that Spectra put on. Or maybe that was a different year, and that year I did a report on the Immune System, which I thought was spelt Amune, as a doctor. I had known about Ooblick for two years by then. I had music classes with Mrs. Ray, who would get angry at my best friend Raynoldi for just writting Ray on his papers. Raynoldi and a boy named Eric Gibbons were my best friends. I've since lost contact with them.

We took a field trip to see a performance of Around the World in Eighty Days. Later we would take another field trip to the same place, where we would see a play about the boogie man playing basketball. I remember I sat next to Katie, and when the boogie man went by, he stuck his tongue out right in our faces. I remember I had a necklace with a key that said Jesus on it. I lost it somewhere in the soccer field. I remember making clay snowmen in art class, and drawing white crayon umbrellas that appeared when you painted blue over them. For some reason I remember playing a game of telephone outside on the front lawn of the school. I remember PE class was fun. Except for when the pe teachers where tired of us. Then they'd put on music and make us line dance. (no joke). I remember dancing to Pink Panther and the Macarena. That was stupid. I was in second grade and I thought that was stupid.

My mom would pick me up on the circle, because I didn't like to ride the bus. Really it was because she didnt' want me to ride the bus, but I didn't see it that way. The bus was bumpy and loud, and when mom took me, I could sleep a few extra minutes.

All of this is so foreign to me. I feel as though I've been this age all my life. I feel like I've been eight all my life.

I recently came from Cape, where I helped with a summer camp for the children of South Cape, the low income portion of the city. These beautiful children reminded me of the time in my life when things like who was first in line and who got to go next were important. Thier youthful curiosity inspired me. Kiyron asked me the meaning of several words, including Arcade, Crinkle, and Origami. I didn't know quite how to answer when he asked me what Whiskey was. I didn't really want him to know.

I remember when friendship was given freely. All you had to do was have a good time, and trust was immediatly created. I had two young boys fighting over who got to sit next to me on the bus, and i had only been there for three days. It's amazing how innocently a child looks at the world. A man is a friend because he is kind, something based solely on the present circumstance. Past is completely ignored. I could have been a terrible person who committed all sorts of things, but I won their affection by simply smiling and holding their hands. Now adays, friendship is first pre-sorted by rumor, click, and appearance. I desperately wanted to shield these children from this, but I realized I couldn't when I heard Kiana talking to Jasmine and Jaleah. She was telling them that her family was rich, and that her parents were popular because they both worked at Papa John's, and people called them all the time. Even at six, Kiana felt like she needed to impress her friends to be of value. The only thing more I can do is pray for them.

I think it's important to remember. Life has many patterns to it, and some patterns are the same in every life. Growing up is very hard. If we remember, if we learn, then we can teach.

And when we teach, we become more than what we are. The experiances of generations passed through me when I helped Jaylyn spell the names he had given to the monsters he had drawn. My Grandfather taught my Father, who taught me. It happened again when I took the time to show him how to make origami paper boxes, instead of being too busy. It happened again when Kiyron kicked him in the leg, and I had to take Jaylyn aside and tell him it was wrong to kick back. It happens everytime you're there to make a difference in someone's life, someone who needs you.

We become more than we are when we reach out to those around us. Millions before us were teachers, passing on the summation of their lives, shaping the world we live in, shaping us. And we can turn and give all of history to our children.

I think they call it a legacy.