ba

Only half a thought

Comment on an essay I wrote

Perhaps I have the opposite of writer's block. Rather than being unable to write, I often find myself having too much to write. Oh, you might say I'm being egotistical, but I don't think so, and since you're so insignificant, it doesn't matter anyway. My thoughts are the most important thing in the universe, and since you're reading this, you obviously think that's true to some degree.

Whenever I sit down to write, whether with pen and paper or on a keyboard, I have a vague idea of my own thoughts. Immediately after writing about a paragraph—sometimes more, sometimes less—I am struck by another thought. This new idea is, I tell myself, much better than the first, but I've used up too much time already—this happens frequently during tests, or the period before the essay is due—so I try to work it in. However, these two ideas usually end up conflicting with one another, and then I am left with a weak, unfocused essay, little bits and pieces of my thoughts.

My computer has an entire folder filled with various attempts at writing. Even blog posts are painful to write at times, but I'll keep writing and writing and writing until I finally get something worthwhile for you to read.

On any average Saturday, you'll probably see me doing homework, researching colleges, playing Nintendo 64, and going to the movies. From this worthless exposition, what do you notice about me? I am a high school student. As a junior, College draws ever near. Everyday, I am preparing for another four years of education. Yay. I don't want to say it: college is scary. I can say that I am ready to leave the nest, but besides my inate adolescent instinct to detach from my parents, I think I'll fall like a rock, or someother non-flying object. Can i really do what I need to do or will I just hit my peak? Anybody who knows me can account for me being lazy and somewhat eccentric. But I have a fear that I can't overcome these little character flaws. Is college right for me as I am? My inner child perpetually screams for his parents to let go of his hands, though eventually he comes back and takes a nap. Eventually, my inner child can't come back for naptime; he goes to first grade and has harder work. He sits down and does his multiplication tables. No questions asked. Somehow character flaws become excuses for falling short. I see the child doing his 12*12 problem until he gets it right. Nothing stops him from acheiving something important, even if it was passing that math quiz. I lost this mentaility somewhere along the way. The possibility of failure should not block a certainty of success. I will always have my inner child sitting next to me in class, yelling in my ear that he's sleepy and wants a snack. I need to be the inner grownup and tell that kid to hush up so I can get things done. PS, the answer is 144.

hai

I used to wonder what it would like to be God.

Would I have created the world in six days and resting on the seventh, like the Bible says?

Knowing me, I'd end up resting for the first six days, and then create it in a rush on the seventh day, and then where would we be?

I don't wonder about that anymore.

If I can't think of a title, I'm going to number my posts with Vietnamese numbers. Maybe you'll learn something. "hai" is "two".

Descent into Madness

"School is cancelled," they told me early Tuesday morning. It wasn't wholly unexpected; I had gone to bed Monday night with the full expectation that there would be no school the next day, and maybe Wednesday if we were lucky. A song by Metric began to play in my head: "If my life is mine, what shouldn't I do?"

And I proceeded to do just about everything on Tuesday. I read all the books I had checked out of the library on Sunday. I ran outside for about ten minutes before going back inside, because I didn't want to press my luck. After all, last year, the power went out at my house because of cold weather. There were only three bad things about that. 1) There was no power 2) It was during a break, so school wasn't cancelled, and 3) There was no power. Thanks be to Providence for keeping a gas stove. The worst part of this lack of power, however, was when it came back on. Excited, we all ran outside and had a massive snowball fight. And when we returned, the power was back out...But that was when I went outside, instead of sitting in front of a computer all day long.

It's not every day that we get a day off because of snow, here in North Texas, so I ought to enjoy it. I suppose it was caused by the Packers and the Steelers, who are here to play the Super Bowl, bringing their cold, winter weather with them.

That evening, the phone rang: no school Wednesday, either. Happily, I went to sleep, listening to Shakira: "sale el sol" (the sun leaves), indeed.

Wednesday, I woke up at 8, feeling great. Still, the sky was dismal, cloudy, and it wasn't snowing anymore. I still had the theme song from "Jackie Chan Adventures" playing in my head from the night before, when we watched several episodes. It wasn't bad, exactly, but it spoke to me of kicking animated ninjas in the face, banishing demon sorcerors to a netherworld, and generally weird Asian people.

It was also Groundhog Day, and my parents' alma mater has a tradition of drinking on this day. It was probably just some tired college students who needed a day off and Groundhog Day was the closest holiday.

But instead of the happy, festive air I was expecting, I realized the power was out. Shit. No internet, no computers, and my phone was dying. Would I have to do...homework!? "Lonely Allen" by Holy F*ck began playing in my head, more for the band's name than for the music, which has a very happy feel to it, and which is instrumental anyway.

I considered homework, thought better of it, and then proceeded to sit at the computer, pretending I was doing homework, even though the power was out. The Dadmin* looked at me a little strangely, though.
(*"Dadmin" is what I call my father, sometimes to his face, usually to other people. He's the administrator of our computers, so "dad" + "admin" = "dadmin")

Power returned (for good), and I distractedly read Slashdot, knowing that global warming was happening as the local temperature dropped*. Not even the siren's call of nerd-dom could distract me from the fact that I was stuck in my own house. It really sucks. I wished that I was anywhere, even under Communist rule with my cousins in Vietnam, than here in America (that's a shift, isn't it?).
*a common misconception, often posted as Facebook statuses, is that extremely cold, unexpected weather contradicts the theory of global warming. Actually, as the Gulf Stream goes away, Europe will freeze. So correct your science, please.

Cabin fever began to get to me. Around 6, the phone rang again. No school Thursday, either. I told three friends, angrily (via text), "I swear, if it's a six day weekend, I'm going to go outside and freeze myself to death." [six days being Tuesday-Sunday] Then I thought better of it, realizing that I would probably get pnuemonia/hypothermia/both and survive, spending a long time convalescing, thereby spending an even longer time trapped somewhere, and told them that, too. Mostly, though, I was glad I had power, unlike another of my friends, who, it turned out, actually did have power back (a lot of my companions had power out for two days, as evidenced by their facebook statuses).

I had just had a Facebook spam war with a number of my "friends" (perhaps "frenemies" is a better term?) and I considered doing a little math, seeing who notified who the most, who got the most notifications, etc., etc., but I quickly realized that this would be such a complete waste of time that I might as well have gone and frozen to death outside in the first place.

So I watched more "Jackie Chan Adventures", and all the while "Bale Out" by RevoLucian played on an endless loop in my brain. I didn't even have the heart to play something utterly depressing instead.

Thursday, today, is Chinese Vietnamese New Year. It's the year of the Rabbit (and also the Century of the Fruitbat). I went outside again, to do some menial task, and began to cavort on the frozen ground. Not snow-covered, frozen. A hard layer of ice covers everything. As I did so, I hummed some song by the Police, reflecting the New Year: "I resolve to call her up, a thousand times a day, and ask her if she'll marry me, in some old-fashioned way."

Then I started humming Phantom of the Opera. I paused, confused. I had only seen that once. I realized how much strange music had been playing in my head lately. I thought back to a conversation I had had the day before, about going insane. Was I? I had hoped to go crazy sometime later, after I was rich, so people would just call me "eccentric."

Then I recalled two fundamental laws of acting:
1) If you play any sort of improv game for more than twelve seconds, the word "gay" is bound to come up.
2) All actors are crazy, regardless of their sanity before they began acting. I assume that playing so many roles in a short period of time degrades one's own character...

"I must be going crazy," I told the ice (all the forest creatures were probably hiding).

Then I went inside. I had decided to go quietly insane if we ended up with a six day weekend.

At six thirty, the phone rang. No school. Well, hell. I have nothing to do but sit here and blog about my misery. I guess I could go do something like read a book, but who reads books anymore? I still don't have an e-reader.

As I go to sleep tonight, I'm sure that Metric song will be playing in my head again, but from the refrain this time: "Help, I'm alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer." But mostly just "Help, I'm alive."

Come visit me sometime. I'll probably be wearing a straitjacket.

No school. A break. A reprieve. A hiatus of staggering length. A curse? I stare out my window at a white neighborhood. Make no mistake, the neighborhood, each individual abode itself is white, not the people. Though most people in my neighborhood are of European descent, the whiteness comes from the sky like crushed packing peanuts tossed from a balcony by a child. I am no stranger to snow, or ice, or slick roads. But three days? We all woke up on Monday thinking we would have to endure another five days of Faulkner's The Unvanquished, the physics of reflections through convex and concave mirrors, trigonometry, reconstruction after the Civil War, and frustration with the foreign language department. We have currently endured only one of those days. At the end of the Monday school day, Fr. Peter announced that bad weather was rolling in, and that the descision to cancel school would be decided early Tuesday morning. I eagerly went to rehearsal for the Ursuline Musical "Bye Bye Birdie", and found out that Ursuline would close on Tuesday. I was anxious to know about my own school, but no new information presented itself that night. I went home, finished all my homework, and stayed up later than I should have. No school Tuesday. Relief. Happiness. Our outdoor thermometer read 29 degrees and was dropping quickly. A fresh layer of snow covered the ground, but it soon became solid ice, transforming the roads into death traps. The news stations reported many major accidents all over North Texas. Too many. TV and family were my priorities that day. The temperature dropped alarmingly throughout the first Tuesday in February, and we soon got another telephone call. No school Wednesday. OK. Another unexpected break. I grew nervous, but was content with one more day off. Wednesday was uneventful as well. Practice piano here. Watch TV there. Eat. Stare at ice covered neighborhood. I found myself not wanting to get ahead on anything related to school. All year long I had prayed for a break, but once God presented it to me, I was at a loss for things to do. I occupied myself through facebook, texting, TV and composing movie scores, realizing what a slave I was to technology. That evening, we received an important email message. No school Thursday. Now I was annoyed. As I type this account, it is currently 12:54 PM on Thursday, February 3, 2011. Our third snow day...in Texas...and people still cling to these ridiculous "global warming" theories. I have worked ahead in all my classes. I have worked on musictheory.net and the official ACT online prep course for hours. I have ventured outside for about a minute before I couldn't feel my limbs (14 degrees). I have practiced my classical piano repertoire, including works like Beethoven's Sonata No. 1 in F minor, and Edward MacDowell's "Hungarian" Etude. I have communicated with this blog's administrator through a myriad of text messages. I have watched the Home and Garden television channel with my mother and sister, and now I am eagerly awaiting my father's return from Minneapolis. The ice has started to melt. I am 99% sure that school will open tomorrow, and 100% sure that if it does, I will have a Theology quiz. Am I thankful for the break? Yes. Would it have been better if I knew it was coming? Definitely. Do I want another long break such as this any time soon? No. I realize the tragic irony that, when we are confronted with enormous amounts of free time, we do not take advantage of the situation because we are too preoccupied with the fact that we have been confronted with enormous amounts of free time.