Fill in the Blank

I feel like Lenny Hayes. Of course the world wound't know Lenny Hayes yet. Lenny Hayes is this character I have in my head, a character specific to the stroy I'm writing, Italian Bakery. Lenny remains unknown as he remains to be published. But this is him, let me tell, as shortly as I can. Lenny is the typical jcok, quaterback of the football team, very well muscled and debonair with his smiles. In general his intelligence is barely skating along average but his thought processing holds such bars of complexity, that even I have a hard time understanding him sometimes--and I created him. While he is complicated, he is also simple minded. It's like he has two seperate parts, one that things all this big things and others that grasp and go dull in attempts to find meaning in the other half. All in all, Lenny is most confused by emotions. He can't figure them out most of the time, and when he think he has them figured out he is often wrong in his perceptions. Lenny's worst character flaw is that these emotions he can't figure out are all his own. And right now, I, like Lenny, cannot make means or sense form my emotions.

I know emotions are complicated, perhaps the most complicated part in human beings. So it should be logical that they are not easy to figure out. Yes, this is true, but I feel as though that truth should only hold to that of other people. It is easy to say the emotions of another human being are hard to figure out. We're complicated, simply mad people. But shouldn't someone be able to identity with their own emotions. Once again, yes, I know, complicated. But you're yourself, shouldn't you know yourself. You are sad or your are happy. You can have mixed emotions, but surely you can decipher the mixed emotions you half, mixed emotions are usually a balance of good and bad terms. Like, 'Hey, I'm excited to be going on this trip,' but also 'I'm not sure if I enjoy the idea of taking said trip in such a tiny vehicle.' But what happens when one doesn't know. Why can't I, for anything, figure out how I feel? I don't know. And that's the theme, right, I don't know. If I knew this would not be the post I was typing, perhaps something else, either happy or sad. But not this, this confusion. What am I really, a human being almost twenty something girl, sitting in a house not far from the beach mearly four days before Christmas. Yes, that sounds about like me. I can identify that. But, what, may I ask, is this girl feeling?
Is she sad because things aren't how they're supposed to be, it's not like Christmas usually is, she wants to go home to Montevallo, she is tired and everything, and doens't like traveling, and all the other complaints in the world? Yes, let me tell you, it is this. Maybe, are those even reasons to be sad? No, not really. It's selfishness. It's lacking in anything less than human. So many more have is worse than you. So yes sadness, no sadness.
And happiness, it is there too. Youa re with lovely people, have eating lovely food. There is a house over your head, you have a nice boyfreind and a ncie job. In a few days you're going to see your old friends, you're going to smell the smell of growing up, it's going to be Christmas. Yes, yes, yes...but no, no, no.

I don't know. I could say this, I have mixed emotions. But I don't, I don't feel sad. I don't feel happy. There isn't some sort of mixture of both. And at the same time there is not a lack of emotion. There is something there, there has to be or I wouldn't be human, right? I don't know. I can feel it, but I don't know the feeling. It's there, pushing on me like a heavy stone, harder and harder and harder. How can I escape it, or at least figure it out. In the background people are telling these wonderful Christmas stories, they are beautfil touching things. Shouldn't I feel somehow, how wonderful they are. And then I want to leave, I don't want to be here and not sure how it should be handled in the next two and a half weeks. I want to be at Montevallo, I need classes and organization. And most of all, I need to organize my new room. Bothered, blah...this is what? I can't see. I don't feel these things, and I do, all at the same time. They surround me and cover me, but I do not know them. Heavy stones, heavy stones, heavy stones.....

I do not what I want right now, wether it be effected by my emotions or not, I know what I want. I was to be alone, I want to have music. I want to be outside, in air that's not too cold or hot. Although, prefferably, a little more on the cool side. There should be a tress above me, wide braches reaching out in long arcs and curves. Light, from the golden sun dancing between white puffy clouds, will finds it's way between the leaves. It warms my face. And there are books and notebooks, I can write and read. I want this, or even something more simple. Can I somehow make a story to read from music and crawl myself between the notes and write about all my ficitonal characters. Ones like Lenny, who I know and don't know. Who like myself are there and present. I'm not making sense, I know. The sense I make is from my words, and while it may not be apparent it is here. I still don't know. Emotions are like games...I need to figure them out before winning.

Fin.
-Keshia

Currently Reading Just Listen by Sarah Dessen

There is good, there has to be.

"Humanity is good. Some people are terrible and broken but humanity is good. I believe that."
-Hank Green

Today twenty eight people died. I'm sure there are more people, of the billions in the world, who died today. But the twenty eight people I'm thinking of are the lives of a certain elementry school. There are no need for names, as the world I'm sure knows of this. What is worst, perhaps, is that twenty of those human beings were children. Children, who are happy and annoying all at the same time. I mean it, they can be such brats, with their demanding and spoiled attitudes. I mean it. In general, I am not a fan of children. But children, they are so wonderful too. Have you ever seen them when they're playing? They can see whole words, things we can never see. And it's like a miracle to watch them. And they wonder so far, they are so curious about the world. It is one thing to me to know that I do love that fact in children, the curiousity. Yes, know, ask questions. Please, I want you to know the world. I want to guide you in it. And maybe I am secretly a person who loves children, and maybe I will have them some day far for now. I really don't know. But I do know that the worlds they know are magic, it is something we are all born with and somehow all grow out of. When you were younger and you imagined things you saw them, you really, really saw them. Now, you can't, I know you can't. I can't. I use writing as my vice to try to capture the worlds of my youngers days. Children have a gift we do not possess. And others too. What else is a better gift in life than the potential that a human being possesses? Let me tell you what potential is, it's something lying in all of us that means we can do something, something big or small, it doesn't matter. But potential, it is how the world knew we existed. And children, they have more potential than us all, because they have yet to live their lives. They are living, and everyday the potential grows more and more. With that is beauty, the beauty that is hope. This little human being, what a miracolous thing they are, that you know they are going to grow up to leave something to the world. The only problem, though, is when they are robbed of their potential.

You know what I really think about when I think about the children who were lost today. I think about their hands. I think about how soft and small they were. Thier hands are no yet cracked or callussed. There are tight lines and cleanching fists. Scars can't be seen on their fingers. Instead, they are little things, soft and rounded, in all colors of the lightest pink to the darkest brown. And these hands, in my mind are always doing the same things. They are playing, grasping handfuls of sand to build a castle or clinging to the rope of a swing as their bodies bound in the air. In school the hands are scrawling on paper, witty little answers that they don't even see the human in. The hands can being things not so good either, shoving glue in the pink rosebud lips or sticking on forefinger into the nostril. And most of all I see them reaching toward the world that is all their own. Their hands are so unlike ours. They are hands they were once like ours but hands that we can never have again. You see, their hands are untouched by the world. Just soft things at play, things that do not yet know hardness. And this is what I see, this is what I keep trying to erase so badly from my head but I can't. I see these same hands, this gentle playing things, covered in blood.

I do not know the mind of the man who did this. I do not see how he is human, he must be broken. I know he has to be. I'm not angry at him either. I know the things he did were horrible. But when someone is so terribly broken, it not in my authority to judge the bad things they have done.They can't be judged on the same level as us because we are humans, whole pieces. They are not. People like the man today are no longer human. But I do know that these people exists, people like him who have broken to the point that they are not really heare anymore. And know, with them existing the worlds seems without hope but it is not. Like Hanke Green says, humantiy has to be good. I know that.

Sometimes when bad things happen it is easy for people to say the world is messed up. I can not see that as something that holds truth. There is bad. More bad in the world that there should be. But in spite of bad, there is good. There has to be good, because if there wasn't what else would t...

here be? I do not think there is a lesson to be learned in the recent events but I do think there is no cause for people to believe the whole of the world is wrapped in badness. Bad things happen, things that are out of our control. And I think it is our job as humans not to despise our world for its badness but to try our hardest to fix the broken bits that cause the bad.

Fin.
-Keshia

Currently Reading: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Irrevocably, a reader...

"At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.”

 

This is what you should know about me, I love reading. Other than writing I think there is nothing dearer to me in the world. And at some points I even question if I do love writing more, because there is so much more effort to it. And sometimes I don't like effort. But reading, reading is beautiful. I can't quite remember the moment when I first learned to read. The quote of above so eloquenty describes what I imagine the experience to be like. To me, though, I've always just read. There was never a point where I can remember not reading. I felt like Iwas born with it, this magic of reading, and in that it became me. When I was younger I would devour books, and I mean that only in the literal sense. A literal sense where I would pick up a bounded group of words and see them with my eyes and know something far greater than I knew before. Mom used to drop me off at the library during the summer, and I remember being in there with the golden sun spilling through the windows, lighting up the pages of all the books around me. It was so lovely, and there are few times in my childhood that I can say are happier than when I was in the library alone. Because those summers, they meant so much to me, they were some of the happiest things I know. And I've always liked everything too, as miracolous as it seems. It seems so to me that the world is beautiful and just because the world has books, books I feel just for me. But there's another magic to books, they are not just for me. They are for everyone. Have you ever just picked up a book and thought about how mnay other people have read it, thought about the miracle of it. In your hands are a thousand lives, lives of every person who touched the book and read it before. And you are connected, connected through the story of the book by the single string of the writer who wrote it. Don't you know thier soul is in there, a little part of them. You hold something so precious of them in your hands, and others have held it too. How, really, can that not be magic?

 

I've never understood people who do not like reading. Or people who make no efforts in reading. It's not within my mind to understand. How can you not read a novel and think of how wonderful it is? How can you see the words, the printed words on page all forming together in this interweaving puzzle that has meaning. It's so beautiful. And how can people not see that. One simply does not like reading, it can't happen in my mind. Perhaps that makes me sadder than anything else, that some can't see the beauty that is the written word. I just don't know. Have you ever read, really read then? Have you ever seen a sentence and thought how someone out there understands? Have you ever learned about a character, one so dear that any tragedy that befalls them pulls on your heartstrings? And most of all have you ever had the hope, when reading, that this is something more. These words, these people, the words they have are that unknown thing floating out in the universe. The thing we all want even when we don't know what it is. And they give you such a taste of it. But only a taste, the rest is for you to have and search for.

 

I really think maybe that's why I like writing so much. Reading has always been a part of me and in turn so is writing. You see, I want to share myself, I want to have some little girl in a library hold my book in her hands and know that someone else out there understands. And that in my words she experienced it, along with others, and felt it. The magic of reading, drawn instrinctly in by writing. It's incredible.

 

Life must be so sad for those in the wordl who don't read. Because to me it, and writing, are my vices of happiness.

 

Fin.

-Keshia

 

Currently Reading: Animal Farm by George Orwell

It's a Sniper.

You know, I've almost had this blog for two years. I started it on November 28th, 2010. I'm only lacking four days from my anniversery. I think maybe in the start I planned on blogging a lot. I talked about Anne Frank, my writing inspiration in nearly anything personal. But I really haven't, I've never been consistent with the blog. And I would promise now, but I can't. Why make promises when they're so fragile, I know I won't be in here all the time. This blog is here for me when it is needed. And that's good, good for me and for the people who read it. Though, honestly, over the past two years I only think there are about maybe eight or nine people who have read my blog. And if you're not in that group, let me know. Who are you? Why are you out there? And it seems to me there would be no reason for someone to read my blog, unless they really wanted to know. That doesn't seem to fit in the pattern of my life, I want to know people, I really do. If I was find out if anyone in my life kept a blog I would actively read it, but you know, they don't. And somehow in turn no one really wants to know about me. I mean, maybe there is someone who does, but really there seems to not be. I don't know. And how self-centered is that, I want people to really want to know me. It's like I'm waving a flaming flag in the air and saying, 'Here! Look at me! I'm right here!", but no one ever looks. And if people do look they don't see, not really, they see the outside. Here I am, here is your perception of me. Would you like that on a silver platter? Because I know, I just know, that you won't make the effort to see beyond. And really, why would you.

Let me tell you this, loneliness, she is a sneaky little bitch. She's like this. Imagine me, perfectly content and happy, and then there's my loneliness, living in the back of my mind, waiting to pounce. And she does, all the time. I know she's there too, hiding in the back of me at all times, but yet every time she attacks I am surprised. And it's that surprise, the surprise that hurts me the most. Shouldn't I know I am a lonely person? I know myself, right, or at least part of it. That loneliness, it should be part of the things I know. But I don't. I really don't, and it scares me. There's so much dimension too it than just meets the eye too, because it's substance comes from the moments that the loneliness chooses to appear. Hear me out , okay? I feel less lonely when I'm physically alone than I would when I am surrounded by a group of people. At least when I'm alone, I mean really alone, I have my music, and books, and writing. And they, they are such good friends to me, they keep the loneliness at bay. But with others, with people, it's so ahrd not to feel it. It's like I with them and I know. I can tell from their attitudes, their gestures, their everything. My presence in their lives is fleeting, without me there would no difference, and even if I was to leave than perhaps it would even be better. And I try to be normal, I really do. Normalcy is the hardest thing to grasp. I mean, I speak and I amke jokes and I smile but I can't help but thinking in my mind if they even hear me. Can they really see me? And they can't, they can't understand me. And I'm screaming in my head, it's a torture. Can't you see me!?! Can't you hear!?!
I just want so badly to truly be seen that I don't even no how to handle myself. I don't even know if I can function around people anymore. I mean I can. I am the best actress in the world when it comes to pretending things are okay. I really am. But I'm not, because it hurts. It hurts a lot that no one cares to really no.
And this, this is the worst part. My loneliness it something that has become part of me. I just know it's there. I just know no one will understand me. That's a such a teenager move, I know. But people don't, they really don't. And it's not the lack of understanding that causes the hurt. It's something else. It's the fact that no one even wants to understand. No one even tries to care.
I don't even know if I want someone to understand, because I really think they never will. But I do wish that they would try. Do you know how great it feels for someone to really, really care? Even if they don't care, but they care enough to try. I don't have that. I don't even know if I have friends at all. And the uncertaintity of it hurts me so much. I just, I want to know that someone really cares.
A lot of people say they care but they don't. But really, most of them, most of them just ignore it, ignore me. They walk around pretending they know me or maybe not and they don't see. They don't want to see.

I know I need to stop thinking about this but I really can't. I don't need someone to understand, I need someone to try to. Because no one is.

Fin.
-Keshia

You know.

I've always wanted to imagine this, that I'm like Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. You see, Elizabeth really has no remarkable quailty about her appearence, only that she has fine eyes. And I know people are more then just appearences I'd like to think I have fine eyes, or at least eyes that like to see. But really, I'm not here to talk about appearences.

Let me let you know what is happening right now. I am in Orange Beach, in a cozy little house that belongs to John's family. It's half past midnight and in the twin bed beside my bed John is trying to sleep. I am trying to type lightly as not to wake him. And I could sleep, I really could, but I have these feels, all these feels. And I don't know what to do with them other than write. It seems that there is no other option. At least not for me. And I wish it was like that way for the rest of the world. Because really, I admire anyone who can quantify their feelings in the written world. And because it helps me understand myself, and surely if other people wrote then I could obtain a better understanding of them.

Okay, concentrate. There is this. When I was younger and in elementry school we had this kind of festival every year. It was a thing were the playground was turned into something spectacular, filled with little games that gave you prizes and stands that fed you hotdogs and snowcones. Of course, though, you had to buy tickets to do these things, four tickets per dollar. I remember so clearly the raw, unadulterated jealousy I felt for kids who would bring in twenty dollar bills like it was no big deal and walk away with a handful of tickets. I always had five dollars, twenty tickets to spare. I was an organized kid, just like I am an organized person now (okay, I admit, not exactly organized, just OCD to an extreme level) and I tried to balance my tickets. I spent about 75% of them on games (where I could earn back their value in prizes) and  about 25% on food (a corndog, snowcone, and drink.) But I always saved three tickets for one particular thing. Something I did for the first time in kindegarten, and something that became a tradition for my next five years of gradeschool. I got a balloon. The balloon stand was near this little red shed we kept on the playground. A red shed which at anytime in the year could be opened by a magical set of keys owned by the P.E. teacher, hidden in it jumprops, hulahoops, basketballs, scooters, and other toys that told us we had a free day in PE. But the balloon, getting back on subject. Every year, I got a different color, and I can only remember the color the first year, it was a bright emarald green. I remember loving the helium tanks, how they were like big, tube shaped, silver robots who could fill the balloon until it could fly. But its flight was stopped by a ribbon attatched to it that was then given to the secure hold of your hand.
That first year I got my green balloon and went out to this little field beside our playground. It was the place where we would sometimes have kickball matches. And when I was in the field, I let go of the balloon and I watched it rise, it's greenness bright amoung the pale blue sky and fluffy white clouds. And I watched it, as it floated further and further. I watched it until my eyes watered from looking so hard and it became a tiny black dot on the skyline that dissapeared suddenly, sucked up by the vaccumm that was the sky and my vision which couldn't hold out longer. And somehow I did this again next year, and the year after that, and so on and so forth.
I remember the feels I had when I let the balloon release. How it wad the immiediate sense of loss, how for one scrambling moment I wanted to jump out and grab the string just so the balloon would be mine again. And then the wonder, wonder as the balloon dance and and bobbed in the wind as it carried on higher. This was followed shortly after by jealousy, jealousy because I wanted to float away like the balloon. And then there was a peaceful happiness, happiness because I had set the balloon free to the world. And finaly just the desperate looking, the struggle just to keep the balloon in my sight. I never wanted it to dissappear. But it did.

You know, I really have no idea what I'm saying with this. Don't pay attention to me.

Fin.
Keshia

Currently Reading: Holes by Louis Sacher

Impetus

There's a thing that is very upsetting to me about other human beings. It's not nesscarily something that would upset they, themselves, but to me it seems too horrible. And I know I've talked about this before. I just have to revisit it, because I really feel like it something that drives into my brain day in and day out. And I just can't understand it. I can't understand the fundamentals in other human beings.

Everthing in my life is driven by my passions. I'm really not a person who does things in my life that I'm passionate for. And I don't understand that, how people can do things in life that they're not passionate for. How can you do something when you know you don't want to? And the whole time there is a pulling in you, a pulling to do something else, something that you're really passionate about. Is it because people are scared? I can understand the fear, I really can. Sometimes passions in life are overwhelming, particuarly in the ones that it seems to shape your lives. Since I'm in college, i'm surrounded by the shaping on lives everyday. There are so many of us, all bright and merry. We are preparing for our future careers. But really, how many of us will actually get our careers? And I think, really, that is what instills the fear the most. One phrase I hate more than anything, because pehaps it's the saddest thing to hear, is when people say they want to do something but they can't because they can't make a career out of it, they can't make any money. And I understand that so well, I really do. Humans have to have material things, it's an impossibility not to. But it seems so terribly sad to me that people can't follow thier passions for fear that they will not make anything off of them. And I think we're all born with passions, and because of that we were meant to follow them. The way of our life should not shape our passions, they are an essential part of us that just are us. Like me, I want to be a writer, and where can I find a career in that? I really can't, there is no value unless I sell books really well. And I know I can teach too, but really it's one of my smaller passions. It can be put off, but my passion in writing can't. I just have to write, and it seems to me if I was in a world where I couldn't write, because I did not follow my passions, then I would go insane.

It's like this. My dream life would be sitting in library all day, full of wonderful books to read and lots of empty notebooks for me to fill up with my thoughts. And in this dream, I have no need for money. I just need my passions.

Fin.
Keshia

Currently Reading: Like the Red Panda by Andrea Siegal

The shy, dark bird.

Sometimes the world has to be a bit unbalanced with things. It's like this. The good has to outweigh the bad for the bit and then the bad has to outweigh the good. It's never at a balance, really. I am okay, don't believe me. There is either too much bad or too much good.
And the hardest part about the good is that it's simply too hard to accept. I'm too busy waiting on the bad to come that my mind can't even be preoccupied with the goodness. It's like the goodness isn't even something that becomes me, it's just there. Kind the opposite of the bad, it sinks into my pores and makes develish little parties all through out me. And espicially at night, it celebrates and dances, all through my brain, giving me thoughts. I think of everything in the bad. I think about how people feel oblidged to me now. I think of the person I used to be, how happiness was so easily achieved. And it gets even worse, I watch my Youtube videos or I look at the pictures and I don't even know who the person in them was. And I'm not even eternally depressed. It's just this, kind of a neautral ground to everything. I am aware of the things that make me sad and yet they don't really make me sad. Instead, I just think about them and they float around in my brain, reminding me of a lot. Making wonder who I am and who I used to be and what part of me is even me.
And then good can't even capture me, he hardly even comes to me. It surrounds me but never becomes part of me. And I don't know why, there is so much good. I am at a beautiful college cmapus, surrounded by freinds who think I'm okay, I am doing decent in my classes, and so much more. There's no good to it, though, no good that can penetrate into me. And I don't know either, because I don't feel it.
I want to be that stone wall, but I'm not the stone wall I once wanted to be. But this isn't a stone wall, this pushes back too much. I'm not pushing, I'm reaching and getting no enough back. This happens, this happens way too much. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Help me.

I am so seemingly different right now. I'm okay, unbalanced but okay.

I don't know. I just think of it in this way. Sometimes when you're walking in the park and you see this one long bird, high on the treebranch, the little weak end of it that looks like it will snap off in the wind. And it's a cold day, with low lying cool gray clouds, and a calm humidity in the air. You're on a park bench, with your hands pressed into the soft pockets of your jacket to keep them from the chill. The grass looks light green, slightly yellowed but damp from the melting of the morning dew. And the gray sidewalk looks almost the same shade of the sky, so you look up and instead of seeing the sky you see the bird, with it's black wings so dark there are shades of deep purple and green buried into it. And the bird turns it's head and looks at you, then with a silent nod it lifts it's wings and flies away.


Fin.
-Keshia

#103/100 Books in 2012: A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb

Pandemonium

"You'll never know the true value of a moment until it becomes a memory"

Sometimes I just get really anxious with my life. I'm not sure how. I try to watch videos, I try to read, I try to occupy myself in any way, shape, or form and it doesn't really work. So I guess I'd be restless, not anxious. But I'm always anxious when I'm restless and always restless when I'm anxious. It just happens. I just can't be a normal human being who can sit there without a functioning thought. It's just, I don't know. And the worst part it that when I'm like this, I try to write in my journal a lot. And it usually ends with me scrawling 'I don't know' for every other sentence.

And now it's getting worse. Not that is inevitably happens everyday, it's just I've noticed and exceeding amount of reslestness and anxiety within myself over the past year or so, and I'm not sure why. Here, take an infinite list of 'I don't knows' into that. And I find it hard sometimes, like there are moments when I literally have to stop what I am doing at the moment and think, "Is this my life?" and then remind myself, going back into my timeline, of how I came to be and how I'm in the position I am today. And I don't know. I feel like I'm becoming senile or something and I'm only nineteen. It just seems so odd to me that I've come to point where I'm not just living my life but I also have to remind myself that this is my life. And it makes me restless, I feel like something should be happening but even if something is happening, I feel this way. It happens anywhere and everywhere. Such as the first weekend here at Montevallo, there was this party of the quad. It was dark, there were bright lights and music, and I was dancing with my friends. Like prom all over agian but less fancy and a little bit more uncomfortable. It was fun, I was having fun. But I was standing there and reminding myself that yes, this is my life. This is how I am. And it kind of ruined me and I left and walked around campus thinking about stuff and my life and my friends. And I cried and I don't even know why. I'm kind of fucked up in the sense that I cry for no reason. My tears are way too selfish.

And it gets even worse than that, because I have weird theories about it. Like there are two of me, searching through a field for each other and this field is life or something. I don't know, I have weird thoughts. And if we ever find each other we might find something else. I don't know, I'll become a whole person. Like questions in my life about my life and about me that could be answered and I'll see something. Have you ever read the theories of self actualization? Something like that. But more of a sense and not so much actual fufillment. Because I think I'll never be fufilled, because there's always more learning I can. Even unto my dying breath I intend on learning more.  But these two Keshias, they're wondering through this field and they pass each other, not where they can see each other but where if they would've turned just another inch or two they could've seen each other. But they don't and they keep going and it's terrible, because I feel like that's why I'm restless. Maybe I just almost grasped something that was bigger and better and the absence of it and it's presence and hope makes it horrible. Like a wrenching in my stomach trying to turn me back around. But I keep fucking walking and let it pull me tighter and tighter until I just break apart. And I don't even know what I almost had and I can't think of it anymore. Nothing will suffice for me, and I have to remind myself that this is my life. And this is what has happened. And this is what I hope to happen even if it doesn't. But it is my life and it keeps going.

Fin.
-Keshia

#96/100 Books in 2012: Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld

I'm a college kid now!

So, hello there, it's been a while....hasn't it always???

So I am now at the beautiful University of Montevallo and I have been for the past two weeks. It's incredible and I love it. There's nothing like being on the campus. It's one of those things that cannot be put into words. It's just; Montevallo is one of those college campuses with lots or trees, abundaunt amounts of sunshine, cobblestone paths, and buildings full or history.

I don't have much to say, other than I can't understand how anyone wouldn't want to learn for the rest of their lives. I know there is real world experience and I know things are good, but I love learning a lot. God, I wanna be in college forever.

Fin
-Keshia

#90/100 Books in 2012: A Series of Unfotunte Events; The Slippery Slope byt Lemony Snicket

The Immeasurable Percent.

So, I have discovered something as of late, something I have always knew but never quite theorized. It's that confidence the most immeasurable thing. I'm sure scientifically speaking, it's not and they have probably found ways to measure it. From one human being to the other you can't just tell. You can't look at someone and say they have a lot of confidence or not. You may think you can, especially if you're the kind that looks at body language, but I am of the opinion that it can't be measured.

And why? It's because of this. The human race, as a whole, has many things in common. One of them being that when it's comes to pretending everything is all right we are pretty much the shit. I mean, some people, they wear their true feelings on their face and all, but I think in their minds they are still pretending. Our deepest pretend is that we are all confident.

I do it all the time, the pretending, I can walk into a room at a party and boldly announce my entry but the truth is I'm so scared of everyone noticing how not confident I am.. Or maybe not. I don't know. I can't tell you at any given moment how confident I am. But it's so hard to tell. And I never even think of confidence as a relative thing in my mind. I don't think , 'I am this confident right now' and 'I am not confident at the moment.' Instead I just do and I exist and I seem. Sometimes I seem confident and sometimes I don't. And even being myself, I am myself and therefore I should know. I should know this part of me, an essential part of makeup that is so important and shapes how interact with the people and things of the world, I should know. But I don't, I just don't fucking know. And I don't think any of us do.

I make assumptions a lot, especially those about human beings. I am probably wrong in every way. I mean, I have met a lot of human beings in my life and I have the uncanny ability to observe them without even meaning too. But the comparative number of humans I have met to that of the world is very small. I shouldn't make plural assumptions, but I do. I like to pretend we're all connected. I think we all have no fucking clue about confidence and how it effects our every reaction of everyday and how it shapes us. The confidence of one man or woman could shape the world differently. And it is the thing we know about least, an essential percent of us that I think can never be measured.

Fin.

-Keshia

#58/100 Books in 2012: Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

The Spectrum of Us

Okay, so I've quoted him in here before but I'm going to do it again. Joss Wheddon is a genius and one of favorite Buffy quotes ever is in the musical episode where Dawn states the hardest to do in the world is live in it. Which is true, but what makes it so hard to live in it is the misunderstandings between people.
Humans really are these unique minded things, and the reason for most of our conflicts is from not understanding each other. I think it's too hard and we often forget the trouble that everyone deals with everyday. We are too wrapped in our own incomprehension of others and their own incomprehension of us. We're all very selfish, who like to reign the anthem of 'No one understands me' all the time. Or at least I do. I'm the most selfish person I know.

And somehow, I came up with this idea about humans. It's probably something you've heard before. I think human beings live all across this broad spectrum, it's dark at one end and light at the other. None of us is in the dark and none of us is in the light, instead we all wander around somewhere in the grey. And I think along the wondering among the spectrum we sometimes bump into or cross paths with other people. And sometimes because of these bumps the people within the spectrum like to stay close to you. These people become your friends and family, the ones who stay around you, the ones who are in the same general shade of grey as you are. If anyone, in my mind, ever existed in the exact same spot as you on the spectrum then they would understand you. Their mind would be in the exact same context as you. But I've never seen an example of that before. Instead I think they can understand parts of you and float around you, sometimes even aligning with you but never being in the exact same spot. And as of late I've come to realize how little I understand about my world around me and the friends I have in it. Before, when I imagined myself in this spectrum I imagined myself surround by my friends, aligned with a few but not all, and all of them just wandering in a general location near me. And now, when I think of it, I see no one in my general area. My friends are still there but when I think of them, they are miles away, too far away for either of us to reach each other. Too little understanding of each other. That's about it, the more I understand myself the more I understand that no one will understand me. And that's it, I just felt like raising an old flag.


And also, I am still happy. I realized how depressing that sounded, but it's not. And my friends, I love them. I may not understand them and they may not understand me but I love them either way.

Fin.

-Keshia

#55/100 Books in 2012: Specials by Scott Westerfeld

Jane Austen and other things...

So, it's been a while. It's June already. The June in which it's, you know, already halfway through the year that we call 2012. Mind blown, I'm telling you.

But yeah, I have some thoughts that I would like to share. And as always, the old report, yeah, I need to blog more. Essentially I have this schedule worked out in my head right now where I'll  blog every Sunday. I've started this new thing on YouTube where I'm adding old clips from my computer up every Sunday, which I call LifeVlogs. If I always blog while the videos are uploading, than therefore I blog once a week, which, as it always seems, my ultimate goal. So yeah, we're gonna try this out.

This one is going to be more of a rant than anything. Really.
First, I would like to talk about Jane Austen and how much I admire her. First off, she's a writer, a writer whose books I first read in seventh grade and now have read all of collection. And I adore them all (although I won't deny that I hold Pride and Prejudice above all others.) I admire any person who is a writer and who writes novels that me me feel something--like any good book should do. Second off, I find it beautiful that Jane Austen let all of her characters have a happy ending because she never got to her happy ending (you'll understand why if you read up on her or watch Becoming Jane, she was a great woman). And third off, I admire the fact that Jane was never married and she lived out her dreams 'by her pen' when she was born into a society where women were typically expected to do nothing more than find a rich, good husband and bare children. Jane did none of this, she broke society and lived off her own written word. She was strong for that and I yearn so much to be liker her.
Now, ranting time. I was told recently by an adult who thinks they know everything of the world that I'm taking on too much in my life with dreams. Okay, so I want to write, be an ESL teacher in foreign countries, act, and maybe chase a storm or two. Yeah, if I want to do that (and I will) then I am going too. Yeah, said person also told me that I remind her of her daughter who had all these dreams until she met the right guy, got married and settled down and had a family.
REALLY?!? Like, WTF, really? I though society had matured a lot since Jane Austen's time and that a woman could do a lot more in life than just settle down with a good husband and have kids? It really upset me so much that I wanted to slap her, yeah, I really did. I'm not usually a person who has physically violent habits, mostly just those of a mouth. In all honesty I'd rather call someone an ill-mannered tub of guts then slap them. But no, I felt the urge to inflict pain upon another person.

First off, I would just like to state that nothing will ever make me give up on my dreams. No man, no force, or no 2012 apocalypse will force me to give up on them. It's my life and it's what I want to do with it and I don't intend on wasting my life by following what others say. And I just don't understand how anyone would want to waste something as the precious one life that they have. God, follow your dreams, don't be a tub of lard. And really, I'd rather not have someone telling me to be a tub of lard when I know of a world so much more beautiful.

Second off, I have told this person time and time again, that I don't want to have a family. I have no urge to have children, I have no maternal feelings and I certainly know that I won't be a good mother. And I can hardly imagine myself married to someone. It's seems to me that I've always imagined my life single (and even now where I've been a serious relationship for nearly nine months) I still imagine myself as single through my life. It's not that I don't love people, it's just it seems like I'll be held back by anything and everything. As said before, no force will stop me from reaching my dreams. So the idea of 'settling down and having kids' is not appealing at all.

And lastly, I can barely even feel bad for her. She doesn't understand me. She got pregnant right out of high school, got married, and has had a husband who has always taken care of her. Her only thoughts have never been farther than that of what's playing on TV or of what her two daughters are doing. And I don't understand her either, like, I can't just can't wrap my mind around why someone would want to do nothing in their life other than be a wife and mother. But I respect her, it's what she chose and I'm not going to tell her to change her life. But I wish she respected me enough not to tell me to change mine.

And yeah, that's it, rant over. I'm going to live like Jane Austen, and live by my pen and dreams, because really, that's all I want to do with my life, is reach my dreams.

And on another subject. I'm seriously considering publishing an e-book. It's just a thought but I want to make it happen.

-Fin
Keshia

#36/100 Books in 2012: Write Good or Die

(I feel as though 100 will never be reached)

A Letter to God.

Dear God,

I'm Keshia, you've probably forgotten about me by now. So let me tell you about me, the current me. I regularly curse (a lot) and I've had pre-marital sex. I have a lot of mean and cruel thoughts, although I usually try to avoid saying them. I don't pray, go to church, or have the ultimate faith in you that I used to. You see, God, I've taken to reading my old journals lately and I used to not be able to go two paragraphs without mentioning you. I loved you so damn much.
I still believe in you, I do. I know this world cannot exist with so much beauty without something out there being bigger than us. You have to exist. But there's also a lot of wrath and hate in this world. Something I think you should understand, and something that a lot of  peopl need to understand is that you, God, created both the bad and the good. Even if Satan was somehow the creator of all this evil in the world it still wouldn't matter, you made him. You need to own up and be responsible. You made us imperfect creatures so as long as we apologize and try to be a good person I think we should be forgiven. I don't think we should have to do all this extra stuff and listen to all that bull shit that the bible feeds us. The bull shit that makes us close minded people. Instead I think you should cherish the life you gave us and truly live it.

To be honest, I know you didn't do this on purpose. I'm sure you're more disappointed in yourself for creating this world than you are disappointed in us for destroying it. But the thing is, I think you still love us even if we don't do what falls in your good opinion. I still have that much faith in you. Because you see God, I want to curse and I want to have sex. I want to be lazy and not make the effort to go to church because I'd rather not hear someone's opinion on what you think. No one knows what you're thinking. And I don't want to get down on my knees and pray. I expect you hear everything that you created, every tear drop on a little's girl face and every laugh from two people who are in love. If you're our father, then you should seek us out, we shouldn't have to seek you out? And above all, I do not want to believe in the bible. Almost everything in there is shit, honestly. I mean, how can you call something a divine word when it implores that some of us are wrong and sinful simply for being ourselves and existing? It's too frustrating, I don't like the bible much.

And really, I wish that so many people would see that. I wish they would come to the understanding that they don't know you or what you want--no one does. I wish people could understand that we all  exist in this world with each other and that we should just try our best to be good people and not try to judge others for their faults. It has never been our place to judge, it's yours. And God, there's only one thing I don't like about my faith today, I don't know if I'm going to heaven. Before, I was sure I was going to heaven but I hated the person I was. Now, I don't know, and I like the person I am, I am myself. And I'll never know God, because while my life is my own and I make it what I want, everything truly is in your hands.

Sincerrly,
Keshia

Fin
-Keshia

#12/100 Books in  2012: The Secret Garden

I just could not get through War of the Worlds, I conked out around five chapters. I'll try again someday.

The Fault in Our Stars

"Sometimes, you read a book and it feels you with a weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read that book"

Oddly, enough its the book itself that puts into words just how I feel about the book. The Fault in Our Stars is such a rarity to me, one of those books that speak to me. Everyday, hundreds of books are published and the amount of books that exist in this world is well past the billions. But somehow, every now and then, you'll come across these deep jewels that you want to treasure forever, it's like finding a needle in the haystack. There are so many good books out there but there are rare few that really get you, that really entrance you in a way that no other can. This book is one of those rare few. 

The Fault in Our Stars is told from the point of view of  Hazel, a sixteen you girl who has lung cancer and her story of how she falls in love with a boy named Augustus, who also has cancer. They also both, have a friend, Isaac, who has cancer as well. With so many people with cancer there's bound to be one who dies, and there is. I sincerely thought it was going to be Hazel, but about halfway through the book, when she really started to fall in love then I just knew it was going to be Augustus who died. And that's it, I completely and totally expected it, and yet, I still cried like a baby when it happened.

First off, I adore how Hazel and Augustus's love is. I love any story about young love that isn't vapid, half-seen, or considered puppy love. Too many adults in this world see young love as 'puppy love' and therefore make it hard to see that there can be a wholesome and truly pure love among the young. I think age is no defining factor in whether love is true or not. And the way John Green presents the two, how much they understand each other and how the faults are healed by each other, it gives me all the hope in the world to believe that love is out there and it is true. It really exists. 

Also, in this book both Augustus and Hazel seek out a writer who wrote their favorite book about a girl with cancer who died, mid-sentence, at the end of the book. They even go as far as traveling to Europe to meet him. But it turns out he is a lazy bum of a drunk, and they learn later that he was that way because his daughter had cancer and died. He wrote the book for her and when they came and pestered him about questions it reared up in him too much pain and he was quite the douche bag. The brilliant thing about the writer in this book, he says that pain demands to be felt, and I think he's somehow wallowing in all the pain and forgetting that even though pain will be felt, happiness that can be felt will outweigh all that pain. And honestly, the most emotional moment for me in the entire book is when the writer shows up to Augustus's funeral. He came to explain his behavior, sort of, and explain his thoughts on the book and why he wrote it, though, not the answers Hazel truly wants.

The best thing about John Green, in all his works, is that his thoughts on the world are so unique and beautiful. It's just, he sees things in such a clear way. Let's face it, most writers now a days have the typical thoughts of pain. God, I'm even one of those writers, and I'm waiting for the day when my brain will somehow think outside of the box. And John, he always does. If you haven't read this book, I suggest you do. It's just, simply one of the best books I've read in my life.

And also, it helped me, with the blog I posted the other day, about just writing. Honestly, I think it's the thing that knocked me over. I had been thinking about it forever but when I finished the book I was like, this is what I want to do. I want to write, I want to create literary masterpieces like this. Which is odd, considering the book isn't much about following your dreams. It's about existing, living, death, human interactions, and just life. Life is so lovely sometimes, and painful, but still great. It's a great expanse that we all have to go through and no matter we will always be connected in that one way. John Green captures that.

-Fin

Keshia

#12/100 Books in 2012: War of Worlds by H.G. Wells

I decided to just write.

 

If you type writing into Google the first suggestion is the Wikipedia page which tells you that writing is ' the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of set signs or symbols.' In other words, some jumbled definition set by the world. Writing is passion. Writing is taking everything you see and do and trying  to fit it into to words to make sense of this crazy world we live in. Writing is the one thing I'm sure I'm going to do for the rest of my life.

For the past two years of my life if you asked what I plan on doing with my college career then I would tell you, 'Double major in Education/English with a focus on Creative Writing, oh and a minor in Theater' and I usually I follow up with but really I would just love to write. And, I mean, after a few years of doing this I have to ask myself, now why do I plan on teaching when in reality I just want to write? Well here's the deal, there's no promise for a career in writing. So if I taught English then I could try to write books while doing it. There's also this, teaching seems like it would be fun, and it'd give me a way to touch someone's life. But really, I'd rather touch someone while uprooting some emotion and make them think about the world through writing. I'd rather do that than just teach them things. I'd like teaching, but I'd never truly be passionate about it.

Basically, it's come down to this. I just want to write, read, and perform for the rest of my life. So I'm not going to teach anymore. I'm going to just do what I'm passionate about even if that means working hourly paid jobs, living in a shitty apartment, and eating ramen for the rest of my life. I'm going to do it so I can write. 

So, Keshia, what are going to do in college?

'English Creative Writing Major with Minor in Theatre'

And that's it, I'm resolute, because I'm happy now. I feel so liberated, it's a brilliant thing, to know that you're going to live the rest of your life doing something you love.

Fin

-Keshia 

#10/100 Books in 2012: The Borrowers

Montevallo Memories

This past weekend (well, no, the weekend before that) I went with a group of friends to Montevallo, my future college. We got to participate in College Night and see the incredible tradition and beauty of the school, in short, it was an amazing experience.

I remember first hearing about Montevallo from Eric Browne my sophomore year. He told us about he and his friend doing the 'Poof' symbol at the Montevallo sign and after that I was bombarded the next three years with stories from him. His Alma Mater meant everything. I never considered it even a possibility for my college (even though it made the most perfect sense, it's a liberal arts college and my planned major is English/Creative Writing) until last year amid all the Mike/Mom drama. Ironically enough it was the college that offered me the second largest scholarship. Oh, how I wish I could go back to the night in my room where I looked at all my scholarships and turned them down. Sometimes I think if I would've just changed that one moment then things would've been fine. But let's no go into my regrets. Basically, somehow Montevallo became my premiere choice for a college when I came back to Alabama. To be honest I chose it because of my friends, and I'm sure that's a stupid reason to most people but I want to surround myself by people who I'm sure at least half like me and whom I all love. I see nothing wrong with it. And besides, I somehow realized that the only reason I ever wanted to go to Troy was for that label of  "The Sound of the South" marching band and the grandiose idea I had about it. Okay, let's not lie, Troy Marching Band is grand but when it's longed up with a line of comparable reasons, it's not grand enough, at least not for me.

But back to Montevallo, College Night is 97 year old tradition with the entire school split in half of purple and golds and compete with each other in a friendly yet extremely competitive attitude. I , of course, plan on being a purple, I'm sure, along with the small army that Eric Browne has encouraged to go there. (And also if we weren't purples then he would like be-head us or something). The part that we got to watch was the big part, the musicals written, composed, and performed by students. It was incredible and thrilling, definitely nothing I've seen before. And it's just that whole weekend, the whole sense of unity and family I felt there (with purple and gold) was overwhelming. I knew Montevallo was the only place for me. This would be home for at least the next four years of my life (now if I could have seen that in Nov. 2010, dammit!).

Not to mention that the weekend was amply provided with great friends, silly dancing, and lots of picture takings (all of which I recorded in the above video). There was also the usual teenage drama and confrontation couple with an awesome college party where I danced the night away. Oh, how you know I'm a fan of dancing the night away. PV parties overcome teenage immaturity any day.

Fin
-Keshia

#10/100 Books in 2012: The Borrowers

Imagine

"It is easy to forget how full the world is of people, full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently misimagined."

First off, above all, I would like to say how much John Green is a genius. I seriously do not know how his books aren't the popular things in the store, sure, they're popular, but if anyone paid any real sort of attention then they would know, he deserves more then popular, he deserves to have his name carved in stone.

So, this quote, it ignited something in me. It's easy to say I'm not one to blog much, as I write in my journal everyday (although, as of late, I've gone on a three day no writing binge--I feel like I'm dying, I also feel lazy as a sloth) I pretty much have the get my emotions out through words thing kind of done.  But sometimes, in those super flexes of emotion I like to blog. Sometimes, I can let my frustration out in one sentence. It helps, though probably confuses the rest of the populace. I'm trying to remember why I started this blog in the first place. The first thoughts were that I started it to show my friends how I see the world. But really, no, I hate it. When someones mentions that they've read my blog (although , believe me, the number is quite few) I run and hide. At first, I didn't realize this. Then it hit me like a dodge ball to the face,'Keshia, this is the internet! This is your life!'  And of course that's when I knew that this was to be judged. You, my dear blog, are nothing like my journal which is the portal  to all that is me. Paper is not prejudice, people are. Not that I really planned on turning you into what my journal was, you were just meant to be a watered down, more mellow version of it. But apparently, even that version of it is something that can be taken the wrong way. But even with this, with the fear that I'm erroneously wrong and people right now are reading and thinking, 'God, she's annoying' (but really, is anyone out there anyway?) I'm going to continue keeping you. And maybe present you more like a real blog, that is at least sometimes written in, and not just when I'm in a highly emotional state. Because apparently, my high emotions equals that I am bad, but somehow, and I honestly have no idea of a better way to put this; 'I don't give a fuck!'

But this quote, it brings me all back to the situation of this blog. You see, John Green grasped unto something here that pulled a chord in me and sent a note reverberating through the walls of me ( my soul? I don't know, I'm not trying to sound like I'm completely going for poetry here). Somehow, that's my view on humans. In my FB profile, I say something along the lines of why can't we just all get along as we're all just people struggling on in this world, I'm pretty sentimental sometimes. John Green, on the other hand, is a very prolific man and puts this concept into words more elegantly than me. Not exactly the same concept, though, just something of a similar sort. And of course his words could be interpreted several different ways--as the words of any great author should.

It's just, I don't know, I think we all sometimes forget. We all have these images of each other in our head, that could change from a time to time depending on our actions. But how are we ever sure that these are real. The 'right' images are just the 'misimagined'.  You could imagine someone of a horrible person when in truth they are a great person, or vise versa.  Sometimes, I believe we are right, though. A mean person is a mean person. (And as Taylor Swift would ask, 'Why you gotta be so mean?') But really, have you ever though about the views of the other person in question. There is no person who doesn't have an opinion on anything. Never let people lie to  you, it's human nature, everyone has an opinion about everything. And John Green captures that. The world is full to bursting of people. All these people who go about that day and form these imaginations about you and every other person on the planet. And yet, these are all half wrong and all half right. But yet it happens, and everyone does it, that's not many who can't deny that they don't. 

Really, I'm going for no point at all here, I have none at all. it's just incredible to me how often people forget that we all exist, and we all try to exist. 

As Josh Wheddon (another brilliant man) once phrased in a Buffy episode, "The hardest thing to do in this world is live in it". And that is true, so true. Only you, selfish person, can't think it's only you. It's everyone living in this world, knowing and changing--thinking or not thinking of others. We are a world of imagined and misimagined.

-Fin

Keshia

#8/100 Books in 2012: Miss Peregine's Home for Peculiar Children

Restless?

It's a new year and I'm supposed to be all new and fixing things. I can't think straight anymore.