Book Update, IV

This is so hard on my mind.

I don't know why, but when I work on Carlos' story, I feel very tired after I finally decide to go to bed--and it's not because it's 1:30. I feel spent.

I decided that what keeps me up eight out of seven nights a week is some form of insomnia. My mind just won't stop, and I wish it did. It only gets worse after I work on this book.

Summer's almost here, hopefully I'll have more time/less effects writing then.

The Prologue and the first two chapters are finished.

From the Very Interesting Mind of Hunter S. Thompson

Human beings are the only creatures on Earth that claim a god and the only living thing that behaves like it hasn't got one.

Ladies and Gentlemen . . .

The class I loved the best this year is also the class I have my lowest grade on.

Dr. Fitts has managed to deliver a class in which I truly have a love/hate relationship with. Modern Western Literature has me drooling over the poems and essays and stories while at the same time wishing for death when writing essays. Let me explain.

After my brain is blown reading Keats or Yeats or Lorca or Borowski, I read it again when I get back to my room. I can't help but feeling small and insignificant against the amazing minds behind these works. Many of these writers only fuel my wish to change the world--for example, Lorca was one of Che Guevara's main insipirations. Now I don't want to create a bloody revolution, but that is another story. . .

Part of the class assignments is writing an essay over one of the authors. This is where it gets hairy: you have to have the essay exactly like Dr. Fitts wants it--it's almost as if he is the one writing the essay for you. Which I don't like. Which is probably why I have only got one "A" essay this semester.

Regardless of how much I love/hate the class, what kept me from dropping the class was the sheer beauty of the literature I read. Some of it was downright shocking. Keats' odes, Yeats' Easter 1916, Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, Flaubert's Un Coeur Simple, and many many more all stayed deeply rooted in my mind.

The latest thing we read was Tadeusz Borowski's Ladies and Gentlemen, to the Gas Chamber. I had already told myself I was not going to read any more Holocaust books--I had read too many. By the time I was in 8th grade I had already read the likes of Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel's Night, and I felt like my humanity was scarred enough. But this work by Borowski is written in an objective journalistic style, and all long I could not take my eyes off of it. I am pained.

I cannot wait to get out on the field and report and awaken some consciences. I feel like humans would be more understanding and more peaceful if we only stopped to understand the people that are affected by our decisions. Just stop . . . and understand. 

Bucket List

I was talking to my friend Rod about. . . everything really. Somehow, after starting a debate whether Canadian cold was better than Texas heat, we ended up talking about our plans for the future and joining peace corps and other volunteer organizations. It was then that it hit us that even though our plans might condemn us to eternal poverty, it would all be worth it. Definitely.

And so it came to pass that we knew we had to make our Bucket List. So much to do . . . so much.

Here is my current Bucket List:

1. Finish Homework, do bucket list later.

Reflection

 My window is the best. I have gotten an awesome sunset almost every day for 8 months. I love looking out from my seventh-floor window at night: the city flickers and simmers and the occasional cloud turns the color from whatever lights are under it. I lean my lazyboy back and look outside. The clocktower shines bright, and I will confess I have sometimes mistaken it for the moon.

Everytime I stop to look out, I become pensive.

Lately, I've been thinking about how this school year went. There were times when everything went amazing, and then those times when the situation looked pretty sad. Still, did I accomplish everything I set out to do at the beginning of the school year?

Maybe not.

Did I do my absolute best in everything?

Absolutely not. And that is sad.

Still, I'm happy with how this school year went. I made great friendships, learned an amazing amount of information, got published twice, started a book and read 9.

Next year I will not have my seventh-floor window. I will miss the sunsets, the nights, the panoramic view of snows. Even so, the view will always stay with me.

From the Desk of Walter Benjamin

The storyteller. . .is the man who could let the wick of his life be consumed completely by the gentle flame of his story.