use before

Inspired by Sami’s comment on our blog. And also by her post on her blog here.

I used to think that if I did a cartwheel every single day, I’d never stop being able to do a cartwheel. Even when I got really old, I’d still be able to do a cartwheel because hey, I’d done one the day before. Getting old was really intimidating when I was five. I wanted to stay young and able to do cartwheels forever, because while I didn’t necessarily love doing cartwheels all that much, not being able to do them sounded terrifying.

Of course, I assumed that I would still want to do cartwheels when I was eighty. When I was five, I didn’t understand that getting old was gradual. I thought that life was kind of like driving through a tunnel—everything stays pretty much the same until suddenly, you’re out in the blinding sunlight and you’re old.

Maybe I’m not really old enough to be writing about getting old, but there is something about the finality of age that seems like it is more terrifying to the young than to the old. When you’re five or sixteen or seventeen, eighty just seems really, really old. But by the time you’re actually eighty, you have all these amazing memories and life experiences to look back on, and you hopefully get to realize that you have lived for eighty pretty fantastic years. It's not like a tunnel, like I used to think; as far as I know, you don't wake up one day and think, Oh my gosh, I'm old. You're simply yourself, just like you were yourself the day before. Everything looks the same, even though it's just a little bit different.

Everything has an expiration date. I don’t necessarily want to be able to do a cartwheel when I’m eighty anymore. Instead, I want all kinds of idealistic, romantic things to have happened, and I want to still believe that real life can be magical if I let it. Maybe I’ll want something different for my future self in five or ten years, but even though I know that my ideas and the way that I see the world right now all have an expiration date, they’re a permanent part of who I am right now. If the way that I see life changes even a tiny bit every day, then things will never stay exactly the same. Change makes life fascinating, and so do expiration dates.

I wrote a thing.

                The signs are all the same—“Open” in big red letters, wrapped in blue neon. Some flash; others don’t. It’s raining, and the sidewalks are nearly empty save for a few soggy pedestrians with black hoods pulled snugly over their heads and arms wrapped tight around their bodies. It’s raining, and it’s not at all romantic. It’s nothing like Gil Pender’s Paris in the rain, where lovers walk intertwined in the mist—it’s nothing like that at all. There is no romance here. “Paris in the rain”—say it out loud. It slips out sibilantly—an elegant, mist-dusted, stone-paved city. Now say “Albany in the rain.” It’s clumsy-sounding: a muddy little town with teens in hoodies huddled underneath awnings, and empty sidewalks with gutters that always flood.

That’s all it is, really; the sidewalks empty and the glow of headlights hangs in the mist for a moment, and that’s Albany in the rain. The mystique expected of a city in the rain is not here. Is it the rain that’s deficient, or the town? I’ve been trained to believe that Paris in the rain is romantic—is it because once upon a time Fitzgerald and Antoinette and Hemingway once walked its streets? Is it because we imagine the Parisians do not mind if they get a little wet and embrace the rain instead of shrinking beneath umbrellas and big black coats? Maybe it is all of these things and more. Perhaps there is a love for the beauty of gray skies and the shimmer of raindrop-shining streets that Albany doesn't understand. Perhaps the glittering expanse of the Eiffel Tower and the quiet reassurance of the stone-paved streets lend an aura of elegance to Paris in any weather that Albany can never hope to match.

                But Albany in the rain is home. Albany in the rain is tilting my head back so that all I see are endless gray skies until I’m blinded by the raindrops. It’s the drumming of the rain on my umbrella. It’s the misty glow of streetlamps and the soggy crystalline leaves dangling from the trees. It's rain in June and summer sun in February. It’s elegant in its own way, and though it will never equal the grandeur of Paris, it’s home. 

15 Paragraphs: An Idea Shamelessly Stolen from Ross Honors.

So I think blogging is one of the coolest things ever because you get to talk about whatever you want for as long as you want to, and people won’t get annoyed with you the way they will if you try that in real life. They’ve always got the option to stop reading your blog. I mean, I guess people could technically walk away from you if you decided to ramble about whatever you wanted for a really long time, but that would be rude and might not end very well.

I really hate it when a bunch of people try to talk at the same time. Everyone just gets annoyed because no one can understand what anyone else is saying. Plus, that usually happens when we’re working on a group project or something, and it’s pretty much impossible to be happy during a group project unless you really, really love your group members. And even then it’s a struggle.

I don’t eat unmelted cheese. Is that weird? Yeah, that’s pretty weird. Seriously though, there’s something about melting cheese that makes it taste better. It’s like magic.

I always find it really funny that people call the week before finals Dead Week, because it’s usually one of the most stressful weeks of the year.

So I just finished writing a kids’ book about thermoregulation for AP Bio. It rhymed. Seriously, how do you rhyme with vasoconstriction?

I get really sad when I shop online because there’s so much cool stuff out there and I’m never going to convince myself to buy it all because honestly, no one needs fifteen different kinds of black ink pens.

Waiting in line is supposed to be frustrating because it’s time that you could spend doing something actually productive, but I kind of like it. No one expects you to do anything or to be profound or to analyze poetry; you can just people-watch or look at food or something like that. People-watching is really fun, even though that sounds a little creepy. You can make up stories about them, like Tim O’Brien did in The Things They Carried. Although, I guess the guy that he made up a story about was dead. Same idea, though.

I love photography so much. Nobody questions a person with a big black camera. They just kind of assume “Oh, they’re supposed to be wandering around taking pictures!” and let you get on with your thing. At least, that’s what I always assume when I see a photographer.

High heels are really cool. They’re like free height. And honestly, walking in them isn’t that great, but you probably shouldn’t be wearing heels if you’re going to have to walk a lot. Unless you’re one of those people who’s really good at walking in heels. I’m jealous of you.

 I feel like everyone’s got an inner hipster somewhere. I mean, people spend their entire lives trying to stand out from the crowd—school, college applications, job interviews, and the like all require you to be unique and memorable. Everyone loves being remembered. And similarly, everyone loves being the first person to introduce a trend. That just makes you feel like a winner. Everyone loves feeling like a winner. (Seriously though. “I listened to Imagine Dragons before they were cool!” That’s always a nice feeling. Although, I guess “I listen to Brokenhearted Narwhals, so I’m cool” is a slightly different sentiment. The coolness comes from the obscurity, instead of the fame.)

I hate wearing sunscreen, but I’d hate getting skin cancer even more.

I have a weird fascination with Sharpies. I think it’s because my mom wouldn’t let me use them when I was a kid because she was afraid I’d draw on the walls or something, so now every time I use a Sharpie it’s like letting my inner five-year-old loose again.

In thirteen years, I’m going to be thirty. I feel like “old” is always a code for “older than I am right now.” I definitely remember being eight or nine years old and thinking that Liesl from Sound of Music was really, really old. But now I’m realizing that she was younger than I was—not that old at all.

The best part about Spanish class is speaking Spanish. Do you ever wish that you could wake up and be fluent in another language? I would love that so much. I guess that would make learning a foreign language less special, though, because everyone would be able to speak every language and we wouldn’t even need to have the thousands of languages that currently exist. We could have one language that everyone would speak, and you wouldn’t have to worry about accidentally insulting someone while stumbling through your limited vocabulary in an attempt to find the nearest ATM while on vacation in Greece. Wouldn’t that be boring?

Writing is really just stringing words together in sentences; sometimes you use different words and different lengths of sentences, but that’s about it. The entire English language is just a bunch of letters thrown together in different combinations, but all those combinations are so beautiful and so unique that it’s kind of ridiculous.

It's been a long time since I actually posted anything, hasn't it.

The clouds looked like they had been painted by the hand of God against the canvas of the clear blue sky. It was one of those landscapes too alive to photograph or even dream of recreating, and so they simply sat and looked. They took a moment to pretend that they were not sitting on the burning hot sweat-soaked spit-ridden artificial turf of a middle school soccer field, and that the sharp scent of rubber was not filling the air. Instead, they told themselves, they were at the marina, staring in silent awe at a surreally beautiful sky.
"Sometimes I wish we could live forever," murmured the girl.
"But then this wouldn't be the same."
"This?"
The boy motioned vaguely with his hands. "You know, you, me, us; this."
"Wouldn't it be even better if we could be together forever?"
"Maybe. It wouldn't be the same, though."
They were silent for a moment. A cloud swept across the sun, covering and uncovering it so that the pair squinted for a second in the sudden light.
"There's something about knowing that we've got the rest of our lives to be here. Like, it's not forever, but it's long enough that it seems like it," he continued.
"Wouldn't forever be even better, then?"
"It just wouldn't be the same. The ending is what makes it special."

Sunshine

So I basically wrote this straight through, and it hasn't been edited. If it makes absolutely no sense, then that's probably why. Enjoy :)

Do tell me if this story makes sense to you.

I have no title. Honestly, I have no idea where this came from. Do let me know if it makes some kind of sense to you. :)
***
Every night, he is young and fresh and whole. His mind is teeming with ideas, his pen flying across the parchment scroll on the desk. Once upon a time...

Every night he writes story upon story, until it seems that he must have written every story that ever was or ever will be. Yet his pen flies across the parchment unceasingly--it is always parchment, he does not know why it is always parchment that he uses--and from the depths of his being come new stories. There are princesses and dragons, there are first loves and first dates, there are gangsters and scientists and superheroes. Every story is different.

His steel tower is cold, almost sterile in the darkness. A lamp sits on his desk, and the moon shines bright and cold through the window facing the east. He pauses his writing for a moment to admire the window. It is really a lovely window, he muses to himself; it is made of cut glass and prisms, and shadowy rainbows dance across the floor of his steel tower. Prisms hang from the ceiling as well, and rainbows decorate the walls when the moon is not covered by clouds. He decided that his next story will have rainbows in it somewhere, and his pen dances across the page. The ink is thick and black, and it never smears. He wonders why it never smears.

He writes until the darkest hour--the moments just before dawn, when the moon is fading and the sun has yet to rise. The prisms hanging from the ceiling no longer cast their ghostly rainbows, the lamp at his desk dims of its own accord. His pen slows and the words cease to dance across the parchment--it is always parchment, why is it always old-fashioned parchment when everything else is shining and new--and the moon fades away as the sun slowly rises.

In that moment he remembers why it is that his pen has stilled, and the ornate window of prisms on the east wall is suddenly blindingly bright. It is like looking straight into the sun, only he cannot tear his gaze away from the terrible beauty as the window shines with the brilliance of a hundred thousand stars. The parchment at his left hand is warm, warm, warm, and all of a sudden it is bursting into flames because everything is too bright for it to bear.

And he is on fire too, he realizes, and he remembers again that every morning when the sun rises he must die again, and his stories must die with him, because somewhere, they have already been told. He is the keeper of dreams, and so he must rise to write again, for without him, there would be no stories. For now, though, he must burn as he and his stories are consumed by the flames. He knows that will rise from the ashes again like a phoenix at dusk, young and fresh and whole, his mind teeming with ideas. Every night, he knows, he writes every story that ever was.

Matcha

Matcha is a type of green tea; it's somewhat bitter once brewed.
******
You're supposed to eat something sweet before you drink matcha, so that the sweetness can fill your mouth before it is washed away by the bitterness of the tea. Not everyone does it this way, though. My grandmother likes the candy and the matcha together, so that the tea is always just a little sweet. I prefer the subtle bitterness of the tea by itself. After a while, though, when there is just a bit of tea left in my cup, I have something sweet anyways. Before the last sip of matcha, I wait as a tiny Japanese candy melts in my mouth, filling it with sweetness. For this last sip, I will drink tea as my grandmother does. Though we are separated by seventy years, a world war, and a lifetime of hardships, this one thing we can share.

My last sip of tea is bittersweet.