Haleigh

When a writer poses that last-resort but all-too-common question, “What should I write about?”, she can generally expect three kinds of responses from three kinds of people.

1. The Unintentionally Narcissist Friend: “Write about me!” 
2. The Extremely Unhelpful Friend: “idk, like something”
3. The Friend Who Spends Too Long Pondering Everything: “Write about how the ethics of raising and killing free-range chickens can be applied as a metaphor to war.”

I suppose it’s to be expected. Who can really rise to the sudden demand of inspiration? Who can truly fulfill the role of Writer’s Muse at a moment’s notice?

Then there’s my friend Haleigh. Also known in previous years as my blog-stalker—or if you were a keen observer of that one speed poetry post two years ago, you may have glimpsed her lurking beneath the charismatic Sirenia Featherheart’s captivating work.

Haleigh has been probably the single best prompter I’ve encountered so far. Where most people clam up and supply stupid ideas, she’s always ready to supply suggestions that are specific enough to inspire, but still vague enough to take their own form in any writer’s hands. In addition, Haleigh’s prompts tend to have the added benefit of humor, which I am sometimes prone to neglect. I’ll forget that poems can be funny, and then Haleigh comes along and tells me to write a clerihew, or a poem based on the lines “weeping, wailing / (do you care for parasailing?)”, or on the name Francesca.

So this is just to give credit where credit is due. Tonight Haleigh resorted to being the Unintentionally Narcissist Friend, but since the unintentional part was very sincere, and since she actually totally deserves a whole blog post about her, I decided to take it.

Thanks for everything, Haleigh. Let’s speed-poem again sometime soon.

(Note: This post has focused on Haleigh’s role as inspiration in my writing, but it should also be mentioned that she edits all my papers like a boss, and can absolutely knock your socks off in an iambic pentameter competition if you are foolish enough to challenge her. Girl’s cool. Don’t mess with her.)

Speed Poetry

As midnight drew nigh, two poets turned face-to-face and tested their hands and skill. Whizzing back and forth like two-minute bullets, they searched their souls and let words of love and pain spill unfettered onto the paper (or screen, as it were).

Sirenia Featherheart:
I look at you
and my pancreas just weeps
and hurts
because all of the insulin
in the world will never be able
to break down
your sweetness.
And so,
I cannot take it in.
It clogs my arteries like dead rivers.*
And I am so sad.


thoughts of. rivers of. tears:
In the middle of the day
at 12:03 P-M, I think of you
and you are like sugar in my heart
making me happy
like I was never happy before
Will you love me back
because at 12:03 P-M, I love you.


Sirenia Featherheart:
Sometimes I wait for you to
whiz by me
like a freight train
with wheels
and love for me like a big silver bullet on a steel track.
My suitcase
is by my foot.
My foot
is by my face
because
every time I see you
speeding by,
all I can think to do is stuff
my foot
in
my face
and wish that you
would slow down
just a little bit
for me,
just a little for me.

Dang,
I missed the train again.


thoughts of. rivers of. tears:
I wish you would look at me
the way you look at your dog
and your pet turtle
and your dinner
and even
her
but you will never feel
this same way for
me
because your dog is loud
and your turtle swims
and you are hungry
and she is your girlfriend
and I will never be.

--
* Phrase "dead rivers" © Sirenia Featherheart 2013.

Almost Forgotten

Worn wooden table. Chairs scraping against the floor, children's chattering, laughter. Hot chocolate in old mugs, cupped by little hands.

We made the hot chocolate with microwaved milk, instead of using boiled water like I did at home.
It was never quite as hot, but always warmer on my insides as we sat there, cheeks pink from the snow outside and all of us thinking hard what to do next.

Tents, or houses, made from blankets. Some of them were so heavy, we had to use our schoolbooks to pin them to the couches. There was barely enough room underneath for even our smaller bodies to crawl, especially after we padded the carpet with cushions. It was okay because we were being Cats, and cats don't stand up inside anyway.

Sometimes we made hot chocolate with only half the powdered packet, and ate the other half, which I never did at home. It stuck to my teeth in little gooey lumps, and I thought that was funny.

When we got tired of talking, we lay down and tried to read in the dimness of those quilted shadows. Eventually we took the books and migrated back upstairs to where the winter sunlight poured in through the window.

Sometimes we didn't make hot chocolate at all. If we had played long enough, if the house was warm enough that we didn't care about the cold, we had cups of apple juice instead.

We asked to sleep under those blanket-houses, so we could keep playing even in our dreams, but ended up in proper beds anyway.

Still it was the roads that

caught our attention and

my recollection: there, 

reality blurred, and we found 

a doorway into our own world.

On the roads, we were

adventurers, explorers,

or warriors as we wished--

what exciting journeys

to remember! and how

simple to forget the quiet

comfort of the house that

waited, waited patiently

until the weary travelers

returned.

Typical Conversations #11 and #12

DAN: (screeches from bathroom) There's a spider in here!!
MOM: Haha. Did you hear that? He has to deal with a spider.
DAD: Let's see what he does.
ME: (yelling from other room) SQUISH IT WITH YOUR FINGERS.
DAN: (another screech, louder)

Silence.

DAN: (coming out of bathroom) I emerge victorious.

~•~

STEVIE: Can I have a knife?
ME: Here.
STEVIE: Thanks. I was just thinking, like, I have this pork chop and no knife...
ME: You could have just torn at it with your teeth.
MOM: Yeah, just hold it in your hands and go nawnawnawr. Like eating a squirrel.

i do not only listen to asian music

Here is a snippet from a chat that took place a while ago:

Stevie: you officially need to
listen to more English music.
lol

...

LOL INDEED BECAUSE I LISTEN TO A LOT OF ENGLISH MUSIC.

Just in case you don't believe me, I'm henceforth beginning a series of blog posts called Davina's Favorite English-Speaking Artists (DFESA). If all goes well, I'll post every week--maybe every Thursday--highlighting one of my favorite English-speaking artists, and you will see* that I do not, in fact, only listen to Asian music.

*or hear

Thoughts on Harvey

[My goodness, the performances of Harvey were about two weeks ago already. I am terrible at posting in a timely manner. Anyway.]

Harvey is my favorite drama club production as of yet. Perhaps that's a self-focused comment, as this has been the largest role I've had so far, but I think it has to do with more than that.
There were a lot of things that made this year's play so memorable:
There was the influx of ultra-talented newcomers--among them Emmie, Liz, and Peri, who all did wonderfully in the play. There was the excitement of performing on our very own stage, and the unexpected ability to begin practicing onstage as early as the beginning of February. There was the stress-relieving presence of an actual stage crew. And much, much more, of course.
Speaking personally, I think that working on Harvey with this year's drama club really challenged me and pushed me forward. I definitely grew as an actress in order to step into this major role, and I probably grew a little bit as an artist when I took on the project of creating the Elwood-Harvey portrait. (I guess I can say that I know how to use oil pastels now.) This year, Mrs. Z twice called me out as an example for the rest of the club, which was definitely a pleasant surprise. Agonizing--albeit mentally and silently--over practical things like keeping my face and body turned out to the audience had a very rewarding result: they eventually became mostly unconscious, and I was able to focus more on delivering my lines with the proper emotion, facial expressions, and gestures.
Acting, in its essence, is sort of remarkable. It is taking on the character of someone else in order to tell a story. And to become this other person, you must change your appearance, change your mannerisms, and sometimes even change your voice. You must study the things they say to find out how they say it, and you must study their words so well that you know how they'll react to anything another person says--not with the words you've been given in the script, but with actions you have to come up with on your own.
It's not all about the laughs you get, though a laughing audience is probably one of my favorite things in the world. It's also not about the comments you get later about what a great job you did, though those are high up there in my list of favorites too. It is about the story you're telling through your character. I only came to this realization this year because of our two performances instead of one. Here's how it came about:
On the first night, there were more people in the audience that I didn't know than ones I did. On the second night, my family was there, along with like twenty people from church. My performance was more real on the first night (not that the second night was necessarily worse, just less real). I didn't expect it to be. If anything, I expected to be more into the play because all these people I knew were watching, but it didn't turn out that way.
I then realized that on the second night, I was more focused on what my family and friends were thinking than on what Veta was thinking. Thus, I became less Veta and more Davina-playing-Veta. It's a very subtle difference. I don't even know if it was visible, but I definitely felt it. I think it had to do with knowing that the people laughing on the first night were laughing because Veta was funny and I was playing her well, as opposed to the uncertainty of whether people on the second night were laughing because of that, or because it was funny to see Davina with lots of make-up-wrinkles, flailing with a purse.
Or maybe it doesn't matter so much. I don't really know.
I'm not very experienced an actress (I haven't even cried fake tears yet), and I assuredly haven't mastered the art, but Harvey showed me something new about myself. I now love performing. Love love love. It has this addictive quality that I sort of felt before, but never as strongly as the moment I stepped onto the stage on Friday night, March 2nd with my long blue dress and like thirty bobby pins in my hair, and said,

"Yes, dear?"

"Telephone."

"Oh no, dear, not with all of them in there..."

2-24-12 Miscellaneous

Because I am terribly lazy.

• The precalc test today was not worthy of the worry I gave it beforehand (thank you, Lord!). I did find, however, that I am terrible at multiplying beyond the twelves without a calculator. It took me a good minute to figure out 13 • 13. Sigh. 

• We have begun to play the evolutionary-model games in Bio. "The Finches of Candyland" was a lot of fun. I was a chopstick finch and had to move various pieces of candy from one table to a cup on another. M&Ms are hard, Nerds are ridiculously difficult, and gummy bears are the best. They are just so delightfully squishy that I could grab them even when they made me use the chopsticks with my left hand. Looking forward to playing GlumpGlumpTime (my group's game) on Monday.

• I spontaneously developed a rivalry with Marina while playing Frisbee, which entailed a lot of yelling "NO!" and half-tackling. If I can't catch it, neither can she!! (That was fun.)

• The difference between shame and guilt: I believe guilt is a state of being--as in, you are innocent or guilty of doing something wrong. Shame is an internal feeling that can be independent of real guilt. For instance, you could do something and be guilty, but feel no shame for it; you could also be wrongly accused of something and still feel shame for the perceived guilt. It turns out that many people disagree with my definition. Thoughts?

• Tim has this awesome connect-the-dots coloring book of legendary/mythical creatures, and he let me use it. I spent all of last period connecting 459 dots to make a Pegasus. I NEED ONE OF THESE BOOKS. 

• Alix and the rest of my robotics team departed for Williamsport this afternoon, as there's a competition there tomorrow. (I couldn't go because I'd already signed up for the Praying Life conference.) Best of luck to them!

• I have been working hard on the Elwood-Harvey portrait, and I'm almost done. All you drama peeps will see the finished product on Monday. The rest of you will have to wait until the play. 

 "This portrait over your mantel. Who painted it?"

"Um...me." << Haha. As if I'd actually say that.

• A very small spider descended from the ceiling on an invisible thread. Nathan and I blew it back and forth a few times before killing it. Playing catch with miniscule spiders? New favorite game. 

• It's been gloomy or raining all day. I really enjoy these kinds of days once in a while, mostly because the sky becomes this lovely grey color, and all the tree branches are outlined so strikingly against it in black. Also, rain = mud = fun. 

what an exciting day!

Emmie's coming over!
We are planning to
1) watch the Wonder Girls Movie
b) watch videos of the USP talent show from her camera
iii) do whatever else fills up the hours from 10am till Cross Culture time

:D

Cows

Emmie mentioned yesterday that I had sent her a really long sentence about cows once, so I went through my email to find it today.

The results of my search (with a few minor grammar corrections):

Now, as I am to write the longest sentence I can possibly craft regarding the subject of certain animals of the bovine family--namely, cows--it will no doubt have some mention of every characteristic I can think of that is unique to (or not necessarily unique to; it is quite acceptable for animals of different species to share certain aspects with each other, such as the presence of teeth, skin, and coloring, as it in no way proclaims them as exactly the same species) these large-eyed, generally mild creatures: large eyes naturally being one of these characteristics, cows are also found to have horns on occasion (usually males possess these, though in certain varieties females may have them as well), are large in bulk when full-grown, have split hooves, come in a wealth of different colors--including brown, black, white, tan, and the classic black-and-white--and quite possibly their most well-known feature: the ability of the females to produce, with relative regularity, a white creamy substance known as milk, originally intended for the nutrition of their own offspring, but in modern times harvested widely for human consumption.

  
[I now wonder why I spent all the effort it must have taken to write that.]

How My Day Went

(In non-chronological bullet points, as I am too lazy for actual narration.)

• I have this. I wore it to school today. This miraculously saved me from getting scolded when I was a little late to math class, because Mr. Sommar likes his daughter and that was her Halloween costume. Apparently she called herself "Hamster Boy."
• There was a lockdown drill today during AP Bio. It was sort of cool, although the prolonged silence as we sat there did amplify the sounds of stomachs growling or saliva gurgling in throats as people swallowed. I was also still in my hamster thing. The tail makes it uncomfortable to sit on the floor.
• I forgot to print out an assignment for AP Language and didn't have it on my flash drive, so I heroically re-did the whole thing during second period, and then at the end of the period something went wrong with the saving of the file...and it got deleted. I was devastated. (Good thing Mrs. Z is a wonderfully reasonable teacher who said I could send it to her when I got home for credit.)
• Emmie made an amazing birthday gift for me. Much thanks to her and to everyone else who contributed to the video! I love you all ^^
• I am going to miss Mrs. Farr so much, I just... 

 

• Drama club Act III memorization deadline was today. It went quite swimmingly. I do enjoy the way my character behaves herself in this act. She rambles about the pooka, whines about her lack of social life, gets annoyed at the cab driver, then goes hysterical (again)--during which I get to yell at Alix to shut up :D That being said, though, I started laughing really hard about three-quarters of the way through the rehearsal and couldn't restrain myself for anything funny after that.
• I still have a bunch of Chinese work to do. Urk.

Absurdedly Paradoxical Pieces

These things. I forgot they existed. Then I looked through my Google Docs again, and I found a compilation of them by various authors, myself largely included. What are they? I don't even really know.
The absurdedly paradoxical piece, or the app, was a form of writing that was pioneered by my friend Asher quite a while ago, then taken over by my other friend Bethany and me and developed from there. Basically they were long paragraphs of carefully-crafted nonsense--as in, the sentences made sense grammatically, but only grammatically. Other than that, the definition is very fluid. Much of the time there were not many paradoxes within them at all (though perhaps some oxymorons), and the only thing absurd about mine is how proud I was of them.
Here is a sample of one of my apps:

"But does two plus two truly equal four? Think about it: put a cloud and a ninja together with a fairy and a rainbow (that's two plus two) and what do you get? Only the fairy, which is one, because the cloud could not dance, the ninja could not ripple, and the rainbow could not sing. Therefore, two plus two equals nine."

I am not sure so much about Bethany's, but almost every sentence in each of my apps was deeply symbolic, its surface-content linked back to the real content by about three or four stops on the thought-train so that only I could know what I was writing about. It was totally brilliant, or at least I thought it was. The problem is that now I can't remember half the things I meant to say, and my own words confuse me.
Anyway, my own path of developing apps turned into a strange method of journalling my thoughts and feelings--cryptic narrative poetic prose, of sorts. I will share one of my later apps with you: one that was inspired by something I don't quite remember, that is kind of prettily written (and slightly emo), and that certainly mixes fiction with my real sentiments. The only part I fully understand is the ending, and I do like the ending.

The flaming red mingled with deep blue was crinkled, deformed in my hands, stiff and stubborn in its misshapen state, the yarn limp and torn across my shaking arm. The firm border was gone, leaving frail white cardboard folded, showing jaggedly beneath the ragged, frayed cloth.
It got wet. Why? It rained. Why?
You never wore it much, anyway.
What does that matter? What does that have to do with my friend who flew across the world and brought that back for me? And so I lowered my head, trembling upon my knees, and wept, for the old memories now tinged with grief, for the death of any new ones before they happened.
Then I looked inside, and wondered, where am I going? Tears dropped from my eyes, stars beneath the rain, burning on their paths down my face, leaving streaks of fire. Were the spirits free? The answer is blowing through the golden meadows, a tossing ocean of melody within my dark, dark hair. Shall I run, or wait, so I may fly? My wings are broken because I tried to catch you--I implore you, don't speak of your shattered dreams to me. Don't you know I know, and hurt for it? I wonder why I wonder and wander, everywhere, nowhere, knowing but never speaking. And I wished I could turn to liquid, my movements flowing, fluid, a dancing river leaping over rocks and trees. Why?
Words are beautiful, but only because of the meaning they contain. And they can only hold so much. So I found another way to show what I meant, but then I saw those were words, too, and wept again, because what I want to say I cannot say nor show. Only see. But how can I see it if I cannot say what it is, to tell you? And so the years went by, and the mountains were swept to the sea, crumbling dust tumbling over the dry, dry sand. My wings were still broken, never healing, the pain never leaving.
Who could hold me gently enough to keep me, to bring me back to life, to show me beauty greater than words?
The One, He picked me up, filling the hole in my heart, and said to me, you're not guilty anymore. No more filth clings to you. I have healed you; your brokenness is gone. I set you free, you are no longer captive. You will find the greatest beauty in my love and new life in my death.
Never forget. Now you are Mine, and I will never let you fall from my gentle hand.
I wept the third time, for joy and beauty and all things good, for they came from Him, and I am His. My wings will grow back soon.
Until then I can run like the river, all the way home. 

What Be This I Doth Not Even--

This is Alix. She is my friend, like Emmie.
Alix is possibly the most awesome of us all.
(Well, in my opinion, she is.)

The first thing that makes Alix awesome is her name. It sounds just like the common name Alex, but it is spelled with an ‘i’. You might think that okay, it’s a variant of “Alex”, but it’s not.
It’s actually the French form of “Alice”. How cool is that?

Don’t try the “genius” trick with Alix, either. You’ll be telling the truth again.

Alix knows everything.
Really.
Sometimes I think that I should get annoyed at her for acting like a know-it-all, but then I realize that she actually does know it all. Or most of it, at least.

Alix says the most amazing things out of nowhere.
One time she was telling me about when she went hunting and suddenly said, “Seriously, the wind chill was lower than the IQ of an intoxicated banana.”
I would never be able to draw such a creative metaphor in the course of regular conversation.








Alix owns everything.
Alix comes up with the coolest costumes.
Alix has mad dance skills.
Alix is really good at art.
Alix is ridiculously smart, especially in areas pertaining to math.
Alix is a masterful writer.
Alix also has a likable personality.

The world is not fair.



...Oh well, who cares?

Nerdy pun picture for Alix :D

Blahghdlsalurge

This is Emmie. 
She is my friend. 
Emmie is a lot of fun.
(She is a lot like me.)

Emmie will do very interesting things, like flap. It is her natural response to everything. There is a happy-flap, a distraught-flap, an angry-flap, a frustrated-flap, a rapper-flap, and many others that have yet to be properly classified.
They are all different.
We counted once during Biology; she flapped 70 times in one hour.
70 flaps in 1 hour is more than 1 flap per 1 minute.
Emmie likes to flap. 
Emmie also makes interesting sounds. Some people complain that they don’t understand her when she replaces words with her sounds, but those people are obviously not trying hard enough. It is possible to know exactly what Emmie means.
“Buack” is one of Emmie’s sounds. 
Emmie and I have had entire conversations without actually speaking real words.
(This, of course, is possible because much of human communication is/can be expressed through means other than words, such as intonations and gestures.)

You may be tempted at times to sarcastically call Emmie “a genius”. There is one problem with doing such a thing.
If you call Emmie a genius, you are speaking the truth. 
By age, Emmie is supposed to be three grades lower than she is. But she is three grades higher than she is supposed to be, and has absolutely no problem keeping up with the intellectual work. In fact, she excels in school. It sometimes makes the rest of us feel dumb.
(Which may give us cause to wonder: why is our education system based on age rather than intellectual ability? It seems rather absurd to simply assume that all those of the same age group have the same mental capacity.)
Emmie is a genius.

Emmie is funny.
I like Emmie.

Emmie is my friend. (This needs to be said again, in more languages.)
엠미가 내 친구예요.
Emmie是我的朋友。
I really like Emmie.
내가 엠미는 너무 너무 너무 좋아해요!
我很喜欢Emmie!


EVERYBODY’S GOT A LLAMA-BUFFALO
MINE IS FAST BUT YOURS IS SLOW
CEBUUUU
SARANGHAE
CEBUUUU
JOHAHAE
CEBU.

:D This is a pretzel for Emmie.