Week Three: The Road Less Traveled By…

First off, please excuse me not posting this earlier.

Downton Abbey was on and I’m a huge procrastinator.

By the use of my title, on might think this week I’m writing about the path I chose in life or being an outcast, etc. But, what I’m thankful for this week is, in fact, poetry.

At my school, I am part of the Creative Writing Club, which led me to an amazing experience that I am to be apart of called OC Ryse. OC Ryse is a slam-peotry contest for teens held at the OCSA school in Santa Ana. What you do is on the OCSA website they have a poem bank of these poems that you write a response to. Your response poem can relate to the original poem by rhythm, by storyline, by context, anything! It’s on March 7th and I am both unimaginably ecstatic and horribly nauseous. What happens for me is I get excited about doing things I feel passionate for but when it comes time for me to get up in front of a crowd and recite two poems I had to memorize, I will feel like I’m going to puke. Hopefully that doesn’t happen. If it does, it better go viral on YouTube.

For the past couple of weeks since the end of winter break, a small group of my fellow creative writers and I have been meeting after school to practice for this event. We’ve done small exercises, read poems we likes, share poems we wrote, and talked about the rules of the competition.

This past Friday, we spent our time exploring the poem bank and finding ones that we felt connected to or that we liked. The one I chose is called The Sun by Mary Oliver, which is so beautiful and I would explain why I related to it so well but it’s kinda personal and I don’t really want to share my personal information to the entire world.

We went around to each student in the group and they would read the poem they liked and then explain why they felt connected to it. One student read a poem called The Lanyard by Billy Collins, which I will type in the space below:

“The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano, from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor, when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly— a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them, but that did not keep me from crossing strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts, and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,

laid cold face-cloths on my forehead, and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard. Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered, and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.”

Everyone in the group felt a connection to that poem. Everyone.

The thing about poetry is, it really brings us together. I had never realized that before.

Poetry says things that we can’t explain or that we’re too afraid to say. Like song lyrics, except your voice isn’t moving up and down.

After I got home from school, I spent my Friday night, Saturday, and part of Sunday binge watching Button Poetry on Youtube and watching different teen slam poetry events.

When I would listen to the audience, I could hear them snapping. I could hear them MMMing and AHHHing over beautiful words spilling of these peoples’ tongues.

And I just loved it.

I love how someone can make a lesson so powerful with just some imagery and a few metaphors. Its amazing. These people put their whole soul into telling you these important life lessons. Most of the lessons, for me, I had never had to learn or have never had anything of the sort happen to me. But the way these poets described a moment, an hour, a year, it felt like I had lived their life personally. It gave me a completely new perspective.

So this week, I tip my hat to poetry. For always saying the right thing when no words are able to leave my mouth.

xoxo,

Hannah

P.S: Yes, I wrote the poem that is the featured image. Yes, I know it’s kinda good. And yes, it is perfectly okay for me to be proud of it. Now read it

Week Two: Do Ra Me Fa So La Ti Do!

Wow.

This week was quite possibly the most stressful yet.

Allow me to shed some light on this subject:

In the arts program that I am apart of at my high school, we got the option to sign up for an alternate physical education class where we do lots of dance and theater type things. Throughout the year we have to do several mini projects and tests. One of the many projects, was a solo. Each person, no matter how good or bad they were at singing, had to get up and sing a song in front of the whole class.

Doesn’t sound that bad right? You just have to get up and sing a few verses and that’s it.

Oh no honey, this was one of the scariest things I’ve ever had to go through.

Monday came along, and everyone was a nervous wreck. People were practicing in the hallways, attempting to breath deep, and having small panic attacks with their friends. As for me, I was suffering in silence.

Our teacher, Mrs. Casey, came out into the hallway and called us in; our soon demise awaiting us inside the stuffy dance room. We all sat down, everyone chatting amongst each other. Mrs. Casey asked if there were any volunteers, and several people raised their hands. I was extremely surprised that someone could have that much courage to volunteer to go first.

To me, courage isn’t going and beating someone up in school, it’s getting up in front of an entire class and singing a freaking hard song, with confidence. That’s amazing!

And the best part about these people getting up to go first, was that even though they were cringe-worthy horrible, no one laughed at them. Not a single person made fun of the people who went up who were not superstar singers.

Everyone just cheered. They cheered as if that person had just performed like Susan Boyle.

That just blew me away. As a teenager, I am surrounded by my fellow teens who feed off of gossip and being such horrible people. And to see everyone being so supportive to people who honestly are god-awful singers, just made me so unbelievably happy that if I hadn’t been so nervous I would have been sobbing my eyes out.

In the words of M. Gustave in The Grand Budapest Hotel by Wes Anderson,

“There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.”

So this week, I tip my hat to the supportive, un-judgemental, beautiful people that I can still see faint glimmers of.

Thank you for existing.

xoxo,

Hannah

P.S: the featured image is of my best friend, with whom I have been friends with for 14 years. She’s the most beautiful, inspiring, and influential person I have ever known and I am so privileged to have her in my life.

Week One: A Warm Cup of Joe

“What in God’s name is so special about a cup of coffee? Is it some kind of magic juice? Heh heh heh!” – the persnickety and annoying human being who thinks they’re all that and a bag of chips because they don’t drink coffee.

Well, let me tell you something you little prick, coffee is like the bittersweet sweat of the Holy Father. It can be pretty awful to think about by itself, unless you change some aspect of what it is.

Hmm, sounds like some people I know.

I’m only joking Reader, I am grateful for every person in life and the lessons that they’ve taught me. After all, that’s what this blog is supposed to be all about: being grateful for every little thing that happens in your life.

Pff, now that’s hard.

Do I really have to be grateful for everything? Everything? Seriously?!

The truth is, everyone should be grateful for everything that happens to them, no matter how shitty it may feel.

I am reminded of a quote by Zig Ziglar: “Be grateful for what you have and stop complaining – it bores everybody else, does you no good, and doesn’t solve any problems”. I like that quote because it’s short, sweet, and straight to the point.

That quote has taught me great things, like when I’m sitting outside waiting to go to my next class and I’m attempting to socialize with my peers, I shouldn’t complain about how tired I am because 1. complaining about being tired only makes you more tired, 2. no one freaking cares how tired you are, and 3. complaining more only makes them want to punch you in the face.

Now, I tend to become the kind of person that is “all talk and no walk”, because tomorrow morning when I have to wake up at the crack of dawn and go to school and it’s freaking freezing outside, I will complain about how tired I am ’till my very respectful friends give me the glance of, “If you don’t shut up, I will kill you”.

This is something I’m really trying to change about myself this year. I have a tendency, okay make that several tendencies, to be extremely ungrateful. I might not act ungrateful, but if you could hear what’s going on in my head, you would be outraged. I am in a constant state of nagging.

Instead of me hopping to the big things to be grateful for (ex. family, friends, music, etc.), I have decided to go for smaller things at first that people seem to overlook as being significant.

Like coffee.

I believe coffee is one of the most important things in the world of human rule, besides music. Music is the most important thing in the whole world.

Anyways, coffee is the building block for my teenage existence. Studying = coffee. Homework = coffee. Waking up = coffee. I am consistently consuming caffeine to get through my daily responsibilities.

I am reminded of a time when I was studying my butt off for a Biology test I had that Thursday. I had barely glanced at my study guide the whole week so I was very stressed out about having to memorize all the vocabulary words and complex processes, like Cell Replication. Luckily for me, my trusty side kick, Colonel Coffee, was there to help me fight my own demon, Respiration.

I clawed my way through Mitosis and Photosynthesis and finally I finished that god-forsaken test. And, best of all, I aced it. When I had destroyed that test, however, I didn’t thank Colonel Coffee. Instead, I thanked my brain for remembering that useless B.S., like having to memorize that mitochondria is the power-house of the cell. Get out of here mitochondria, no one cares about you.

It wasn’t until after much self-arguing did I realize that the only reason I owned that test was because I was way too hyped up on caffeine to not forget anything.  Colonel Coffee was the true hero there, not me.

So to coffee, I tip my hat in gratitude to you. I am forever indebted to you and I don’t know how I will ever be able to repay you for your kind deeds of caffeine crazes.

Speaking of coffee, I’m quite tired and I have an entire book to read by tomorrow. Good luck to me!

Catch you later, Reader.

xoxo,

Hannah