Life is like dancing on the edge of a blade. Forced to constantly move, yet suffocatingly restrained.

  Someone who doesn't know what tears are is constantly crying. --what comes of thinking about Ulquiorra from Bleach. i don't know how to spell his name don't ask why on earth a japanese mangaka would ever give my favorite antagonist such a weird name (and may i add kill him).

     Beebeep. Beebeep--SLAM.

     Silence.

     Beebeep. Bee--SLAM.

     Silence.

     Vincienna Wei [it just sounds weird to say, "hey volkeswagon! wazzup!"] repeated this process every morning about five times. Sometimes more. She groaned and rolled under the bed covers, vaguely cursing alarm clocks, and more consciously cursing school. Beebeep--SLAM. Only when her second alarm clock (the one on her desk three feet away) rang did she crawl out of bed. Her older sister, Haiti [lol i know it shouldn't be funny but oh well], joined her as she finally got around to brushing her teeth.

     "Hurry," she said. They used the same Sonicare base (and luckily different brushes), and Haiti's tooth-brushing schedule always seemed to clash with Vincienna's. The latter made a sound in reply, though it was hard to hear over the buzz of the brush. Haiti smoothly began putting on her finger-brace [i have no idea what they're called. and now its off. been off for a very long time.], since a week ago she'd fell while dancing and sprained it.

     Most of the time, Hazel and I walk home together from school on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. 

     "I wish I could walk on air," I said to her one day walking home.

     "Too bad," she said in reply. "You're too dense."

     There was a split second of awkward silence as I digested her words and realized how shockingly brilliant, and as such un-Hazel-like [that was a joke], the pun was. The silence was broken by laughter bursting out, and Hazel broke the joke down and made sure to explain everything about it that I already knew.

     After we'd calmed down a bit, we pranced around a little (since I was in a good mood) and played "mini, everything-goes soccer" with pebbles and pinecones. At one point, Hazel kicked a pinecone into the street. I was especially particular about this pinecone, since the morning before I'd kicked the same pinecone away from the street, and it spun perfectly upright in a sort of leaf-pocket in the hill almost as if designed just for it, with a pretty pine needle twirled artfully around. It was still there the next day, and would have been there the next next day, too, if Hazel hadn't kicked it. I was upset by this; but it wasn't very big (nothing much seems very big when I'm in a good mood).

     "What if a car ran over it," I wondered.

     Almost immediately, a car really did run over it, sending pieces flying with a glorious cru-cruncha. We stared, open mouthed, for whose car was it that had just fulfilled my dream? Hazel's mom.

     "Did you feel a bump?" Hazel cried as we dashed towards her mom. She got out of the car and looked at us with a quizzical and suspicious face.

     "Yeah."

     "It was a squirrel," I said matter-of-fact-ly.

     My act didn't last long, as usual, and I busted with laughter again. Hazel's mom rounded the car and examined the road.

     "Pinecone," Hazel [and I??] explained. "We kicked it."

     "Oh. The needles might puncture the tires, you know," her mom gesticulated.

     "Spring is nice. Except we all get allergies."

     Mom gave me a slightly concerned look. "You have allergies?"

     "My eyes are killing me."

     "What?"

     "My eyes. They're killing me. And my nose keeps running, especially right after P. E."

     "Then it really is allergies." She brought me close and examined my eyes. I stared back, and then slid into my seat to eat dinner.

     "'Specially with the--Since we're doing the long-jump unit, there's dust flying everywhere."

     Sometimes I think I'm a caged jaguar. The only reason I'm using this metaphor is because it's the only animal that I know for sure paces along barbed wire fences when it wants to cross. Yes, pacing. Pacing along and along this wall of colors, this kind of insane thirst that can also be described as hunger throbbing dully in the back of my mind, of longing to get across. I believe it's called curiosity, or desire. It's odd. I don't really know what they feel like; so let's be safe and say I think the pacing is because of desire and curiosity. But anyways.

     I could sit for days and just stare at the surface of this wall; it is pretty, and if I was preoccupied with work my whole life through, I would be prefectly content with the colors. After all, I might be in for a disapointment on the other side, as always. The delicious fantasy of golden honey dripping like fresh spring dew into my mouth, of delving my hand into the endless see of sparkling joy and slurping the sweet goo off my sticky fingers; it might all be a dream, for ever and always. But because I'm such a uselessly doddling glob of me, I touched it one day. Probably around 10. And then I tried to eat it. It didn't digest very well at first, and it still takes a little while of standing still like I just dunked into an ice cold pool, but it's the kind of thing that you get used to eating. Like alchohol, I guess, except you don't exactly eat alcohol, unless it's in chocolate or something.

     It's pretty hard, biting a wall, and at first hardly anything came off, and if a lot did, I can't remember. By 12, though, I'd made a nice hole. Even more fascinating things than colors are inside the wall, like moons and moccasins [referenced from walk two moons]. This most recent summer, the whole gnawing and chewing and hurting my teeth and my stomach got better. Maybe I got a shovel, or a magical liquifier. Whatever it was, it made the hole get bigger.

     And you know what? I'll never reach the other side.

     My brain works like a function.

     No kidding.

     Or at least, the things Mrs. Short [cough. no real names] drew on the board to explain functions. Here comes a formula? Chomp. Devour it, turn it around and around, come to understand it. Once this is achieved, I make it my own and use it whenever appropriate. Pretty nice. It's how I learn things.

     But! What happens when I come across a situation that's unlike anything I've ever seen before? Never even heard of before?

     I go brain-dead. I don't know what to do, I'm too afraid to try to be creative and risk making an egregious mistake [learned from trial and error], and I end up sitting there hoping that someone will come along that knows this formula. If a certain set of words--"How are you?" "Fine, thank you." "Nice day, huh?"--are standard conversation starters, my brain goes click and files them away in my memory. Formula 17, set A. Code number 332679. Wonderful.

     It just doesn't work, you know? Just doesn't work.

     I realized today that I automatically switch moods or react differently when I see different people.

     For instance: whenever I see Yellow Hair [this no real names thing is driving me crazy. let's call her Shianne, the one who told me about Robin and sold me a seven-dollar pencil holder to save the whales] my "glomp" sign flashes. Whenever I see Ava, my "spazz/talk/glomp if she's not in a bad mood" sign flashes. And whenever I see Hazel, my "fight-or-flight" sign flashes. Especially when I'm late to Bones and Macky might be coming to assault me at any moment.

     This is why I almost strangled MokonaGo today in the locker room. - __ - It's partly your own fault, Hazel.

     This is hardly a day anymore...it's become more like a thoughts page. Well, news flash, my dad came back from China, coughing like he's been for the past however many months, Haiti's tested positive for tuberculosis, though it's dormant, and I just got my TB shot. If Dad and I test positive, too, Mom would swoop down on Dad like an eagle on fish. That is, after making sure his coughs weren't harbingers of death (ooh, a vocab word!!!). They probably aren't; in fact, even if they were dangerous, there's bound to be medicine.

     According to the book Freakonomics, people aren't so afraid of death itself. It's imminent and unavoidable death that flips them out. If you told someone that they might die from skiing down a mountain in a year, they would hardly give you a second glance. If you said that they had just stepped on a landmime and would die of the explosion in ten seconds...well enough with that. The book's examples are way more amusing. Somehow mine ended up sounding bleak... maybe it's just me...

     As it turns out, Dad and I are fine whilst (XD whilst!!!) Heidy and Mom aren't. They're positively dormant (!?).

     Well then, as you all know we have to talk about what writing means to us in the very very veeeeeeeeeeeery last project in middle school, ever. Freaky. So here I shall now basically spazz about it and use that as rough draft part 2 (I already typed up the growth and piece choice part). Oh, and in case you're curious. My sixth, seventh, and eighth grade stuff are actually really cute and not that bad on re-retrospect, except "Demon of Warfare" and stuff like that. In fact, I dug out a story about why Raven has black feathers I wrote way back in who-knows-when (I had yet to get into the habit of putting dates on my papers), and you know what? I really like it. Where, oh where has my originality gone...

     Words have always been precious possessions of mine. I have loved reading since before I can remember. Back then I hated writing, why I have no idea. But around when I entered middle school, I began to change my opinions. Something was missing, and I desperately wanted it. I eventually discovered that this was knowledge and truth; as my mom put it, I was trying to "understand the world." To me, writing is truth. A good book is a mirror that's bent to reflect only what the author wants you to see. And writing is creating you own work of art that no matter what will have a piece of "you" in it. What I want more than anything else is to make something "my own," something significant, something impactful. I want to change the world. I want to be remembered generations later, not necessarily as the person me, but as the me that I created. What I write is a piece of me, a way that I see the world, and the reason I write these thoughts down is so that one day, somebody can pick them up, read them, and change. I know I'm a long way from being able to change someone's life, or even presenting my thoughts professionally. But with practice--with practice, persistence, good guidance, good choices, and a whole lot of luck--maybe one day, I will.

     The ability to read and write is, to me, the second most important everday skill of a normal human being. The first's communication. I mean, imagine what would happen if nobody could know what the other was thinking? Doing? Needing? That's prehistoric, before the Stone Age, probably. Body language is unavoidable. But writing has something even better than speaking. With writing, you can record something for as long as the paper and ink remain legible. Compared to human memory, unless storytellers get paid and Qin Shi Huangdi doesn't terrorize the planet, writing lasts much longer. Take Fahrenheit 451. A phoenix reborn doesn't remember what happened in its past life, and thus will probably make the same mistakes. But what if the phoenix recorded its mistakes in a book before dying and reviving again? It could read this book and learn from the deadly mistakes it never made, and take a new, hopefully better path. Again and again. With truth, one can do a great deal. Haiti wants to save lives through medicine; I want to save lives through words.

     "She asked: 'Are you an alien?'"

     My head popped up from the turtle-neck angle it always stoops to as I drink soup. Dad was the speaker, and Mom and Haiti were giggling.

     "What?" A sudden memory of the complete storyline of Humans and I flashed through my mind. I have a bad habbit of phasing out as people talk, only to snap to attention when they say something that piques my interest. On some occasions I miraculously have a vague idea of what the context of the conversation is and am able to follow, and luckily it happened this time. Apparently Dad was telling a story--something he excels at and enjoys rather too much (he is a professional speaker, in a sense)--about his trip to China. While on the train, typing away on his computer like usual, a woman from New Orleans asked from the seat across:

     "Are you an alien?"

     I was now fully alert and listening like a lapdog.

     "I was pretty calm, too," claimed Dad. "I said, 'Yeah, I come and visit Earth from time to time, you know, do some research...' The lady laughed." There was a break in the flow as Dad made some hand motions, indicating that the woman probably was joking, too. "She said, 'No, no, it's just that I can't read what you're typing! And then I looked at your watch, and I couldn't understand it either!!' Because I was using all those scientific words, and terms, you know?" He laughed again, and I remembered the times when I peaked over his shoulder at whatever it was he was writing. It really did look like alien language.

     "Hey, don't touch the face, you'll smudge it!" Mom took the watch from Dad's outstretched hand.

     "Wooaahh, it's like, super-high-tech!!" I exclaimed. "When'd you get that!? In China!?" [he'd just come back from china]

     "Vince," Haiti said, staring at me with an exasperated expression. "He's had that for weeks, maybe months ago." After Mom had inspected it to her satisfaction, Dad's watch was passed on to me. It had a main face, the date, and three small faces. The main face's second hand wasn't moving; in fact, the only thing that seemed to be in motion was one of the small faces. It took a while to puzzle everything out.

     Alright, hilarious and unbelievably perfect experiences aside, this is now basically my online diary of Eastlake High School. To keep you guys updated and so that we won't forget to keep our fingers curled around the strings. I have a feeling I'll be holding on to them for my life.

     These past two days I've been having "Westlake Orientation Week," which lasts 3 days, not 7 (why on earth did they call it a week?), and I was considering posting their events, but it's so long and dreary and hot and I have to do one chapter of geometry every day, so I decided against it. I will say this, though: the WOW (Westlake Orientation Week) sign is holding up three fingers from each hand against your cheeks and gaping your mouth in this "O" shape, so it looks like you're saying "wow" while spelling it with your body at the same time. As for me, I like to cross my hands so the three fingers (six total) form whiskers and say "meow." Either way is equally embarrassing.

     Well, that's that...if Haiti's car blows up from old age (which seems highly likely) I'll let you know, but until then, good luck with life.

     By the way there's a mosquitoe right under my foot. It sucks.

A Day in the Life of a High School Me