cutting great neck

grandmother, cousin left today.

to israel. to home.

how i miss israel. we listened to this zionist noami shemer cd today in the car on the way back from a horrible day in the city and i felt so much deep, harkings nostalgia, so much longing and so much remembering.

i'm all alone in the house. dad and sharon are driving back from the airport; it's dark, silent. the radio is possibly on. they discuss the past--the distant, distant past of our infancy, and even before--and science and history, even though in a sense everything that has to do with science or with the past is history. the radio plays softly against the thundering of the wheels against the wet highway asphalt, which sounds like a tree breaking against a violent waterfall in the middle of an empty forest. the window’s rolled down. rain—the smell of it, the cold plummeting drops—blows in.




speaking of the devil: keys jingle downstairs, voices from outside seep in.

they just came in. the keys in the door. it turns. i say hello. shalom, dad says. sharon goes to play with ginger, and giggles, and ginger’s collar clinks.



i celebrated cousin’s departure. he's sweet, but extremely obnoxious and ignorant and acts like a 7-year-old, even though he’s 12. we love each other, but it's almost impossible to live with him. how he has to sleep with the lights and the a/c on; how he always had to have two+ eggs every day; how he always watched the most abhorrent channels, and played the most abhorrent games on the computer; how he feared ghosts and darkness and unclosed closets; how he had to have everything, play with every single electronic device our family owned, especially while we were using it; how he asked me to repeat the same song on itunes over and over again; how he was still a child, an undeveloped, exasperating child.




they all left, and i stayed home to walk ginger. after i hugged and kissed said cousin goodbye, i came back in and closed the door and looked through the small window in the foyer, and saw grandma's bulky, familiar form, her hands reaching for the seatbelt--she always asks for my help when it gets jammed—and then i turned away, and petted ginger.

i was sad.



now i'm listening to cat power. i'm thinking about, thrilled for the canada trip.

i'm... i don't know. i guess i miss learning french. i miss living in israel. i miss school, guide post, history. the english book we have to read is so infinitely dull and horribly stoic. "all the king's men"--brrrrrrrrrrr!....

~~~



i dined alone. in the horrid rain and wind, i stumbled and hopped across puddled pavements to a shawarma and hummus dish, and then i walked back in the darkness, thinking.

~~~


i'm excited to meet the broders again. i just went through a photo album from when i was 6, or 5. and i saw several pictures with them in it.

and i'm feelin' melancholy.

not horribly though. not really. i'm feeling... poetic, almost. no. i'm feeling... absent-minded. bare. jaded. and yet, in some strange way, refreshed almost. new.

it's been almost a year since we moved to great neck. july 30th.


i'm free!

label me: broders, family, food, israel, melancholy, memory, miss, music, nostalgia, rain, travel

so summer has so far been the most atrociously amazing thing that has ever happened, ever.

i got away with a 94.2% gpa, a 5 on the ap World, 800 on the hebrew sat II, and my lowest regents grade was a meager 95% (even though it was the highest out of all three of ms. afkhami's classes, woohoo!) i'm pretty sure i'll be going to college (guide post sports editor [and eic in senior year, hopefully], peer leader, [most probably] thespian, avid political savant, creative writer/blogger), and it won’t be a community college at that.

i've plenty of amiable friends, i'm learning french, spanish and romanian, i speak english and hebrew fluently, and fuck it, i'm so fucking blissful!



i've already smelled the wondrous scent of the linden trees: oh that salacious, sexy smell of spring, sweeter than the dripping watermelon goo and even more profound than the barrenness of wafting clouds.

i've already watched the fireflies ember up from the wet, summer-soaked earth, and already felt the jagged tips of the sun slowly and excruciatingly mutate my skin’s dna.



i've already caused pain and suffered pain on behalf of my visiting cousin matan (and enjoyed that pain), and i have already chewed on my grandmother's meat patties, already sucked in her sweet chicken noodle soup.



today i woke up at 7:00 a.m.; i took a car ride to the french institute on 60th street, where my mom dropped me off. the human beings--clad in black suits, orange dresses, matted coats and striped jeans--clambered across sidewalks, across streets, across each other, and i slowly climbed the crowd towards a cart selling a $1 croissant and a $1.5 ice coffee. i captured a bench right at the south eastern corner of central park and watched the tourists and manhattanites [there are only two categories in this world] scramble all around me, their eyes piercing through the thick air towards me. i went to the french institute, and the lesson began sharply at 9:30 a.m. as it had yesterday morning, where a sweet audrey-tatou lookalike tutored us didactically, vigorously the vowels, the consonants, je ne ve pas, que'est-ce que est? baguette et poission, merci, s'il vous plait! and then at 12:30 p.m. i went to watch a movie for free--belle de jour, about a housewife becoming a prostitute, made in 196something, excellent--and entered about 5 minutes late, exited two hours later and had lunch (spicy chicken over rice, over salad, with a pita and a diet coke) from a central park cart for $6.50 (wow) and then parked myself next to the little strand book stand in the corner of central park (again) and looked through novels and biographies and poetry and whatnot... and then mom took me home. tomorrow i will take the train and metro, independently--that means, all alone!



what an amazing week, two weeks, three. phenomenal beginning to summer.

label me: family, food, grades, high school, languages, manhattan, smell, summer, sun

BULLET CASINGS LEFT IN FLESH:

night has slowly cascaded down her neck
like blood spurting from a freshly-bulleted
wound, as filled and heavy as a black hole.
perplexed flies drawn in by the red syrupiness
are swallowed; the skin and the flesh wane
like a rose’s petals in her arm, and darkness
settles into the scarlet sap of her tissue, burnt.

finally. i'm done. completely, eternally finished with my sophomore year.

hallelujah. no more tests, no more homework. it's summerimte and the sun will be out soon and the world will smile down on me. i'm ready to enjoy life.

i just watched full metal jacket. i nearly wept. anti-war thriller, so exhilirating, so... so sad.

---


on friday, grandma nety and cousin matan are coming. thrilled.

i got a 99 on my global regents, 95 on my chem regents. what about the rest? i don't know. i want to know.




this is it! tomorrow i will rise at 11, fall asleep at 1 in the morning, read books and watch movies, eat at restaurants and play with friends. my actual life has started. first real summer in lush, moist great neck, new york.


the trees have greened and leafed. layers upon layers of thin, green sheets gush from the tops of trees to the ground like long curtains. the sun pulses through each one. branches scatter across the sky.

can't wait to smell the linden trees. will visit manhattan sat/sunday. with grandma, with cousin.




goodbye, tests.

goodbye, griffin.

goodbye, papers falling out of backpack because of rotting apples.

goodbye, trips to bagel hut once a day.

goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

label me: family, great neck, high school, home, poem, summer, sun

i have collected
scraps of nothing,
the dead leaves
pouring from my
bedroom window
and into the world—
hundreds of them,
useless and tittering
across the parquet
with shallow faces
from yellowing plants.
the heat extracts
the strongest scents
from the greenest
trees: the evergreens,
the oaks, the sallow,
nocturnal willows
stand in rows, emit
a sacrosanct song
that trembles in the air
like empty voices,
unanswered gods.
“who do you think
you are?” the nothing
titters, and dust rises
from beneath bare feet.
maybe i’m nothing, too?



not posting too much; end-of-year tests, etc. sorry! will post more soon!

label me: poem, spring

this is such a horrid month. a stressful, long, agonizing month.


may.



ap, regents prep, homework up, fun down, i die.

i want feedback. is this being read, or is this just for my personal gain?


ap world in a week (may 20).
i'm (almost!) excited.

To my yellow dog:

Your lids close like lips
that summon sluggish words
with their last breath,
a night closing in on itself
like lips on a ball
of unraveling yarn.
Night has been your shelter,
my slumber—your guardian;
the wicked witch
has whipped you away,
you dying, yellow dog
with a head attached by
two thin yellow strings.
Diamond eyes and golden crust
that cooled against my cheek
evenings and summer afternoons,
under thick blankets, false hopes
that disappeared with daunting
dreams and jaunting ambitions—
night prowling in black,
plastic eyes, wind flapping
in long, detached ears. My yellow dog: Ten years,
you have brought me night;
Ten years, you have brought
me sleep. You aged Thai yellow
doll—your last barks ring
around my head in dreams.

edit:and sarah, this is not about ginger.

label me: high school, poem, sleep, test

Somebody’s crying. I can just barely distinguish her sobs—frail and feathery, like little hummingbirds—as they sink into the bitter night air. Her bare feet crunch the blades of grass around me, and swift jolts and vibrations pour into my roots like frozen jets of water, gradually swelling in magnitude as the girl draws closer and closer. I lurch in pain, just as a vigorous shock reverberates into the dirt around me; a long, anguished yowl seeps into my pores. It’s the girl’s knees punching stiffly into the earth, I think—that booming shock that twists my stem.



She starts screaming words—human words, words I can’t comprehend—and her voice peels away the warmth of night like a tree’s bark, leaving only the naked darkness to settle into the turf. Her strident shrieks send chills through my body. If only I could help her, if only I could understand—if only we would be able to understand each other, to speak to each other...



Her tears reach my taproots. Warm and zesty, the tears elicit some ill, distorted emotion in me—not empathy, no—but a sore, shrill feeling of torment and solitude. I yearn to see—yearn for my petals to open, for my eyes to unlock like a pair of clogged jaws—just so I could capture one short glimpse of her, just so I could watch her anguish unfold before my very own eyes.

I think: Maybe if I see it—maybe if I gaze at it long enough—I could help her.

It’s like I’ve just transported back to this period of, of utter friendlessness, and hopelessness and meaninglessness, this depression, when my father had cancer and I didn’t really care what happened; when I was all alone and afraid and abhorred by society; when I had few cares, but so many strong, redundant worries; when I was a child, a child that did not understand adulthood. The summer of 2005... the summer of 2006... the spring of 2007...


a period of misunderstandings, of strange, discontented loneliness and isolation... i lived in a world different than my own—a newcomer thrice, a stranger in a strange land... unconnected and invisible, attempting to connect and enabling myself to be seen, rather colorfully.


i felt not in control, alone—unknowing to the furious, political, sexual world that revolved around me, the world that i, unlike others, did not discern. i had for long known that i was strong, personally, even back then; a strange, lurid child, an oddity to his relatively new home(s).

not depression, really—merely obliviousness, a forbidding futureless prospect, of miserable realizations and dull, aching understandings.

harry potter was my world... it guided me through my deepest dilemmas, followed me through my highest obstacles, and then led me through my small, teen-sized triumphs. the boy who lived—a crucial vehicle for my writing, for my learning, for my reading—had allowed me to discover english, to fall in love with english—and even more so, with language in general.

harry potter was the vestibule into my solitude, and into my happiness. i can trace the major turning points of my life by the books; i remember waiting for my grandmother to arrive with the fifth installment in december 2003, because i could not yet read english—it was a month after we had moved—and i remember in the e.s.l school library in san jose, taking the book out and then sitting next to my mother in the living room of our temporary house, throwing a tantrum because she didn’t read it right, didn’t translate the words to me like i wanted her to... in july 2005, waiting at midnight with guy z. at border’s, a month before my move to san diego, the first harry potter i would be able to read in english the first read... and then, in july 2007—standing in line, britt and sarah and i think james and deanna... i can’t quite frankly remember... in barnes & noble, waiting... me—the same me as now, a person whom i can today recognize, a person who—

--who was not entirely oblivious, not wholly futureless, a person who understood...

and then, it stopped. it was horrifying. there would be no more stories to guide me, no more books to live with me, no more characters to grow up with me... i felt—i feel—alone again, mistrustful, dejected... even friendless. throughout my moves, throughout my life, from the third grade on, there was always harry, there was always ron, there was always hermione...

and it has taken me a year and a half—nearly two harry-less years—for me to finally, silently, sorrowfully, understand the deep and scarring consequences of the series’ conclusion.

as if she was here—her ghost. grandma was
supposed to, and now it appears as if
she walks the neighborhood streets, as if
she had come: that black shadow, swallowed
by the fumbling silhouettes of tree-trunks,
heaving, toddling across the street from me,
might be her long-lost phantom, or maybe
our ancestor’s relative who fled on a distant
ship towards america. as i watch it approach
me, that old toddling body—a symptom, a relic
from a broken hip—i feel what those who’ve lost
someone and then were reminded of them
must feel, must undergo when a familiar feature
is exhibited: a pang through lungs; as if she
is here, a dead woman walking—though
she’s not dead, thank god, she’s not dead yet.

this white screen is pulsing in the insides of my eyes.

so now i'm looking away. forgive me for any spelling mistakes.

life... ahhh. i don't know what i'm living for. there's nothing. just plain nothing.

there's travel.

there's college.

(ha. i'm looking forward to college. pshh.)

who cares about people, i already know too many of them.

i'm kind of happy i got sports now. because i feel like i've been given an opportunity to make a chance, for the paper and for myself.

there's...

israel. life. family.

old friends.

and there are way too many new friends. i'm about to die.

i've been spending more time in school than sleeping. that's... horrible. my head is so heavy, my eyes so sore and... arghhh.

it's spring already. sun. i can't wait for summer. for june. for the linden trees to start pouring out their smell.

sarah's coming next week.

the show's in two days.

i might be going to israel over the summer.

i can't wait to start working on the paper.

so there's some shit i'm living for... right?

good evening everybody. i've been pretty good mr. ed, how've you been ms. sycamore? no-o i don't go no place much. i'm on relief. here's the flies, rheba. caught a big mess of them today. i see you've been working miss. sycamore. how's grandpa? my, the years certainly

do

roll

arounddd.

but i'll be having lotsa fun

FML.

label me: fml, guide post