cutting great neck

i am really supposed to sleep at this moment

but i know that sleep will not come, for a long time

out of fear, of excitement, of nervousness

of this yearning to remember what i once wished i forgot

and thinking about knowing about thinking

makes me think about death

and i think about it

and sometimes it feels like a mini-quake in my rib cage

this thought that one day i will never be.

i feel like that now.

not dead. not not alive.

but not there. not being. not seeing, and feeling.

i remember the summer of moving.

i miss it.

turning 15; being 15; being new to a beautiful world.

label me: fear, high school, miss, moving, sleep, summer

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

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

insert blank:

life is ___________


a)disappointing
b) horrible
c) leave as is
d) all of the above



no snow. no happiness. no life.

i am a particularly angsty teen. today has been horrible. in all of my classes, i felt... well, for a lack of a better term, not superior. or inferior. inferior to other individuals.



my friendliness with miserable eric (a disgustingly tall&pale, mindless, skittish sophomore who likes to create awkward situations and frivolously flaunts his adoration of zack efron and high school musical [1, 2, 3] who confirmed to me his bisexuality [does he know what sexuality even is?] on thursday night when i was compelled to spend an evening with him and watch benjamin button [overrated somewhat]) has not paid off yet, and as i leave my drama 1 class with him in it i feel somewhat joyous, somewhat anxious for fifth period drama rep.



second period, hebrew, as always, felt secluded. this is the only class in which i still keep to myself, still keep silent. i am the teacher's pet, a democrat and an ashkenazi, which apparently does not match the particulars of anyone in the room except moi.

third period was all right; i discovered am 82% on math midterm, which i previously believed to be a FAILED.

fourth period--88% on history test (highest of all time! YES! [well, it's AP]) and 75% on essay (YES! highest in the class!!!).



drama rep... meh.

english was a bit of a hullababoo today or whatever you wish to call it. teacher returned papers--apparently i and another girl, a particularly brainless blond, have not been given back our papers. oh well--typing it at the moment, taking an extra-long break. my heart was beating so hard. i need an a in english fuck.

spanish... 96% overall, if i turn in notebook probably 98%.



chemistry, teacher (i love ms. afkhami. i think she's muslim which makes me love her even more. the utter courage to teach in such a jewish-oriented campus is astounding. i know she is iranian, and am kinda sure she is muslim.) told me i fit in ap physics next year. yucks--am not elated, though enjoying her consideration of my intellect. maybe because told her my psat score? and because we both love obama?

after school, i had tryouts for a play. apparently we were all called back for tomorrow. it's a good play too, so i'm crossing my fingers--need, yearn those extracirriculars.




anyway, nobody in tryouts paid any attention to me. but like 3/4s knew me. gackk.

and then after terrible tryouts i had fun with loren who i never actually... met, seriously. she helped me on my shakespeare.

and a little bit extra.



came home. tireeddd. had trouble sleeping last night.



sometimes when im really not tired i lie in bed and fall into this sleep trance where i am awake but not really, like i think as if i am awake but it's more like a dream. i just lie there and consider different possibilities. it happened once with politics, but i am not sure what i was thinking about last night. and it's like you think about it and you're not sure if you're awake or not and then it's 7 in the morning and you realize you hadn't actually slept at all.



it's going to snow tomorrow.




:)

label me: boredom, dream, friends, high school, life, sleep, snow, social life

27/01/09

so let me start off from sunday.



sunday, we went to the lower east side with avi, judy, yahli; tenement museum, jewish market, delancey street. the tenement museum was so inspiring, so miserable too--giving us a glimpse of 7000+ people's lives, many of them immigrants, like moi. we couldn't talk pictures. oh well.

then we crossed delancey street



sped through the lower east side



and went straight into katz's delicatessen--i've been waiting since november 2007 to go there, when my parents promised me that we'll go the next time we visit nyc [little did we know that we would be living next to nyc by the next year. grr.]



had a delicious pastrami sandwich.



so yesterday i went to school--short periods. and then i asked jessica fogel about cat power cause she said she might go to the concert with me and so she rolled her eyes and said, "gadi, leave me alone? we have a midterm today!"

blink.

blink.

oh shit.

anyway, studied all day yesterday only to discover at 12:30 one of the easiest chem tests i have ever taken in my life.

yay!

and today i woke up at 9:26 after having the weirdest dreams ever. i dreamed that i was with a lot of friends on a big hill overlooking a quaint european/latin american/asian village which looked more like uniformly colorful legos than an actual metropolis. anyhow, i woke up when a big angry golden retriever cornered me to a wall with its big teeth.

and in an hour i'll be in school preparing for a history test.

it's 11:16 am over here and i'm getting tired.

ahhh.


poem for english class:

My Black Muse
another night peels from my eyes
like piano keys sliding off against
each other. a match burns from two
different sides; an old, dying wolf
wrings his tongue from the roof of
his jaw, and howls; a poetry book,
frayed, splintered, slides off a pile
of white papers. my table, fixed to
the wall, creaks. it’s ten p.m. before
my math midterm and i’m outside taking
pictures of the snow. black, señor night
winnows out the white lights in rows, slips on
his navy-striped cloak; i return home, my
fingers burning from the cold, burning
from the sudden heat of habitat, from
pressing the push button for too long.

label me: broders, dream, food, friends, high school, manhattan, poem, test

Saturday January 16 2009 early early in the morning

i miss you.



whoever you are, wherever you are.



i miss you.



i love you.



you are so important to me. i really meant to tell you this a long time ago.

but, i forgot.

and it's cold. and i can see lights outside. and i miss manhattan, and i miss you, and i am so full of missing everything.



i went to school today and had tears in my eyes because this guess speaker came to talk about children in cambodia and how he was building homes and talking about how he built schools and how important life is and he showed us a video of all these cambodian kids singing a song and i had tears in my eyes and i have them now. and my spanish teacher was sitting next to me.

and i felt how strong and important humanity is.



and now i feel like you're so important to me, and that i want to see you again.



i miss you.


i had so many ideas about what to write in this post.

but i forgot them all.



oh, let's all end this with some good sylvia plath poem:

"Childless Woman
The womb
Rattles its pod, the moon
Discharges itself from the tree with nowhere to go.

My landscape is a hand with no lines,
The roads bunched to a knot,
The knot myself,

Myself the rose you acheive---
This body,
This ivory

Ungodly as a child's shriek.
Spiderlike, I spin mirrors,
Loyal to my image,

Uttering nothing but blood---
Taste it, dark red!
And my forest

My funeral,
And this hill and this
Gleaming with the mouths of corpses."

... ... ... ... sleeppp

label me: high school, miss, poetry, snow