Oh How Great the Gatsby Is

It is late, in fact it is quite a number of hours past my bed time. However, I am inspired to write and so write I will.

I just finished a lengthy paper on why fat taxes are no good and all it did was make me want to eat hamburgers and fries, almost in defiance of the idea of taxes on delicious foods. I could preach to you more about why fat taxes are a total infringement on our rights and I could even tell you many other reasons fat taxes should be flushed down the toilet but the real reason I wanted to get on blogger and write is because I have been inspired.

Yes, I believe inspired is probably the best word.

Here is the thing, The Great Gatsby is amazing. I read it and I loved it, and about two hours (or more) ago  I finished the movie and while it was not even half as good as the book because of the books great detail, I quite enjoyed it too. Just like I could tell you more about fat taxes I could also expound on the amazing symbolism that Fitzgerald uses in The Great Gatsby, but that is also another topic that I am not willing to squander on.

No, I have not been inspired by The Great Gatsby really more about the idea that goes along with it.

Again, here is the thing, my English teacher is, among other things, inspiring. Every book we have read in English this year with the small exception of Huckleberry Finn I have been completely drawn into. I have literally immersed myself with finding hidden meanings and reading words that I have now learned were chosen with a specific purpose in mind. I am completely boggled by the idea that an author can sit and think about almost every word that they put into their writing because they know that they must pick just the right word or the interpretations of the story will be completely thrown.

I could sit here for days and list examples and explain examples of this phenomenon, and I could do it with examples from just one book. But more importantly I want to challenge people to read more and find more meaning and suck the richness from books. I want to yell to the world, "WHY AREN'T YOU ALL READING RIGHT NOW BECAUSE IT IS SO WORTH IT!!!!"

I want others to be inspired as I have.

I could say more, but as you have seen, there are a lot of things I could say that I have chosen not to.

Ponder those.

Love.

Kiss Me Then I'll Wake Up

"A big part of math is simply knowing your calculator." - Mrs. Taylor 

 It's funny when people are walking down the hall all alone and for some reason they decide to walk the other way and, instead of simply turning around and going the other way, they feel like they need to say something out loud to the random passers to explain why they look like a total idiot for going in the wrong direction. -- "Oh, ya!" -- "Hahaha, other way..." -- "Oh darn! My violin!" -- "Whoops, wrong direction..." -- "Agg, other way! --- Those are just a few of the things I have heard this week.

 "He who has a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Be who you are, and say what you feel. Because those who mind don't matter and those that matter, don't mind." - Dr. Seuss

"Bad memories are like bullets. Some whiz by and only spook you. Others tear you open and leave you in pieces."

"I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they are right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself." - Marilyn Monroe

" 'Tell me one last thing," said Harry, 'Is this real? Or has this just been inside my head?' 'Of course it's happening inside your head, Harry, but why does that mean that it is not real?' "

"You can't just sit around and wait for things to happen. You have to make things happen. Begin with no fears and end with no regrets. What would you do if you weren't afraid? if you knew you couldn't fail? In life, sure, you get second chances, but at least make your first shot count." - unknown

"ELIZABETH: John, I counted myself so plain, so poorly made, no honest love could come to me! Suspicion kissed you when I did; I never knew how I should say my love. It were a cold house I kept!" - The Crucible 


"What do we live for if not to make others lives easier?"

 I love the teachers who conveniently plan their end of chapter math tests to be on a Friday. Some of you might think, "Oh that stinks, a Math test on Friday?!" but I see the hidden treasure... NO HOMEWORK OVER THE WEEKEND!! Sounds perfect to me!

I feel like most of the material put into this world is ridiculously overanalyzed. Writing, Music, Art, Dance, Historical Events, Language/Sayings, and even numbers. Sometimes I think that the population of the world is too busied by a search for a deeper meaning in everything. I think that things do have a deep meaning and it should be recognized to some extent, but why should we spend so much time analyzing others deep meanings and messages when we could be creating our own.

Why is being literal considered so rude and/or ugly? While being figurative, evasive and a bush beater is pretty and clever and elegant. I wish people would/could just say what they mean.

"Humans are born with drives; We all have the drives to eat, to sleep, to connect. People want to understand and be understood. You shouldn't understand everything, not everything should make sense, or you lose that drive."
- Stephen Van Orden

I'm Checking

Sometimes, thoughts are confusing and tangled into a wild mess and you don't know how to put anything straight, at times like these you search for other thoughts and when you find those you depend on those thoughts to get you through the day. I credit most of these thoughts posted today to other people that I love and cherish. I love finding other thoughts because I believe that everyone has profoundly deep wisdom that they are just waiting to share with other people. You just have to reach out and talk to them and make them feel like their thoughts are worthwhile because they all are. 

Flowers from my secret sister on dance company, they are slightly wilted but still beautiful. 

"I wish I could just shed my skin, well, no, not my skin. I want to shed my thoughts and feelings. They're old and I'm tired of how they feel sitting in my head. I would just shed them and leave them to float away. Then I could find new things to put in my head and they would sit there until I got tired of them and shed all over again" - Elizabeth Caroline Peek 

My Jess made this out of shoelaces and I really quite enjoy it. 

"You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget."

"If you break little promises, you'll break big ones."

"Sometimes herons is nothing more than patience, curiosity, and a refusal to panic."

I have always wanted a pet elephant so, upon seeing this picture, I smiled with great joy. 

"This is love, she thought, isn't it? When you notice someone's absence and hate that absence more than anything? More, even, than you love his presence?" - Everything is Illuminated

"Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of al the lives I'm not living."

"Don't judge me until you know me, don't underestimate me until you challenge me and don't talk about me until you've talked to me..." - Anonymous

"Do you ever put your arms out and just spin and spin and spin? Well, that's what love is like. Everything inside of you tells you to stop before you fall, but you just keep going." - Practical Magic

This picture is totally cheesy, but sometimes I just like taking pictures of myself in my clean room wearing my Ferrari shirt. 

"Trust is like a piece of paper, once it's crumbled, its can't be perfect..."

Have you ever watched somethings, read something, or heard somethings inspiring? Something that gives you this peaceful feeling, and you get chills that reach up your arms and you feel tears in your eyes waiting to silently push past that slight barrier and escape onto your cheek. You feel like you want to be a new person and change everything you have ever done wrong, and learn and love everything and everyone. You fill like suddenly life will not be fulfilled until you have accomplished all the new goals that just rushed into your brain when you were inspired by one little something. I have a love-hate relationship with this feeling, somedays I love being inspired and I love expressing inspiration but there are sometimes where I just don't want to feel I just want to be the functioning machine I am everyday and I resent the feeling of being inspired by new thoughts and ideas. Recently it been more of the second choice, I have mostly just wanted to function and not have to think or feel or anything. I have to actually try to motivate myself to be motivated to do things. Its getting hard.

I love my sister. She is the best sister anyone could ask for because she loves me and is nice to me no matter what. 

 I love my English teacher this year. I feel like everything she says is absolutely profound. She has such a love for knowledge and an excitement for life that I so admire her for. Hearing her talk about literature is so interesting, I am amazed at her passion for things that before this year I didn't have any deeper thought for. I like how she has started the year with not teaching us just how to write, but how to think and bee great thinkers. She always tells us that in order to be great writers, we have to be good thinkers, and that is what I love about her. I have never been more excited to attend any class in school that I have been to attend english this year. I love it.

“I would but run away. Run away, perhaps today. Perhaps today I will. I will run away.” - Unknown

50th Post

It's not easy to be inspired when you are not willing to listen to other people. I am tired of people that are unkind enough to not acknowledge the pure amazingness that everyone in this world has to offer. One of my goals in life is to try to get to really know the people I come in contact with. It is so much fun to really get to know things about people but at the same time, the idea that society has given you about how people should or shouldn't be is hard to get past. In fact, no matter how many times anyone tells you not to judge a book by its cover, whenever you meet a new person you automatically judge them and begin to decide how you feel about them just by seeing them and hearing the few "Hello, what's your name?" words they say upon meeting you. As sad as this seems it is true for almost everyone. So instead of deciding to make the goal of not immediately judging people, make the goal to get past that first impression, get to know a person better before making any final decisions. That overall is a lot more manageable goal, and even though it can be hard, overall, it is really fun to get to know people and learn more about everything through what they have to teach you.

"There are more people who wish to be loved, than there are people who are willing to love."

-Nicolas de Chamfort

"Difficulties mastered, are opportunities won."

-Winston Churchill

"He stumbled into faith and thought, god this is all there is? The pictures in his mind arose, and began to breathe. And all the gods and all the worlds began colliding on backdrop of blue. Blue Lips, Blue veins. He took a step but then felt tired, he said I'll rest a little while. But when he tried to walk again, he wasn't a child. And all the people hurried past, real fast, and no one ever smiled. Blue Lips, Blue veins, Blue the color of our planet from far far away. " - Regina Spektor

I have been thinking about what would happen if I was granted 3 wishes, and I had to obey the traditional genie rules, like no wishing for more wishes, and no wishing for anyone to fall in love with you, and no wishing for people to come back from the dead. What would I wish for? I really don't know how I would decide what to wish for, I have almost everything I want. I would probably wish for really base material things knowing me. Like I might wish to skip the rest of my High School Life, I might wish that I could move to New York and have enough money and skill to make it into NYU and learn all that I could possibly learn. Then, when thinking about my last wish, I thought, I could just immediately wish to become a famous choreographer and have everyone love my choreography... but then I thought, that would be pointless because, if I just wished for that to happen, then it wouldn't really be worth it because everyone who loved my choreography would just be under a genie spell and not really love my choreography and that would be worthless... So I rethought that wish and decided that I would wish for the chance to be noticed, seen, and given a chance to let everyone see me, then they could all decide if they loved me. These wishes may seem worthless to some... but to me, I would love these things. What would your three wishes be?

{MY TOP TEN SONGS FOR THIS PAST WEEK}

1. My Number - Tegan and Sara
2. Mr. Rager - Kid Cudi
3. Who'd Have Known - Lily Allen
4. Cosmic Love - Florence + The Machine
5. Paradise - Coldplay
6. Cinema (Skrillex Remix) - Benny Benassi
7. Take It All - Adele
8. Pumped Up Kicks - Foster the People
9. How to Love - Lil Wayne
10. Lights - Ellie Goulding

"Love is not speeding up to a stop sign like I used to think. No it's, when you don't want to miss one butterfly so you don't blink. It's been seven month's now since I've taken that flight, and I'll be okay when it's finally okay for me to kiss you goodnight. And I'll say, will you be the soundtrack to my life, there's no bells, no whistles just you by my side, ya and that's all that I'll ever need, I found a new heaven, and that's where I'll dream." - Preston Pugmire

"We argue to have a better understanding of issues." - My English Teacher

Live like nothing else matters but living,

BYE.

"Do Your Own Thing" - My Tribute to 70's Culture

Learning about the 70's in U.S. History has definitely sparked a nerve in my brain. A while ago I posted a picture of a 20's girl and said that I would have been the best 20's girl but I changed my mind. I want to be a Hippie from the 70's (minus the bad parts)...

So here is a tribute to 70's culture. It has a bunch of stuff I have learned in class and also some of my own research. The pictures are my favorite part ;)

[MUSIC OF THE SEVENTIES]

I realized as my history teacher started playin

g seventies music in class that not only did I recognize almost all of the songs but I also had most of the lyrics in a little drawer in my head. I have to thank my parents for making sure I know all of the seventies music ;)

These are all of my favorite seventies songs! (Not in any particular order)

1. "BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER"

-Simon & Garfunkel

'I'm on your side, when times get rough, and friends just can't be found, like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down'

2. "YOU'RE THE ONE THAT I WANT"

- Olivia Newton-John & John Travolta

' It's ELECTRIFYING'

3. "I WILL SURVIVE"

- Gloria Gaynor

'Then I grew strong, and I learned how to get along!'

4. "UNDERCOVER ANGEL"

- Alan O'Day

'Undercover Angel, the answer to my prayer, you made me know, that there's love for me out there (somewhere) yeah, somewhere.'

5. "Y.M.C.A"

-Village People

' Young man, are you listening to me?'

6. "PLAY THAT FUNKY MUSIC"

- Wild Cherry

'Play that funky music white boy, play that funky music right!'

7. "SUNSHINE ON MY SHOULDERS"

- John Denver

'Sunshine on my shoulders, makes me happy, sunshine in my eyes can make me cry'

8. "(THEY LONG TO BE) CLOSE TO YOU"

- The Carpenters

'Just like me, they long to be, close to you... la la la la la la la close to you...'

9. "BABY COME BACK"

-Player

'Baby come back! You can blame it all on me! I was wrong, and I just can't live without you...'

10. "LET IT BE"

-The Beatles

'When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me. Speaking words of wisdom, Let It Be.'

11. "BENNIE AND THE JETS"

-Elton John

'Say, Candy and Ronnie, have you seen them yet? But they're so spaced out, B-B-B-Bennie and the Jets'

12. "BRANDY (YOU'RE A FINE GIRL)

- Looking Glass

'Brandy, you're a fine girl, what a good wife you'd be, yeah your eyes could steal a sailor from the sea."

13. "RAINDROPS KEEP FALLING ON MY HEAD"

- B.J. Thomas

'Raindrops keep falling on my head, and just like the guy whose feet are too big for his bed, nothin' seems to fit, those raindrops keep falling on my head, they keep falling'

14. "WAR"

-Edwin Starr

'War, huh yeah, what is it good for, absolutely nothing, uh-huh!!'

15. "ABC"

-Jackson 5

'ABC, as easy as 1,2,3"

[HIPPIE POEM]

Hip clothing - Tie-Dye, bell-bottoms, peace signs, and love beads

Illegal substances - ya know, drugs

Pray to Buddha - became buddhist and most of them actually practiced the religion.

Poor - lost money because they didn't believe in materialism.

In the middle - most hippies were middle class college students

Exiled Materialism, War, and Technology! - they were against these things

Simple life - they wanted a simple life but not working and then smoking all day usually made their lives more complicated.

(There would be a sweet picture of a hippie here but I didn't dare google hippies...)

[LAST, ART AND ANDY WARHOL]

This is a famous piece done by Andy Warhol.

"POP" or popular art in the seventies consisted of simple, colorful, and comercial images. This picture is of celebrity Marilyn Monroe.

I just really liked this picture and quote by Andy so I decided to put it on :)

Well, that is the end of my seventies tribute.

THE END.