(small pieces of real life)

youth and beauty

There's something taken for granted about this line. The highlighted one.

It's from The Day of the Triffids, a sci-fy book by John Wyndham about giant walking carnivorous plants. (I know.) This question planted itself into my head and I hadn't a clue why until, about a week later, I realized why it was true.

Youth and beauty is always going to be sad, because it is always going to be taken for granted.

There's a certain magic to it, I suppose. Something covered over and ignored, unrealized by those experiencing it, glazed over by the harsh realities of life we are told to expect and will still never be prepared for when they come. An unspoken understanding in the generation holding hands, that no single person in it believes there is anything as beautiful in them as the beauty they see in each other.

It is realized in pretty dresses and tuxedos; in that ugly, honest laughter of changing voices; in bad jokes and sincere apologies. There is something so, so beautiful in that. And not just the prom-night sort of vanity of youth. The best-days-of-your-life kind of crap they feed us that we all know isn't true for everybody. It's in the honesty of it. In that glow of excitement that no amount of acne or winged eyeliner can blot out. In the sound braces make when they smile. In sweaty hugs and bitten nails. There's a magic to that.

There is beauty in bare shoulders, in young girls and slim boys crying over snapped strings and tuning each other too loud to a note too off-key and laughing in a voice too sharp. There is beauty in the sweat of stage lights and in the dust of rosin floating out above the crowd. In sleeping audiences and earplugs and slammed stage doors and cheap coffee. There is so much beauty in it.

There is a glow. And none of us ever acknowledge it because we believe it's just our awkward phase: that section of life when we never know the right face to make or the right words to say. There is so much beauty in that.

The realization of youth is that we are fools in a world of idiots. Our eternity is fifteen years, because we have nothing else to compare it to. Our only goals are to become a better generation than our parents', and hardly any of us ever succeed.

It's beautiful, the foolishness of it all. The innocence. I had never thought of teenagers as innocent before now. The pimple-faced kids who smoke and cuss and fight. But no one ever looks at the elderly thinking, "You must've done an awful lot to be sorry for in your long life." Of course they have. But no one cares. You smile at them because of all the good they must have done and seen, and cry because it all must end.

The ignorance of inevitability. Is that it? Is that what makes it beautiful? That we're all standing in this huge room wearing black, our impulsively-died hair washed and our loosely-tied shoes shined, laughing and talking and shoulder-patting and flirting and no one* looks around and shouts, "WE ARE ALL SO YOUNG AND FOOLISH AND THERE IS SO MUCH BEAUTY IN THAT!"?

I hadn't expected beauty. I hadn't expected pretty dresses and rolled-up sleeves. Nervous smiles and solemnly-delivered compliments and poorly received expressions of devotion. That wonderful feeling that we are sinking. I hadn't expected that there could ever be anything so rawly gorgeous in the clumsiness of a waltz in the back of a choir concert, in the vigorous feeling of life, of absolute life just beginning to be lived, just beginning to be observed, and taken note of for a future time.

It isn't widely enough accepted. And maybe all it takes is to stand in front of a mirror in a dress with your heels together and toes apart and think I am not yet fifteen years old.

Someday we're going to be sixteen. Someday we're going to pay taxes. Someday we're going to die.

There it is. The sadness. But there, also, is the beauty.

Sadness at least ought to be beautiful. It ought to have that much. The beauty of youth lies in that ignorance of prime, that idiocy and honesty and glow of it all, but it lies too in the future which cannot be seen and which will always be dismal. Love only ever ends in pain, through death or falling out, and that is why love is both beautiful and sad.

Youth is like that.

It's blind to the beauty and blind to the sadness, but always knows so well that both are there.


But, you know. That could just be the unbalanced hormones talking.

*except me 

Altruism - A Failed Experiment in Gold Stars

Far too long ago I came up with the Great Idea of gold stars. It was the best thing I’d ever come up with. Better than dog-scootering through Wal-Mart, better than the day of silent sticky notes, better than the rainbow suspenders and bongos (which was not exactly a social experiment, but which did the trick.)

The idea was to get a bunch of gold star stickers. Hundreds. I would carry them in my pocket, and every time somebody did something awesome, I would stand up and walk over and stick a star on their shirt. How cool would that be? If you got the answer right in class and suddenly you get a STICKER STAR for it? I wouldn’t be able to contain myself. I would probably start crying.

So I bought 248 stars for three dollars, and I set off to live the dream. Only the plan never worked because I kept forgetting about the stars, and there are only so many times people do really awesome stuff. Of course, when they do, I am ready. Even so, at the end of every day I’d still come home with hundreds of gold stars, and they’d get mushed up in my pockets and stick together and fall apart and get lost in my pants.

I had not yet realized the purpose of the stars.

So I stuck the last wounded sheet of star stickers in my back pocket yesterday and set off to be rid of them. There were probably somewhere over 100 left, and at the beginning of my first class I decided that everyone has done something to deserve a star, and should all be rewarded.

I circled the room, clumsily delivering compliments and sticking tiny shiny stickers onto shirts and shoulders and collars and backpack straps.

“You get a gold star because you let me use your colored pencils once and dress nicely every day.”

“You get a gold star because you read philosophy books and write in cursive.”

“You get a gold star because you are my homedog.”

By the time class started, every single person in the room had a star. And all of them were shining.

It was wonderful. It was like we were a galaxy.

Throughout the day, I just walked everywhere giving everyone a star. Sometimes I would run out of people I knew well, and reasons for why they deserved a star.

“You get a gold star because your shirt has an owl on it.”

“You get a gold star because you woke up this morning and put on pants.”

“You get a gold star for fashion sense.”

“You get a gold star because in eighth grade I decided if I were a boy I would have a crush on you. Also because you are punk rock.”

We were standing in the arts hallway with some theater and choir kids, and one of them -- the marine biology girl from Economics -- asked me if I had gotten a star. Which, of course, I hadn’t. I hadn’t done anything.

She took a star and stuck it onto my shirt and said, “You get a gold star for being Shady.”

I frowned down at its luster, for a state of being is based entirely on a state of action, and what had I done to deserve to be Shady?

Martensen looked at my sheet of stars. It was only halfway full now. And, because Martensen understands things, he said, “I feel like - like something bad will happen when you give away all the stars. Like you’re trying to leave yourself behind and when the stars have been distributed, you will no longer exist.” Martensen has also been forgetting his medication, and slightly crashed a motorcycle a few days ago.

“Well,” I said, as if it were extremely important, “When you see you're running out of stars, you realize you would like to leave them behind in the best way possible while you have them. You know?”

There was this uh-oh oh-no moment shared when we suddenly realized we weren’t just being pretentious and metaphorical for the fun of it and there was actual truth spoken. It was very frightening, so we laughed loudly and painfully and went to class.

The true reason for passing out the stars was, I realized, to feel better. To make myself feel better by making others feel better. To give as much as possible in the time I have on earth. Because there are times when you have too many stars and feel that maybe if you gave them away you would feel less empty of them.

With each star distributed to each halfway-stranger, my lungs felt heavier. I had expected a lightness, but then found I couldn’t breathe right. The air was too dense and foggy and there was too much at stake.

The plan was failing badly.

Altruism is an extremely emptying feeling.

I was drowning in the spaces on the page where stars had once been and were no more.

So, I became desperate. In a weird, tired, depressed kind of way.

There was this kid eating a sandwich by himself and I just walked over wordlessly and stamped one to his shirt and walked off. Almost everyone I ran into had a star. They began to ask me for more.

One kid actually pulled out a dollar and volunteered to pay me for another. I gave him another and did not take his dollar because that’s not how altruism works. The empty feeling got heavier and heavier and kids kept coming, asking for them. Giving new reasons for why they deserved it. And I just kept sticking the stars on people.

There were only two stars left when I ran into Jay, a girl who sings and already had two stars. The first was for getting a solo in choir and the second was for “being suave.” With her walked Thomas, my science partner who plays cello and speaks softly and factually in a sarcastic display of bitter intelligence.

I was surprised to realize he had not yet gotten a star, of which he deserved very much so, for Thomas is my friend. I gave him his sticker gladly and felt like throwing up.

“There's only one left,” I said.

“Did you give Martensen one?” Jay squealed.

"Yeah."

“You should give him another one. Because he is a gorgeous human being.”

It is not normally insulting to call someone gorgeous.

I really, really felt like throwing up. Instead, I shut my eyes and actually quoted Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, each word like a small and distant explosion of pent-up insult and understanding:

“Sometimes the stars are only beautiful because of a flower you don’t see.”

She smiled thinly and I opened my eyes and had a small moment of panic before realizing she currently had no idea what I meant. I looked down at the single star resting on the paper in my palm and Thomas said,

“Or maybe the stars are just shiny?”

“But maybe they’re MORE THAN SHINY, Thomas! Maybe they’re more and maybe they’re less and--”

I hid my face in his backpack strap and did not say anything else.

“You should give Alli a gold star!” Jay said. She held a girl I did not recognize by the arm.

“I don’t know her,” I said.

“I don’t know her,” Alli said.

I looked at the girl. She was wearing a turtle pendant at the end of a necklace.

“I don’t know you,” I said. “But you’re wearing a turtle necklace..." There was very little left to be done. If losing stars hurt like this, the only cure would be to have nothing left to lose. "I have many turtles," I said. "My grandpa gave me them when I was little... I have many turtles.” There was nothing else to say. This was it. The last star.

When it was over, the sheet was empty and blank and brighter than I had imagined it would be. I threw it away and walked to math and there were no more stars.

Except, I thought, and looked at my shoulder, where the star on my shirt had remained unnoticed. The star for being Shady. The only star. Suddenly, every piece of joy and every sparkle born was contained in this single star. All 248 in one.

I had emptied myself of stars and still remained Shady.

I didn't even have to die. All I have to do now is exist.

givers

"I left my cello at home today."

"Oh. Okay?"

"Just in case you -- I don't know. There's only so many things I'm good for."

"You don't have to give so much, you know. I like just having you... exist..."

"...Do you believe there are people who are destined to give more than they will ever get back in return? Like they were born with too much in them?"

"Oh yes. I do."

last piano lesson + coffee

"This is the only way I know how to teach piano: You play this for left hand, and I'll play this for right hand. Then you hold my left hand with your right hand."

"Why?"

"It's how I was taught."

"Was your teacher a pedophile?"

"...It was my grandmother!"

[a small theory]

I have a theory that some people are stories and some people are songs and they subconsciously seek out those with loose-leaf paper and those with stringed boxes in order for a certain purpose to be filled.

It's like the stories are sitting on park benches thinking, "Man, I've been around a while, and nobody's truly noticed me enough to immortalize my being. I'd better go find myself a writer."

And the writers are sitting in tree branches thinking, "Man, I've been waiting here a while, and nobody's truly had stars in their eyes worth putting a pencil to paper. I'd better find a story soon or else I might die."

And somewhere along the way, story meets storyteller and they complete a cycle.

One is the camera and one is the photograph.

One is the conductor and one is the score.

One is the knock and one is the punchline.

One carries legions of butterflies within their being and the other holds a broken net, desperately trying to catch them, and pin them down, and name their species.

I don't know which one is funner to be, but I've only ever viewed the world from behind the camera, and the stories I see are awfully more beautiful than anything I could be. A net is a very humble existence in comparison to the wings of butterflies.

And nets and names are not required for the color of their wings to be beautiful.

Just a thought.

So... Welcome?

Um. Hello.

So ... you found it. My blog. Hi.

My name is Shady. I live in the state of Colorado. Apparently we lost a pretty important sporting event. I think it had to do with football? I'm sorry.

If you are a previous follower (dad, english teacher, carrot bestower, chicken man, etc) I must now alert you that I am going to have to step up my game. Are there athletic blogging thimbles for typing? I'll have to look into that.

What happened is my mother found my blog.

She then shared it on her facebook page (of which I do not have) which resulted in this site now being filled with ALL OF HER FRIENDS WHICH IS SO COOL.

When I started this blog, it was sort of just me standing in a corner talking to myself, as usual.

Then some people showed up. Like, two, three, six, here and there.

So I sort of just kept talking to myself and figuring stuff out and telling stories with my back turned to the audience. Because it's really important to tell things the way they are, and it's hard not to lie when you know people are listening. So I closed my eyes and stood in the corner and kept talking.

And, a year later, I think hey, maybe it's time I turn around for a second, and I see

How did my mother make so many friends? I do not know. Facebook is generally a mystery to me.

So, after accepting the fact that I had been spotted and staged and must now perform, I decided on a list of things to do in order to appeal to my audience and avoid further embarrassment. 

With help from the stats bar, this will, from now on, probably be the best blog ever. (Note to previous followers: I was planning on a Homecoming Hindsight sequel for the Sadie Hawkins assembly, but I think this time you're going to have to use your imaginations.) 

So, to distant relatives and newly found adult friends, welcome! I will now post adult-y things about taxes and car insurance and we will all have a lovely time. 

Welcome to my blog.

-The Tree Monster

diner scar, shiner bar

There was a man and he had a heart-shaped scar on his head and I wondered if that's what it looks like when you fall in love without reason.