Log with Liv

With my college decision made and the end of the school year rapidly approaching, I am excitedly looking forward to the next year of my life. From this summer to my first year at college, here is a short, incomplete, semi-chronological list of a few major things I want to do.

Summer 2023 and the Chicago music scene

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: live music is the best thing in the world. This summer potentially being the last summer I’m spending in Chicago, I am looking forward to fully embracing all the music Chicago has to offer. I have already started buying tickets to shows and marking dates off on my calendar for this summer. When I see a band I like post that they are going on tour, I always buy two tickets for their Chicago date right away and then later on find a friend to come with me to the show as the concert draws nearer. True to my Naperville roots, I am very excited to go to Lollapalooza again this year. Last year, I went for all four days with a friend. As if that was not exhausting enough, this year we have decided to do all four days again and also go to some of Lolla’s notorious aftershows. I’m going to Pitchfork as well and considering going to Ohio for Sonic Temple Festival. If you know of any cool festivals in the Midwest this summer, let me know!

My first solo travel experience

For this next “to-do” item, I’m not sure exactly when it will happen. Originally, I planned to solo travel for around two weeks in France or Spain this summer. After scouring the internet for cheap flights, though, I realized that a European trip this summer is not in my budget. Not one to get tripped up by details, though, I set my eyes on a new destination: South America. After approximately a five-minute TikTok search of fun hostels and tourist destinations in South America, I became fully committed to the idea of traveling around Colombia. I know absolutely nothing about Colombia, but I can speak an acceptable amount of Spanish and the country seems gorgeous. I was sold on this new destination until I started sharing my plans with people and I got the overwhelming response that Colombia was not a safe country, especially for solo female travelers. I don’t know if this is true, but I still maintain that the Colombia haters are just being buzzkills. From the little research I have done, it seems incredible and its cities are about as safe as any other major city. That being said, I have no desire to be kidnapped, so I don’t know if a trip to Colombia is necessarily the best place for me to travel alone without friends or family for the first time. I always hear such amazing testimonies from people that have traveled alone, so whether or not Colombia happens this summer, I will absolutely find time within the next year or two to explore a new country by myself. 

Plan out (and move into) my dorm room

Less than an hour after deciding what school I am going to for college, I created a Pinterest board for my dorm room. After winning a Keurig at Senior Celebration, I am definitely ready to set up my very first dorm room. I am still in the beginning stages of planning, but a quick peek into my vision reveals lots of pictures and band posters covering the walls, an overpriced urban outfitters comforter (side note: are comforters supposed to be 150 dollars, or is that totally a scam?), and lots of alternative lighting to avoid ever having to turn on the horrible overhead lights included in every dorm room. 

Seafood in Boston

My half-eaten lobster roll from the last time I was in Boston

I’m getting close to my word count, so I’ll keep this next point quick. I am going to Wellesley next year, which is right outside of Boston. I am planning on going into Boston at night and on the weekends to explore the city, do some shopping, catch some local concerts, and, most importantly, eat! I love Chicago, but we don’t necessarily have a lot of seafood options here in the Midwest. I am a big foodie and an even bigger seafood fan. While I probably won’t be able to afford lobster on my college-student budget, I will definitely be taking advantage of Boston’s proximity to the water and eating as much seafood as I possibly can. 

The Scream Tunnel

As I said, I am headed to Wellesley next year. When I was choosing which school to go to, I did some research on several different schools’ traditions. The “Scream Tunnel” at Wellesley was one of my favorites that I read about. During the Boston Marathon (which actually just happened this week), a part of the race goes right by Wellesley’s campus. All of the students gather along the race and cheer on the runners as loud as they can with creative signs and promises of a kiss. Alumni that I have talked to always have such fun stories to tell about the Wellesley scream tunnel and I am excited to participate in it next year.

A European Festival Summer

This last bucket-list item would technically be happening in a year and a half, but humor me. My friend Jess and I have already begun planning the summer after our freshman year at college and I absolutely can not wait. We have planned a summer of European festivals where we camp out for days, listen to as much music as possible, and get lost in insanely huge crowds. I tried and failed to convince my dad to take me to Glastonbury this year, so we will definitely be hitting Glastonbury next year and traveling around to different European countries in accordance with the summer festival schedule. When it is not a festival weekend, we’ll stay in hostels and hang out with other people we meet along the way. I’ve also been obsessing over Berlin recently, so I want to spend a good amount of time there as well and experience the fashion and nightlife that I have always heard so much about. (I’d also like to see if I am cool enough to get into the exclusive Berghain!) 

I’ve got a lot of big plans for this next chapter in my life and I am so so excited for everything that is to come. I truly believe in experiencing as much as I possibly can and taking all the opportunities I can to enjoy life. For now, though, I have thoroughly enjoyed sharing my thoughts through blog posts this year and reading what other classmates were writing about. Maybe one day I’ll have my own travel blog and in the “about me” page, I can credit Ms. Hitzeman’s AP Lit class for giving me my start in blogging. Until then!

One of my favorite college application essays I wrote this past fall centered around if I believed society was progressing or headed toward destruction. I answered that society must be progressing. We have to be, right? What would it mean for humanity to assert that we are no longer moving forward? To say that we have become so stuck in our own greed and blind division that we have rerouted our projection altogether, into a direction much more sinister? 

My mouth always forms the word “evolving” in response to the question, but before the sound of progress can quite make it out, a doubt deep within my stomach grows from the world’s seemingly never-ending supply of tragedy and injustice. 

I do not know what the answer is. I know life is full of joy, love, and wonderful people, but I also know that every time I read a new headline, I cannot help but wonder at what point the loss and grief begin to outweigh the good. 

I cannot help but feel like we are constantly bombarded by tragedy. In my college application essay, I decided that our world was headed towards a progress that I was determined to take part in. Now, when I no longer have to worry about portraying myself as an attractive college candidate, I waver on this stance. I find it more and more difficult to associate the news I read each morning with progress. 

This is not a post about my essay, though. It is a post about a loss of faith in the world around me. It is about backward movement, destruction, and dead children. It is about unidentifiable 10-year-old bodies riddled with bullets. It is about guns and lawmakers, a generation of ALICE and violence.

A few years ago I spoke at a March For Our Lives rally in front of congressmen and teenagers scared of getting shot in their schools. I spoke about the fear that our generation holds within ourselves. I spoke about the worries that haunt our subconscious, the images of dead friends that exist in the back of our minds. I spoke about escape routes planned in classrooms, AR-15s and the nation’s youth pitted against each other by lawmakers. I finished by promising that our generation had found our voice, that we were ready to fight back, that we would finally be heard. All this was said with the Parkland shooting as a recent memory. I was sure that something had finally shifted. I was confident that national attention to such a massive tragedy would manifest itself as a renewed vigor in legislatures to address the massive gun issue facing our nation.

Years later, I regret my confidence. Kids are still dying. We still go to school in fear of guns. I see no progress. 

I used to talk about gun violence with anyone I could. I participated in my fair share of arguments with anonymous accounts on social media. I spoke with friends about what had been done, what could be done. Now though, I am tired. I have nothing left to say. Kids are dying and I learn in fear, and nothing I have said seems to have made any difference. I want so badly to believe in progress, but I am exhausted and angry. An entire generation has yelled their outrage into the face of our nation’s government and nothing has come from it. This year already, it seems as if there have been more shootings than ever. The recent events in Tennessee’s legislature, too, immediately come to mind as evidence of a disregard and silencing of the nation’s youth and our interests.

I don’t know how much more we must scream. It is certainly beginning to look like loud protests will always fail when falling on deliberately deaf ears, stuffed by the cotton of profit and “freedom.” 

Our generation has always been taught to fight for what we believe in. We have been told over and over again that we will be the ones to rectify this world’s problems. We have shouldered the burden of our own survival. We have been taught to recognize injustice, the plentiful problems facing our world, and taught to fight back, to speak out. We were taught that the world wants to know what we have to say, that lawmakers cared, that those around us would respond to our passion, our desperation. We said “never again,” and it happened again, and again, and again. Now, my conclusion tends to be that no one does care. Or, at least, not enough people. Not the right people. 

Progress seems impossible right now and destruction imminent, and yet, I find myself still inclined to finish this post with a call to speak out, to continue fighting. Maybe that propensity to fight is enough to ensure that progress has not entirely been lost, though. Either way, kids are still dying and we still live in fear. If we cannot stand up for our lives, if we cannot take every possible step to promote our survival, then destruction is assured. 

Progress is no dead students. Despite the infuriating lack of movement toward this (ideally universal) goal, I absolutely refuse to give in. Something must be done, and, voices hoarse and faith battered, I fear it is up to us to save our own lives. 

Something must change, and for that, I am sending thoughts and prayers…Thoughts and prayers are the most effective form of action, right? They stop bullets, right? They revive dead, bloodied children, right? Right?

Over winter break, I went to the Netherlands with my Dutch best friend who was born and raised in the Netherlands. We spent our days shopping, stopping in as many cafes as possible, and using the country’s incredible public transportation system (take note, America) to travel around to different cities. We spent most of our time in Amsterdam and Den Bosch, and then took a day trip to The Hague. 

The view from outside our Airbnb

Our hotel in the middle of the central plaza in Den Bosch

In Amsterdam, my friend, Jess, and I stayed with her uncle in one of the gorgeous houses that line the streets of Amsterdam. Picture a stereotypical brownstone-type house lined with a cobblestone road and located right on a canal. That is where we stayed. Sitting in her uncle’s kitchen that first day, we received a hand-drawn map of the city with starred “must-see” locations. We also received a helpful list of rules that are quintessentially Amsterdamian at heart, of which being: 1. no puking inside, 2. no taking any drugs we have not already tried, and 3. no taking pictures of the prostitutes. With these oddly-specific, mildly-concerning rules in mind, we set off to explore the streets of Amsterdam.

The view from the front door of where we stayed in Amsterdam

Remember how I said my friend was Dutch? Well, she is the kind of Dutch that comes from a suburb, not Amsterdam. Most of her family intentionally avoids Amsterdam with claims that the city is too busy. Basically, we had no real knowledge of the city besides a highlighted route on the crude map drawn for us. Was it the best idea for us to spend a few days essentially wandering around an unfamiliar city? Probably not. To Amsterdam’s credit, though, not once did I ever feel unsafe, even while walking through side streets late at night to get a midnight treat of poffertjes (mini Dutch pancakes).

Let’s think back to rule number three (aka, the prostitutes). It just so happened that Jess’ uncle lives two streets away from Amsterdam’s famous Red Light District. Prostitution is legal in the Netherlands and this specific area is where a lot of it is based. When you are walking around a new city at night, it is easy to get turned around. Coincidentally, every time we would get lost, we would find ourselves back at the Red Light District. Our trip’s motto quickly became a spin on the classic “all roads lead to Rome,” and the phrase “all roads lead to the Red Light District” experienced extreme overuse in the next few days. This being said, the Red Light District seems to be more of a tourist attraction than anything, but it is still shocking to walk through a street that is impossibly busy at all hours of the night with the buildings around you emitting an unmistakably red hue. The street literally glows red. In the windows of the buildings stand women posing in lingerie, with doorways blocked by muscular men with crossed arms. Definitely a strange sight.

While in Amsterdam trying to avoid ending up back in the Red Light District, we spent the majority of our time shopping and eating. Food highlights include lots of cheese and tea, as well as Dutch classics of bitterballen, oliebollen (one of the best things I have ever eaten), and a mysterious horse-meat sausage that, although I was hesitant to try, was admittedly very good. As far as shopping goes, we spent our days in “The Nine Streets” and discovered that Amsterdam has some of the best vintage shops in the world. (The size of my suitcase severely limited my purchases, but let’s just say that I was able to fly back to Chicago wearing a few more layers of clothes than I arrived with. When in doubt, wear two coats and your biggest sweater on the plane!) We met a few of my friend’s aunts and uncles during our time in the Netherlands, and every one of them made sure to make fun of our decision to not go to any of the many historical sites or museums around the country. To our credit, we did visit the Anne Frank house, which was certainly a worthwhile and sobering experience. We also saw traditional Dutch windmills. See? We are cultured. Did we go to drag queen bingo after visiting the windmills? Maybe, but the important part is that we saw the windmills. In another city, den Hague, which is known for being the unofficial Dutch capital and the center for many international organizations, we also explored the Peace Palace and saw plenty of government buildings.

The Peace Palace

In the moment, and especially when looking back, Amsterdam was one of the most amazing places I have ever been in my life. To say the streets are aesthetic is an extreme understatement. Every single street, ally, and cafe could be taken right out of a postcard. I loved walking around in the cool winter air, looking at all the well-dressed people walking around me, and listening to all the different languages being spoken at once (although my friend did complain that everyone in Amsterdam spoke English and no one seemed to speak Dutch). I even loved fearing for my life every time I crossed the street due to fearless bikers speeding across intersections.

The stereotypes about the Dutch and their bikes are not exaggerated. They may even be understated. The streets are lined with bikes. Everyone has more than one bike. They have a normal bike, of course, but also a cargo bike to really maximize bicycling efficiency. In front of the train station, there was even a bike garage. Not a car garage, a bike garage. The Dutch take their bicycling very seriously. Upon asking my friend if we could bike around Amsterdam, I was scoffed at and told that I would absolutely not be getting on a bike. I was also told that I did not know how to properly ride a bike to Dutch standards. What does that mean? I have no idea, but I have to say that biking on a Dutch street is not for the faint of heart. As a walker, I had enough difficulty figuring out where the street ended and the sidewalk began. Fun fact, when the streets and sidewalks are cobblestone and there are canals in the middle of streets, it is very hard to tell if you are standing in a bike line, standing in the street, or are safely on the sidewalk.

On our final night in the Netherlands, we avoided this street vs. sidewalk debate by taking a boat ride through the canals of Amsterdam. It was a surreal experience. At one point, our boat pulled up to an old stone building on the side of the canal where a window suddenly opened and an arm poked out to give us wood-fired pizzas. Every time we went under a bridge, we had to duck to avoid being decapitated by the low-hanging brick arches. The streets were illuminated by Christmas lights and the whole night felt like a scene taken directly from a movie. Even in the moment, we knew we were creating what was soon to be a fond memory. With that memory now in mind, the accompanying wave of nostalgia excites me for our next adventure.

Doei!

The pizza pickup from the boat

My friend and I being very excited to be in Amsterdam and on a boat

Sanity

Sanity is a charged word, or rather, insanity is. The first glimpse into Caroline Bird’s poem is the title: Sanity. As I began to look at this poem throughout a few initial reads, I read it through the eyes of sanity. I considered the loss of sanity, the quest to sanity, the attempt to hold onto sanity. With every line I read, I considered the relationship between sanity and the speaker. It soon became apparent, though, that there was no obvious connection between the idea of sanity and my first surface-level readings of the poem. I quickly came to the conclusion that I would have to approach the poem using a different technique. Once I had a grasp on what was literally happening in the poem, once I had an idea of who the speaker was and what they had to say, I would be able to readdress the title. 

With a new goal of not getting fixated on the overarching meaning of the title, I was able to take a more holistic look at the poem. Unfortunately, in true Goldilocks form, I widened my lens of analysis a bit too much, and I found myself skimming over many of the seemingly less important details. Sanity is composed of short, simple sentences one after another in a single large stanza. With no natural breaks, it was difficult to identify points of emphasis and I found myself having to reread more than normal to really force myself to focus on each individual sentence. By reading past some seemingly mundane sentences about eating Coco Pops and playing the lottery in favor of sentences that seemed to be more “complex,” I thought I was efficiently working to pinpoint a larger meaning or global message, but I was really disregarding half of the poem. I found it incredibly challenging to reconcile statements about the world going silent with frustratingly simple sentences like the one-word sentence “Jog.” To combat this, I physically identified and isolated all the sentences/phrases that, at a first glance, I kept stopping on due to their potential broader implications. With these phrases identified, I found myself much more willing to look at the poem sentence by sentence, giving my full attention to each individual part. What had originally been such a difficult aspect for me to focus on ended up allowing me to see for the first time what the speaker might be saying. The mixture of everyday, mundane occurrences placed beside sentences about having children and falling in love emulates the process of life. Mundane and exciting, I realized that the poem was a narrative of the speaker’s life, particularly a woman’s life. Even more so, as the statements towards the end of the poem seemed to suggest a maturity and responsibility lacking in the first parts of the poem, I also determined that this was a chronological narrative. With this understanding in mind, I was ready to move forward in my reading process and address the next aspect of the poem that challenged me. 

Most of the vocabulary was conversational and matter-of-fact in Sanity, but there were a few instances where I was not sure what the speaker was referring to. With such short sentences, I knew that every word and phrase was an important contributor to the overall meaning of the poem, a fact that encouraged me to research the phrases that confused me. First, I was completely confused about what “the panther of purple wisps” could be referring to. Upon looking up “Purple Panther” (fully expecting it to be a cartoon), I realized that it was a marijuana strain, adding immediate context to the idea of this panther of whisps “[prowling] inside the air.” From a wider lens, this speaks to the speaker’s loss of youthful joy, or even to the adoption of a new coping mechanism. The next phrase of difficulty I encountered was a sentence in the middle of the poem about a stonewalling course, leading me to look up what “stonewalling” meant. Stonewalling is when a listener in a discussion withdraws and shuts down, closing themselves off from the speaker. As it turned out, this was an incredibly relevant definition to the recurring idea in Sanity of a one-sided conversation between the speaker and the world. 

This leads to the aspect of the poem I found the most difficult. Every few sentences (in terms of the poem, every few years in the speaker’s life), there was a description of the speaker listening to different items she encountered in the world, only to hear silence. Halfway through the poem, the speaker commands these objects to speak to her, to respond. In the final lines of the poem, there seems to be a period of reflection where the speaker recognizes the lack of response she has received from the world, ultimately concluding that “the world has zipped up her second mouth.” For my first few reads, I was completely stumped on what this silence meant. What did the speaker mean when she said her mission was over? What did it mean for the world to zip up its mouth? To approach these massive questions, I used my previous identification of the chronological timeline of the poem throughout the speaker’s life and the persistent presence of diction of loss and rejection through words like “no,” “without,” “never,” “nothing,” and “stop.” There was a sense of the speaker being continuously rejected by the world around her throughout her life. At times, the speaker seems to be beginning a conversation during lapses of life, looking for a conversation of sorts between growing wisdom teeth and changing a lightbulb. The speaker continually sought out this response, this recognition from the world around her, yet never received any reply. She lived in silence. Throughout the poem, all she does is give to others, whether it be organizing parties, having children, doing kind gestures, or donating her eggs. Even after all this giving, the speaker receives nothing in return. Through my careful analysis of each sentence after originally finding it difficult to read through such a densely formatted poem, I was able to see the sense of duty felt by the speaker and the fact that, through major life achievements like finding “a real love” and having children, the speaker never feels as if the world, or anyone else, for that matter, reciprocated her selfless giving.

When I first read this poem, I was overwhelmed by the structure and I struggled with formulating an approach to reading Sanity due to its plentiful simple sentences of various societal importance that seemed to be in a random order and intermixed with vague sentences about calls gone unanswered and closed mouths. By slowing down to consider what I found difficult about analyzing Sanity, I was forced to reflect on my approach and modify it based on what specific aspect of the poem I wanted to focus on. After slowing down and taking a conscious approach to my analysis and how I deciphered different parts of the poem, I believe Bird’s commentary here is a grim one. It is a remark on the unfortunate female fate to give and give to the surrounding world, living your life how society has always told you one should, and yet never receiving anything in return. It is a commentary on how you can go through all the steps of life you have been instructed to, and yet you can live without recognition, appreciation, or reciprocation. Bird’s poem is a warning of the world’s unfortunate tendency to take everything possible from women without leaving them anything in return. After this analysis, the title is clear to me. Sanity is the collateral damage of this one-sided existence. To do everything you have been taught to, to give everything you have, and to be denied the only thing you have ever asked for, insanity seems the only sane course. This female life of literally being used up by the surrounding world creates conditions completely inhospitable for sanity. 

I am a faithful follower of the power of words, as trite as it sounds. As humans, we pride ourselves on our superiority, our modern inventions, the conquest of our animal-like side. No matter how we may evolve, though, I remain certain that the best part of humanity lies within the thoughts looming in the back of our heads. Within every single person is an annoying voice plaguing our ears, a constant knocking in our brain insistent to be dwelled upon. Try as we may, we cannot escape the demands of our minds. This persistent plea for contemplation is clear evidence that even in a world of modern convenience, we maintain the primal urge to feel and experience and love. As a force against this urge, an urge too overwhelming to always keep trapped inside our heads, we have learned to communicate. Where verbal conversation fails, we have been gifted writing. We have been gifted poetry. 

I am not a religious person, but if I was forced into a church, it would be certain quotes, specific stanzas, that I would pray to at night. I do not believe in a grander universe, fate, or any guiding omnipotent hand that directs our lives. I do believe in, however, (and submit myself fully to) literature’s ability to capture sentiments that are otherwise incommunicable and undefinable. It is to the power of poetry, the power to express something deep within ourselves that we have always felt but have not been able to recognize without the words to describe it, that I would kneel to.

I know. I am being dramatic. The best poetry is though, so forgive and excuse my dramatics as being on theme with this week’s blog post. 

Following is a collection of poems that I think about ceaselessly. The following poems influence my every action, my every thought.

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This Beau Taplin poem is for all of us second-semester seniors. I do not know how much I agree with the sentiment that we are currently running against an hourglass filling up in the wrong direction. It seems a defeatist take on growing up, one that I refuse to resign myself to. What I think we can identify with, however, is the unmistakable sense of sand shifting between our feet, a consistent, unrelenting reminder that time is moving forward, and in one sense, moving away from the life we have always lived. From the first time I read this poem, I always now think of my heartbeat as a kick drum at a rock show. There is a quote I like from Roger Kamenetz: “The other day, lying in bed, I felt my heart beating for the first time in a long while. I realized how little I live in my body, and how much in my mind.” A drum set of a heart does not seem like such a horrible reminder that we are wonderfully, noisily, alive. 

As we leave high school and, in many cases, the town and the people that we grew up with, it is easy, perhaps preferable, to forget about and not think about the day we will have to say goodbye to almost everything we have come to regard as familiar. As soon as this school year ends, my best friend and I will be on opposite sides of the world, where we will probably remain for the rest of our lives. To say I want to forget about saying goodbye is an understatement. To be honest, I do not know if I will ever be able to actually express the words goodbye to her. 

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I wonder how many jars I tote behind me, impossibly heavy but empty in all real sense of the word. I wonder how many dead, winged things linger in the room while we live our lives, oblivious and complacent.

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I think a lot about what it means to be a girl, and the best definitions I have found are “grief and glory” and Kristin Chang’s observation that “godhood is just like girlhood: a begging to be believed. ”

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This is absolutely one of the most powerful, revelatory, things I have ever read. When I read poetry, I usually have a favorite line. Something that sticks out to me, speaks to me either in profound relatability, or just in sheer beauty. It seems lame to assert that every single line of this poem is perfect, but I truly have no other descriptive words in my vocabulary to portray my absolute obsession with this poem. Since reading it, I have not been able to stop thinking about the notion of writing about things as if you own them. I keep coming back to the inherent privilege in even writing about the beauty of nature or in crafting careful metaphors about hard topics from a place of security.

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(In the spirit of full transparency, this is not a poem, but a quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. Sorry! It is too good to not include. Plath is a fantastic poet, so we can pretend this counts.)

I am a big Sylvia Plath fan. To read her poetry often feels like an out-of-body experience in which the thoughts from my mind have somehow expressed themselves on paper without my knowledge. She speaks a lot about the weight of potential, of possibility, that many people, especially women, carry. With this quote, I cannot help but identify with the sense of hunger that comes from looking through windows, both real and metaphorical. Especially now, eighteen and almost graduated, it is so hard to tame the rising feeling of fleeing in my chest, the feeling that I am on the cusp of life. I find it a dangerous sentiment, the idea that life will suddenly begin one day. The fear that life will happen and pass me by in a sense while I am blindly waiting for some abstract sense of a beginning is certainly a large one. This quote serves as a reminder to live an absurdist type of life in which one lives simply to live, and not in anticipation of what could or might be. As pleasant as it is to watch from a window, it seems a sad way to exist, always watching, never living. Never being the person on the other side.

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Sometimes I think that the desire to be immortal, undying, unending is what keeps the blood circulating through my body, the single force keeping my heart beating. Sometimes I think immortality is why I write. It is an alluring idea, living forever. Even more enticing is not being forgotten.

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I certainly have never lost a love to a revolution, but I think there is something to be said about reading this poem as both the boy lost to the rebellion and the one who lost him to his passions. The idea that rebellion compliments the boy, it fits him, yet he is still ultimately destined to be lost to his own passion, is a tragically realistic and horribly beautiful idea. It is an awful thought, and yet a deeply poetic one, that what you desire and work for is ultimately what you will die too soon for. The only tragedy greater than this fate is the resignation that the speaker must watch, helpless and still very much in love, as the boy implodes, the perceived necessity for change and greatness trumping love. “I do not believe we shall ever see how old age looks on you” is one of the most devastating sentences I have ever read. 

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I am sure you enjoyed those poems just as much as I did, so here are three bonus poems! (I know, poetry is so exciting.)

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It is easy to say that senior year is a year of lasts. 

A bittersweet close to twelve years of growing, learning, making mistakes, and countless identities tried on along the way until deciding on the people we are right now. For twelve years, seven years, four years we have sat at each other’s sides and grown up. This year, I have found myself zoning out in class as I look around at the other students in the room, remembering when we were in preschool together. Remembering playdates in second grade, sharing a class in sixth grade. It is with a sense of pride that I find myself looking at my friends, my classmates. I know where we have come from. I know the discussions we have always had about the future. The plans made in a game of “MASH,” the Pinterest boards of college dorms made by preteens, the dreams laid out by young kids longing for the future. This semester, we stepped into that future. We are where we always dreamed of being, and there is certainly a sense of surrealness surrounding the fact that we are now living in what was always thought to be the distant future. 

This past year has been characterized at times by the sentiment that time is running out, childhoods ending and an 18-year-long safeguarding from the world coming to an end. As we grieved who we were though, we simultaneously applied to college, looking forward with excitement and anticipation to the next period of our lives. These coinciding looks forward and the subtle fear that we are moving ahead too quickly are difficult to reconcile. The range of human emotion is not supposed to be digestible, though. It is exactly the contrast between our senior year of “lasts” and the plentiful beginnings of our blossoming futures that have inspired us to live this year so fully. 

More than ever, I prioritize spending time with my friends and simply having fun. With Covid shrinking our time to be a teenager, it is hard not to feel like we have to make up for lost time. In a similar sense, I recently realized (years later than my peers, might I add) that school, while important, is not everything. I realized that some assignments can be turned in a day late (sorry Ms. Hitzeman!) and that sometimes being happy and present and just having fun is more important than the math quiz you have the next day.

This past semester has given me perspective. It is only with the end in sight that I have slowed down and taken time to reflect. We exist currently on the precipice of childhood and life. As we mingle on this edge, laughing, being, and taking in the view, an immense appreciation is developed for the people and experiences behind us, bridging us into the future. 

This year, I have become very conscious of how much I have changed. Evolved, even. I know with a certainty that I am everything that younger me hoped to be, and everything I could not know to hope for.

It is easy to grieve the time we no longer have. Coming into this year, I expected that it would be difficult to grapple with a period in which we all want to move forward into the next chapter of our lives while simultaneously holding onto some of the last pieces of carefree youth that we have left. It has surprised me to learn that the way in which I ultimately confronted this massive jumble of conflicting emotions was to place a great deal of value in the present moment. To hold the feelings of existing and being above all else. 

This year has taught me a joy unlike anything I have ever felt. To be situated in a beginning within an end, reflection is mandatory. There is a decision to make at this point, whether that be quickly moving forward or taking your time to slow the end. I have a bad habit of romanticizing things, of forcing beauty into places it does not belong, but I cannot express the extent to which I find it endearing that we have somehow as a group decided to navigate this period of waiting by living our lives as fully as possible. There is nothing more human than being faced with the decision to dwell on the past or sprint into the future and choosing the unseen third option: to take joy in the present.

To all the people beside me in this confusing, nostalgic, wonderful liminal space: we made it. Let’s enjoy it. 

Like it or not, our generation, technology, and social media are inseparable. We may not be snot-nosed toddlers gripping an iPad with a screen protector stronger than god, but our dependency on technology and the online world’s similar reliance on our consumption will always tie our future to that of technology. It is what we have grown up with. It is what we have dedicated our every extra moment to, and ultimately, it is what brings us together while tearing us apart. You could write thousands and thousands of words about why technology and streaming services and different platforms have produced a glass generation: readily offended, lazy, dependent, insecure, comparison-prone, and easily distracted. We know the pitfalls of the apps and habits we have come to adopt as our own. The point is, though, it is a part of our lives. We have quickly become the media we consume. Phones for hands, button-like fingers, and LED-studded eyes, our generation has become irrevocably associated with the media permeating our lives.

I am not here to complain about this technology — griping about social media, Netflix, or some online trend is a job already well-employed by a majority of the population over twenty-five. This digital trifecta of streaming, posting, and communicating has created a unified, aware generation, connecting millions of young adults in a way no previous generation has related to each other. 

This week, the name “Wednesday Addams” has found its way into a disproportionate percentage of my conversations. Every other TikTok video seems to be a Jenna Ortega interview or a clip of Wednesday dancing. From streaming the show on Netflix to Instagram posts with Wednesday-inspired outfits, I find it endearing that, for a moment in time, we take a collective interest, a shared appreciation, if you will, in the same thing.

The release of season four of Stranger Things this year brought a similar sense of unity. For weeks, we adopted an 80’s style of dressing, Kate Bush played on our Bluetooth car radios, and Metallica became appreciated by a new age of teenagers. Every Sunday night, too, we convened with glittered eyelids and absurd outfits to watch Euphoria with our friends, sharing our theories, ships, and season hopes with each other across social media platforms, with schools buzzing with conversation of the episode the next morning.

We share the same sense of music, watching each other’s Spotify Wrapped every year, sharing the artists we have spent the past eleven months getting to know intimately. We post stories on Instagram with our favorite song of the week playing in the top left corner. A teenager’s show-and-tell, we bare our hearts, hopes, and emotions with a screenshot of whatever album we are listening to at the moment. The generation of instant communication is also that of instant connection and a shared sense of pop culture that prevails in our lives tenfold since the days of MTV and teen magazines. For us, it is not a question of what is “cool,” of what is “trendy,” but a selfless and loving continuous trade of sharing what we enjoy and adopting the habits and tastes of those around us.

“Did you see so-and-so’s TikTok?”

The answer, of course, is “Yes! Did you see *insert other obscure reference that somehow an entire generation has experienced as a whole over the course of a few hours*?” 

There is comfort in our familiarity. A sense of security. We are united for a minute. United while we are young. I’m sure we will grow up, our lives divulging into two, some heading to the right, and others to the left. In due time, we will learn to hate each other (and that is not the cynic in me speaking — that is the realist). For now, though, we are separated from the rest of the world, together. Together in our own bubble of media, unified against the ridicule we receive for our connection to technology. Maybe every young generation feels a special connection to each other, an us-against-them approach to the world. I feel sure, though, that there is no group of people that have shared in pop culture, trends, ideas, and beliefs so quickly and readily. 

In this moment, we are young and growing, knowing each other better than we know ourselves. We share what we love with one another, begging a friend to watch a show that we binged in a day, or blasting our music in the car, asking each other “Who is this? I love this song!” People love to complain about our generation. That is a different problem entirely, but there is absolutely nothing more human than the idea that we are navigating the world as a unit, each connected by a show, an actor, a song, an Instagram page, a TikTok trend. We may spend our time apart, at times watching meaningless videos, editing pictures to post, counting the views on our stories, but we do so weaving the web that binds each of us together. 

We will remain together for a little longer. Our music tastes still shared, commenting on the same video, watching the newest season of some Hulu show simultaneously, hundreds of miles away. I don’t know exactly what the hourglass marking our divergence looks like. I like to think that the sand lies evenly on either side, falling slowly as we enjoy our lives. I like to think we have more time. I imagine the glass cracking as we learn to tolerate, if not love, each other from constant exposure and undeniable shared interests and media. Maybe we will stay loving, sharing, connected across oceans, borders, and socioeconomic divides. Maybe the hourglass will fall, sand spilling across the table. Maybe media will save us in the same way we have breathed a collective breath of life into the industry over the past decade. 

For now, I guess the question is, “Have you seen Wednesday? What did you think?”

The restaurant when the power went out.

Working in a restaurant is a shocking display of the highs and lows of humanity, and, quite frankly, a sociologist’s dream. As a sixteen-year-old, I watched grown men throw tantrums about having to wait half an hour for a table. I have been in an argument with an old woman that our parking lot was too icy (much to her dismay, I, as a hostess, was unable to salt the parking lot right then). One of my personal favorites was when I was yelled at by an old man because the entire stretch of buildings around the restaurant and the restaurant itself lost power due to a car accident that hit a power line. According to him, it was a) my fault that the power was out, b) unacceptable that the kitchen could not make his dinner in the dark, and c) outrageous that he had to wait for a table for twenty minutes in the crowded restaurant only for the power to go out right when he sat down. On the other side of the extreme, countless people have apologized profusely for their parents’ or friends’ undue behavior, and I know every regular customer by name. To be honest, these contradictory interactions are one of the main reasons I love my job. Every shift brings new drama (from the customers and staff) and a new cast of bizarre characters. I work at a half-bar, half-restaurant in Lisle whose main patrons are old people and the people who line up outside the restaurant when we open in the morning to get to the bar as soon as possible. One of my greatest joys is getting to interact with this Breakfast Club-esque collection of patrons.

Working at a local family-owned restaurant where the idea that the customer is always right is scoffed upon, I caught on fairly quickly not to read too much into the emotional outbursts of the people yelling at me in complaint. I was told when I started the job, “Olivia, this is the real world. Learn from it.” Sure, I learned how to interact with combative conversational partners, so to speak, and I certainly learned the responsibility that comes with having your first real job, but there are a few principal lessons I experienced and one incredibly important guiding rule that I follow above all while sitting behind the host stand. 

Under no circumstances should you ever ask a customer if they are joking. 

Yes, they are serious, and yes, they really do have a thirty-person party that would like to sit together in the restaurant with no reservation on a Saturday evening. When a woman calls on the phone to ask if she can rent out the restaurant’s tables (mind you, physically rent and take the tables home), she expects a legitimate answer and she will get increasingly agitated when you ask clarifying questions on how exactly taking the restaurant’s tables and chairs would work.

Above all, the “Invisalign Incident” is what truly convinced me of the necessity of such a rule. A few months ago a woman calls the restaurant’s number and unfortunately, I am the one who picks up. She says that she was at the restaurant earlier in the day and left her Invisalign after wrapping it in a napkin and forgetting about it. It was an unfortunate occurrence, but realistically there was nothing that could be done to rectify the situation because her table had already been cleaned off and any napkins and other trash thrown away. As I explain the reality of the situation to her, she decides to share her plan for retrieving the Invisalign with me. “Where do you keep your trash?” she asks as the other hostess and I stare at each other, mouths gaping, each coming to the conclusion of what she is suggesting. My coworker takes the lead in my shocked silence and explains to the woman that our trash for the afternoon was probably two or three massive garbage bags filled to the brim with food scraps scraped from the plates of every person who had eaten there that day. Essentially a soggy, gravy-filled, schnitzel-y mess contained in a few plastic garbage bags. My coworker explains that there is absolutely no possibility of us going through the trash to retrieve her Invisalign, a task as impossible as it is revolting. With yet another shocking revelation, the woman replies that she will arrive at the restaurant in thirty minutes herself to pick up the bags of trash. 

In the subsequent half hour, I spend my time retelling the story to every server and busser I can find, basking in the look of horror and disgust that predictably fills their face as they realize what she intended to do. (Keep in mind that this is also in the middle of Covid.) As the minutes come and go, we feel sure that she will not come, we are confident that she has realized that no $50 retainer is worth what she is attempting to do. Just then, an older woman who is probably in her fifties walks in and requests to be taken to the dumpster. She, unfortunately, is completely serious. In my shock, I even ask her, verbatim, if she is joking (I know — I broke my own rule), in a final attempt to confirm what I fear her intentions are. She simply glares at me before repeating her request. My coworker then takes the woman behind the building where she picks up several bags of trash, placing them in the backseat of her car before driving away with an unmistakable look of triumph on her face. 

No one knows if the Invisalign was ever found. No one knows what happened to the pounds and pounds of old, soggy leftovers piled into her car. I like to imagine that she laid out a tarp and dumped the contents of the bags on the floor and was immediately hit with a wave of regret (not to mention a stench) so strong she physically had to back away from the trash. What did I learn that day? First, I worried a bit about the trajectory of mankind after such a shocking event. More importantly, though, my hostess golden rule was cemented as gospel. Customers are weird. If you think it is a joke, it is probably not. If you feel like laughing, don’t. They are serious, and they will ask for your manager.

I was driving on the highway in the rain this week when a flock of migrating birds passed over me. The sky was dark and it was pouring outside as these birds struggled in the rain whilst maintaining their ‘V’ formation. It seemed to take them ages to cross the sky as they lost and gained height, fighting against the rain. I watched the birds above me flap tirelessly, over and over, their wings a consistent beat to the somber song of displacement and pointlessness. It struck me as so profoundly futile, something akin to absurdity, even. To be a bird flying through a storm because of some wild urge programmed in my DNA to migrate every fall. To upend my life (albeit a bird’s life) every year until I die for a hundreds to thousands-mile-long journey in hope of warmer weather.

Migration is an instinct for birds. It is a tug on their stomach each year to abandon the sanctuaries that they have cultivated throughout the more recent months. It is an escapist’s excuse, a defeatist’s way out. Other animals would have evolved to survive colder weather, but birds? They learned to run (or, well, fly). 

Fun fact: birds always return home to where they were born. Only, this fact is just fun in name, because there is nothing I find enjoyable about being dragged away from life by an unidentifiable urge. To work tirelessly on a weeks-long journey to reach what is supposedly a “better place,” just to be swept under the influence of this same urge a few months later, propelling you back to where you came from. It seems awfully tiring, being forced to comply with the every whim of some feeling deep within your gut. I cannot imagine the exhaustion of repeating the same trip time and time again, a horrible cycle of coming and going for the rest of your life.

Another “miserable” fact, you might ask? Birds migrate at night. As if being controlled by this urge was not enough, now you must travel away from your home during the cover of night, the cold seeping into your bones and the dark tangling in your wings. The night renders the trip a solitary one, transforming a flock migration into essentially a solo passage. To add to the downright stupidity of the migration process, birds frantically propel themselves through the air at shocking speeds while in the depths of night, hoping, I guess, that they will make it to Mexico, and not wind up dead on the side of a cell tower or wind turbine.

Birds lack control. Their entire lives are predetermined. Their location at all times decided by forces much larger than themselves, and yet they are looked at as totems of independence. An animal characterized by utmost freedom, bound by nothing, not even the tricky confines of gravity. And yet, driven to abandonment each year by a compulsion to escape. What does it matter that you can fly if the choice is not yours?

I’m probably overthinking it. After all, it’s birds—what do they really matter? If I have not already been transparent in my bias, I do not particularly like birds. As far as I am concerned, they are nothing more than flying rats. Birds are probably worse than rats, too. For one, I am positive that birds would have a massive ego because of their ability to fly. Imagine rats, but with audacity. Birds are dinosaurs (google it, it’s true). Imagine how insufferable birds must be, having survived the very extinction that took out 65-ton reptiles.  

I started this post with the intention of describing how I pitied birds for having to partake in such a pointless, tiresome journey due to migration instincts in their genes…at about 500 words in, I remembered that I hated birds. Migration is karmic justice, as far as I am concerned. An attempt from whatever sick celestial being who created these disease-carrying, beak-pecking rodents that could fly to undo their grave mistake. 

A final horrible fact to think about: there are around 50 billion birds in the world. That is seven birds per person. Do you feel confident in your ability to fight seven birds at once? You could fend off seven songbirds, maybe, but what about an ostrich? Or two four-foot-tall storks with eight-foot wingspans? How confident are you in your odds now? People need to worry less about robots taking over the world and instead look to the sky with fear.

Be thankful for migration, I guess. For even if it is not attempted heavenly rectification, it means a few bird-free months.

I read something recently that has since occupied a large portion of my mind. It was a question essentially asking if people would still fall in love and marry each other and pursue traditional “romantic” relationships if we had not been taught from an early age about love. If the word love was not in our vocabulary, if we did not grow up watching rom-coms, if dating culture did not exist, and the idea of falling in love was foreign, would humans still find and commit to partners because of some feeling of desire deep within ourselves?

Would we fall in love if we were not taught love? Or is it some irresistible human urge, some metaphysical itch, located far within us that draws us together whether or not we have the capacity to define it, whether or not there is precedent?

It seems an awfully unpoetic idea that love is a learned behavior. Although, there is something beautiful to be said about adopting such a vulnerable desire because of observing those close to you do so as well. I have the same work ethic as my mom and the same music taste as my dad, so who is to say their potential and capacity for love has not been taught to me in the same way since well before I could comprehend I was already the student of life’s most ambiguous lesson.

Whether an impulse or an imitation, love occurs every moment of every day as people find love and beauty in even the most ordinary happenings. I fall in love dozens of times a day, and not once does it look like a love-at-first-sight scene from a Hallmark movie.

A short list of the times I have loved this past week:

• Standing in the checkout line at Joann Fabrics holding a rainbow feather boa, chatting with a girl buying a red boa. Waving my hands with excitement as we discovered we were going to the same concert that night. Talking about our favorite songs, our outfits, our seats. 
• Walking an old woman to her table at my job as a hostess. She was unsteady on her feet, so when I offered her my arm, she leaned into me with thanks. She told me she was going to die soon. I told her to enjoy her meal. 
• Sitting on my couch early in the morning with the sun warming my body and in my eyes. Falling in and out of sleep as the sun rose, shadows leaping across my face.
• Watching my friend laugh with another as they spoke quickly and excitedly in a language I do not understand. 
• Dancing with my best friend under strobe lights as one of our favorite musicians performed in front of us. I fell in love with her for the thousandth time and fell in love for the first with the girls standing around us. I don’t know their names, but for that night, we were in love. With each other, with the music. We were familiar.
• Driving around with my dog in the pouring rain with no particular destination in mind. Sitting in the driver’s seat, singing along to the music blaring from the speakers, with my dog in the passenger’s seat, tongue out and tail wagging.
• Making my grandmother and me tea (she chose green tea, I chose blueberry). Sitting close under a heated blanket talking about my cousins, her friends, the recent drama from the small town she lives in. 

I am in love with my best friends, my heart uniquely theirs. I fall deeper in love each time we laugh, each time we share a judgmental, knowing glance, each time we brush shoulders in the hallway, grinning hello. All this being said, I certainly did not grow up being told fairytales of friends who loved each other or strangers who shared moments of love, fleeting and real. 

I grew up, instead, going to concerts with my father and his childhood best friend. Nobody told me it was love, and I doubt my dad would ever say they were in love, but weren’t they? Aren’t they? Isn’t texting each other when you are happy because you want the other to share in your joy love? Isn’t laughing over childhood memories and asking each other how their aging parents are doing love?

I end every facetime with my best friend by telling her I love her. She tells me, smiling, that she loves me too. I know this. She knows this. And yet we repeat it each call, two heart-eyed parrots, I suppose. Love is redundant. Consistent. 

I don’t know if people would love each other the same way if we had not been exposed to a nuclear type of affection or idyllic Hollywood courtships for our entire lives. Love would exist, sure, and I would argue it would be more honest. Simpler; innocent joy and desire. Expectation and precedence seem like merely complicating factors. Whether or not we have a certain phrase to define it or a few letters that supposedly sum up the breadth of our passions and appreciation, there remains an urge within each of us that I wholeheartedly believe is love, or at least the seed for which love to grow from. A hollow space cleared away between our organs and skin begging to be filled. A place and potential that could never be taught, whether intentionally or by virtue of existing in the 21st century.

What is it they say at weddings? Love is patient, kind. Love is a girl stopping you on the street to tell you how much she likes your shoes. It is catching a classmate’s eye in class and not looking away. Love is ordinary and mundane and comfortable. It is human connection and appreciation, and the optimist in me chooses to believe we are each born with this tendency, with the capacity for such a bond.