What a Blog What a Blog What a Blog What a Mighty Good Blog.

Yeah, yeah (ooo).

Just kidding.

I’m in psych right now and I just got my first “Hero” pass for being late from off-campus. On the first blog, I said that Echen is terrible at driving, but now I take it back. At least the man knows how to drive. 👀 @jeff. After getting Chick-Fil-A, we were parked at Meijer for five minutes trying to figure out whether or not we need to make a u-turn. This is why you shouldn’t eat waffle fries while looking at Google Maps.

Granted, if we were in Echen’s car, he probably would have gone 30 over the limit to get us back in time. Not sure which one is the lesser of two evils; I’m either late to class or at risk of vehicular injury. 

Also, why is it called a “Hero” pass? Is that jaded sarcasm? Am I being dissed by a 2” x 3” piece of paper?

I feel like if I had come back in class without the supervisor at the front of the school (who gave me a late pass), Mr. Scott never would have known. The man is pretty aloof. I’m pretty sure he didn’t know my name until I missed 8 days of school in January. Wait, did I even need to call out? Maybe he would have just marked me present.

During class yesterday, Mrs. Trowbridge said something about each blog having a “theme,” or some common factor that links each of them. Emm…I think I need to figure out how to write a blog before wrapping them in a common theme. Baby steps here. 

Actually, the other blogs all have some central theme with each entry. Megan and I read Allie’s blog on French Fries during Euro; I saw that Daniel focused his entry on Twitch streaming; Ewang had an introspective post of four characters. They’re very nice, but I don’t think I can focus on a topic for 1000 words without losing my sanity. I swear, for our Beloved paper, I thought it was 3-4 pages double spaced, so when I pulled up Amy Chang’s sample essay Sunday night on Canvas and saw a 4-page block of 1.5 spaced text, I shat myself.

Is it “shat” or “shit”? Is shat the past participle of shit? What is a participle? Maybe I should read directions.

Nahhhhhh.

I think I’ll just keep writing down anything that comes to mind in a free association format.

We played volleyball during gym today, and I was on a team with Aadi/Ewang/Jeff. Nick was on the other side of the net. Honestly, when you’re playing against a 6’ 2’’ member of the Varsity volleyball team, this sport is just abuse. Jason can tell you, N3L: “To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” 

When Nick hits the volleyball, I hit the deck.

Oh, side note, Ewang treats any event like it’s football. Basketball, Soccer, the Homecoming Dance. That’s why he wasn’t very good at Volleyball; you can’t aggressively tackle the other team here.

(Just kidding you know I love you Ewang) 

(in a platonic way)

(please keep driving me off campus) 

(I can’t ride with Jeff or Echen anymore).

(They steer like apes)

In a few hours, I’m scheduled to assassinate my target, ______ _______. Last time, we attempted to assassinate ______ _______, but ______ _______ did not show up at the specified location. We were giggling like school children while waiting for ______ _______. Wait, we are schoolchildren. It was very disappointing. This time, we will ensure that ______ _______ is dead. ☠️. Figuratively. In the bounds of the assassins game.

With the other blogs, I noticed that most of them have an image to go along with the post and a few images embedded throughout the site. The problem is that I don’t know how to use images. I could insert those copypasta text emojis from Reddit. 

\(0.0)/ ! 

Is this visually appealing? Does this make the blog more engaging? Blogging is strange. Or maybe I’m just doing it wrong. I’m kinda hungry. I hope Ewang takes us to chicken lit after we murder ______ _______ ☠️☠️☠️.

I’ve exhausted all my thoughts. I didn’t know that Writer’s Block existed with free writes. Perhaps writing on a consistent topic would allow for a more coherent stream of thoughts. But then again, if I’m writing on a topic unrelated to me (like French Fries or League or Twitch), I think that the format would be more of a “They Say I Say” structure, where I find a topic and then react to it/describe my opinions on it. While that’s definitely a solid format, maybe my blogs can just be sporadic journal entries. Does that still count as a blog? What is a blog?

(Also, if we reacted to a topic or issue, we would need to create a works cited page. That would muddy up the site. It would also require me to watch a 2-minute ad on easybib. Or I could get a subscription like the New York Times. Smh. Heck no. I don’t support independent journalism. English sux. Verified facts sux. Suck.  Jk. I’d do the They Say I Say blog it if it felt right.)

---

Aight! It was nice meeting you. Please let me know when your college decisions come out; it’s always nice to see where my interviewees end up. Until then, I’ll be happy to answer any questions about our school or my experience there. I’ll be writing a report to the admissions committee, and you can also reach out if there’s anything else you want to add to our application.

Chao!

– zx

Perhaps I’m doing this blog post thing wrong, but I wanted to try my hand at poetry.

 

Finding X

Cercare, men, of the philosophes’ helios on heavenly bodies––

No, that’s not quite right, I’m not a Renaissance polymath, like those

paste-colored portraits I glanced over in my Euro textbook

 

last year, when I was filled with all questions

and far too few hands. I read Machiavelli, balanced crooked

in the memory of a bean-bag chair, told myself I’d

 

take up a gym membership, take up school lunch without

the lost clicks of computer keyboards and raindrop buttons, stuck

mid-conversation measuring time in the dry ring of bells

 

but I digress––in text without Provençal and Latin and languages

that the vernacular won’t understand, even––I’m sure I need to find

a letter. That’s what we came here for, right? A letter 

 

x, like the Leo among Renaissance men who patroned the arts and declared

feasts of Worms, shushing figures who called for reform. Well

I don’t know how to find x, but I know that years ago I

 

met a man whose reforms others would like shushed, him stuck

in the middle of vascular dementia, patronizing the arts and calling

a feast to be Of worms. We wanted to find x. Here’s what

 

we got: a kid and his grandpa in a retirement home, clicks

of a carmel photo. On weekends I’d bring my math homework

while he was there, listening to lectures of communism 

 

and oil fields and weeping criticisms of capitalist China

that Renaissance predecessors to Marx would find hard

to believe. The worksheet said to derive the circumference

 

of the circle, x. X, I found the circumference of my thoughts

spinning, lost and lackadaisical like Galileo’s fight for the

Earth to spin around the sun, condemned by faith

 

for speaking the truth. I wrote numbers on paper until the lines

warped, and grandpa sharpened pencils for my moments and his time, Mantegna 

to Raphael. The best days: flowered dixie cups of fruit smoothies

 

on a table, games of quiet and loud nostalgia as he dug memories

of a dreamer, coating my aspirations with the pencilled ephemerality

of youth. He was an idealist. I could have been influenced, but there he was

 

quoting Mao and Deng, making speeches by chance. The Renaissance changed

thinking. So did he, filling my mind’s open space with the most beautiful and 

terrifying thoughts. On a calm spring Wednesday, he rolled up in his chair,

 

the one pushed by the nurse, and fell, dropped. Here’s something 

they didn’t teach us in high school history: time is petty, worse than Cigna 

insurance company when he showed up at the emergency room

 

with a winter gown and clotted artery, worse than my mother’s sob in silence 

that echoed through the partition walls and linoleum tiles. I almost wish

it was the Church that struck him down, papacy adamant to drench his fiery beliefs. 

 

Cercare, men, of the philosophes’ helios on heavenly bodies––

there is no sun left. X is still blank and followed grandpa

into the unanswerable, but I must keep scribbling down numbers 

 

and rearranging thoughts. The textbook never says how hard it is, 

crafting theories and enlightenment after dark. So let me try: 

it’s not x. But it’s the only answer I know. The Renaissance

 

fades even if I wear edges of paper flipping through text, and grandpa

ends up taking those words with him. Outside the angel’s pin,

the philosophes push at thought’s door. But I am not a Renaissance polymath.

 

We wanted to find x? We got the past.

I don’t think that’s right. Sorry. I’ll try again.

Before exploration and written vernacular language, before 

 

science and empiricism and modern math, 

there was a kid, his grandpa, and the Renaissance. 

They chased x to the limits of chance,

 

and changed the text of history–