Journal (or Stream of Consciousness)

Sumer camps in winter days and

Skiing all the way from June to May

Write in journal every day

So much detail, every action: this, then, this

Forgot something – add it in

Happy sadness jealously in censored pages

Read the words, relive the days

Summer camps in winter days and

Skiing all the way from June to May

Write in journal every day

Callingwood, Earl Buxton, Mall

Popsicle recipe, camera assembly

Spelling mistake and grammar error

Oh, just learn about sentence structure

Summer camps in winter days and

Skiing all the way from June to May

Write in journal every day

Going places, Jasper, Banff

Cabin stays at horseback trails

Some stay constant – little panda,

Lots of novels, baby blanket

Summer camps in winter days and

Skiing all the way from June to May

Write in journal every day

Image of the house is fading

Enter, piano, stairs, then dining

Blank out – living room, kitchen, look up

Upstairs bedroom mine, then theirs

No wait – that’s now. Before disappears

Summer camps in winter days and

Skiing all the way from June to May

Write in journal every day

End of journal, half filled blank

Close the book and open window

Wonder where they all are now

Haiku Definitions

Happiness is

                Knowing what to do

                Being with all my good friends

                Full of distraction

Pride is

                Accomplishing things

                Reaching a hard-to-reach goal  

                Don’t feel it too much

Disappointment is

                Going not as planned

                Failing to do what I want

                Should have done better

Confusion is

                What should I do now?

                WTH is going on?

                Feel it all the time

To Do List

Ever lengthening things to do

This thing, that thing, and that one too

Satisfaction in crossing things out

Add some more to complain about

Tasks laid out all organized

First this then that, can’t be surprised

Finish one thing then suddenly think

Also have to give Pepper a drink

Like a shape-shifter always changing

Helps me with my life-arranging

What was I doing? Look back at list

Oh right, I should be practicing Liszt

Forgetfulness is a weak spot

This list is the thing I got 

Le Cadeau

C'est pour mes devoirs de français, mais ça m'est égal :)

C’était Samedi matin, et les deux petites filles étaient très heureuses. Grand-père était en traine de venir ! Elles aimaient beaucoup quand leur grand-père est venu chez eux, parce que Grand-père aimait raconter beaucoup de bonnes histoires. Et qu’est-ce qui c’est même plus meilleur, c’était que Grand-père apportait toujours des cadeaux pour les deux petites enfants.  Caroline et Mathilde ne pouvait pas attendre pour son visite.

Vingt-minutes plus tard, la cloche a sonné. Caroline et Mathilde a couru très vite vers la porte pour l’ouvrir.

« Grand-père !! » elles ont crié en voyant leur grand-père. Il avait une grande sourire sur le visage, et il a donné une grande baisser à chaque fille. La mère des filles a apparaît et a demandé à tout le monde à rentrer à la maison. Caroline a tendu la main de Grand-père et l’a amène au fauteuil.

« Racontez une histoire !! » a dit Mathilde.

« Oui, une histoire ! » a ajouté Caroline.

« Laissent votre pauvre grand-père décontracter un peu avant lui demander pour une histoire ! » a dit leur mère, en rigolant.

« Ce n’est pas grave, » a dit Grand-père. « J’ai une bonne histoire que je veux raconter. Les histoires sont le plus importantes, n’est-ce pas ? Je peux décontracter après.»

«D’accord, » Grand-père a commencé.

« Il était une fois, il y avait un petit garçon qui habitait avec sa tante, son oncle et son cousin. Il n’habitait pas avec ses parents, parce qu’ils étaient morts quand il avait un an. Le petit garçon ne le savait pas, mais il n’était un garçon normal. En fait, il était extraordinaire. Pourquoi ? C’est parce qu’il était un sorcier ! Mais Il ne le savait pas parce que son oncle et sa tante n’aimaient pas la magique. Ils avaient essayé de cacher la vérité du petit garçon, et ils avaient dit au garçon que ses parents étaient morts à cause d’un accident de voiture… »

« Hé ! » a crié Caroline. « Ca ce n’est pas une vraiment histoire ! C’est Harry Potter ! »

Grand-père a ri.

« Oh, désolé, Caroline. Je n’ai pas su que tu avais déjà lu cette histoire ! »

« Mais grand-père ! » a dit Mathilde. «C’était vous qui nous avons donné les romans ! Vous devez bien savoir que nous l’avons déjà lu… Vous nous l’avez lu ! »

« Oui, oui, je rigole, » Grand-père a admis. « Mais j’ai une raison de raconter cette histoire. Attendez ici. » Il s’est levé et est allé à son sac. Les deux filles essaient deviner qu’est-ce qu’il fera pendant il cherchait pour quelque chose dans le sac. Grand-père a trouvé qu’est-ce qu’il a cherché : deux boîtes longues et marrons. Les filles ne pouvaient pas croire leurs yeux. Elles ont pris les boîtes et les ouverts très rapidement. C’était qu’est-ce qu’elles ont voulu pour longtemps : des baguettes magiques ! Les filles ont embrassé leur grand-père et lui ont remercié sans cesse. Quand leur maman a retourné à la salle à séjour, elle était surprise à voir ses enfants avec des bâtons en riant avec son père.

« Maman ! Regardez ! » A crié Mathilde. « Je suis une sorcière ! »

« Grand-père, » a dit Caroline. « Ca c’est le plus meilleur cadeau que vous nous avez donné ! »

Performance

It’s my turn to play. My heart beats fast as I get up from the chair, remember at the last second to take off my sweater and walk the short distance up the steps of the stage to the piano. I take a bow and sit at the grand piano.

My hands are shaking a little, thought I know that I can play this piece very well. All of a sudden, I think of all the things that could go wrong. I messed up on that section today when I was practicing. Sometimes I don’t hit those chords right. I imagine pushing the thoughts out of the way and shutting a heavy door in front of them. I take a deep breath and start to play.

The song starts slowly, and I feel like I’m playing especially slow as the metronome of my heart speeds up even more. I force myself to stay at tempo, imagining my mechanical metronome at home ticking out the beat.

As the song progresses, my apprehensive thoughts stop pounding on the door I slammed in front of them, and begin to disappear. I imagine them walking away, shoulders hunched with disappointment. I stop thinking about each individual key, and start to enjoy the music, letting my fingers play freely. I start to think about the CD recording of this song I listened to in the car, and imagine myself playing just like it. My thoughts begin to wander to other things, like the cake that we’ll get to eat after the recital, and the lit essay I have to work on when I get back home. When I start drifting too far away, I quickly give myself a mini mental slap and remind myself to focus.

The fast part of the song comes up, and I play a little faster than usual. Part of my brain is surprised that I’m playing this fast, and this makes the unhappy thoughts stop in their tracks and look back hopefully at the shut door. My fingers continue to play the song while part of me tries to say, “Slow down!” part of me says, “Go ahead!” and part of me is reinforcing the lock on the heavy door, for those thoughts are heading back to try to break in. Fortunately, I manage to keep everything going smoothly.

As the song nears its end, I become a little excited. Almost done, and no mistakes! I quickly admonish myself again, for I have to actually finish before I can celebrate. The thought that I am not entirely sure of the last note of the song slips through the crack under the heavy, closed door, but I shove it outside again and keep playing.

I hit the last chord and let it ring out. The thoughts have stopped trying to break down the door, and the part of me that was on the other side is pointing and laughing at the bad thoughts as they shrivel up and disappear for good. My heart’s still beating fast, but it’s no longer out of nervousness. I get up from the piano, take a final bow, and walk back to my seat. 

Moving

The music pounds in my ears louder than I usually like it, but today I don’t care. I try to keep my mind on the music as I throw clothes in to the cardboard box, trying not to think of what the boxes mean. Sophomore year had just ended, and I should be ecstatic, hanging out with my friends at Jollyman Park or at someone’s house, enjoying the first few moments of summertime freedom. Instead, however, I was stuck inside, helping my parents pack for our big move.

Move. The word hadn’t meant much to me before. “Move out of the way” meant taking half a step to the side to let someone pass. “Move it here” meant clicking and dragging a portion of a photo project from one corner of an 11-inch screen to the other. I never realized the word could have this other meaning: “We’re moving.” Meaning leaving this house. And not just to a different neighborhood, or even to a different city in California. My family and I were going to leave the country altogether.

Granted, Canada is probably the least foreign a foreign country can get. But still, leaving Cupertino, my home for all 15 years of my life, to some random city in Alberta, Canada was pretty unnerving. My mother had informed me of the decision a month ago, mumbling something about “Dad” and “job” as an afterthought. At the time, I had been so preoccupied with studying for finals that it hadn’t completely hit me that we were actually going to move. So it wasn’t until after I came home from my last final this afternoon, and finally took notice of the multitude of brown cardboard boxes that lay around the house, that I suddenly realized the reality. We couldn’t be leaving. There must be a different reason for the boxes. The return plane tickets must be hiding somewhere underneath those passports. The goodbye party we were going to go to this evening was just a joke.

But it wasn’t a bad dream. We really are going to leave the next morning. And that is why I was in my room, blasting music while grudgingly picking and packing up my belongings.

After all the boxes are packed up and duck taped, I sit on the floor in the middle of my room and look around at the emptiness. With my bed gone, you can see the little dent in the wall that had been covered up by a multitude of plushies. The dent was the result of my head hitting the drywall when I was seven, an excited child eager to show my mom the great amusement found in running up and jumping up onto the tall bed. I smiled at the memory. After I had hit the wall, I had laughed as my mother freaked out, thinking I had suffered a concussion. Fortunately, the only real damage had been to the wall. My eye wandered to the tiny holes in the wall right above my desk. In my mind’s eye, I put the nails and the whiteboard that used to hang from them back on the wall. I could almost see all my reminders, in pen or on sticky notes, covering the once-white, but eventually green-tinted board.

I try to imagine a new room. Empty and white, no colorful posters on the walls to cover the blank canvas of wall paint. My mother, seeing the sorry state of the old whiteboard, had decided it was time to throw it away, promising me a new whiteboard when we got to the new house. A new white board, too, would be as white as the snow that would fall heavily during the winter.

Thoughts of snow cheered me up a little. Here, the only snow that ever came fell on the very tips of the mountains a little ways away. Our family went skiing every winter at Lake Tahoe, but it was a snowy respite that only lasted less than a week every year. My mother told me that there were two small ski resorts less than half an hour away from the new house; that would mean I could go skiing for perhaps four months rather than four days.

Thinking of winter makes me think of figure skating. I have been skating ever since second grade, so looking for a new club to join had been one of the priorities on the moving to-do list. The club my mom had found seemed pretty cool. They usually practiced in an ice rink in West Edmonton Mall, one of the biggest malls in North America. Apparently there are also at least three other ice rinks in that area. I wonder if there will be outdoor rinks too. The one time my friends and I went to skate at the outdoor rink in San Jose, the ice had been melting and was more of a pool than the ice rink by the time we were ready to leave. I figure colder weather would mean actually frozen ice rinks. Perhaps some day one of my friends from over here could come over and we could go skating outside.

Friends. Leaving everyone is the hardest part of moving. The school I am going to go to has a total population of about 400 students, less than the number of people in just my grade in my school here. Smaller classes seems like it could be a nice thing. Maybe then I’d be able to get to know everyone in my class by more than just their names. Of course, I will still keep in touch with all my friends in California with the help of email and facebook.

When my mother calls me to say we have to go, I turn off the music and run downstairs. It’s sad to leave all my friends, but I’m not so sad anymore. Perhaps Canada won’t be so bad after all.