going back (abridged)

suppose i were to return to imsa. no withdrawal, but everything leading up to winter break still occurred. i'm given the chance to return to imsa.

what happens?

first off, let me get out what i know. i know that i'll be an outcast. i've lost the trust of the 2007-08 quad. i can no longer count on any of them for seemingly anything. i'm sure if i look gar bear in the eyes, he'll threaten to 'do it again - but this time, make sure its done right'. everyone in the wing will seemingly side with my opposition (for a myriad of reasons). first off, i had been a dick to some of them. secondly, quite a few of them either didn't know any of us (and thus would go with the status quo) or avoid conflict, and thus would just try to stay out of it. almost the rest of 05 would be behind sadi, because he has now has the curly frye, and mems, who represent their separate factions. no doubt they've been able to turn the rest of 05 (and perhaps the campus) against me during my absence, and for good reason: they speak well, and i've been a douche at certain inopportune times. or, perhaps, its better to say that my escapades are well documented. regardless, the main point that i'm trying to convey is that my allies will be few and far between. i could probably only truly count on ten people, and only in private.

i probably had people that would associate with me in public, but nothing like before that fateful day, 11/20. generally speaking, my senior year was filled with people saying kind things to me, then expressing their true feelings behind my back. now, i doubt i'd get such pleasantries.

girls? few and far between. what girl should i have pursued? some random sophomore fling? tried to rekindle something that i used to have? perhaps pursue a girl from junior year? quite the topic of discussion, and yet none of it would have sufficed. i was a shell of my former self, and would really not bring a quality personality for a good time. ideally, i'd have something figured out by prom, but it likely would be some girl i knew decently well that was probably younger than me, hopefully cute, ideally a good dancer, and someone that could take my mind off it all. seemingly unlikely, but possible

but really, what would i do? now that the cats out of the bag, and its okay to hate me, i doubt it'd be as easy to traverse campus knowing that i had eyes on my back. i'd be the kid that got kicked out; the sophomores would either be intimidated or think i'm some kind of monster. i dont that anyone who had extended exposure to me before the incident would ever take anything i did without remembering what i was known for.

the only way i could see myself breaking free of everything that i've previously mentioned would be to return to my roots. long ago, before hate and misfortune hath changed me, i was a nice kid. if i were to return to imsa and be the nicest kid i could be, perhaps i'd make something of my second semester senior year. this thought crossed my mind so many times, and so many times i knew it was what i was going to do.

every time i brought it back, however, i realized that there was one essential flaw to it: i hated those two backstabbing, lying, manipulative sons of bitches. they both lied to my face, foregave literally everything we had ever done together (and for each other), for some sort of comfort; one wanted me out of the room, and the other didn't want to be replaced in the quad. such petty differences yielded such great misfortune for me. i would have gladly moved to 01 and never strayed into 05 if it meant i could have stayed at imsa. alas, i knew that being nice, being myself once again, would be conditional, and eventually i would break. people from the start would presume that it was but a facade, and their thoughts would be confirmed after i had had enough of the two of them. in a perfect situation, we would never run into each other, and i could be what i wanted to be.

thus, even had i been requested to remove my tender for a withdrawal from the academy, im not sure i would have taken it, because i really didnt know what was left for me there, if anything.

although i still wish, to this day, that i had ms. cain for modern theater that last semester

street lights

roughly december, 2009, the weekend before finals

i was on facebook instead of studying for the finals that would make or break my standing at imsa (note: at the time, i thought i had a small chance of winning the appeal, and thus would have my withdrawal from the academy reversed. i realized, with my parents, though, that if i failed two classes, imsa would have every right to request my withdrawal for that reason. quite the predicament that missing 4 weeks of classes leaves you [i literally add over 20 absences in some classes. i think in calc based, in which i also skipped 3 classes and missed a handful due to soccer, it was approaching 30]). my class schedule contained mvc, mcb, ebe, calc based, gender studies, ceramics, and indoor/outdoor games (so essentially calc 3, ap bio, ap phys for the first 4 classes). i was in danger of failing the first 4, and had only completed about a quarter of the required projects for ceramics. dire straights indeed.

thus, the normal session of procrastination has quite a bit more riding on it than usual. i facebook stalked something on my news feed and came across the song 'street lights' by kanye west (ironically, i think i remember it being either a post or a comment on a post by sadi). i youtubed it, let it load a bit, then had it play in the background while i continued facebooking. parts of the song caught my interest, so i listened to it again, watched the music video, listened to each word, etc. this song had struck a chord within me.

i ended up listening to this song on repeat for hours.

i was quite nostalgic, realizing that i may never be able to do some of the things that i've been yearning to do, never again do my daily routine of the past two years; never be looked at in the same way. certain lyrics, such as those suggesting personal growth, and the recounting of memories, helped me cope with what going to come. i knew that the appeal was a pipe dream, that i wasn't going to return. i would need strength to move on, or at least try and let go. i feel like song helped me accomplish the latter, if not the former.

i read someone post something along the lines of "kanye doesn't rap in his new album". a friend replied to said comment by seemingly joking about how he wouldn't switch from rapping to singing while at the top of his game. to this day, i still chuckle at this comment because of what i know about kanye's situation and my own. the album 808s and heartbreak (to the best of my knowledge) was recorded and released following the death of his mother. i felt that after this experience, something died inside of me, so i felt that i could relate somewhat to what kanye was saying.

so, to sum up this piece, although kanye didn't release another rap album to appease the pop sector, the song meant a damn lot to me at the time, and feel some sort of inherent need to suppot ye on his move.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3UD9hn0V90

initial thoughts

i'll try and keep the formatting of this blog similar in its entirety. note, though, that i will make mistakes and have irregularities; for that, i apologize.

generally, i'd like to have near perfect grammar, with the one exception that the shift key will never be used. generally speaking, i write in two ways: when i'm trying to prepare a formal discourse of my ideas such that i'd be proud of how it's presented (which suggests that i'm not necessarily proud of 'my ideas'); this is the case for all manners of school assignments, emails to my parents, any sort of legal document. the second method occurs when i'm simply trying to give my ideas justice, to literally attempt to let them bleed from my mind through my fingers into the keyboard

(now, naturally, with so many changes from the initial idea to the brain synapses firing to the muscle spasms in my hands moving, etc., my ideas may not be represented entirely as i'd like them to be. as such, i apologize if i am misunderstood).

regardless, i don't capitalize and i sure as all hell make grammer mistkaes. at times,i litrally type as fast as posible to get my ideas out.

this blog will be a convergence of these two concepts. as such, the blog will attempt to represent my ideas well, be as grammatically correct as i can make it, and will undoubtedly have many line breaks (as mr wiersum taught me during my semester of purgatory).

-andrew

the first post

i think about seemingly random topics quite often. when i allow my mind to wander, it'll make transitions from one topic to another, with said transitions often being vague or nonsensical. often times, my mind will combine two stimuli (be it visual, mental, sound, etc.) to yield a new thought pattern.

perhaps the best way i can think to describe it to another would be to suggest the concept of dreaming. bear with me, but i presume you've dreamed before. some of your dreams have been rather far-fetched, no? or quite fantastic in nature?

then you wake up; be it 2 seconds or 2 hours later, that dream is still somewhat in your mind. you try to explain it to, say, your mom downstairs when she's cooking breakfast, only you realize that after (or even during) your recounting of the events that transpired, you're quite literally a bumbling loon. it made sense to you, during the dream, but not to others. that dream was your reality, and at any other moment in your life, or to another, its just rubbish.

well, those seemingly unconnected and random ideas are the type of places that my mind takes me to. what follows is a disconnected series of thoughts about seemingly random topics. what makes these topics meaningful, to me, is the essential truth that at this stage in my life, i trust my subconscious, and will thus share everything with you that which it has led me to conceive.

-andrew