After All

Just another week and it'll all be over.

No more marching.
No more gush-n-gos.
No more dot books.
No more running blocks.
No more duts.
No more scissor lifts.
No more arcs.
No more run throughs.

I haven't really spoken about marching band in my posts, but I guess I just took it for a regular part of my daily life. Albeit a very huge one. I suppose it's just been taken for granted and now that it's coming down to crunch time...I don't know. It'll be strange to not have to do it anymore.

Just max out till the end then.

P.S. LOLbert hurry up.

Perspective

Today was a good day.

From going to Signal Hill to visiting buddies at UCI.

I suppose this will be more of the same of the last post, but I think today really was an eye opener for me. Listening to Javy talk about his essay on Chino Hills made me realize how right he is in describing the hills as something that we climb over to reach a greater world beyond them. The duality of the hills around me really came out then. How oppressive these brown giants can be blocking the horizon from seeing any further than the decaying grass on them. But at the same time the bosom of the hills offer a feeling of safeness and home.

It felt so nice being on the freeways and not seeing a hill in sight. It gave me a feeling of their being an endless world out there to explore. And even though Signal Hill was another hill, it was different. The only hill in sight for miles around us and it gave us view across the horizon that no other hill in Chino Hills could. The shimmering lights of the city below were like tiny hands waving begging to be answered.

Then seeing two of the Freshh guys just kicking it in college just made me want to leave high school behind me more. Sure Ayala has provided great memories but to me it almost seems like if the boring and bad times outweigh the good ones. Just walking around the halls and playing ping pong made me realize of a life beyond the hollow words, empty promises, and the this and thats of the people I go to school with. The ridiculousness of how I think of some things as so serious. How for a long time this felt like the end of the road and there was nothing after. But no, not anymore. The haze is becoming clear.

I want to get my applications done. I feel motivated. I feel the desire.

This is it.

I gotta say, today was a good day.

Popsicle Stand

I tried sleeping, but couldn't. I don't know when I fell asleep tonight or when I actually woke up and started working instead of just continually dozing off, but now I can't sleep and I'm up. There's nothing else to it. I lied in my bed for a good 30 minutes closing my eyes, tossing and turning, staring at the ceiling. Lying seems like an appropriate word to describe what I was doing in bed. Thinking I could sleep when I well knew that I couldn't.

But it gave me a chance to think about something other than school and the work I needed to do. I think it's finally dawned on me how everyone I knew last year felt as seniors. Just waiting, itching to get out of here. To me, laying in my bed, it seemed to have come full circle for me. I don't want to stay here anymore, I don't know where I want to be but not here. I want to say my final goodbyes, pick up, and blow this popsicle stand. Or maybe not even say my goodbyes and just leave. I realize that for most of the people I know now, I won't ever see or speak to again. The thought is eerily cathartic.

Maybe it's just easy to think that now, in what seems to be the thickest of senioritis.

Or maybe it's just finally coming to me how I don't really care about most of the people around me or what happens to them. Even in band, most of me doesn't really care how well we do anymore. I just want to go to competitions perform, chill in parking lots, and relax on bus rides. I don't care for practicing anymore. I don't care for getting better anymore. Some part of me realizes that no one will listen to all that the leaders and seniors have to say anyways. An apathetic outlook, I know, but at this point there's no other way to look at things for me.

As far as I'm concerned, I think my work is done here. At Ayala. At Chino Hills. I've taken what I could and I've done what I can. It's time to get up and leave for while I think. Maybe sometime in the future I'll realize that home is where the heart is. No matter how bland Chino Hills stays. But right now, in what I perceive to be my youthful rebellion in a search for something I think might be better out there, I'm ready to leave this these Hills behind me.

Illin'

Being sick is no fun just like everybody says. Not that I didn't know or think that before, but it really is horrible.

Headache
Chills
Fever
Aching Body
Sore Throat
Coughing

It just keeps going.

This must be the longest I've been put out of commission for being sick. Two days out of school, missing a competition today, and an SAT. Fucking hell. I still feel like shit with my head spinning and hurting at the same time, but I refuse to lay around in bed anymore. The worst part of being sick and missing school has to be just seeing your mates or having your regular human contact. The second worst part must be all the stuff your going to have to make up.

Being sick is such a strange journey in that of itself. When you're asleep it seems as if years fly by only to be woken up and have to sit through agonizing pain through time that seems to have stopped. Sitting there with your head throbbing and your body shivering uncontrollably looking back at the clock thinking it's been an hour only to see that it's still the same minute.

Hallucinatory nightmares of the deep and darkest corners of your mind fueled by an unrelenting fever then waking up gasping and wheezing for breath only to cough up something from your lungs into the trashcan that can only be discernible in the dark by the foul taste that it leaves behind in your mouth. Not to mention soaking in sweat and trembling from the cold.

At least now it isn't that bad. The fever is mostly gone. My neck and back only ache a little. Chills aren't so bad anymore. The coughing is still very much there and the headache still continues to persist. Speaking of which, it might be time to crawl back in bed and give my head another rest. Wasting time like this is not the fun.


A last thought: Why does Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup taste so good? It basically tastes like hot salt water, but it still tastes so good. The world may never know.

Another thing, to all those that send their goodwill, I thank you all.

Day Dreams

A drowsy zero period. Christensen's booming voice echoes through my head. My eyelids start to drop lower and lower until the whole room goes black. It only takes a second. I can still hear the sounds bouncing through my head.

I am god now. The universe a black canvas. I use my hand to summon up the debris of words and ideas into a swirling mass in the palm of my hand. From the void swirls together form. A planet. A society. Life. It all comes together, a spinning sphere smoothing itself out.

I snap awake, my head falling out of my hands. I can create life, but can't keep my head steady.

These half awake dreams in class are the only ones I seem to have anymore. Sleeping at night only lends itself to fast forward through life. These dreams I live lifetimes in a matter of seconds. I wonder why this is. Although all of them aren't so grand as creating life.

More often it seems like my subconscious is crawling through my dreams. Dreams of loss and rejection. They keep replaying through my mind, staying with me through the day like an awake nightmare. As if someone is dipping into an emotional well and pulls out a bucketful, these dreams leave me with my head hurting, my mouth dry, and my chest aching.

Another wet season in my brain seems to have come around feeding my feelings. But the well can't be full forever, it'll dry up eventually.

Maybe.

And then there was one.

It feels like those that enjoy doing nothing and the company of others are starting to fade away. The best moments I can recall in the last few years have been ones where I'm not really doing anything, just wandering. Just out for a stroll in the warm winter sun, the sun peaking through the tree branches. Everyone seems to be in a rush, along with myself. After a year of working day in and day out I miss those rare opportunities to just stop and smell the roses. To enjoy a walk for a walk. Even if by the time I reach my destination my feet are killing me.

I owe a lot to those that have left these hills for greener pastures. Those that like to do nothing for nothing. You could say that we're wasting our time, but to you I say that you're not living in the moment. Some of the best moments in my life have been where I could just laze about and be bored. To those I could be bored with, I thank.

College applications are already here and so are so many other things. I think I need a couple more breaths.

I shall go for a walk this weekend to remember all those that walked with me before.

Coughing

This cough that's followed me from band is killing me. I can barely stay in my room without my stuffing up and my nose closing up. Laying on my bed I can hardly breathe anymore without coughing up my damn lungs. Going to sleep at night consists of waking up in the middle of night not breathing and coughing till my throat goes raw. Damned allergies or whatever it may be.

I think I realized something from the last day of band camp, which is that the only thing people understand is fear. Fear of pain, fear of failure, fear of whatever else. Those instructing us keep saying that our drive is bogus if the only that motivates us is the fear of having to do push ups, but what else is motivation except fear? Fear of our competitors beating us, fear of us not being all that we can be, fear that we won't live up to someone's expectations, fear that we won't live up to our own expectations.

Desire. Fear.

I feel like they're one in the same.

I had to laugh that last day of band. To any of those who were in band, it was one of those days in band when all of the instructors decided to go into asshole mode and make us run 4 greens and do whatever else to get that fire under our butts and realize that we suck. Breaking people down from their selves was amusing to me.

Seeing people moan. Seeing people fall. Seeing people cry.

It was especially fun seeing all those that like to act so tough being the first to break. Such fakers. While everyone else was dying, I couldn't help myself from smiling. I guess you could say that we'd all come out of that experience stronger, but I don't believe that anymore. Not from such a weak experience like that. I don't pretend to know what real pain, struggle, or suffering is but the least I can say is that it wasn't that.

I feel that a majority of people don't understand, me included. For those that do, I envy them. What can I say? I guess that comes off as insulting to them, but what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger, right? I am fortunate though to not have to experience those pains on some level, but at some point without experiencing any of that where do I test my character?

I want to be broken.

I find that I can be quite amoral and unethical at times. By being broken maybe I can find how much of a hypocrite I am of my own beliefs. Sometimes I scare myself by what motivates me. The lengths that sometimes I go to lie to reach my own ends. Or to get involved into something with a completely false intention.

As Napolean said,
"From the sublime to the ridiculous is only a step; let the future generations judge."

If you live without any sort of moral ruler I feel that my brain is capable of conjuring up some frightening things. But you have to put that mask on so that you aren't a completely tossed out of normal society. Then sometimes letting those thoughts slip through the cracks and seeing the reaction of those around you. Putting on fake reactions of disgust to some other things as to not appear abnormal.

But then there's the side that puts yourself on the line for those around you. You live by the seat of your pants, but don't want those around to follow you, going as far as to protect them. Moving on with your own agenda without thinking about yourself, but of others almost in an altruistic fashion.

Then there is living on without fear. With nothing to lose. Without the caring what anyone thinks anymore. It's only what you want and do whatever you do to your own ends and to no one elses. Why do we fear authority? Why do we obey what anyone says? The fear of not conforming to the rules? What is it that makes obey someone with authority? With respect? Is respecting someone just not another form of fear? The fear of their disapproval. Why do we maintain such pack mentalities? Those that transcend are the bounds of our animal nature and have no fear in what they do are truly the extraordinary ones.

Standing on the sides because you yourself are so closed. Sometimes that's all you can do because you fear that no one understand what is going through your brain. Like bugs crawling out of your skin you can't say that it happens because it only makes you look like a basket case. You can only be there standing on the sides. No matter how much noise you make that's all you are, noise. Like bugs crawling under your skin and trying to pick them out by digging your nails through your skin.

How do you respond? How do you rationalize such crazy thoughts?

Sometimes all you can do is stand there and cough.

Thoughts

It's summer time again. Time to feel relaxed and laze about, break out the lemonade, fester away on top of couches, and all that good stuff.

This summer...seems about the same, but so different in so many other ways. What a trite thing to say.

But where to start...
I didn't write anything about the end of school. I don't know why. Lazy, finals, unwinding, whatever the reason I guess I should now. All the seniors are going to be gone, very soon.

I honestly don't know how I feel about it. Sad of course, but the realization that time is passing hasn't really hit me. A problem that I still dont' know how to deal with. Freshmen camp was a...kick in the teeth I suppose. The first time that I looked around the band room or the field and didn't see all the seniors standing around. It was somewhat an eyeopener. Being a senior is a very strange feeling.

I think for a better part of my life I've always been under the wings of someone else. Always having someone guide me or tell me what to do and now that I'm a senior I should be the one taking over that job. It's a big, scary job though that I think that I'll probably shy away from for a couple reasons:

1.There is a scarcity of freshmen.
2.I don't find it to be my place.

I always find that people want to be the hero that we all see on TV, in the movies, or read in books. That everyone wants to jump in so that they can cheer someone up or be the knight in shining armor to help that damsel in distress. Then the whole scene gets cluttered up and I find that if I weren't a part of that then it'd be all the better, but then get accused of not caring. I suppose being rational isn't being caring.

But then I'll find myself sitting alone in an old donut shop, paint peeling, white fluorescent lights making my eyes want to bleed, with dulling pink table tops at 1 in the morning alone, watching a man on crutches struggling to carry a cup of coffee to his car. And I look around even though I know that I'm the only one in the store besides the baker in the bake rolling his dough. And I'll be fighting a mental and moral battle inside my head on whether or not to help this man. Of course the right thing to do would be to help him. But at 1 AM? By some kid who shouldn't be out this late? My sheepish manner got the best of me and he limped away into his car. I guess I'm part of the reason why youth looks bad.

I think it's those kinds of moments are part of what defines us.

Do we help a man getting mugged or call the police when no one else is around? Or do we walk by like he didn't see anything hoping that someone else will help him?

Do we help the elderly or do we think that some other more upstanding citizen will come by and help them?

Do we help a man carry coffee to his car or do we sit stupidly sipping away at a can of soda thinking he isn't struggling that much?

---

Struggle.

Something else that makes us who we are. It's hard to have struggle when you're living in middle class suburbia. The struggle to find struggle in such a place. Or maybe not having struggle is our struggle. Or maybe I just have a different set of struggles.

Though I've thought a lot about this on my own Little Miss Sunshine put flatly how I thought.

"...he gets down to the end of his life, and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered, Those were the best years of his life, 'cause they made him who he was. All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn't learn a thing."

I find it to be a perplexing thought. If we're happy then we don't learn anything. If we're suffering it shapes us into who we are.

Does that make happiness a waste?

Is the pursuit of happiness just that? Is it worth more to pursue happiness then to attain happiness? Is that why the founding fathers gave us the right to pursue happiness instead of just having happiness?

---

That's it for now. More thoughts on the way.

Pavlov's Dog

It's sad to think that when I get a bad grade I feel the bad grade. It hurts to get a bad grade on so many levels.

It's sad. Since when did getting bad grades hurt so much?

But I'm sure I'm not the only one that feels this way. The pang of a bad grade. Some feel it at C's or lower and some others at B's.

I can only see this as living in fear. Fear that if I fail then I failed myself, my teacher, and everyone I know. But when I succeed it's not much better. Success is little more than hitting par.

But when happiness is found in an A and sadness if found in an F what does that say?
That we have to be made to learn through fear?

Mistakes and failures become the bane of my existence. Failure is not an option, ever.

But living how sweet can success be when it's out of fear?
I'd have to say not very. Sure sometimes it's great, but for the majority it feels like a hollow victory. Hollow because it wasn't out of my motivation to do well rather my fear of not doing well.

How can one be truly happy when it's constantly chased by fear?
I think it's something that is seen all the time in literature and other arts. The man at the top unhappy and the man at the bottom happy.

Ignorance must really be bliss because knowledge only brings fear, despair, suffering, and a thirst for more.

Mon Dieu

I cried.

Sometimes you just have to I guess.

I hate life.

A lot of people say that, me included, but at some point I had to ask, "Why do I get up every morning?"
I know I've put this out before. What motivates me? Which is nothing apparently.

But that fact has been eating me. It's been eating...slowly but surely at me, at my soul, at my heart. I can't help but feel that I'm...I don't even know.



Today in Japanese school I went to be a T.A. in one of the other classes for 3rd period. It was a 3rd grade class...I saw the kids and saw how happy they were.

I wanted to cry.

Where did those days go? Where you could be free and be a kid. When being a kid meant nothing more than having fun.

I don't know why I wanted to cry. Maybe it was because I realize how pitiful I really am wallowing in my own failure. Maybe it was because I can hardly remember how I was when I was that age. Maybe it was because in this world today you have to grow up fast.

I'm not cut out for this place.

I still want to be a kid.
I want to make those mistakes I never made.
I want to fix the mistakes I made.



I want to make something.
I want to create something.
I want to make something that will make people cry.
I want to make something that will make people laugh.
I want to make something that will make people proud.



I want to chase my own dreams. My own goals.
But how much are those worth if I never created something to make people stand in awe?
How much are those dreams worth if it only ends up forgotten in the annals of history or as mediocrity?

I want people to see my name and think, "He belongs with Kubrick, Hitchcock, Spielberg, Kojima, Wright."
I want to inspire people.
I want to be as famous as Einstein.
I want people to say, "All right, Fujita."

I want to give people a place to escape.
A place to get lost and not care.

Something to give people what they gave to me.



But what are wants worth if you can't make them come true.
What are they worth if they're just wants.

What are they worth.



What are they worth if you can't chase them.
What are they worth if you have to chase something else.
What are they worth if you don't have the legs to chase them.



They always say, "It's your deal, do it already."
But what if it's not what you really want?



Vinci, Einstein, Edith Piaf, Jaffe, Miyamoto, Moore, Coen, Tesla, Levine, Coppola, Anderson.

Where will I be?



I just want them to be proud.



I just want my parents to be proud.







I cried.

HEAT

This sudden heat wave warrants a post.

Damn this California sunshine, can't stand this heat. I sweat by just existing.

And then the bugs that start coming out. I sleep soundly without thinking about some bug that's flying or crawling around somewhere in my room that sneaked in from the outside.

I can hear their buzzes buzzing

April is bad news.

...Live

Kicking back in a car listening to great music with two of my best buds.

A hard day's morning setting up the gymnasium for drumline.

Napping away a cool and cloudy Saturday afternoon with just enough warm sunlight caressing your face.

Ginseng pills and hamburger aroma.

Lotting.

And an amazing show to top it all off.

Layoff

LAYOFF: THE GAME

Do I laugh?

or

Do I cry?

If You Don't Have Anything to Die For...

I've been wanting to write for a while now but every time I come to my keyboard and I feel like I have something to write about, nothing comes. My fingers fail to punch out what I'm feeling. Sometimes I figure that smashing my face into the keyboard would produce something just as good. However, now I'm going to try anyways.

Life has become so tiring, I just want to give up. The daily grind wears down on me. It seems like the gray suit wearing, hermetically sealed suburbs of the 50s are no different now.

School, homework, sleep. Repeat and rinse. Sometimes I can feel my creativity being stifled by everything around me.

At the same time I can feel the real world tearing open the seal to my life, pulling me out, and putting the boot of reality and firmly stamping it against the asphalt of the world.

After 16 years, almost 17, of avoiding the spotlight and bottling things up I find myself standing on the sidelines watching my emotions seep out of me. Suddenly after 16 year, almost 17, I find my lack of emotions alarming. It seems as if I hardly care for anything that happens and I'm at a loss of words when something confronts me.

Spending my life in a textbook has made stupid. It has me socially retarded.

"Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education."


Oh, how true I think that is now. How else could one see it?

I even look at myself and now wonder,

"Who am I?"

I feel so cookie-cutter, devoid of a personality.

Factory direct. Wholesale. Dime a dozen. Mass produced.

I see college admissions for the seniors and wonder, "Where does that leave me?"

What drives me? After 16 years, almost 17, I finally wonder what's been my ambition. After running an academic marathon, I stop and look back, then I look forward.

Where am I?

Why have I been running? To where am I running? Or what am I running from?

I'm closing in nearer to a crossroads of my life and can't see far because of the heat distortion of the California sun.

It's melting my gray matter.

I just want to sleep and hide under my covers for the rest of my life.

Without something to die for, what do I have to live for?

Art?

That's my problem. Art.

Maybe I'm just not looking in the right direction. Too busy thinking of how to make it more than it is when all it needs to be is casual.

Who cares what a pompous, old critic considers brilliant?

The Incompetence

Today was a usual day.

Get up, school, nap, eat, work.

But in between eat and work I found something. I found my brother's old AP English work papers in a file full of random junk. So I start to read through the papers analyzing Mark Twain, some sonnets, etc. Then I come up on work that hasn't changed in 5 years: Billy Budd Quote Quiz, Mimic Writing Exercise, among others that I can't remember off the top of my head.

Something dawns on me as I read through the papers.

I am terrible at this. I read through these close reads and all I can think to myself is, "I would have never caught this!" Even on the work that we both did he got a higher score. Between never catching the things my brother caught in close reading and him getting a higher score on the same work I start to think more. He was just lazy in school and he got better marks than I did. What if he tried? Where does that leave me? I don't want to think of it as a failure on my part, but how else should I think of it? Not that I'm out to one-up him, but I can't help but think of competition.

Only left me more confused about my future.
But maybe something good will come out of it.
Or maybe I'll just never measure up.

The New Year

Another year gone by.

It all seems like a blur.