Yes. I own one. Yes. I plan on using it.

I'm not sure how I came to be in this particular mood. I've been told it's one of my "odd teenage phases". Uh...thanks for making me feel diseased. Anyway, I've been LOVING old technology. I love this cassette player that my mom gave me. I was visiting with Andrea (basically the coolest person ever) and we were talking about how we love these things. These simple things.  So, here is my plan:

1. For my 16th birthday, I want a nice bicycle and a bus pass.

2. I will not upgrade my phone, if anything, I will downgrade.

3. I will use cassettes and CDs only. (I keep CD's because Carlie makes me excellent ones.)

4. From the excessive amount of random items I own, I will downsize ALL items to a maximum of 80. That includes clothes, the house key, toothpaste, my notebooks, writing utensils, etc. ALL OF IT.

5. Live with less.

I'm not sure how long this will last. A long while I think. I like it.

I'll update with grand excitements and tragedies from now on, I promise.

In the meantime, I will look for these...

 Because...well, I like 'em.

Amourpropre

Ollo. 
In Socratic we've been studying WWI and the literature we just finished with it was All Quiet on the Western Front. (I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it, it's quite the masterpiece.) Upon completion of this reading, we were given the weekend to write a war poem. As much as I love writing and poetry, I can honestly say that this is the hardest assignment we've had all year. I spent HOURS trying to wrap my mind around the horrors that I know nothing about. Whenever I've been in a writing class or conference, or whatever it may be, one thing that your lecturers harp on is to write what you know. After banging my head against the keyboard, racking my brain trying to uncover the emotions of a soldier, I realized that I couldn't possibly put myself in that situation, but I do know what it's like to be on the other side. I wrote from a much more mature perspective than I can personally relate to in detail, but it's better than having no connection at all. In the end, I think I accomplished a fairly sound piece. It's not finished of course, as nothing is ever really 'finished', we simply turn it in, but I would like to improve it. So here is what I turn in, I hope that my effort is shown, if not, I've been jipped. Then I'll be forced to tell myself that some Whit just Happens.
Just as a side note: amourpropre is French for vanity or self indulgence. But, you already knew that.




In the pearl white casket
Gleaming with glory
Lies the man who belongs
To an unfinished story.
The black sea of despair
Draggles after men we treasured.
And silence is nearly tangible
As wrung hands cry their displeasure.

We'll bury him like any other,
Deep within the ground,
Where he'll never ease the pain
'Cross the lips of his lovers frown.
She'll collect his pay,
But forget why it was important.
She'll pretend to hear their respects,
But drown in her own discordance.
Her restless nights in woe
Because half the bed was cold...
Tell her the honor in dying
In a land that’s not your own.

Leave her to her tears
And shattered breath,
For tonight we converse with God
As we begin to question death.
We pray,
"Our hands are stained with our brothers’ blood.
We try to suppress it with the flowers we've plucked,
We lead the lie that if we build a higher gravestone,
Engrave the courage that resonates in his bones,
Our crime of exorbitant amourpropre
Can somehow be erased."

But her lover is still dead.

A broken home trapping the ghost of he who bled.
They'll give her a medal to replace her regrets,

But her lover is still dead.

His mere mortal strength
Matched not their artillery,
And now in freedom's dirt
He'll rest or turn forlornly.

We’ll bury him like any other,
Deep within the earth,
Where he'll never again hear his mother's talk,
Her pride in his worth.
She'll hold her head high;
Respectfully follow her one and only son.
She'll blindly shake strangers’ hands,
Not knowing her war has just begun.
But far from the crowds
And the noise of the opaque,
Her eyes will swell as she swears
Her misfortune is all a mistake.

Leave her to her tears and shattered breath,
For tonight we converse with God as we begin to question death.
We pray,
"Our hands are stained with our brothers’ blood.
We try to suppress it with the flowers we've plucked,
We lead the lie that if we build a higher gravestone,
Engrave the courage that resonates in his bones,
Our crime of exorbitant amourpropre
Can somehow be erased."

But her baby boy is still dead.

A mother's heart patched by loose threads.
Her prized possession lost, we're all free instead,

But her baby boy is still dead.

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