Category: potpourri

The Drafting Table

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In my home, in a secluded corner of the living room lies a large table with thin white sheets of paper laying over it. Thin metal wires line the sides spanning the entire length. A straightedge lies in between these wires hanging millimeters above the paper.

A bushel of pencils held together by a rubber band lay in a ceramic cup outside the wire.

I still feel the carpet from when I was a small child playing around it.

It has moved from house to house, the table itself changes but the items don’t. Each house has been drawn on it. From the renovations of my first house to the house in Ojai being built. When I wake up in the morning I can hear pencils drawing lines and ideas becoming reality.

This has been an important part of my creative process and it has made me a more complete student.

Having a father who was artistic and built himself from scratch makes me want to do the same. The drafting table in my house serves as a monument to the hard work and art.

So when I wake up in the morning when visiting home I am inspired to become the best I can possibly be.

Universe

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We came from darkness

In a flash, the universe was created

Molten rock, frozen metal and fiery space dust crashed and collided across the galaxy 

Stars were born from clouds of gas, nebulae

The sun exploded in the vast blackness

Casting its newborn brilliance into the universe

Misshapen rocks were sucked into its gravitational pull

The third rock cooled just enough to create water

Tiny organisms evolved

With each passing millennium, they changed…

October 16, 2009

kirbyfullyloaded1 Comment

I was thirteen when I attended Spudfest at the Ojai Valley School Upper Campus.

Spudfest is an annual campus-integrating event that introduces students of the Lower Campus to high school life.

We had Team Comp(etition) and battled it out in various events for points, the winner would be rewarded with a pizza party.

We did all sorts of games, including, but not limited to, the chicken launch, the Barbie drop, tug-o-war, candy mummies (where someone got wrapped in tape and rolled on a tarp with candy all over it), and the shoe scramble.  It was all very jazzy.

Afterward we had a party up at the campus.

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A point

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A point

A location in the universe of indeterminate size and mass

This is the beginning

A focused point of unfathomable energy

Expansion.

The celestial bodies begin to drift away

Hydrogen begins to react with itself as it becomes helium

The elements form together inside stars and through the explosive power of supernovas

The folds of gravity bring these pieces together

The universe expands constantly

never stopping

never slowing

it pushes beyond its edges and speeds toward some unfathomable edge

The stars fascinate me

How some flash of light millions of years ago

manages to hit my retinas and get deciphered by my brain to be defined as

a single point of light in an endless dark abyss.

The journey of trillions of miles over millions of years only to hit a retina in the eye of a person on

a solitary rock orbiting a giant burning ball of gas

and there are people too focused on the happenings of the Kardashians to notice.

Petrichor

kirbyfullyloadedLeave a comment

“It means the smell of dust after rain.”

In freshman English, our teacher had us memorize a list of the “Hundred Most Beautiful Words in the English Language.”

I still use a lot of the words I learned from that list, in my writing.  But one word stuck with me more than the rest, and that is: petrichor.

In that list, it was defined as “the smell of earth after rain.”

Isn’t that just lovely?

Last weekend, I went home to San Diego for just over fifteen hours.  It was the shortest visit I’ve ever had, but it was beautiful.

It was drizzling when we hit Genesee Avenue, and raining when we got to Point Loma.  I stayed at my friends’ house and I could hear the rain pouring outside.

At about 12:30 am, I walked out into the warm, San Diego rain.

It was foggy, so the city lights turned the cloud layer soft sherbet orange.

It was so peaceful.  I just stood there and let the warm droplets collect on my eyelashes and make them heavy with rain.  The world looked gilded, as if embellished in tiny bluish crystals, tremulous and glittering.

Moving

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I had lived in the same place my entire life.

Los Angeles was my home. All of my friends were there.

I had made countless memories from Brentwood to Santa Monica.

The Ghosts of these memories stay even though I am now in Ojai.

The fence on 18th street is still broken because I ran through it playing football with my friends.

I still have a time capsule in my Brentwood backyard from a decade ago.

There are panels missing in my friend’s garage from stray baseballs.

Footprints in cement from walking over it while it was still wet.

The memories I have formed have stayed as ghosts. living, but stuck in a state where they are both stuck in time and begging to be relived.

Whenever I visit I can feel them. The memories that have past. I want desperately to grab them and put them all in a backpack and take them with me.

Alas, one cannot store memories like one stores clothing and items.

The move has been a difficult journey, but I am happy here and excited to make new memories with new people.

OVS has become a new environment that was scary at first, but has become a place I call home.

Overwhelmed

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Like many students I get overwhelmed with my work very often. The process progresses over time.It starts during second period when I get my first homework assignment. In my mind I am scheduling out my study hall. By third period my study hall is full. In my mind I am praying that I don’t get anymore homework. Fourth period hits. Well now I am going to be up until eleven. Then I get a brief break for Journalism where I do a blog and some of my work in class. English comes and more homework is added to the pile.

During study hall I sit down and look at the giant list of of homework in front of me. My mind starts to race. The worst case scenario runs through my head first, what if I don’t finish any of it. The list starts to feel bigger and my time is ticking away.

The Walls get smaller and my heart beats faster. It gets harder to breathe. I get a faint ringing in my ears and a massive headache. Everything seems impossible and I just want to go to sleep and leave it to the morning.

I work up all of my courage and begin. I tear through the work slowly chipping away at the giant list.

I blast through graphs and formulas as math slowly works itself out.

Physics disappears as the laws of projectile motion get thrown around.

AP US History get thrown into the past when I answer questions about the revolution.

I expose the end to my articles in Journalism.

In English I power through Miller and Poe as the clock hits 11:59 pm.

Homework is finished and I crawl into bed.

As I fade into sleep I remember.

I have a vocabulary test tomorrow.

I say toss it, I’ll study during my free period, and I fall asleep.

Sidelined

displacedlocal1 Comment

I have been sidelined at every football game this season. I have not played a down of football in a game this year. This is all due to a small fracture in my ring finger that I injured during practice.

I injured on a play during practice where I rushed the quarterback and was blocked. my finger happened to get caught in another player’s jersey.

The fracture wasn’t very large, but my finger was rotated halfway sideways and wouldn’t move.

I stopped playing and after practice had it wrapped up. It wouldn’t move and I didn’t feel hopeful.

The results from the X-ray proved my fears.

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Printemps dans Paris

kirbyfullyloadedLeave a comment

My school is going to France and Spain over spring break.

I can’t go, but I think it’s so exciting that Ojai Valley School gives its students the opportunity to travel in Europe!

OVS is collaborating with a company called Education First, and will be traveling in France and Spain for 11 days in April, 2013.

But the part of the trip I think is OUTSTANDING is that our students are going to Paris in the spring.

They’re going to visit:

–Notre Dame Cathedral

–Place de la Concorde

–Champs ÉlyséesRead More »

The Wind That Shakes the Barley

kirbyfullyloaded1 Comment

“I sat within a valley green

I sat with me my true love

My sad heart strove to choose between

The old love and the new love

The old for her, the new that made

Me think on Ireland dearly

While soft the wind blew down the glade

And shook the golden barley 

‘Twas hard the woeful words to frame

To break the ties that bound us

But harder still to bear the weight

Of foreign chains around us

And so I said, “The mountain glen

I’ll seek at morning early,

And join the brave United Men

While soft winds shake the barley.”

While sad I kissed away her tears

My fond arms ‘round her flinging

The foeman’s shot burst on our ears

From out the wildwood ringing

A bullet pierced my true love’s side

In life’s young spring so early

And on my breast in blood she died

While soft winds shook the barley

I bore her to some mountain stream

And many the summer’s blossom

I placed with branches soft and green

About her gore-stained bosom

I wept and kissed her clay-cold corpse

Then rushed o’er vale and valley

My vengeance on the foe to wreak

While soft wind shook the barley

But blood for blood without remorse

I’ve taken at Oulart Hollow

And laid my true love’s clay-cold corpse

Where I full soon may follow

As ‘round her grave I wander drear

Noon, night and morning early

With breaking heart when e’er I hear

The wind that shakes the barley“

–Robert Dwyer Joyce, “The Wind That Shakes the Barley.”

This poem was written about the 1798 Irish Rebellion, a conflict opposing British rule in Ireland.

It is told from the perspective of a young Irish rebel, torn between his lover and his desire to fight for his country.Read More »