To The Beach

1. Failing

2. Sentences without subjects

3. Academic Team

4. Girls

5. None (knock-on-wood)

6. Being a Writer

7. Fidgeting

8. Dirt Bikes

9. Maherajah, Mr. Kill-Bunny

10. Homework, This Writing Prompt

Can ten writing-territories define a moment?

No.

Because if I were to define this moment, I would have to tell you that the cup of green-tea-coffee abomination I just drank was not nearly as bad as you would imagine. I would have to tell you the plate of paella and steak leftovers I just ate was very good. Yet as fleeting as this very moment. I would have to tell you that I am in my condo in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, doing my homework on a lap-top.

That probably isn’t right. I shouldn’t be typing a blog post, only to afterwards write a SOAPSTONE and then do math homework and then read two chapters of AP US History and then read a chapter of AP European History and then fill out a common application and then outline the format for the upcoming IPPF debate and then study for a Spanish vocab quiz.

No. I shouldn’t be thinking of acronyms like AP and SOAPSTone and IPPF.

The only acronym I should be thinking about is T and A. I should be out on the beach chasing girls in bikinis. Or without bikinis. I should be feeling the sun singe my skin. The sand rubbing me the wrong way. The salt stinging my eyes. I should feel the poetry of beauty and the truth of ugliness I want the metallic taste of a busted limp and the jolting stench of rotting fish.   Of pain and comfort. I should be thinking and breathing and sweating. And doing something real. With the rocks and sticks and waters of planet Earth.

But I am not. I am here. Sitting at a table. Typing away at plastic keys. I am not even afforded the authenticity of pen and paper.

I look out an ocean-view window. The sun is hidden by clouds. The turquoise water and golden sand is painted the most monotonous shade of gray. The ocean is rough, but not raging. Uncomfortable, but hardly dangerous. Everything is so gray and hazy that there is hardly a chance I can get much more of a tan.

The sky is full of clouds, but not a drop of rain falls.

I am in paradise, but unable to enjoy it.

I am sixteen years old, but unable to enjoy it.

Just as the clouds outside ruin a wonderful day, so does our existence of deadlines and assignments ruin our youth.  You ask what I am thinking in this very moment? I am thinking what I think every moment. Homework.

 I am a machine and I study and write and compute and calculate. My humanity obfuscated by the yoke of schoolwork, as a cloudy sky blocks the radiant life of a yellow sun.

I do not mean to sound like I am complaining. God knows I take this homework as willingly as any student around. I even sort of like the mindless sedation of hard work. I will not dispute the effectiveness of our education. Our mounds of work indisputably improve our academic skills. Doing hours of homework every night indubitably teaches us all that we need to know as we continue our education. This existence, just as the sea outside my window, is not beautiful. Or even all that enjoyable. But it is tolerable. And inevitable, seeing as how all the heat and energy and moisture in the atmosphere demands it.

 Heck, when it comes down to it, you guys (Ms. Carpenter and Mr. Logsdon and all the teachers at Henry Clay for that matter) are doing one helluva job. I have learned a myriad of facts at Henry Clay. I can derive equations, and go on and on about the Thirty Year’s War.

I just ask to what use is this education if we have not a spare moment to think?

Are we human beings? Or are we slaves to a standard of dumb, unfeeling “knowledge”?

Will we settle for facts and rules? Or will we demand poetry?

What use is paradise if you have not a sun-tan to show?

I do not know, but I sure as hell do not care. Because despite the clouds in the sky, I am headed to the beach.