Freshman year was, for me, easily summed up in this poem I wrote shortly after I was done with school for this year at 4 in the morning. I'm really glad to be done with school, being as I hate it, but instead of my usual ranting about how horrible it was, I leave you with poety:
There are obligations
There are rubber soles skidding up hallways
There are pencil shavings at the bottom of my locker
There are red-lipped ramblings on bathroom mirrors
There are pieces of broken rules collecting in the corners where the walls meet
There are nail polish fumes lifting off from the left side of classrooms
There are jail-break rumors buzzing from phone to phone
There are hazard signs written all over our faces
There are yellow Post-It notes all over my bulletin board
There are promises of freedom written on the back of my hand
There are goodbyes sifting
There are shredded papers woven into bedsheets and crowns
There are fires I want to start
There are buildings I want to burn down
There are barefeet in pancake-yellow beds
There are islands waiting for me in a place far away from here
One year down, three more to go.
Much Love and The end of freshman year,
Sarah.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Finals and Soccer Balls to the Face
There’s one thing I have to get used to now that I’m in high school. At Unity (the ginormous middle school in my town that’s big enough for every 7th and 8th grader in Cicero), there was the ISATs, which are the state “No Child Left Behind“ standard test for the elementary lot. Now, in high school it’s ACT prep, it’s common assessments ever few months, it’s FINALS.
Finals don’t scare me. It’s the prospect that the grade I get on my final can drastically change my semester grade is what gets to me. I only have trouble (and by trouble I mean it’s impossible for me to get an A ever) in Algebra. It’s not regular algebra I’ve been doing, though. It’s Algebra on steroids (uniquely titled Honors Advanced Algebra, which as pretensions as course names get) and it’s the everyday. We never get a day off from learning about mathematical constants and formulas and conics and graphs and values of x and (for the last few weeks) trigonometry.
Last semester, I studied my little buns off for the Algebra final. I turned into a hermit crap. I had music and my notes and the text book with me constantly. I dreamt of matrices and formulas. Pi paid me a visit and recited 200 values of itself, none of which I remember past 3.14. I learned was not myself. I studied like a dog. I didn’t sleep. And come the fateful day of the final, I get an 80%. Studying will not break my B curse. I will always get Bs. It’s written in stone, I suppose. I think I pissed off the math gods long ago and am still paying penance.
Other than that, Honors English finals will be a breeze, Honors History will require studying, but I’ve got a study guide that, on some fluke decision, is exactly the final. Honors Biology is easy, Spanish is a joke, it’s so easy. My last final of the year on the very last day of school will be the P.E. final which is running a mile under 12 minutes. That will be symbolic of my struggle this year. I’ll do well, I suppose. I hate gym though.
Off topic, today in gym class while playing soccer, I got kicked in the face. Right smack in the nose. My glasses left a mark on my face, but I’m fine. The girl who kicked me, however, got a nasty bruise and had to be carried off to the nurse. Ironic, I get kicked in the face and I don’t even get to miss gym class.
I’m going to turn back into a hermit crab this Memorial Day weekend. I’ve got to study, despite the proof that it did nothing last time. Still, it’s almost a moral obligation to do so, to somewhat prepare myself.
Wish me luck.
Much love and getting kicked in the face,
Sarah.
Finals don’t scare me. It’s the prospect that the grade I get on my final can drastically change my semester grade is what gets to me. I only have trouble (and by trouble I mean it’s impossible for me to get an A ever) in Algebra. It’s not regular algebra I’ve been doing, though. It’s Algebra on steroids (uniquely titled Honors Advanced Algebra, which as pretensions as course names get) and it’s the everyday. We never get a day off from learning about mathematical constants and formulas and conics and graphs and values of x and (for the last few weeks) trigonometry.
Last semester, I studied my little buns off for the Algebra final. I turned into a hermit crap. I had music and my notes and the text book with me constantly. I dreamt of matrices and formulas. Pi paid me a visit and recited 200 values of itself, none of which I remember past 3.14. I learned was not myself. I studied like a dog. I didn’t sleep. And come the fateful day of the final, I get an 80%. Studying will not break my B curse. I will always get Bs. It’s written in stone, I suppose. I think I pissed off the math gods long ago and am still paying penance.
Other than that, Honors English finals will be a breeze, Honors History will require studying, but I’ve got a study guide that, on some fluke decision, is exactly the final. Honors Biology is easy, Spanish is a joke, it’s so easy. My last final of the year on the very last day of school will be the P.E. final which is running a mile under 12 minutes. That will be symbolic of my struggle this year. I’ll do well, I suppose. I hate gym though.
Off topic, today in gym class while playing soccer, I got kicked in the face. Right smack in the nose. My glasses left a mark on my face, but I’m fine. The girl who kicked me, however, got a nasty bruise and had to be carried off to the nurse. Ironic, I get kicked in the face and I don’t even get to miss gym class.
I’m going to turn back into a hermit crab this Memorial Day weekend. I’ve got to study, despite the proof that it did nothing last time. Still, it’s almost a moral obligation to do so, to somewhat prepare myself.
Wish me luck.
Much love and getting kicked in the face,
Sarah.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Queen of Vinegar
I don’t like school. That, in fact, is an understatement. It is the simplest way of putting what I want to say, but it’s lacking the emotional intensity of what I want to express. How I feel about school (my high school in particular) is more comparable with, say, how the Romans felt about Jesus, how misfits felt about popular kids, how West coast rappers felt about the East coast rappers, and vice versa. I hate my high school. I hate high school so much, it’s almost immoral. So, reasonably, on can assume I don’t walk around the halls of the MFC with the biggest smile plastered unmoving on my face and spreading good cheer and school spirit like free candy from a parade float.
No, one can assume I do almost the polar opposite of that.
I have a reputation around my school, among the teachers. I sort of play the sarcastic, cynical roll. I walk around, stomping my all-black logo-less chucks* with resentment. Everything I say is coated in a thick layer of sarcasm, everything I do is bourn from the pool of apathy I’m constantly drowning in.
All of my teacher’s know this. I believe, by now, they’ve come to terms with the fact that they can’t change me, that my mental state is pretty much unalterable and their efforts towards making me in a proud Morton students are all entirely in vain. They’ve accepted it now and have moved on to giving me crap for it.
The nicknames are there, the snooty comments, they eye-rolling, the mocking snickers at my comments, are all there. But today, I got the mother of comments. I got a comment that might’ve been delivered to be insulting, but that I took as a compliment.
Let me explain the story:
It was English class, and because finals are close and it’s the last hour of the day, our teacher didn’t really have anything plan. There was fierce debate over whether we should go visit the book fair going on in the Great Room (yes, my school has a Great room. I don’t know why they call it that; nothing great ever happens there) or if we should stay in class, review something for a few minutes, and then do nothing. I petitioned to go to the book fair because I wanted to get out of the class for a new environment to trudge through, and when our teacher turned to ask a student (I suppose she made some negative comments toward the idea that caught his attention) what her opinion was on the topic, she gave a cynical, apathetic answer. Now, this student and I have had a few congregations over snarky remarks in gym class, so I made a comment about how I was starting to rub off on her to which my English teacher said this:
“Oh no, Sarah, no one can touch your level of cynicism. You’re way up there. You’re the Queen of Vinegar. You’re like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
My English teacher is much like an older, more refined, happier version of myself in which he is sarcastic and cynical periodically. Knowing that, we can assume he meant this as an insult. I, however, am going to take it as a compliment, as the best compliment I’ve gotten all year.
Much Love and Cynicism,
Sarah.
*All-black because that’s the uniform policy, logo-less because the uniform policy also prohibits stars on logos to be visible on the shoe. I walk into the school one day wearing the same shoes I’ve been wearing all year to be stopped by a security guard who asked me to lift up my cuffs and show her my shoe. In seeing the logo, she sent me to the Dean’s office where a secretary with an Australian accent told me I either get LAC (don’t know what it stands for, but it’s an equivalent to in school suspension) or I get the logos off my shoes. So, I sat in the Dean’s office, fuming, ripping off the logos from my shoes, sending the whole system death wishes. I’m still pissed about it.
No, one can assume I do almost the polar opposite of that.
I have a reputation around my school, among the teachers. I sort of play the sarcastic, cynical roll. I walk around, stomping my all-black logo-less chucks* with resentment. Everything I say is coated in a thick layer of sarcasm, everything I do is bourn from the pool of apathy I’m constantly drowning in.
All of my teacher’s know this. I believe, by now, they’ve come to terms with the fact that they can’t change me, that my mental state is pretty much unalterable and their efforts towards making me in a proud Morton students are all entirely in vain. They’ve accepted it now and have moved on to giving me crap for it.
The nicknames are there, the snooty comments, they eye-rolling, the mocking snickers at my comments, are all there. But today, I got the mother of comments. I got a comment that might’ve been delivered to be insulting, but that I took as a compliment.
Let me explain the story:
It was English class, and because finals are close and it’s the last hour of the day, our teacher didn’t really have anything plan. There was fierce debate over whether we should go visit the book fair going on in the Great Room (yes, my school has a Great room. I don’t know why they call it that; nothing great ever happens there) or if we should stay in class, review something for a few minutes, and then do nothing. I petitioned to go to the book fair because I wanted to get out of the class for a new environment to trudge through, and when our teacher turned to ask a student (I suppose she made some negative comments toward the idea that caught his attention) what her opinion was on the topic, she gave a cynical, apathetic answer. Now, this student and I have had a few congregations over snarky remarks in gym class, so I made a comment about how I was starting to rub off on her to which my English teacher said this:
“Oh no, Sarah, no one can touch your level of cynicism. You’re way up there. You’re the Queen of Vinegar. You’re like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
My English teacher is much like an older, more refined, happier version of myself in which he is sarcastic and cynical periodically. Knowing that, we can assume he meant this as an insult. I, however, am going to take it as a compliment, as the best compliment I’ve gotten all year.
Much Love and Cynicism,
Sarah.
*All-black because that’s the uniform policy, logo-less because the uniform policy also prohibits stars on logos to be visible on the shoe. I walk into the school one day wearing the same shoes I’ve been wearing all year to be stopped by a security guard who asked me to lift up my cuffs and show her my shoe. In seeing the logo, she sent me to the Dean’s office where a secretary with an Australian accent told me I either get LAC (don’t know what it stands for, but it’s an equivalent to in school suspension) or I get the logos off my shoes. So, I sat in the Dean’s office, fuming, ripping off the logos from my shoes, sending the whole system death wishes. I’m still pissed about it.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
I Apologize, Internet
There is no easy way to say this. There is only one way to say this, and it is not easy.
I'm blogging now.
I'm sorry, internet, I'm sorry, bandwidth. I'm sorry world. For the next however long it's going to be (maybe months, maybe one week, maybe forever), I will be in your screens, textually feeding you the contents of my life.
It'll get personal. Skin-to-skin personal. Well, skin-to-screen.
But before the layers of clothing come off, I think you should at least know my situation and how much emotional baggage we're dealing with here.
1. My name is Sarah Bonilla. The "h" is important. If you forget the "h", there are consequences. Dire consequences. Small, nameless islands scattered along the Pacific imploded when the "h" is forgotten.
2. I live in Cicero, Il, and unlike most internet personalities, I have no problem sharing that with you because I know no one will stalk me. I know no one will rent-a-car and drive their happy ass to Cicero. I know this because there is nothing of appeal here. There is absolutley nothing. There is the sour smell wafting up in the air of crushed hopes and dreams of generations of Ciceronians still in Cicero living their pathetic, half-ghetto, half-surburban lives.
3. I am not self-righteous nor pretentious, but like most self-righteous, pretentious teenagers, I hate high school. If Cicero is a pile of crap, Morton High School is its own personal hell. Hell. That's what I call high school.
4. I read constantly, more than anyone should. And I'm not talking Twilight shit here (I hate girls who think reading Twilight makes them readers; I find it grossly insulting), I'm talking Zadie Smith, Hemingway, Virgina Woolf, David Sedaris, others of that effect. I'm guessing most of the posts here will be about books. I apologize in advance.
5. I'm a writer, sort of. That's not pretentious at all. I swear. I don't go to coffeehouses and sip frappes with my laptop in front of me telling everyone to quiet down because, "I'm working on my novel." Writing is just something I love. Bloggng indirectly reflects that.
6. I'm Hispanic. That shouldn't matter. I'm not Mexican, I have my papers, I was born in the United States. I speak English better than I speak Spanish. I'm documented, and legal or whatever (still, VIVA LA RAZA)
7. I come with a slew of almost-disorders: I'm prone to insomniac bouts, I addicted to many things, I get up and fuck in my sleep (no, I'm only kidding...unless you're interested).
8. I'm really sarcastic, if you haven't noticed. And I'm mean, I'm insulting, I'm acerbic, I'm made of awesome.
9. I have two cats, one of whom I love dearly, and the other I kind of like. I'm a crazy writing, Cat-lady in the making.
10.You'll love me overbearingly. Just wait for it.
If you're still reading, I'm proud; dedication like that is rare.
Much love and sexually charged introductions,
Sarah.
I'm blogging now.
I'm sorry, internet, I'm sorry, bandwidth. I'm sorry world. For the next however long it's going to be (maybe months, maybe one week, maybe forever), I will be in your screens, textually feeding you the contents of my life.
It'll get personal. Skin-to-skin personal. Well, skin-to-screen.
But before the layers of clothing come off, I think you should at least know my situation and how much emotional baggage we're dealing with here.
1. My name is Sarah Bonilla. The "h" is important. If you forget the "h", there are consequences. Dire consequences. Small, nameless islands scattered along the Pacific imploded when the "h" is forgotten.
2. I live in Cicero, Il, and unlike most internet personalities, I have no problem sharing that with you because I know no one will stalk me. I know no one will rent-a-car and drive their happy ass to Cicero. I know this because there is nothing of appeal here. There is absolutley nothing. There is the sour smell wafting up in the air of crushed hopes and dreams of generations of Ciceronians still in Cicero living their pathetic, half-ghetto, half-surburban lives.
3. I am not self-righteous nor pretentious, but like most self-righteous, pretentious teenagers, I hate high school. If Cicero is a pile of crap, Morton High School is its own personal hell. Hell. That's what I call high school.
4. I read constantly, more than anyone should. And I'm not talking Twilight shit here (I hate girls who think reading Twilight makes them readers; I find it grossly insulting), I'm talking Zadie Smith, Hemingway, Virgina Woolf, David Sedaris, others of that effect. I'm guessing most of the posts here will be about books. I apologize in advance.
5. I'm a writer, sort of. That's not pretentious at all. I swear. I don't go to coffeehouses and sip frappes with my laptop in front of me telling everyone to quiet down because, "I'm working on my novel." Writing is just something I love. Bloggng indirectly reflects that.
6. I'm Hispanic. That shouldn't matter. I'm not Mexican, I have my papers, I was born in the United States. I speak English better than I speak Spanish. I'm documented, and legal or whatever (still, VIVA LA RAZA)
7. I come with a slew of almost-disorders: I'm prone to insomniac bouts, I addicted to many things, I get up and fuck in my sleep (no, I'm only kidding...unless you're interested).
8. I'm really sarcastic, if you haven't noticed. And I'm mean, I'm insulting, I'm acerbic, I'm made of awesome.
9. I have two cats, one of whom I love dearly, and the other I kind of like. I'm a crazy writing, Cat-lady in the making.
10.You'll love me overbearingly. Just wait for it.
If you're still reading, I'm proud; dedication like that is rare.
Much love and sexually charged introductions,
Sarah.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
