The Ballerina

In my dance studio, we have a girl who is the ballerina.

She waltzed in last year in the early spring, fresh from southern California. I was in pit orchestra at the time, and was missing a few classes because of shows, and I heard from my other dancer friends that we had acquired an amazing new dancer over the weekend. Nobody knew how old she was. Nobody even knew her last name. But she said that she had been dancing for thirteen years, and, based on her perfect turns and natural grace, it looked like she had been doing it for twenty.

In my several years of dancing, there have been some wonderful dancers who kind of led the way, trailing scores of hopeful ballerinas behind them. When I was seven and just starting, it felt like there were so many older girls, with their prim buns and tight leotards and shiny pointe shoes that just dazzled on the rosin-smeared marley. It's true that there are a lot less now than there used to be, but it just seemed so amazing when I was younger. It's not like we're hardcore Russian ballerinas or anything. I live an extremely artsy community, actually, and the standard uniform of a dancer was commonly replaced by ripped tights and loose shirts (as much as they could get away with without my teacher getting annoyed), and dreadlocks and messy braids instead of buns.

Dancers are some of the most interesting people in the world, next to orch dorks, in my opinion. There are so many different kinds, each with a different story to tell, but we all have one thing in common, and we can all tell those stories through dancing (or music). There are people who immerse themselves in song and just move along with a flow of energy, and there are those who carefully count beats and focus on technicalities, making every turn and fouetté perfect. (Actually, perfect is a funny word. They don't achieve it, necessarily, but to someone else it might appear perfect, while to the dancer him or herself it's far from it. Either way, they're mostly always striving towards that intangible concept of perfection). And then there are those of us who dance just for enjoyment, just to have fun while leaping through the air, to have that feeling of being in control (or out of control), and to be able to sweat buckets and still feel happy about it.

I used to love watching ballerinas. Whether it was onstage or in books, they always seemed so beautiful to me, and so amazingly ethereal. When I was finally going to get my first pair of pointe shoes at age eleven, I couldn't stop talking to my cousin about it. It was something I had literally dreamed about for years, and it was unthinkable that it was actually going to happen. Finally my cousin, who is six months younger than me, said, "Why do you even care so much? They're just shoes". With her being a competitive swimmer,  I racked my brains for something to compare it to in her sport, but I couldn't think of anything. What a non-dance doesn't really grasp, I guess, is that these shoes are a rite of passage. Not every girl has a a ballerina dream, but a lot of young dancers do, and pointe shoes, being on TOE, are like a gateway to becoming one for real. Your work becomes a lot more demanding, and you're serious about what you do. And it's a wonderful feeling to actually be on your toes, spinning around the stage, the lights streaking and blurring in front of your eyes, hearing that beautiful clunking sound beneath you. I took a year of beginning pointe in fifth grade, a year before I actually got the shoes, and I couldn't wait every week to get to that class, just so I could stare at the shoes and the perfectly angled feet inside of them, wishing that they were mine. It really was a dream that came true, only a dream with blisters and tendonitis threats.

I wrote this last Thursday, after living through a torturous P.E. class with idiots who think that football makes them the strongest and coolest people in the world.


  I laugh at those people who say that dance isn't hard at all, because in truth, we work almost harder than them at times. I'm sure that the snobby volleyball girls would stop laughing as soon as they started trying the stretches and bar work, their smirks replaced by grimaces. I'm sure that the supposedly strong football boys would think twice about snickering after an intense hour, sweat pouring and showing through their clothes. I'm positive that my mom couldn't get through an entire class of even the easiest work, and would stop telling me that dance isn't considered an aerobic activity that requires lots of work. It's not looking pretty that makes my muscles ache for days, or gets me blisters on my feet. I didn't suddenly become flexible just by putting my hair up and wearing satin shoes. I spend several hours almost every day at the studio, and I'm proud of what I do. So be quiet, hypocrites.

I know it's kind of narcissistic to agree with myself like this, but hear, hear! We work hard at what we do, and there's so much work behind the prettiness. Yes, it was my dream when I was small, and it still is my dream, but now I know the truth of it, and, if anything, that makes me enjoy it and appreciate it even more so.

Last year, before my pointe dance, I was standing backstage with a two other dancers my age. Wearing our tutus-the only tutu I've worn in dance in the past five years-and covered in sparkles and silver glitter (we were supposed to be stars), we watched as this ballerina girl, who is so good that she's now an assistant teacher, chassé and leap and piqué around the stage, looking just amazing with all those years of serious ballet training. She was like an alien dancer to us, who had always worked with contemporary styles rather than Russian form, and we were just enthralled. She made me realize that no matter how many other dreams I have or have had, dance has and will always be one of them.

Alice McKinley

I'm fourteen and a half years old, and I've been reading the Alice books, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, since I was about ten. The first time I ever laid eyes on one was when I was backstage during a dance performance, back when I was young enough to hang around in the studio theater with the other younger levels, instead of being in the dressing rooms. My friend, who was in fifth grade at the time, had one of the prequels in her bag of blankets and snacks, and I picked it up to look at it. Since then, I've been nearly inseparable with them.

Alice McKinley is a young and honest girl who was first brought to life in 1985, and has only just had her famed series completed. The first book, The Agony of Alice, starts when Alice is in sixth grade in a new town, but Naylor soon began to write prequels for her younger readers, which span from her third to fifth grade years. Alice lives in Maryland with her father and brother, with her mother having died years ago from cancer, and in the first few books all she can think about is completing her family and finding a new wife for her father. In her own life, she has friends, enemies, and teachers, all who have their own stories throughout the series that matter almost as much as her own.

I'll admit that I did read the books of Alice's high school years when I was twelve or so, without waiting and growing up with her, but having that knowledge of her life helped me all through middle school, and now I can refer back to them when things in my freshman year sound familiar. Alice's life isn't perfect-far from it, really- but she has a keen sense of humor and goes through horrifying, embarrassing moments, just like everyone else, and still lives to tell the tale. As the books go on, you can hear her voice start to mature, and her likes and dislikes become more clear, while at the same time she's still trying to figure herself out, trying keeping her peers in line as much as possible. Twenty-eight books span for ten years, and finally the series is drawing to a close.

'Now I'll Tell You Everything" takes Alice and her readers to college, through marriage and troubles, and all the way to age sixty, in only about five hundred pages. I can't say that I'm a lifelong Alice reader, because really it hasn't even been five years, but if feels like I've lived a second life through her. The last book comes out in October, and I just can't wait to read it and find out what happens to her. As a fair warning, Alice does cover some mature topics, but not as much when she's younger and in middle school.

Are there any other Alice readers out there? If so, I'd love to hear from you and discuss the books. From reviews that I've read about the last book, it's mostly designed for those who just want to know what happens next rather than a curious reader, but I strongly encourage you to read the books anyway. My mom reads them as well, and has described them to be as "Judy Blume for this generation". They're perfect for growing up, or just for reading for entertainment, to live along with Alice as she deals with her life.

High School

It's so weird. It's like I'm walking through a dream, a dream that I've been writing for myself for the past few years, except everything is so much different than I thought it would be. I can't really be here, can I? To be so far away from elementary school, to be able to walk through the halls without feeling like the lowly middle schooler in the lowly band. I can eat lunch wherever I want, sit in the back of the bus, and take classes with teachers I didn't know before yesterday. After three years of almost the same thing, how can that be possible?

But it's still true. You can bring your backpack to your classes, I actually have to go to P.E. and wear gym clothes for the first time ever, and I sit in front of juniors in Spanish class. I can actually belong in concert band now, and in journalism, my first class of the day, we sit on beanbag chairs and couches instead of at normal desks. And speaking of desks, I've never even had the desk where the chair is attached to the side. We just sat at tables in middle school.

In a way, high school is kind of like a big event going on, every day. I'm used to being in a school where you can always see people you know just by coming out of a classroom, and the lockers are just feet away from the classes and the bathrooms. Here, it's normal to go a day without seeing a certain person. There are two buildings (one across the street), and you have to really plan everything out perfectly to get to class on time. It's all calm for about an hour, and then there's this mad rush where everyone spills out into the hallway and crosses the road or whatever for about five minutes, and then it's quiet again. I don't even have to carry around a normal binder anymore, and my back doesn't break from the weight of the books I'm stashing in my backpack. Kids I knew as eighth graders back when I was in sixth grade are once again in classes with me, and even some kids who were in the old building, the tall upperclassmen, when I was in fifth grade are there, too, reappearing this time as seniors. I'm once again with the friends who left at the end of seventh grade, and finally get to talk to them again.

It's just so crazy.

Home

"You know, I remember moving, but I don't exactly remember feeling sad about it or anything," I said, staring out the car window. I was with my friend, who was like my sister when we were little, and her mom, driving to dance after school. Seven years had passed since I had first met her, only it felt like so much longer. "I wasn't really that emotional as a little kid."

My friend's mom laughed. "Are you kidding? You used to cry all the time. It was a good thing, but you always made sure to wash your hands because you were afraid of germs."

"That's not what I meant," I told her. "I wasn't even upset about leaving my home. I don't even think I cried then."

She shrugged and kept on driving. I pretty much forgot about the conversation after that.

in 2005, when I was six years old, my family moved from Massachusetts to Oregon. I must have been to Oregon before that, because the pictures proved it, and I remembered my aunt and uncle's house in Portland. To be honest, though, I don't really remember that much about life before Oregon. We go back every year to see family, and I definitely recognize things, and I have specific memories, but it wasn't enough to feel bad about leaving. It had just always been my home, and I was okay with that. I took it for granted, and never knew any abrupt change. For some reason, when a change did come, I just went along with it. My mom might know a different story, but to me, it was just a road trip, only with a big truck and a really tightly packed car.

My dad came upstairs to say goodnight to me one night when I was probably about six, and I asked him, "are we going to move?" It was too dark to see his face, but he replied, "yes, we probably will." And then he went back downstairs and I fell asleep like any normal night. I told this really obnoxious boy from my "walking school bus" that I was moving, and he didn't believe me at first.  It's weird that I don't remember telling my closest friends that I was moving, but I can remember exactly where I was standing when I told that kid, whose name I don't even know anymore.

There were goodbye parties, of course. I remember that because there are pictures in our moving scrapbook, and I remember people saying goodbye to me and getting a book about Oregon. My kindergarten teacher (I was in first grade by then) gave me a teddy bear that I named Patches and carried with me for the entire move. We went to a restaurant called Bertucci's with my relatives to say goodbye, and I remember stopping near that restaurant again as we were leaving to use the bathroom. We sold our grill to these really nice people who asked me about moving. My mom's friend came over and gave my brother and me each small flat "desks" and some other things for the car. We stayed with my cousins in New York state, the last time I went to their house, and played with their basketballs in the basement. I slept in my older cousin's room with her, and she had these nature noises on a CD to help her sleep. I can remember all of those random details, apparently, but I can't remember for the life of me feeling bad about leaving during this.

It's not like I don't have a good memory, because it's actually pretty good. However, I don't organize my memories chronologically, it's more like eras. I don't know what my earliest memory is, but if you ask me about an event, I might recall it quite clearly. There are a lot of things that have stuck in my mind over time, but it's kind of like my life on the east coast was one happy blur. Nothing traumatic happened, and that included moving. Days just happened, one after another, and it went on for almost six years. When I was eight or so, I would tell my friends here that Massachusetts was really still my home, and that I missed it some times. It's true that I feel like I'm going to cry when the plane circles over Boston every year, but I also ache for the sight of the Portland skyscrapers. It was only a few years ago that I realized that I love Oregon. It's my home now, and I feel comfortable here. When I think about college, all I consider is the west coast, and I don't want to think about moving away.

My grandparents' house is my home away from home. For fourteen years, everything has been the same to me there, even the dolls in the toy chest and the random knicknacks in one of the guest room's dresser. I have real memories there, and some of them are only a few weeks old. But when I think of where I used to live, my old neighborhood, all I see is a street view from the height of a toddler, a coffee shop, a church, and the houses of our closest neighbors. It's not really a home to me anymore. And while that's sad, it's also comforting that I've found another place that really is home, that I don't want to leave yet.

Editing

Sorry for any mistakes in the post below. I didn't, um, well, read it over after writing it. If something seems out of place, it probably is. Then again, if you tell me that there's a mistake so I can fix it, I'll give you a free virtual Hermione viola cake! Or a Hogwarts cake. I do both.

Weekend Adventures and Thinking in Fours

This is the part of the blog where I write this long synopsis about what I did during my weekend and how I analyzed it, etc. etc. Actually, if I'm going to do myself justice, I would write about the last two or three weeks or however long it's been since I actually wrote something on here. I can't say that I was busy, because I was definitely not, but I will admit that I was uninspired most of the time. Still, life went on for me, and I kept living it, even though I didn't write it all down. Some day I'll regret that, probably, but I just went on with what I do without worrying about how I was going to phrase it, or what I'd pull out as highlights.

I came back from Rhode Island. The last few days were rainy and stormy at some times, but that didn't stop us from plunging in the dangerous ocean, dodging the out- of- control surfers, and then finally getting out before being sucked out into the waves. I bought a fedora and a shirt, went by Taylor Swift's house twice, hung out at a coffee shop with my parents and my mom's graduate school friend for two hours eating muffins and talking about turtles, and went on a 70-foot sailboat with my relatives in Newport, listening to jazz music.

I sat around for a week, unwinding from my trip and (shhh) watching television and practicing violin. I babysat once or twice, and studied for my health challenge test, which I passed (yay!). My brother went to camp, and I made a bread Dalek with my friend.

I started band! Well, actually, I only went for three days, because even though it was scheduled in May, only about twelve people showed up every day, and none of the older flute players came. We played pep band music and practiced marching commands, which are pretty funny to watch, but really simple. It's so different to be an actual member of the band, and not just a little middle schooler who played with them at times. I'm still a freshman, but at least I belong.

So, this weekend I went to Portland with my mom to pick up my younger brother from his rugged, wildlife nature camp, where the kids are required to bring a knife. We hung out with my cousins and aunt and uncle and I read comics in their hammock.


In a brief recap, I/we:

-Got instructions to Taco Del Mar from a pathological liar from Pennsylvania, who put us on the completely wrong path for about thirty seconds.

-Went blueberry picking in the middle of nowhere, and spent ten minutes looking at a dead mole.

-Went swimming in freezing water, really close to a waterfall, while carrying my sweatshirt on my head.

-Mused about life with my wise and lovely relatives.

-Watched my brother and cousin use their very sharp knives to create spears and atlatls (if you know what those are, kudos to you!)

-Went to hippie central in Portland.

-Ate a lot of chicken.

-Tried to think up a good reason for not writing on my blog more often.


School starts next week (nooooooooo), so I registered the day I took my stressful health test (which is ironic, because the textbook had a ton of ways to cope with stress, and none of them really worked). I'm taking journalism because of the lack of health class in my schedule, which I've been worried about for the past year, and Spanish 2, along with P.E. and Geometry. I was all set to take Biology from the aptly named Mrs. Life, when my friend's mom called while I was painstakingly trying to shop for clothes on the way to Portland, and explained to my mom why it would be a good idea for me to take Chemistry instead, from my sixth and seventh grade science teacher, who moved to the high school last year. This way I could take Chemistry this year, Physics next year, and then I.B. Biology for two years after, rather than taking Biology for 75% of my time in high school (I can still do math!). My schedule is kind of up in the air right now because of that.

It's kind of scary to think about. Elementary school was so long ago when I really look back on it, with this whole school being in the middle of it and high school. The first five years were the basics, and middle school was just a launching pad for high school, which is a launching pad for college, which is the springboard for life. I think I wrote a post on that a while ago, but the more I consider it, the more true it seems. I only have four years of school left. That's like from first grade to fifth grade, which is a million years, but it's also like fifth grade to now, which was a while ago but still feels like just a few months ago. To some adults, that would be no time at all, and when I think that I've lived a while, I realize that I really haven't at all. I'm not even fifteen years old yet. Just a decade plus four. Everything seems to be in fours now. I'm glad I wasn't born on Leap Day.

Why Do We Hurt?

(That isn't really the royal "we". It's the "we" that means every human that has ever walked this planet, or if that human didn't have any feet or for some reason couldn't walk, has ever existed on this planet. I understand that there is probably a really nice person somewhere in the world who either can't talk or hasn't hurt anyone ever, but I'm just generalizing here, because the majority of people on this planet probably have done something offensive in their lifetimes).

When the Internet was first created a long, long time ago (like, the 1950s), it was meant to be a new and amazing advancement in technology. Now, sixty years and billions of emails, tweets, and instant messages later, it's something that we take for granted, and, more often than not, abuse. 

What is it in typing that makes it just so easy to hurt somebody, just by tapping out few letters and pressing send? What is the drive that pushes somebody to do this? Instead of having to face the person and spill out the insults, all that's needed is a device and some creativity, and BAM, you've ruined someone's day. Is it just a sport, to go around to different blogs and Facebook pages and see how much venom you can inject into someone's work, just for the sake of it? Trolls are interesting creatures, but no matter how much studying, it would be nearly impossible to find out everything about every single one. 

Maybe I'm just generalizing again, but the act of hurting seems to have just a few different motives: you (the hurter) is personally hurting (low self-esteem, troubled past, whatever), it's just fun to see how much you can manipulate someone, or you actually really are offended by something that has been said, but can't express your opinions in an acceptable manner. There's absolutely no reason to go onto someone's blog and go off on an foul-mouthed rampage about how much you hate something that you see there, even if it's just a random post that really has nothing to do with you. There's absolutely no reason to hurl destructive comments at somebody's writing, ruining that person's confidence in that piece. Is it because you don't think that your writing is as good, so you feel the need to hurt everybody who has more developed writing than you? There's absolutely no reason to ridicule somebody because of his or her faith, and call the entire religion names just because you don't belong to it. There's absolutely no reason to mess with people, steal identities, and try to ruin friendships, because there is no gain for anyone in that, unless you count the satisfaction of watching people struggle. 

Unfortunately, trolls will be out there no matter what. You can never really know if it's somebody sitting at a computer with no life except messing with the lives of others, a bully on Facebook or something with low self-esteem, or just someone with a really, really bad temper. It doesn't exactly work to guilt them, because it either bounces back to you or just can't quite pierce the remorse part of their hearts, but it does work to not be easily intimidated by them. Ignore them, or, if you have to, reply with facts, mild language, and a calm manner. We hurt because sometimes we're hurting, too, and a nudge in the right direction might be the key to helping someone get back on track.