Life in a Limbo

We ended sophomore year last Thursday. That makes us...not 10th graders. But we're not technically 11th graders until August.
And so, I welcome you to the time of your life known as a limbo. Merriam-Webster defines a limbo as:

1) a place or state of restraint or confinement
2) a place or state of neglect or oblivion
3) an intermediate or transitional place or state
4) a state of uncertainty

We are not sophomores. We are not juniors. We are the wandering children of the summer. What does this mean? It means that now, more than ever, we need direction and stability in our lives. Aaand that's me being hypocritical. I have neither.
What I do have, though, is a brief, un-thought out plan for the future. As you'll see, it's full of holes and relies on specific events to turn out just the way I need them to. It's all highly unlikely, but it's what I want and hope for:

I don't know what I want to do in the future. I've got an idea; I want to travel, meet new people, and get homesick every once in a little while. I want to take a long train ride with no destination in mind when I get on, and find an adventure when I finally do. But that's the future future, the one we think about with a sense of detachment almost.

In the near future, the one that's going to occur in 2 years, I want to go to college. Even that's iffy; I don't know whether to attend a liberal arts college (preferably UCLA), where I can study art while continuing to study English and other cornerstone courses, or to forgo a liberal arts education and pursue a formal arts education at a technical art school (CalArts).

Beyond that, I just don't know. I've an idea somewhere that I'd like to teach art. Not like it's normally taught, though. Art has to be a disciplined class, contrary to popular belief. There are too many people who call themselves "artists", when all they are are sadly misinformed. Art needs to be structured and taught, not just "pure and from the heart". You can only attain that level once you understand what art is and isn't, and how to truly create with technique and skill.

Someday, I want to own a one-floor house that has a balcony. I want to be a trucker for a year and drive across America. I want to live in Ireland with my best friend Olivia and become a part of the nightlife. I want to go to the desert with Dylan and get lost in the red arches and sunsets. I want to visit Caroline on Broadway and be amazed by her technical skills on set. I want to go too yoga class with Kyana and write a book with Cassie. I want to work in a tattoo parlor, a coffee shop, an obscure music store. I want to be both a dedicated art student and a compassionate patriot for my country. I want to find my calling, the place and purpose of my life and talents. I'd like to maybe find God again, and tell him a story. My story.

To Do List (poem)

-chase butterflies
-blow bubbles in public
-tie a balloon to your wrist for a day
-climb a tree and just sit
-watch movies all night with your best friend, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, whoever
-walk down the street at night with only the streetlights and the moon
-eat breakfast for dinner
-draw on the sidewalk with chalk
-take a spontaneous drive
-fall asleep outside
-run on the beach
-jump into cold water
-lay down in a park with someone you love
-wave at people you don't know
-listen to a child, be they young or old
-question everything, and then come to terms with it
-sit and watch the world
-tell them you love them
-wake up with a smile
-laugh so hard you cry
-be yourself, loud and proud
-forgive someone
-live in the moment

*posted on the windshields of various cars, at least 35.

Unlike Tim O'Brien, This Sh*t is Real (grade)

I've never been to war. I don't know what it's like to watch someone die. I've never had to choose between saving my own life or the one of my friends, my fellow soldiers. I didn't have to leave my family, my friends, and enter a completely new and hostile environment.

My cousin has.

He's been a Navy SEAL since 1993. He's served 7 combat deployments, all to red zones. He's been to hell and back, hell being Afghanistan.

SEAL Team 7 has been a key player in the mission to end the opium trade in Marja, Afghanistan. This mission was officially launched in February of 2010, but my cousin's team had already been in place since March of 2009. The SEALs were teamed up with Afghani troops as well as Canadian, French, and British forces. Although the team themselves didn't suffer casualties, the Afghani and foreign troops were hit heavily. Thankfully, none of my cousin's team were seriously wounded.

Joe became my cousin in June of 2008, when he married my mother's niece and became a part of our family. His past deployments, the pain of him being gone; those memories were lost upon my immediate family for most of his career. This was the first deployment he had to leave us for since he became such a huge part of my life, of our lives.

He stands at 5' 5", 5' 6" when he's wearing his uniform shoes. When he walks in a room, though, you can feel it, feel his commanding presence. There's something very comforting about having a Navy SEAL in the room; he has such a quiet power in his small stature. You can see it in the way he holds and conducts himself; he's confidence and strength boxed, packaged, and put into a body.

My cousin left to fight for his country while his wife was 7 months pregnant. He couldn't be there for his daughter's birth, and he couldn't be there to hold his wife's hand. He wasn't there when his brother graduated from his lifeguarding academy, and he wasn't there when his sister came home after being dumped by her boyfriend of 2 years. He wasn't there to see me finish my first year of high school, didn't see my brother's soccer team make it to the finals, and couldn't celebrate our nation's independence day with us, an independence he was fighting to keep and uphold.

He came home in late October after a 6 month combat-deployment, the last of his career (for now). He held his daughter for the first time, kissed his wife for the first time in a long time: Hugged his mother, my mother, his sister, his brother, his father, me for the first time in 6 months. It was the longest 6 months I've ever experienced, the longest any of us had experienced, especially for him. He's always been soft-spoken, but for the first 3 months after his return, my cousin was morose and pensive, even to us, his family.

The war in Afghanistan gave my cousin a job. It's given him a paycheck and a way to support his growing family. It's given him scars, memories he'll never forget but never tell us. I don't want to say the war has completely changed him, because it hasn't; he still plays football with my brother, still comes to our house "just to see us", and he still has his amazingly flexible sense of humor. But it's given him a new side, a darker, more thoughtful view on human nature. I can see it in him, in the way he walks and looks, almost studies people.

My cousin is a soldier. I am not.

The Old Apartment (Grade)

He never wanted to move. He liked his old apartment, liked his neighbors; he even liked the Winston's new puppy that had tore through the hallway at 2 o'clock in the morning, baying like a bloodhound after a fox. He liked the old window in his kitchen, the one that never quite closed all the way and so created a pleasant breeze on those blistering summer days. He liked the creaky floorboard just outside his door, when he could always tell if Veronica from Apt. 13 was listening in on the rare nights he brought a soon-to-be-ex girlfriend home to dinner.

He liked his bathroom, with the chipping tiles and the leaky faucet. The landlord always promised to fix the plumbing, but he still took cold showers every night. He liked the warped mirror that hung on the wall, twisting his reflection so he had to strain to find himself in the morning to shave. He especially liked how his tiny bathroom window peeked right up into the apartment complex next door, where he could watch Mrs. Levine's daughter-in-law practice her violin every day. Even the corner of the sink was held close to his heart, but closer still to his groin, which he had run into the corner so many times it was part of his morning ritual.

His bedroom's walls were cracked, and the paint was peeling in almost every direction. He loved staring at the ceiling and pretending the dark water stains- made from the time Mr. Alvarez had flooded the entire upper floor- were animals romping across the Savannah. He liked the blank wall his desk faced, the one that had given him such fleeting inspiration on the late nights he was up typing an article due the next day. The wall his bed was pushed up against was so thin he could hear Lucy and her fiancé argue over the rent late at night, and he wanted to punch through it when she started crying and whisk her away from all her problems.

He liked the small living room, the way his meager furniture seemed to fill the space just perfectly. The television, with its bunny-eared radar, which he had dedicated a week to finding just the right spot, only received reception once he had pushed it to the middle of the room and stood it on top of seven volumes of Shakespeare he had bought from the Goodwill down the street. He cursed the architect who had built thin walls and thick ceilings whenever his television flickered in-and-out during the Red Sox games, but he secretly enjoyed the adrenaline, the anticipation of when the picture would fade out and he was left sitting alone in the dark, listening to the fuzzy sound of the announcer cheering as David Ortiz shot another ball out of Fenway Park.

He loved his balcony, if you could call it that; the rusted wire posts and the cold feel of the cement on his bare feet made the small square jutting out from the side of the apartment building feel so real. The metal chair he had forced through the tiny door, going so far as to butter the door-frame to squeeze it through, gave him a picture-perfect view of the city. Telephone wires were strung out over the endless sea of roofs, tying the buildings like a huge network; the Italian pizzeria was connected to the Mexican take-out, the Spanish tapas bar to the meat market, connecting all the ethnic corners together into the five blocks that made his neighborhood a place of comfort to so many.

Yes, he liked his old apartment. He hated the boxes that were lined up on the landing, hated the moving van that would pull up to take his possessions away and move him across the city to a new apartment, a new neighborhood. He hated the idea of having to pack up his comfortable world and unveiling it to cold, unfeeling walls that had never known the warmth of housing a human being. He wanted to gather up his view from the landing into a box and take it with him to his new apartment, where he could throw it up on the wall and admire it like a painting. He wanted to capture the smell of the restaurants a block away that wafted up to his window in a jar and release them into the wind off his new balcony, in the hope of bringing some familiarity to a vast, uncharted new territory.

But there was a new opportunity, a chance to jump-start his career. We want you to start the job as soon as possible. All you have to do is move closer, the lady who had interviewed him said. We like our reporters to live near the office. Makes for an easier commute, especially when we have a big story to cover. She had smiled at him with a mouthful of bright, shining teeth, as if it were no big deal to just uproot his world and move clear across the city.

All right, he had said, forcing the words out. I'll be in the office next week. The words sounded like a betrayal, and as if his apartment had heard him deliver the verdict, his key stuck in the lock when he arrived back at his front door.

The man on the telephone had assured him that the new apartment complex was the most recent building in its neighborhood. Four stories, plenty of room for a single man like yourself, he told him. We've already rented out most of the first, second and third floors, but there's a smaller studio on the fourth floor if you'd be interested. Great view of the city.

I'll take it, he told the man.

And so there he stood, with his rabbit-eared television under one arm and a cup of coffee in the other. The boxes were all lined up on the street now, and the movers worked like bees, going back and forth from the landing, carry his world away from where it had stayed for so long. The burly man with the beard nodded at him as he carried the last box down the stairs; it was time to go. He packed the television as neatly as he could on top of his meager boxes and watched as the movers closed the sliding door on his possessions. Climbing into the passenger seat of the truck, he looked out the window one last time as the van pulled away. There sat his old apartment, gray, forlorn, and empty. He raised up his coffee cup as it disappeared around the corner; to new things.

Bucket List

Because everyone should have one.

1. climb the Grand Teton (Wyoming)
2. visit Armenia
3. live in Europe
4. join some branch of the armed forces, either Marines, Navy, or Army (i'd even settle for the National Guard)
5. publish a novel
6. have a gallery showcase my artwork
7. go on a roadtrip engulfing all of North America
8. buy a studio (to live in)
9. become Ravenmaster at Windsor Castle, England (which would mean giving up my United States citizenship, but still worth it!)
10. be a Navy wife
11. get a tattoo (don't tell my mother)
12. adopt twin boys
13. own an old-school Ford F-250 with a red-white-blue color scheme
14. live on a boat
15. sell t-shirts from the back of a van in Ireland
16. create characters for Brad Bird
17. write a movie screenplay
18. make my own money
19. disappear off the grid

Where's Armenia?

I suppose I choose #5. What I write may not exactly fit the billet, but I've been wanting to write about this for a long time. The events of 1915 affected my great-grandmother Hatoon Bazarian, who was a part of the Armenian coalition against the Ottomans. She was able to escape Armenia to the United States, where she and many other Armenian refugees finally settled in Fresno, CA.


Q: Where is Armenia?
A: Between Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Russia, bordering on the very eastern tip of Turkey.

We're on the map. Riiiight there. See us?

At the beginning of the First World War, the Ottoman Empire- restricted now to Turkey- was in its dying days. The Russians began advancing into Eastern Anatolia with the aid of Armenians from both the Russian Caucasus region and modern Armenia (part of Turkey at that time). The Ottoman government blamed the Armenians for their devastating military losses to the Russians. Coupled with ethnic tensions between Armenians and Turkish Ottomans, the Ottoman government took the opportunity to start a mass deportation of Armenians out of Anatolia.

From a population of 2 million, nearly 1.5 million Armenians were massacred during these forced deportation marches from 1915 to 1917. Any outbursts against this genocide were silenced when Armenia was absorbed into the Soviet Union not long after the end of World War I. The country was a quiet wallflower until their independence in 1995.

For the past 15 years, relations between Turkey and Armenia have been tense: efforts to negotiate peace treaties have been stalled because of Turkey's refusal to recognize the 1915 killings as genocide. Recently, movements in both the United States and Swedish legislatures have pushed bills to recognize the events of 1915 as genocide; consequentially, Turkey has put its ambassadors to both countries on the first flights out. The entire country is a part of possibly the largest denial ever.

In the Armenia-Turkey relationship, Turkey holds nearly all the power as far as strategy goes. If the United States passes the bill recognizing the 1915 atrocities as genocide, Turkey could deny us access to their military bases, which are a huge part of deploying American troops from Europe into the Middle East. Turkey's prime minister Tayyip Erdogan is threatening to expel nearly 100,000 Armenian workers from its country as a retaliation to the negative publicity the country is receiving.

(There are currently 170,000 Armenians working in Turkey. The 100,000 Erdogan is referring to are illegal workers, forced into Turkey because of an impoverished economy in Armenia, a combined result of Turkish oppression and the devastating earthquake of 1988.)

Turkey gained the upper hand in this relationship 100s of years ago. The Ottoman empire was one of the most successful ancient regimes, until Europe modernized its weapons armaments. Armenia has been just a small country absorbed by larger empires; first the Ottomans, then the Soviets. They've had no real chance to prove themselves on the world's stage until the last 15 years, when their government decided to challenge Turkey's resolute denial of the 1915 genocide.

Unlike the Jewish Holocaust- one of the most largely publicized modern genocides, largely aided by photographic evidence from both Allied Forces and Nazi records- there are very little photographic records of the Armenian Genocide in 1915.

Turkey will not give up its narrow-minded views easily. It justifies the actions of 1915 by asserting that many Turks died as well. This is true- Turks died as a result of famine and the war, but no mass genocide came from the part of the Armenians. The Turks were the only side to purposefully work towards eliminating the Armenian ethnic group within their country. No matter how hard the rest of the world tries, you can't tune a broken record.

Further Reading:
Memoir- Black Dog of Fate by David Balakian
Online information- http://www.armeniapedia.com

And I Say, Quote...

So here I am, bored on Friday. I hate being alone because thoughts pop into my head; big thoughts. Like...what am I going to do with my life? What inspires me? What's the answer to life, the universe, and everything? (By the way, it's 42. Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.) These thoughts fester and linger forever, so I thought I'd answer the one that's been bugging me the most: What defines my life? Below are some quotes that I think define who I am, what I feel, and what I really want.


Randy Pausch: The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They are there to stop the other people!

Michael Crichton: Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Anonymous: You can't have everything, where would you put it?

Vincent van Gogh: What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?

Private Reiben: You know what that song reminds me of? It reminds me of Mrs. Rachel Troubowitz and what she said to me the day I left for basic.
Mellish: What, don't touch me?
(Saving Private Ryan)

Anonymous: Sure God created man before woman. But then you always make a rough draft before the final masterpiece.

Coleman McCarthy: Everyone's a pacifist between wars. It's like being a vegetarian between meals.

U2: You've got to cry without weeping, talk without speaking, scream without raising your voice. (Running to Stand Still)

Reliant k: I gotta get outta here, I'm afraid that this complacency is something I can't shake.
(Be My Escape)

Meredith Brooks: I'm nothing in between, you know you wouldn't want it any other way. I'm a little bit of everything, all rolled into one.
(Bitch)

John Stuart Mill: War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

Albert Einstein: Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

Defeating the Monster

Where I Am Now:
To start off, I am in a huge art slump. Part of it has to do with my personal life; my older brother died during spring break last year, my younger brother has been estranged since August, and I've been having repercussions of a nasty relationship with my biological father. Another part has to do with the fact that I decided not to return to CoSA Visual Arts sophomore year; basically, I'm the only motivator to put out artwork. Something else that has been hindering me is that I've always hated art homework. I despise structured art classes with a passion. A BURNING PASSION. I have absolutely no motivation to succeed in Advanced Art class.

Actually, that's a lie. My motivation, ironically, does come from my art class. I feel surrounded by people with drawing capabilities far inferior to my own. I'm probably just pumping up my ego, but that's my opinion. I don't want to lose my skills. I'd eventually like to have a side-career involving art; maybe freelance illustration, portraiture, or tattooing (with Olivia!).

Room for Improvement
As far as improvement goes, I'd like to work on profiles more, being able to draw somebody's portrait and make it actually look like them. I heard somewhere that when artists draw portraits the portraits tend to loosely resemble the artist more than the person the portrait is of. I definitely do this, and would like to eliminate all self-resemblance in future portraits.

After portraits I'd like to move on to painting. Yes, I can paint, but not as loosely or easily as Katy, and certainly not as picture-perfect as Olivia. I'm somewhere in the middle; loose perfection, I suppose. I'd like my paintings to develop a style of their own, which means only one thing: I have to start painting more. I hate painting in art class, so I'll be taking my paints home for "sleep overs" more often now.

I would like to experiment in new projects altogether. Scrapbooking is a definite veto, but collaging is a better alternative than that pathetic excuse to waste a Sunday reliving memories. I've film a couple sketches where I drew portraits under a camera, which I'd like to eventually expand upon. I hope to film a complete painting from start to finish after I reach a point where I feel comfortable with my painting skills. I would like to incorporate mixed media into my paintings after reaching that pinnacle. I've seen a couple interesting paintings- my favorite was a large landscape painting with a giant tree branch glued onto the canvas, instead of painting a tree in the foreground. Fun projects like that are definitely motivation to improve my artistic skills.



Defeating the Monster
That's about all I'd like to work on for my art. Obviously I'd like to push my art as far as I can, but for now I'm happy just refining and strengthening my skills. Right now, because of my art slump I don't feel like an artist at all. I feel like everything I draw has no value and is horrible. But an art slump is just a brick wall I need to get around. I've been working on defeating this monster by listening to as many different genres of music as I can handle, browsing online sketchbooks, and making trips to the library. The most difficult part of defeating an art slump is just putting yourself out there; you have to surround yourself with new environments, people, and as much diversity as you can.

Another part of defeating an art slump is working on what you're good at. I feel really comfortable just sketching, so I've been trying to do a lot of that lately. I don't feel like I have to finish any pieces; that's a part of art class that I despise: Why should we have to finish a project? For me, half-finished sketches are beautiful because there's a certain mystery as to what the end product was intended to be. My sketchbook is full of half-inked drawings that I will never finish and really don't want to. The beauty of a sketchbook is just that; I don't have any pressure to finish anything, and no one's grading me or harping on me to finish.

After defeating my monster I will graduate high school, go to college, possibly join the Navy or Marine Corps, and continue my art life working from a giant desk outside. I will accept commissions as I please, refuse to talk to anyone unless I want to, and be published as an anonymous writer satirizing the current state of American society. I may or may not ever visit Coronado again, but I will definitely live in an income-tax-free state.

But that's only possible if I work as hard as I can to jump over this brick wall.

Gender Roles are Sooooo IN

Who attended the pep rally on Friday? Oh that's right...we all did.
Who wore their gender lenses on Friday? I know Caroline and I did...thus ensues this two-week requirement; a cultural-critique on gender roles in our society.
I have a guy friend who specializes in the art of tumbling, mostly just falling over on purpose and springing back up. Last year some teacher asked him (totally innocently, of course) if he had ever considered joining a gymnastics club or even the cheerleading squad. Needless to say, he mumbled something about cheerleading being a "gay sport for guys". He went on to elaborate that his father would kill him if he ever joined a club like that.
Why are guys so afraid to join sports like cheerleading? Because cheerleading has been hyped up for years as ultra-feminine. What other sport incorporates hand-clapping, preppy cheers, cartwheels, and whose uniform is a short skirt? Congratulations, society- you've created the perfect exclusively-female dominated sport ever. High school sports become stereotypes; girls, please pick up your pom-poms and guys, here's a football.
If a guy has the guts to go out on the cheerleading squad, that doesn't mean that any of the other guys will have the guts to accept it. They'll still laugh at him and call him a gay sissy. Maybe somewhere underneath they'll be jealous of his guts, but they can't show that; that's un-masculine, and anything un-masculine is gay. DUH DU JOUR.
On the flip side, girls are discouraged from playing ultra-male sports, like football. Granted, professional football is (unfortunately) way above any regular female's physical capabilities in terms of being hit repeatedly (but I bet Serena and Venus could do it- they're BEASTS).
However, they're even discouraged from playing football in high school. I do have a friend who made the varsity football team her junior year, but she met a lot of discouragement from her own teammates in the beginning. She still gets calls on the field from opposing players that she's wearing the wrong uniform ("Go back and put your skirt on!") or, her favorite, "The pom-poms are over there!" Girls playing rough-and-tumble sports like that are seen as untouchable but also as equals to other guys, which takes them off the dating field; and of course none of us can live without a boyfriend. (sarcasm, SARCASM)
So, there you have it. Gender roles in high school- girls who cheer, guys who play. It's that simple, unless you're some Disney-hero who thinks they can change it. But even if we do have kids who can overcome these gender stereotypes, they still exist in our minds, back there somewhere with the homework we forgot to write down from math class.