Because You're Beautiful and the World Sucks

Dear [insert college here] admissions,

My name is Sammi Stolar. I have recently applied to your fine establishment of education and have a simple inquiry. Did you, or did you not, communicate with more than too many other colleges about the announcement dates of your admissions decisions? I ask this because I have recently received at least four emails alerting me that the day I will receive my admissions decision will be (who woulda thunk it?) the same day as all the other ones, if not a day after. I would like to know if you're trying to be cruel or if this was all accidental. Believe me, I do not assume the worst but I'm curious nonetheless. Thank you.

Sincerely,
You're Not Making Me Anxious Whatsoever

***

I don't want to hate ski racing, but the path I'm currently on kind of makes it difficult not to.

***

Sometimes I fancy myself a poet, then I think, You should stop. Now. And then I do. Which is good, not just for me, but for anyone who reads my poetry.

***

***

March is currently upsetting me because of how much snow has melted (about 0%) and how much snow needs to melt for me to play softball/lay on the field all afternoon/enjoy springtime (about 100%).

***

Right about now, you're asking if I can use any more asterisks in my post. The answer. *I*m*n*o*t*r*e*a*l*l*y*s*u*r*e*i*s*t*h*i*s*e*n*o*u*g*h*?

***

I think it's everyone's goal in life to make me so angry that I scream.

Dear world,

If this is your goal, you can stop now. Mission accomplished.

Sincerely,
Me? Mad? No.

***

Other than that, I have been betrayed by mathematics, which, in my experience, has been the most concrete, logical subject I've taken. Yet, nowadays, math has taken on the role of Brutus and I'll be damned if I don't end the year with 23 stab wounds.

Oh, it will be.

***

I'd like to make it known that I have been living as if I were a second semester senior since February of my junior year. This seemed to catch up to me this fall but then when I actually became a second semester senior, I decided that I liked homework (????) and was actually going to be proactive about it.

Dear 9th grade Sammi,

How in the hell did you do this? Oh. Right. You cried a lot. Never mind.

Sincerely,
Still Crying A Lot

***

Finally:
"But then she pulled away and kissed my forehead and started back toward the others. I was too dazed to follow right away, because there was something new happening, a wheel inside my heart I'd never noticed before, and it was spinning so fast it made me dizzy. And the farther away she got, the faster it spun, like there was an invisible cord unreeling from it that stretched between us, and if she went to far it would snap--and kill me."
-Hollow City (Sequel to Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children) by Ransom Riggs

Dear Mr. Riggs,

If you hurt Emma, there will be hell to pay. If you break my Jacob's heart, I will be outrageously upset with you.

Sincerely,
Emotionally Attached and Emotionally Unstable

I'm Only Looking Out For You

With unlimited means and unlimited time, wouldn’t you grow bored? Doesn’t the brevity of life give it its meaning? If it lasted forever, if knees never creaked, voices never grew dry and husky, if hair never turned gray, if we always healed with ease, if all of this just kept going, would it even be worth it? With so much to do, the mere prospect of so many volumes to explore and adventures to have makes me tired. It makes me want to hole up in my room and waste away an eternity or two underneath my comforter. It will still be here, I will still be here, next millennia. And the next. And the next.

That’s why every moment stolen is so much more than any moment given or owned; it’s a leg up on the tick-tock clocks tick-tocking closer to claim us. Pushing on the limits of what is allowed by the constraints of imminently creeping, eventually pouncing, death expands them. I can’t tell if the box started out huge and has been inching closer or if it began skintight and I’ve wiggled and haggled my way to a room-sized life which will eventually collapse hard and fast upon me, capsizing when my arms are too weak and too tired to keep the walls at bay.

When my fingers are no longer nimble enough to steal moments, when they shake too fiercely for me to pick pocket the grim reaper, I hope to use all of the feeble strength that I can muster to launch myself into the wall with some sort of finality. Perhaps I will be strong enough, use the momentum and my bodyweight to fracture something in the foundation of the cell of life. I hope to glimpse something outside this box before a chillingly cool hand grips mine with a strength I’ve never had. Perhaps if I were to ask nicely, there will simply be a door.

***

I don't really know how much of that makes any sense. 

***

I have no idea my cat friend. I have no idea.

"I got misled, mistook, discard.
Anything that I said
Take me out back show me ***** ****.
Cause I've got some lies to tell."

M.I.

My brain is alight with a sentience. It burns with a demand:

Speak.

The words are impotent.

Nothing can be lost with an army of words at your fingertips.

Yet I’m scrambling for a manifestation that doesn’t live in the barracks.

When the only way we’ve ever learned to communicate loses its potency, what then?

When they stop. When the words don’t work. Won’t work.

What then?

Simplicity necessitates a simple form of communication.

I’d like to reach out and touch your hand with a shy, hesitant finger

Hope you understand my intentions in only their simplest form

"Have you no idea that you're in deep?

I dreamt about you nearly every night this week 

How many secrets can you keep?

'Cause there's this tune I found that makes me think of you somehow

and I play it on repeat

until I fall asleep"

NSFW

Anyway.

Last spring at CCYWC (That's Champlain College Young Writers' Conference, AKA my bros), I put off packing until around 4am on the last night because a group of girls and I were in the dorm common room writing the most ridiculous poem to exist ever. (Okay. We're calling it a poem simply because there is no other word for the spectacle that is that piece of writing.) But I never posted it because it's so inappropriate/ridiculous/nonsensical. On the last day, we stole Abby's notebook, commandeered a copy machine (this was actually quite difficult), and made copies for all five or so of us. I have mine taped to my wall at home but I had almost forgotten about it until my friend sent me a message with the first few lines. So I'm going to post it now. But if you're not prepared for this poem (it's called The Fuckweasels by the way), I'm also posting an adorable video of a porcupine eating a little pumpkin.

***

Please go into this with a sense of humor and an understanding of how ridiculously hyper we were at 3am. It was not our intention to offend.

"The Fuckweasels"

Fuck the weasel once did I

How I wish he would couch me so on my bosom

Scoodilipooping canoodlers on the front porch

Dancing in the moonlight, leaping with the moose

He’s such a baby

can he be on my pizza?

But tell domino’s it was undercooked

Cause it was crying

As sheet rock cascaded into the toilet

I wept

I wish someone would grip me tight

And raise me from this perdition

So that I could be free from the wrath

Of the nefarious spirit

That won’t allow me to poop

Don’t trust her,

She reads gay porn

You need more mothers to love

You need more mothers to fuck, according to Freud

Fuck the window, once did I

That was awkward

There were people outside

It smells so bad in here

And then I found anal

Lose your energy drink virginity

And join the hyper-jittery masses

Conform to non-conformity

And get fucked in the asses

Go home, you’re drunk

You’re out of fucking space

Or are you in fucking outerspace

In the heroin dens

With rocket fuel in their veins

Kicking over fucking tables

And screaming like a weasel

As I fucked it in the ass

With rocket fuel jizz

As it soared into the moon

I ship Epopnine and Marius

And Cosette and HEAVY DEATH

That’s fucking metal

With a kleptomaniac stripper

With Hannibal Lector

That guy was dead in thirty days

It’s fucking Tuesday

Yesterday was too

The only way out it with the Jabberwockies

Fuck yeah that was a star wars reference

But aren’t they all?

Jimmy Carter liked Captain Kirk

(But more than just a friend)

This is infinite

In that moment, I swear we were all

John Green

Ripping out souls and lighting them on fire

Or maybe Obama

Or maybe yo mama

Moffat lays the corpses on the roof

One by one

He kicks them

over the edge

Before he hangs in the rafters

With the bats

And the nuns who sit in silence

Snorting their lines

With Dr. Sexy

Doctor Who?

You pudding stealer, you fucking bitch

Telephone poles the legs of giants

Magic hens lodges in the sky

I smell death

Like decomposing bodies

There is nothing like it

***

So there are a lot of references in there. I also like how we get really introspective and morbid at the end. If you made it through the whole thing than you deserve a round of applause. It sort of makes me want to cry but I'm too busy laughing.

Originally I was going to talk about gender roles, but I sort of like this better.

(I'm so sorry that I can't find the artist for this one, otherwise I would source it.)

Evaline

I can't keep up this "no sleeping" thing. It's driving me insane. I keep waking up in the middle of the night thinking that I want to run a marathon or become an astronaut or meet Shakespeare and tell him he's kind of a prick. But then it's two in the afternoon and my brain only says one thing: "Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep." Or I'm in the middle of physics and I can't help thinking, "Jesus. I really just don't care."

***

I finally got around to describing the difference between a person and the idea of a person. It sort of made my brain hurt. I think I'm made of really mushy spaghetti. (?????)

The idea is a cardboard box. The person is a child who sees the box as a spaceship or a race car or a new hairdo or a drum kit or an ice cream stand or a podium or a hat or anything imaginable. The idea is the box. The idea is that you are whole and complete and the space between you and the walls of the box are nonexistent. You are a rock. You do not waiver or change; that is how you are. Your actions and opinions are, simply, always predictable.

The idea of a person is that they are not only completely stereotypable, easily packed away into a neat little box, but also that this thing they are now does not change. Their reactions to situations are predictable and absolute. They cannot surprise you because they do not have the depth to be anything other than what you see them to be, what you expect them to be.

Ideas are whole, a complete sphere. People themselves aren’t like that. A person, when understood, reveals the ways their sphere is shaved down in some places, they have chunks missing here or there. Some are flat on the bottom so as not to roll away. People vary wildly and by perpetuating the idea that those you do not understand are a full sphere, it becomes difficult to understand and accept a person when they do eventually reveal faults or quirks. When you’re walking down the street, it is difficult to imagine that everyone around you has a family and someone they care about and a crippling fear and a hundred childhood memories and someone they miss and some aspect of their life that they’re working on. It’s difficult to do when your view of the world is small; the people who live within the world have to be small and uncomplicated. If they are not, you cannot understand them. It’s almost as if there isn’t enough space inside of your brain to store and accept the many different moving pieces that create a human being. People have so many more layers than you can imagine and even without knowing what lies beneath each layer, we can still imagine that there is much more to them than can be gleaned from a cursory glance. If we don’t imagine people complexly, we reinforce the idea that having depth makes one strange, that complexity is something shameful when really it exists inside of every human being.

***

I mean, things have been pretty okay. I say this hesitantly because of a fear that I will suddenly fail all of my classes or spiral for no apparent reason or that every song I've ever listened to will turn terrible. But ya know, things are tentatively okay. Except for the not sleeping and the fact that my brain is in overdrive and that I keep wanting to pace but can't because of Christine and I's outrageously small room.

Anyway, do you ever feel like there are certain songs that you can't give out, that you can't share with anyone for fear of revealing too much about yourself? Are there songs that present your soul too plainly for you to share with anyone? Nope? Just me? Fine. Fine. Okay. 

Do you ever sleep with your feet where your head usually goes and then wondering if you're sleeping on the ghosts of all the feet that have slept there? Or the phantoms of however many socks have been kicked off there?

I believe I've begun the slow descent into insanity. I think it will start out slowly and then at some point the slide will become extremely slippery and I'll be incapable of controlling my fall... And now the weather!

"Pull me closer, hold me tighter
Take me down, take me down, take me down

Won't you cover my skin with your sunkissed light
There's a bonfire burning tonight
We could be all right
Evaline, Evaline, Evaline, Evaline"

I'd rather have a cookie, but a medal's fine too.

existence just kind of keeps going...

I'd like to discuss the difference between the idea of someone and the person that inhabits the idea but my brain has ceased to function, so here's a thing a wrote. I wrote it a long time ago. Like middle-of-January long time ago. For lit class. I'm sorry. But does anyone know how many oreos I would have to consume before my sweat starts smelling like oreos? Because that would be cool. Another thing. Blankets should get warmer or cooler depending on your current temperature and your desired temperature. Then you'd never get to hot at like 2am and then be forced to choose between opening the window and allowing in the negative five billion degrees outside air or taking your blankets off and allowing yourself to become a target for the boogie man that obviously takes up residence under every bed. Final thing, I promise. Why do your eyelids get heavy? Honestly. It's really distracting and it requires so much more energy just to keep your eyes open and I just want to get things done. Gosh. No more of this slowly fading out of consciousness. Awake. Asleep. The line needs to be more clear. There should also be more of the sleeping and less of the awaking. Do you understand? No more homework. No more races. Only sleeping until my eyelids are no longer moderately heavy. Also books. I don't really want to read right now. Can I hire someone to read to me? That would be good. When I was a kid, my mom read the first three Harry Potter books to me. It was a constant struggle to get her to read to me because I always wanted one more chapter and my mother wanted one more hour of sleep. I currently want both things. So. Here's the thing that I wrote middle-of-January long time ago for lit class. 

***

I was sitting with Nate and Toby in Toby’s office and the banter was light and expansive. It was good and fun to sit quietly and listen to stories and jokes, feeling like I was contributing just enough. Perhaps too much. But at one point Toby told a story, apparently one that was too similar to the one told before it, and at the punch line, the response from his audience was lacking. Toby apologized a bit too profusely, putting on a show of remorse, complete with a frown and puppy-dog eyes. The only way to combat this overabundance of faux-shame, is to tease him further. “You let the conversation down,” I said, putting on a show of admonishing him. And then I realized what I had been thinking months ago: The conversation is alive. It is its own entity, forming around the words and sentiments of those within the exchange.
Some comments keep the flow of conversation going, some stop them dead, and some, while not adding to the conversation, do not necessarily kill it. To the latter of these comments, Toby’s response is always “Nice!” or some other comment that makes you feel like you are not a conversation murderer.
“Not all silences are uncomfortable,” he said between bites of sandwich. I looked at him quizzically. I knew this. Most of my life is a comfortable silence. The difference between moments when a conversation suddenly dies of heart failure and when it gently glides into non-existence is how the audience responds to the last few comments of the conversation. It depends upon the relationship between the conversation-goers. So when Toby was driving a van on a slippery, curvy road in the middle of Colorado, and I said something that didn’t add to the life-force of the conversation, his response was “Nice!” with an appreciative head nod. Then a silence settled around us like snow falling gently in December: that light fluffy snow that blows through the air like a shared smile: transient and quiet. The kind of snow that when you wake up in the morning it has settled and nestled into every crack of your window. You run outside simply to grab an armful of snow and throw it into the air, because watching it fall is the best part. Sometimes conversation is quiet like gracefully falling snow. But that sort of snow never stops dead; it fades out. Eventually it stops without you even realizing it. When the sky runs out of snowflakes, you’re grateful for the sunshine and the mounds of newly fallen snow on the ground.

Had one of these moments today...

Okay. But why did he rip his shirt off?