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Standing in Solidarity

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Christina “Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” Martin Luther King Jr. in Letter from a Birmingham Jail For quite some time, I’ve been enveloped in normality and insulated from prejudice, and as a direct result, I’ve become quite subdued and honestly, ignorant of the realities that exist beyond my immediate bubble. I am ashamed to say that the sharp edge of injustice has been whittled away until all that’s left is its dull residue, and I have become the exact person that Martin Luther King Jr. criticized: the one who demonstrates complacency and a “lukewarm acceptance.” Yet injustice should be well-defined. After all, there’s a fine line between right and wrong. So the fact that I have been able to rationalize the violence and injustice occurring in the world as unfair yet irrelevant towards me, an Asian American who is usually non-partisan and soft-spoken when it comes to inflammatory matters, is unfathomable. In light of the resurgence in the promine...
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Musings No Longer

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Avery Since I will (most likely) never win an Oscar or the Pullitzer Prize, here’s my speech of gratitude to Stream of Consciousness on its first birthday: Thank you! Thank you! I would like to thank my family — my mom, dad, sister, aunt, cousins, and other relatives who not only take the time to read the blog’s articles, but also subscribe to it. And I’d like to thank my wonderful friends, who, one year ago today, were so supportive of the idea and never fail to read what I have written. I want to thank my co-creator and contributor, Chris. We have established two amazing things in our high school career together, this being one of them. I could think of no better fellow writing enthusiast to share my first blog with.  But this wouldn’t be possible without the anonymous readers, the people who happen to come across my posts by chance, or my Instagram followers to take the time to click the link and leave positive comments. Without the readers, Stream of Consciousness ...
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One Glorious Year

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Christina My fingers glided deftly above the keyboard, over familiar territory, as my thoughts poured directly onto the page. I could hear the clack of my fingers furiously pounding the keyboard and the sound of the gears churning within my head. It was midnight already, and I was admittedly tired. Nonetheless, I was still seated in front of my fluorescent laptop screen, typing away at my newest blog post. And to think, this all started a year ago. I’m speechless. Today, marks the one year anniversary of our creative writing blog Stream of Consciousness . A year ago, I had no idea that 2,500 people would be interested in listening to what I had to say. A year ago, I had no idea that my affinity for writing would manifest itself in a physical, collective form. A year ago, I would have been too self-conscious to express myself publicly, a sign of vulnerability no less. So today might be a mundane Monday for you, and that’s okay. But today means a great deal to me: it’s a monument...
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Like a Blooming Rose

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By Tate Moyer, posted by Avery I am still struggling to accept that my last day of attending high school was an uneventful Friday in the middle of March. I woke up at 6:15 AM, made breakfast, and left for school early so I could do some last-minute studying for my Statistics test. I went through that school day the same way I had gone through any other ‘normal’ day: unconcerned, uninterested, even apathetic. Now, I am sure I would have gone through that day much differently if I had only known it would be my last.  Unfortunately, we are in our present situation because many people have failed to take the COVID-19 pandemic seriously. Throughout the past two weeks, there have been striking disparities between the reactions of adults and teenagers. While many adults overreacted by hoarding non-perishables, hand sanitizers, and (weirdly enough) toilet paper, the vast majority of teenagers seemed relatively unbothered and extremely annoyed. I even found myself adopting such a pe...
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Solace in Domesticity

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Avery “And the people stayed home ... Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently. And the people healed ... And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.”  So suddenly, the faraway epidemics in la terra d’italia and China became starkly frightening realities for us Americans, for us meme-obsessed, college-decision-consumed, and music-loving high schoolers. So suddenly, everything we’ve worked for seems to be so trivial in the face of this even more potent force known as the virus. So suddenly, the next six months of the year will contain only one month of school, an unfathomable thought merely ten days ago.  But despite the heartache thousands of families are grappling with across the globe, the numerous careless men and women par...
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Cascade of Unfortunate Events

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Christina A lot has happened. And truthfully, much of it has been hard to put into words because it’s been hard to fathom altogether but here goes. Towards the end of January and the beginning of February, the disease emerged, dampening Chinese New Year celebrations overseas. It was barely important enough to make American headlines. But it was there, lurking and festering, waiting for the opportune moment to attack. Until one day, the waiting was over. Coronavirus strikes in Wuhan. Still, my life proceeded as normal, and today, just thinking about the number of high fives that I’ve shared and the number of times that I involuntarily touched my face is enough to make me wince. Students joked about it at school while unbeknownst to us, this virus wasn’t the flu, and it was taking things that didn’t belong to it: lives, souls, hope. Oh, the irony. Approximately a month later, the effects of globalism were becoming apparent, and once the bystanders of this disease and the insensitive, ig...
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In This Reverie

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Christina One moment I am, And the next, I’m not. So who am I, if not just a product of my thought. Engrossed in this reverie, Consumed by a new desire. I’ll stop at nothing, No thoughts to retire. Yet this persistent nagging, it tugs at my mind. “Go away,” I exclaim, I’ll do anything; I’ll leave it all behind. So there, I quit, Submissive to anguish. Forever conflicted, My flame is extinguished. Now, I’m defeated, Yet another nagging persists. “Keep trying,” it says. “All the more reason to exist.” Despite the obstacles, All the hurdles that test and quiz, Nothing ever comes easy, For reality never is. This poem is the summation of a mental battle, replete with eagerness, stagnation, and persistence, and it details a process that regularly plagues my mind. Rather than traveling forward at a constant pace, I feel a jolting sensation, as if my feet are indecisively switching between the gas pedal and the brakes. Always forward, yet in intervals of rapid...
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Careening Wildly

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Christina Frustration. Irritation. Exhilaration. (And I admit maybe a little delirium at the end.) I couldn’t quantify it. I certainly couldn’t qualify it. So instead, I submerged myself in the tumultuous emotions that mercilessly hurdled at me. In the height of the moment, tears threatened to run down my cheeks and an unabashed scream teetered precariously at the verge of my mouth. “Deep breath,” I mentally reminded myself for the five hundred thousandth time, muttering a brief prayer under my breath instead. “Please Lord, let this physics roller coaster project work. We’ve been working on it for over twenty hours now, and I could really use a miracle right now. Amen.” And I know... I know . It’s silly: both the act of praying in a secular moment like this and the trivial content of my prayer. I guess that’s why my prayer didn’t come to fruition in the end, and so the struggle continued. I devised a plan; albeit, a cheesy one to uplift our dejected spirits. We would say a compliment e...
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Little by little

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Avery Over the four day weekend, I got to spend my time at Hume Lake Winter Camp with  325 other high schoolers and 40 leaders. It was eye-opening and beautiful, but during the 6-hour bus ride home, I wondered what aspect from Hume I would choose to write about. It took me time — I could write about the transformative powers of nature, the way friendships can be developed so deeply in so little time, how fun a little independence is, and the like. But I realized something minute, yet important, during my trip, which I feel speaks to me most. During summer camp in August, I spent nearly a week in the presence of God, being immensely transformed and convicted at the same time; I was baptized soon after and tried reading the word of God daily, but this drive soon fizzled out.  I wrote at winter camp that “I don’t feel overwhelmingly moved by anything” like I did during summer camp, but that’s okay. I felt “tiny stirrings in my heart,” which I can be more impor...
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Upon the Precipice

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Christina Standing on the precipice, I gaze down. Expecting to see a chasm of darkness, representing my uncertainty and hesitation in how to proceed, just as I have seen in the past, instead, I am met with an entirely different view. Gazing back at me, with equal fervor, is a familiar set of eyes, not quite of a stranger yet not quite my own: charcoal in color, soft with compassion yet hardened by time and experience. These eyes are those of a future self, and indeed, I am met with my own reflection. These eyes, apertures into the soul, radiate confidence, maturity, and knowledge that cast a long shadow over the confusion, naivety, and ignorance that I exude now as a seventeen-year-old. While one screams satisfaction and belonging, the other struggles to find her place and purpose in the world. The difference separating the two stages of life is massive, vastly beyond the hope of reconciliation, yet somehow, they are one; somehow, they are mine. It seems that time is the great ...
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