Stream of Consciousness

Avery There lies my love, Sitting still, Waiting for me to come near, With eager eyes and a stiff back, Perched on the shelf. Its gaze is transfixing, Mesmerizing, Alluring. I grab him,  And I peruse the pages as shimmering sunlight sifts through the window. It is the seventh time I’ve met him, Seven times too few. He doesn't know me, Yet I know everything about him.  Can I speak? A chance for mutual understanding, The opportunity of knowing, Impossible. Though he is always there, He is never there. He is inside my head, But on the shelf forever. I lie back, and I know, I have nothing if I do not have him. 

Avery Science or silence. Planet over profit. Don’t be a fossil fool. The climate’s changing — why aren’t we…  These were only five of the 250 signs representing peoples’ voices yesterday on September 20th, the latter two of which were mine. As a part of the global climate strikes led by Greta Thunberg, we led a strike in Westlake Village, a small town to say the least.  I had never participated in a strike before. It seemed too “hippyish,” too progressive, too rebellious. Though I knew it didn’t have to be as extreme as skipping school every Friday to stand outside of Parliament and demand reform (love you Greta), I thought that showing my face at a strike would characterize me as too liberal. Well, I don’t think that anymore. I missed a quiz yesterday!!! No, I didn’t miss an entire day of school, but I did miss one period (environmental science, ironically), in which we were reviewing for Monday’s test and receiving last minute help.  But as the WHS stude...

Avery As I think about what to write, I scan my room for anything that sparks words in me, a typical exercise I do to get my juices flowing.  Suddenly, my eyes fixate on Seymore, my Beanie Ballz extra large seal (basically a seal, morphed into a sphere larger than a basketball).  His glittering blue eyes shimmer, twinkling under the light of my bedside lamp. He whispers, “ Write about me ” in a voice that I imagine would sound like that of Gargamel from The Smurfs (Seymore looks much cuter, however). While staring at Seymore, my head floods with thoughts about my stuffed animals. One of the first stuffed animals I received was a faded yellow teddy bear with a saggy, bead-filled butt, and a neat ribbon. Based off of an episode of Adventure Time I watched in elementary school, I gave him the name Hambo, the name of Marceline’s teddy bear. Since Hambo, I have accumulated more stuffed animals than times Trump has played golf in office (229, I recently found out). ...

Christina This happens more often than you would think: as I attempt to conjure up another article for the blog, I realize that I’m no genie in a bottle, just an amateur blogger suffering from severe writer’s block. And the remedy, you may ask? Music. Whenever, my fingers stop typing away at the keyboard, they immediately begin to reach for the black and white keys on the piano. Whether it’s the latin-influenced swing beats in the song Señorita by Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello or the soothing melody of River Flows in You by Yiruma, I’m constantly exploring new pieces to play and to express my inner creativity when I no longer can express these emotions in words. I started playing piano at the age of five. I was still in kindergarten, and the truth was that I could barely read the English language, let alone read sheet music. Nonetheless, I persisted, and watched countless fingering tutorials on YouTube in between my weekly classes with my piano instructor Casey. My first rea...