overcast and overworked

Hi guys,
I was poking around the very, very deep depths of my laptop and I found this terrifying story I wrote when I was thirteen about several mermaids who spend their lives battling wealth inequality in their seaside town. But I also found these photos from last winter and they felt relevant so here they are. All were taken at my high school (which is basically monochrome all the time, vibe-wise) with my lovely Canon AE-1.

I hope Janus is treating everybody well. SNOW DAY TOMORROW WOOT WOOT. 

- Ana <3

Girls

So Girls came back and I am falling in love all over again. Had I been born twenty years earlier, I would have been a Miranda. Right now I like to think of myself as a Hannah whose indoorsy little heart wishes desperately to be as cool as Jessa, but most people peg me as a Shoshanna. I think people criticize Girls as a modern rip-off of SATC, but who says Generation Y can't use it's own culturally relevant set of twenty-somethings? Because Hannah Horvath is in every way my spirit animal. I totally understand her when she wants something exciting/tragic to happen to her because it will finally and truly make her an Artist with a capital A. And I am all too familiar with her unfortunate encounters with the cottony sticks of evil marketed as Q-Tips (Pro tip: don’t use them.) And as ditsy as Shosh’s dialogue sounds compared to the carefully constructed and in-your-face metaphorically resonant monologues of female television drama protagonists, THAT IS HOW PEOPLE SPEAK. In response to criticism of Lena Dunham’s so-called white-washed, privileged background, I guess my response is this: there are no irrelevant lives. Lena is a creative and smart and funny young woman who writes what she knows, which is what we all should be doing. To quote Georgia O’Keeffe, “Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest."

Anyhow, here is a Very Important Review of the best Hannah lines of Season 3, Episode 2.

"I'm like unrelentingly itchy, is that road trip thing?"

"I'm just realizing this road trip is just not a metaphor. It just isn't."

"This rocking chair is so pointy. it's not giving me any room to express myself."

"But you know what Adam? I don't want to do it. And it's really liberating to say no to shit you hate."

"It made me remember what it was like in college when you'd say, 'Oh, meet me at the Free Palestine party' and then I find out you're over at the Israel house."

TTYL,

Ana

a playlist for Hermione Jean Granger

Music for studying dark magic, hanging in the common room with Ron and Harry, being an ambitious young woman, and twirling in pink dresses when nobody's looking.

The brightest witch of her age. from anaisabel13 on 8tracks Radio.

Paper Forest - In The Afterglow of Rapture - Emmy the Great
Beth/Rest (Rare Book Room) - Bon Iver
Arabesque No. 1 - Claude Debussy
Optimistic - Radiohead
She Will - Savages
Stand on the Horizon - Franz Ferdinand
Heaven in the Afternoon - Belle & Sebastian
Aha! - Imogen Heap
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out - The Smiths
Don't Panic - Coldplay
(Nice Dream) - Radiohead
O Children - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
This Is The Night - The Weird Sisters
Young Blood - Birdy
Leaving Hogwarts - John Williams

Hopefully this brightens a dreary day for someone. I know Harry Potter will always cheer me up, especially Hermione. She's been a really important female role model in my life, especially as a scrawny, graceless bookworm in elementary school. I think she showed me that being "nerdy" is a trait to be valued, and I'm grateful for that. And for J.K. Rowling, of course. If you like Harry Potter, I suggest you check out wizard rock; it's a completely legitimate genre of music, I swear. I suggest "The Bravest Man I Ever Knew," by the Ministry of Magic. (Bring on the tears.)

Until next time,
Ana

early success

Something that I think about way too often is how little I've accomplished. I know, I know, I'm fricking 16 years old. Believe me, I make myself aware of that every single day. I am a typical teenage girl times about two thousand percent, in most ways. But there are some outstanding kids out there. I mean, like, spectacularly outstanding. And accomplished. Malala Yousafzai, Tavi Gevinson of Rookie,  LORDE, a slew of award-winning young actors and actresses. They are making literal headlines and advancing VERY IMPORTANT CAUSES. (See: TIME magazine's list of the 16 most influential teens of 2013.)And I'm sitting here next to a couple granola bar wrappers. I know my frustration sounds silly. Those are exceptions. But there is something about desperately wanting to be exceptional like that that produces a very real feeling of anxiety in me, because all I can think of is how easy becoming something and staying something (something being, like, a cultural presence) will be for them. How they will have the world's university admissions committees kneeling at their feet it that's the path they choose to take. Relatively speaking.

Here's Tavi Gevinson on the cover of Bullett, looking like a bad-ass Gwyneth Paltrow circa 1995.

But then again relativity is everything. Sure, I'm a smidgen of dust on the windshield of the world compared to Lorde, but I guess I'm not too terribly off if you put me in a (figurative) pool with every high schooler out there.

And of course, I'm not discounting the fact that all of these remarkable prodigies that I'm thinking about worked extremely hard/did impossibly brave things/basically did God's work on Earth to get where they are. Work that I haven't done (sigh). And obviously I admire them so so so much. I would flip shit if I met Malala or Tavi or Lorde. But the thing is, it's not just them. There are hundreds of potential Harvard applicants out there waiting in the wings with their volunteer trips to Zimbabwe and their own incorporated software companies. And yeah, I know, anything is possible. But what scares me is that I don't think that kind of precocious success is possible for me. Wow, I sound impossibly vain. It's just a national tragedy that I'm not the most amazing person in the world. Sorry about that guys.

So yeah, this is kind of a ridiculous thing to be apprehensive about. I guess I've read enough Malcolm Gladwell to know that. 

But it's there, ya know? And isn't that kind of what teenagerdom is? Being told that the things you're worried about won't really matter in the long run? Question marks???? 

Well, this is thoroughly long/unappealing first post. I need to go listen to some fifties doo-wop to cheer myself up. Something more cheerful next time, I promise, with a maraschino cherry on top. This has been a public service announcement.

- Ana

introductions

Introductions are always uncomfortable. Only the most effervescent souls can get their true personalities across during first meetings. All the rest of us can do is try. Well, here goes. I'm Ana. Hopefully you haven't met me irl. If you have, then, well, hi. If you haven't, I'm just a 16-year-old girl trying to find a place in this world. (See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDw2Q3uiWq8 ) Feminist, fangirl, Faustian.This is going to be a place for my thoughts, I guess? Expect posts ridden with teenage angst/song lyrics/links to articles by winsome geniuses who can express my own thoughts better than I can. I'm just getting started, but see you soon? Comments are welcome! (I just used one of the three exclamation points I'm allowing myself during the entirety of my writing career. FEEL THE ENTHUSIASM.)