So This is The New Year...

And that wasn't a boring title. It was a reference to a great song by a great band named after yet another great song by yet another great band. I will link to that song at the end of this post.

I don't have any resolutions. At least, not yet. I like the idea of New Year's Resolutions because it's a tradition and a healthy one at that. And I like traditions. Not necessarily tradition, but traditions. I might work on getting some resolutions together, but probably not. :) It's like what I told Ash. Usually when I try to adopt that kind of attitude, it turns out like this:



In hindsight, it's been a pretty excellent year. I've grown a lot. Maybe not physically, but in other ways. Yeah, unfortunately, I haven't grown any taller in like a year or two. I'm not complaining, because I'm 5'10, but I doubt I'll ever achieve my dream of hitting six feet. Unless I get that surgery where they replace all the bones in my legs with bones from the legs of a horse like from Pushing Daisies. Damn, that was a great show. I don't know why they ever cancelled it.

A lot of stuff has happened. I changed so much. When I was in third grade, my image of myself in high school involved skateboarding, wearing sunglasses all the time, being a spy part-time, playing basketball and baseball on the Varsity team, and dating a girl who looked like my current celebrity crush at the time...Lizzie McGuire. I'd honestly just love to go back in time and announce to my past-self that, well, I'm in high school, and I've joined the musical, the school's literary magazine, have NEVER been skateboarding, listen to classical music, and have a poster of Albert Einstein in my room. Then I'd like to punch him in the face, for being such an annoying little fuck face.

I got my first ever pair of Converse All-Stars today. I know people say whoever wears them anymore is just a wannabe, but I just think they're awesome shoes. My feet have never felt so classy.

I'm sleeping in a tent tonight in my backyard. It was just a sort of impulsive thing, but it worked out, because I'll be able to listen to the fireworks while I'm drifting off to sleep.

Do any of you use DeviantArt? I wanna get one, so it would help if there were some people already on it who I knew who could help me get settled. Just like moving! Ha ha. I just made what's called an analogy.

I think that's about all I have to say. Expect a guest post soon from Kat, who wrote the last fantastic guest post that blew all your minds.

Oh wait! One more thing! Have all of you still been reading The Toble Chronicles and promoting it to your friends? If it doesn't start making some ground, it's going to shrivel up and die like Nicolas Cage's acting career. I poured two grand into this. So SHARE IT ON FACEBOOK. Or TWEET IT. Whatever the hell you people do nowadays. But I would be ever so grateful. And I would definitely make an effort to return the favor somehow. I'll do whatever you want. Wink. Wink. Wink. Whatever. You. Want. Wink. Nudge. Wink. Wink.

(I'll have sex with you.)

So I guess, Happy New Years Eve, huh? Looking forward to another great year. Just hoping the world doesn't end, huh? Heh heh. (Nervous laughter.)

HAPPY NEW YEARS EVE!!!!



Here's that great song I was talking about, by the BTW.

Au revoir!

-Christopher

The Mystery Train: A Poem

The sunset’s last rosy fingerprints have disappeared from the heavens
And the moon hovers in the air, an unblinking eye
Pale silver clouds hang limply above the roofs of little houses
Clouds spun from some celestial spinning wheel
A dark tsunami of silence comes crashing over the earth
Yet the trees grow restless and arch
Their creaking spines

Through the silence come the faint, wheezing gasps
The fast, tinny breaths—the muffled roar
Of some ghostly locomotive, gliding through the night like
A creature in the darkest depths of the ocean
I can hear it stumble over the terrain on its screeching wheels
As I listen to its heavy, metallic respiration from
Beyond my bedroom window—while I lie in bed tasting
The first glowing dew drops of dreams
I wonder where this mystery train is heading
I ask myself where it has come from
Perhaps from some fantastic land with winged beasts
And whispering ghouls, towering cities
Sculpted from ice or rock or consisting
Of smoking factories, clanking machines that cough and spit
Cities filled with merchant spirits and
Cantankerous sorcerers and scholarly wolves
That wear spectacles and have tea at midday
I imagine it’s heading to a place even more extraordinary
Woven from the sparkling fabrics of my dreams
I lie in bed listening to its ethereal whistle, its bellowing horn
Marveling at the wonders of this
Mystery train

Capitalism: A Poem

It grows like barnacles on the sides of wood ships
Gnawing and sucking with its cold, flabby lips
It is a rust that corrodes a metal once sleek
A bacteria that blackens a once-youthful cheek

It's a clanking machine that coughs and vomits oil
An unearthly worm that resides in the soil
In the daylight it gleams and flaunts its parts
But in the darkness it wheezes and feeds on men's hearts

It grows larger and larger like some mutant swine
Grunting and licking the meat from men's spines
It wraps its tentacles around the earth
Drinking its life with grotesque mirth

From death and despair this monster was built
Under its shadow, the world will deaden and wilt
Yet we cling onto it like infants, disgustingly reliant
On this foul, vampiric creature--this bloodthirsty giant

Merry Christmas, Kittens

I love Christmas Break. I really do.

You know, some high school students get out of school for the holidays and just sort of slump over like those fainting goats. Others take expensive trips and go skiing and wha wha wha wha. But I have a simple break, while at the same time a very productive one.

I wake up at 6 every morning and bike 15 miles to the nearest gym. I eat healthy, get exercise, write loads of poetry, and I speed read. Just in the past week I've already read Dante's Inferno, Milton's Paradise Lost, and a number of Shakespearean plays. I organize my room, then the rest of the house, and I garden. I feed the poor, pick up trash, and my smile ends wars. There's just no stopping me when I'm in my good, Christmas Break mood.

Then when school starts again I turn into a vegetable

But I'm enjoying myself. Like I said, we have a pretty simple Christmas. Right now I'm celebrating by eating a lot of mini-pretzels and listening to She&Him's fantastic Christmas album. Zooey Deschanel's rendition of "Silver Bells" is so pure it makes me blush.

I'm going to conclude this post with something that I'm sure will surprise none of you: a picture of a kitten in a Santa Claus hat.



Frohe Weihnachten!

-Christopher

My Superhero Alter-Ego

Okay, Lex, here it is: THE HEAD. Yep, that's his name. Just...The Head.



His body may seem small, and it is, but his head is large. And so is his heart. But also, his head is. And, in case you can't read, it possesses magical powers of sorcery.

So can I join the league now?

-Christopher

A Poem in Blank Verse and Iambic Tetrameter (In Case You Were Wondering)

Black holes form like stars in the air
The world spotted with unsightly
Unholy leprous blemishes
Drains away like cold bathwater
Heaven crashes through the glass clouds
And falls into oblivion

Monks chant whispered praises of God
The wealthy sink their marble teeth
Into the flesh of the lesser
Poets howl at the silent moon
Teachers teach and the singers sing
But at night all are wounded beasts

Raped by the deafening echoes
That deflect off the atmosphere
We wounded animals quiver
Whining against the icy ground
Begging—screaming for our mothers
Like orphans who dream of their past

The end is near—fresh on our breaths
We cling onto a sinking ship
Hurtling towards the cursed black sea
That flows around our island home
Monstrous eternity looms
Over we maggots of dust

One cannot hold onto moments
They dart away like beams of light
And life, sweet life, is fragile as
The tiny spine of a dead leaf
Fleeting, like the fall of rain drops
Destined to hit the rigid ground

So as our existence runs thin
We are dying sailors searching
With red eyes for some sign of land
Searching oh searching for some land
Searching, God help us, for some land
Searching, dear God, searching for land

Conclusions I Can Draw from Sad Movies and Old People

Today I watched Water for Elephants. I cried at the end.

I cry at some sad movies, but not all of them.

Why did I cry at this movie, for instance, rather than at Toy Story 3, which I expected myself to cry at, or during Seven Pounds, the saddest movie of all time?

I concluded that I cried because one of the elements in the movie was old people. Old people at the ends of sad movies always make me cry.

Why is that?

I think that, to me, it's because I have trouble coming to terms with the fact that one day I will be old.

Why does that bother me? Why does the thought of being old bother me?

I think that it's because being old means being closer to death, and above all I am having trouble coming to terms with the fact that I one day will die.

I'm scared of death. Not dying. Death.

Then again, I'm not sure which scares me more. The thought of disappearing into nonexistence to never emerge again. Or the thought of living forever. Eternity. What a terrible, terrible word.

It never ends. Although I guess that's the point.

Then again, maybe I just cried because this song was at the end:

I'm Coming Home

-Christopher

Newest Painting

I apologize for the shitty quality. I think the painting is decent, though. The assignment was just a modern art piece incorporating various media including something 3-D. All the blue and white forming a frame around the painting is folded up, painted strips of cardboard. The only other 3-D media I used was an empty CD to form the black circle in the upper right hand corner. I wanted to use something significant to me, like a Beatles CD, but who would let me ruin their Beatles CD like that? Ah well. I could always lie. What someone doesn't know won't hurt 'em.

Lisa Hannigan, Lille

Tchuss.

-Christopher

New Piano Pieces

I still haven't figured out how to load the videos directly onto my blog, so instead I'm going to post a link of each new piano video with a different one of the seven dwarves. Click on each one and you'll get a different piano piece! Isn't that cute?









"Come right here and sleep while I slip...poison in your ear..."

-Christopher

The Mirror

He had come through the mirror. He could not speak, but I understood it the first time I met him. It was on a night when the moon hung so full and heavy in the sky that it looked as though if you pierced it with the tip of a pen, some icy, celestial water would come pouring out. As I lay pressed against my bed by the enormity of the night sky which peered at me through my window, I spotted his dark figure shivering from between the spindly trees of ink. Although it was black, it glimmered somehow, and the way he gazed at the sky above him intrigued me. I set out to meet him, slipping on my jacket and delving into the wintery night like a gray rain drop falling into a vast expanse of sea.

As I approached him, I saw that he was much taller than the average person. He was thin as well, and his skin was as white as snow, so that it looked as though he was woven from the moonlight. When I spoke, my voice sounded flat and muted in the presence of the whispering wind and the restless trees, and even I was not aware what I had said. He turned slowly to behold me, and looking upon him, I thought he must have been an angel. His eyes were black and glass-like, yet at the same time they resembled liquid. Looking into them was like gazing upon an entire Universe contained within a marble. He did not smile, but his face was gentle, calm and questioning, and his long, golden hair and silvery tunic billowed almost magically in the gentle breeze. He reached a long, thin hand toward me, making not a sound, and I embraced it. It was neither warm nor cold, and when I touched his fingers, melodic noises like piano keys sprinkled throughout the air. Then he smiled at me and returned his eyes to the night sky. I stood beside him for what might have been moments and what might have been years. Then we set off back to my home, and when he entered it, it was filled with an eerie, musical glow that danced upon the walls and ceiling. He strode swiftly and silently to an aged, noble mirror of mine mounted on a table in the hall, and together we stood before it, side by side, and acknowledged each other’s odd reflections. At that time, I understood that the mirror was where he had come from, and scarcely had this idea formed in my head before he reached a hand out to touch the mirror. The glass seemed to melt at his touch so that his hand slid easily through it, and after his hand had slid through it, the rest of his body followed. The mirror swelled and rippled, and the peaceful silence that proceeded seemed to murmur to me its quiet farewell. I hardly hesitated a moment before I plunged into the mirror after him.

I do not know how long I have lived in this new world, although sometimes it feels like a lifetime, but I do find it to be very strange and wonderful. The people here live in the sunset. They walk along the long, fiery wisps of cloud that stretch across the sky like strips of desert, and when you walk across the clouds, reds, oranges, yellows, pinks, and blues lap at your ankles like ocean waves. The people, who are all tall and pale—like my friend, carve their cities into the fiery evening sky, fashioning beautiful mansions and towering buildings that swirl and breathe like living things. Birds fly through the air like glimmering schools of fish, and small islands of cloud float peacefully just above your head or somewhere below your feet.

What would have been the ground arches far above our heads, forming a colossal, mountainous ceiling of solid green and brown. Hills and caverns and valleys and forests hang above our heads, just upside-down, so that the trees grow downward. People here look up at the ground and have wild dreams of somehow visiting it, imagining what fantastic creatures and extraordinary wonders must reside there.

They do not speak, these people, but somehow they do not need to. There is music, wonderful music, that seems to say everything for them. They are happy, I think, and why should they not be? What a fantastic idea, to live in the sunset. Sometimes, though, I glimpse my reflection in a pool of water or even in a mirror and I wonder whether I will ever go back. I do not know, after all, whether I will return, or if I even want to. But still, after all of this time, it is strange to stare at my peculiar reflection in the mirror and envision the many worlds that dwell from behind it. Strange to look into a mirror and to imagine all of those worlds, and to imagine visiting all of them. And I wonder: if I am living in this strange paradise in the sky—this mirror world, have I become the mirror me?