Easter Sunday
Forgive me for not writing, oh journal. I have been evolving emotionally and spiritually and intellectually, despite my absence. I have written not for myself but for others and because of that I feel content. I love you, journal. If I could, I would be naked and make love to you because you have kept me feeling warm and safe and secretive throughout my life. I’d love to fuck you. I feel so silly.

Anyway, I’ll just cut to the chase here. Ha. I can’t believe I just used that expression.

Anyway, Wednesday was quite a turning point for me in terms of finding out my purpose here in this world. I was looking at this photo in the school gallery with Tony, and it was fantastic. It was a self portrait of this kid simultaneously sitting on a bench and standing up on a subway platform waiting for the train to come. The station was empty and the train wasn’t there and all you could see was a clear background with ghostlike images of him. I was duly impressed. So was everyone else who had seen the picture. And I was looking at these apparitions of a human being and I was thinking about Vonnegut and how all of us are beams of light in fleshy bodies, human human human, and how I’d like to capture the unity of our souls into one picture using ghostlike images of two children dancing. How appropriate, I felt!

The next day I was in photo feeling very spiritual and my teacher, Mrs. Vergis, was giving us all a speech about how we expect her to answer our questions when we don’t care about what she’s trying to tell us and explain to us and teach us and share with US. And I understood exactly how she felt. So when she was done, I sat there and I looked around and I thought for a while and then I wrote her a two page letter about how when I looked at her all I saw was a youthful beam of light, eager to share with us how human everything can be and how beautiful things are and ready to teach us how to express ourselves creatively and help her express herself creatively and how nobody knew anything anymore.

That night, when I was at my sister’s play I saw her there supervising the money box. As soon as she saw me she smiled and waited for everyone to go into the theatre and said “Well.” And I smiled. And she asked if she could hug me before she said anything else and so I hugged her. And she said, “Well George, I can retire now. After eight years of teaching here, I can retire.” I was sort of confused as to what she meant but then she told me. “Never in my eight years of teaching have I met a student as spiritual and human as you.” I smiled again. I was honestly quite flattered. She then went on to talk to me for an hour about the many troubles of life and how everything could be so much better, and she recommended “The Book” by Alan Watts to me about a million times, which was nice. I picked it up yesterday, by the way, and from what I’ve read (which isn’t very much), it’s fantastic.

Sorry to interject in my own damn entry, but I have to. There’s this terrific line in The Book which says: “It is said that humanity has evolved one-sidedly, growing in technical power without any comparable growth in moral integrity, or, as some would prefer to say, without comparable progress in education and rational thinking.” How perfect, I thought!

And Ms. Vergis said to me, “George, it’s been forty years since there has been a major group of people willing to beautify the world. I think you might be part of something big in the future. I mean, you’re the first kid out of twelve thousand (in her eight years) that has tried to beautify everyone. Maybe you will one day.”

She then went on to tell me about this brilliant man, Mr. Fessler who was incredibly well-read and often went home after work to create gargantuan works of art in his garage. She said that after retiring last June, he went off into the middle of nowhere to try and create a haven for new, inspiring thinkers to sit and do what they love to do for a month or a season or however long they want to. I mean right in the middle of nowhere, on a farm or something.

On a side note, we agreed that I should finish learning German to understand Kafka, to finish learning Mandarin to understand Confucius, to finish learning French to maybe live someplace beautiful in the future with other artists. Dasha told me Jack Kerouac used to post words up on his wall that he didn’t know when he was learning English. I think I’ll do that with English and German and Mandarin and French and loveliness and beauty with pictures and pencils and soulfulness.

After feeling elated Thursday night, I came to school very energetic the next day and not caring so much about what I used to feel was important. We had this test on volumes in Calculus, and I was feeling so damn sad about having to take it that I just sat there and scribbled for a while. Then I started writing a letter to my teacher, Mrs. Spilker. I felt that nobody really writes letters to math teachers, so she might enjoy it. I told her about Mrs. Vergis and everything we had talked about the night before, and how I had proven I could do Calculus (I’m [was] doing very well in that class) in the past, and how I honestly felt like I was going to throw up and my head would explode if I had to take another useless math test. I mean Christ, we were learning about finding the volume of a laundry washer inside a triangle. So I wrote that letter on the back of the test with nothing else really filled out (I think I attempted one problem, but then got bored with it) and went to English.

In English, we were assigned a poet project in which each group was given a specific period of time with different poets in that era. We were given the Beatniks, and our group immediately chose Allen Ginsberg. I thought it was pretty cool that we were given the Beatniks just because I read Howl in class, but I was sort of laughing when this kid David was complaining because he had read something by William Carlos Williams in class and he was stuck with 17th century Victorian. God how I hate that stuff. Actually, I’m just scared as hell of it.

On an end note, I hugged Dasha in the bookstore yesterday feeling quite in love with a person I know will help change everyone’s perspectives on life. We painted eggs today, and it was terrific.

love,
george