Goals for junior year: Somehow survive all these advanced classes I'm taking. Remember to post a blog entry in time for every due date. Let myself relax a little.
I'm normally not very open about my dreams, my feelings - I'm not open about much of anything, really - so this blog for my AP Language class should be exciting, frustrating, stressful, and fun, all rolled into one little bundle of 0s and 1s that will be sent through cyberspace from my computer to yours. Then again, maybe it won't be much of an issue because the Internet is so unfeeling that no one will know my true emotions anyway - just fragments of it, fragments of a life that was once entirely mine but has since become scattered over the Web as I try to keep some parts of myself whole.
I might as well start sending those emotionless binary codes across the universe now, with the one thing that can actually help me express myself: writing. Writing has been a major part of my life ever since I was in kindergarten, when I realized that the books my mom had read to me as a little kid had actually been written by real people, and that the skills I was just learning how to use could be used to put the imaginary worlds of my head onto paper. I wrote and illustrated my first-ever story in crayon, telling the story of a little bird who had to go to flying school because she couldn't fly. The only things I really remember about the book are my then-four-year-old sister's amazement and the feeling of waxy blue crayon under my fingers. Currently I'm keeping track of my writing through my account on the writing website Figment: http://figment.com/users/2899-Becky-Hill
The other day, I realized that the plot of that first story, as simple as it is, also reflects my love of flight. My dad earned his pilot's license when I was six years old - just about the same time as the bird story - and he's been taking my family up into the air for the past ten years, especially after we bought a small four-seater plane when I was eight. It took me until eighth grade to realize that I could combine flying and science into a major that seemed perfect for me: aeronautical engineering. When I graduate high school and go off to college, I plan to earn a master's degree or Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering and a minor in creative writing.
I hope to begin each blog post over the course of the next nine months with something about flying or aeronautical engineering and then end the post with a poem or story I've been working on recently. This one is about my best friend Sofia Braunstein, who's been there by my side since seventh grade even though we already know that our futures will follow drastically different paths.
I guess the sky can't even escape me in my writing.
Galaxy
We came into this world with stars in our eyes
and fireworks in our hands.
The sky was always ours, the galaxies off in the distance
closer to us than to anyone else in the world.
Never did we imagine that our paths through the sky
would branch off in such different directions
and force us to add different stars to the galaxies of our minds,
different constellations to our pasts and presents and futures.
Never did we imagine that the mirror images of our lives
would not always line up perfectly
when put together in the way we know so well.
And yet, somehow, despite the different galaxies
and different constellations and different fireworks,
every time I see the girl with the stars in her eyes
I know that I have found my way home from the sky.
I actually wrote this poem the other day in history, scrawled in the margins of my notebook next to a worksheet about the Civil War. Sorry, Mr. Marshall - it's not your fault my inspiration comes at the worst possible times!
Becky Hill
