Fuel for Fire

You know those girls who write names over and over and over again? and then one more time for good measure. and after about 4 minutes and 39 seconds, the page is covered in that name, and the curly letters with hearts all around it make the page look like somebody puked a cupid on it.

Well..

It's stupid. That's all I have to say about it.

Another thing..... I've been trying to listen to this band that basically everybody I talk to SWEARS BY.

And. I must admit.

I hate it. It's the worst. ever. I have a weird reaction/retaliation to its "musicality"/ it sounds like a freakin steamroller attempting the height of a pitch much like unto a tween girl happening upon her long-lost b.f.f. from, like, furevur ago.

>..? "3 in the mornin, better get some sleepin soon" - from said "band." (if you could call it that)

gahhhh

Almost done with DANG online classes!!! Hopefully Wheetneey will help me with health.

oh my gosh. this band sucks. I'm trying. I'm trying.

okay. next topic:

Trains.

They are symbolic.

As usual.

But sometimes, I like when people sing about it.

It's like music to my ears (no literal pun intended) after listening to rubbish.

P.S. I will never tell you the sucky band. On account of, I feel bad gossiping about them... (in case they hear me...)

GOOD NOTE: The Kooks are moving up on my list of FAV'S. (fav's? really, Ari?)

go on... listen to Naive. It's beautiful.

P.S.S. This is what is known as a puke post. Learn to lovem.

Financial Blit.

This is the main point I learned in Financial Lit today:

and I quote, "If you're alive, you are at risk at something." (visit this link if you don't believe me)

I basically laughed out loud when I read it.

Then... I thought about it.

And, even though it's the most ridiculous claim ever stated, the truth of it is hard to ignore.

Riskkk. The game of Life.

P.S.

Best news ever:

I'M GOING TO RAY LAMONTAGNE.

AND I WILL FALL IN LOVE

AND I DON'T CARE IF IT'S REAL OR NOT.

OR THAT HE'S KIND OF 37 YEARS OLD....

age does not affect the matters of the heart.

P.S.S I"m changing my name to Hannah, Jolene, Sarah, Meg, or (if worse comes to worst) You.

Then he can sing to me. And my name will be in there somewhere. Even if it is "I could hold You in my aaaarms," in which case I still win.

Ray is a real man. Beard. Voice. Guitar. EYES. MANE.

He's a lion to me. And I've never actually told anyone this before, but lions are sort of my thing. Yay for posted secrets. ... (...p.s.s.s(s?.) One day I will tell you all about my deal with lions..)

I'm done for.

Just sometimes need a push.

FRiday Night.

HOLY cow. (no reference to my previous post)

Thursday and Friday night was the talent show.

AMERican Fork HIGh school. GAHH.

how am I supposed to post if I have no words to use/!?

I will start with my gratitude. Having the opportunity to be surrounded by some of the most amazing musical people is a dream in and of itself. I'm just also ridiculously happy to have gotten a part of my self back that comes with a confidence I had lost.

Can I post some lyrics?.... k.

All This Time by Maria Mena

you self destructive
little girl
pick yourself up
don't blame the world
so you screwed up
but your gonna be ok
now call your boyfriend
and apologise
you pushed him pretty
far away last night
he really loves you
you just don't always love yourself.

all this time
all this time
you have had it in you
you just sometimes need a push
all this time
all this time
you have had it in you
you just sometimes need a push

think all the mean girls
that pulled your hair
are barefoot now and
pregnant there
and you write pop songs
and get to travel
round the world

all this time
all this time
you have had it in you
you just sometimes need a push
all this time
all this time
you have had it in you
you just sometimes need a push

so you've had some detours
some stupid men
now we know what not
to do again
besides you lucked out
finally

all this time
all this time
you have had it in you
you just sometimes need a push
all this time
all this time
you have had it in you
you just sometimes need a push

/

To my pushes: Shelbie, Laura, Sarah, Mikelle, Han, Chloe.

You are the reasons for everything. You're my pick-me-ups. You're my back. You're my right hand (just pretend i'm an Octopus).

But most importantly you listen. You understand that I understand and are willing to take my words with either a grain of salt or a take to heart.

I know I screw up a lot. A lot. And I'm being extremely hypocritical by making this post kind of Diary-esque.... but Honestly. I don't know who I'd be with out you. (Same goes to you other readers who know who you are, but I'm not mentioning your name.)

Although I might have screwed up these last months of our post-childhood pre-life, I'm so grateful for those surprising life-changing experiences. (Aren't they always surprising?)

I know for scientific fact (I'm a scientist) that if you look for the worst things in your life that affirm your worst expectations, your life will miserable. Full of those "duh's" that make true your belief system.

But, if you look for the best things in your life, suddenly your life becomes its best. You become who you always were. You remember what you always knew. You transform into your best self- which is the self that is infinitely growing, changing, learning, healing, coping, becoming entirely real. good and bad. all of it.

Feel free to eat some grapes with the cheese I just threw at you.

Also. Girls. Let's stop blog warring, okay? I'm disappointed in the justification of it all.

Even though I know you are not horrible people, you are not being very tactful. It's blogging, not slandering.

Know this: there is a lot of love out there.. But only if you are willing to look for it, give it, and accept it.

Parking Lot Fiasco/ TIPS FOR MEN.

How many Thank-You's to Codename: RaChelle Stwarto do you think will suffice for yesterday's hilariousness??

Ohohohohohohoho.

Story time?

Yes.

It all began on a perfectly humdrum, after-school day in the school parking lot. (A.K.A. The pink ticket's favorite place to kick it.) When, from the corner of my eye, I beheld a red car trying to make it over the concrete where... you know... you're not supposed to try and drive a car over.

Sure enough, "RaChelle" had managed to unwittingly high-center her car with the wheels on either side of the forbidden concrete hump. Much like unto this heifer---------------------->-------------->--------->----->

If you're ever bored and want to boost the macho morale of some hot Mexicans and a Korean...... Here's how a few tips....

HOW TO PROVE BLUSTERY TESTOSTERONE LEVELS:

STEP 1. Hunt for the beautiful, half-witted-decision-making girl with car in a pickle (in this case ON a pickle)

STEP 2.Stand around in a giant group surveying the damage.

STEP 2b. disregard any cops around who think they are helping but they are not.

STEP 3. Take orders from said beautiful, yet accident-prone girl.

STEP 4. After minutes pass, finally lift car off ground using brute strength and grunt a lot ....(I'll leave this one up to your imagination)

STEP 5.Watch wistfully as they drive away in somewhat altered car in blissful admiration at the manly man work you have done.

Applause!





What a great. day.

Thank you, Presidents.

For giving us an absolutely pointless holiday/ best idea ever.

Here's a list of pointless things in honor of the pointless holiday. (I really hope the Gov gov doesn't liquidate my assets for being a quote unquote national threat/ disgruntled citizen)

1. Woke up as pissed as my cat.

2. Pet the cat.

3. Started reading Emma.

4. Contacted a fellow citizen about Emma; we're book clubbing it(!).

5. Epically battled the cat. (cat won... idonwannatalkabouit)

6. Ate some toast.

7. Watched sweet documentaries about the symbols and secret organizationsof our country (to be somewhat patriotic/just in case the gov was listening...)

8. Told myself I wasn't schizophrenic.

9. MATH. -+=XX (If you get this math joke, you're a dweeb. Join me in my dweebiness.)

10.

I did not have a 10enth thing.

But I DID have a tenth finger in which to use my backspace with.

Caps lock was also used, just not as much as backspace. TO CAPS, I APOLOGIZE.

Also, I literally have not been to a single scholastic class period in over a week.

Hopefully my eyes remember how to feign awake when I'm in the back of my evil child development class.

I swear, the reason it's called Child Development is because the children in there are developing at an INCONCEIVABLY slow rate. (caps lock discretion no longer acknowledged).

They're like monkeys.

Fellow classmates of C.D..------------>

Even a few of them seem to compliment monkeys.

Speaking of animals. My dog tried to get up the steps... but he just fell down.

He definitely got eaten by 6 or 7 steps worth of gravity.

Poor boy.

These are words.

x.

ari.

Heroic

As I've been sitting here for the past week and 8 minutes, struggling to find the right words to explain that my life was altered on Friday, I realized that I cannot tell you how.

I can not tell you how Spencer Nelson literally handed my life back to me in an envelope

or how it was that my self was restored by a question Janine Paulson asked me,

or how it happened that my being was recovered and reminded by Michael Gray.

It is too sacred to me to expose the how's and wh

y's; to tell background stories.

But I am willing to explain the foreground stories. The story of our futures, or what we can see of it anyway.

Pictures courtesy of Chloe Ann Mehr

Struggle: To make forceful or violent efforts to get free of restraint or constriction.

On Friday, January 21, 2011, every person who attended the Hero Assembly came out with an assurance. Assurance that there are heroes sitting next to us, not because of a logo and a cape, but because of a heart and a mind. Because those sitting in the auditorium realized that they themselves have the potential, no, the incredibly likely fact that they can become heroes. If only they so choose.

Courtesy of Chloe

SO many names upon the walls, not just the people spotlighted, but ones nominated, the names that were submitted.

Meaning: kids in our school took the time to grab a piece of paper, deliberate on a name that represents somebody who was HEROIC to them, write that name down, walk over to the locker, and turn it in.

People took time to do that for a lot of other people.

Names written down representing those people who have helped by some unknown, irreversible, and deep-seated ways.

Names that represent people who have struggled and have broken free.

Breaking free? What even is that?

It's an inner battle.

It's a struggle with something on the outside that is only the facade of a true battle.

The real battle is within. The battle to do good over bad. The battle to decide who you are, what you want, who you'll become, who you'll change over who others tell you you are, what you want, who you'll disintegrate into.

The battle is of who you really are in retaliation to who dictates what you are.

It maybe your family, friends, poverty, drugs, lying, underestimating, denying, running. or even your own self.

Winning the battle equals breaking free. Winning the battle against everything and everyone who tries to tell you who you're NOT.

"breaking free" is just another way of saying that The person who you ARE has finally decided to choose the good, to choose the right. Breaking free is the final act of winning the battle within and seeing the light.

Saturday, I was with one of the greatest boys this world

He doesn't believe the depth he possesses, therefore unable to believe in the being that he is.

I can't believe I felt the same as he did just barely.

I can't believe he cannot see himself the way I see him.

Yesterday I was with one of the greatest girls in this world.

She doesn't believe in the being that she is, therefore unable to believe in the potential that she owns.

I can't believe she cannot see herself the way I see her.

All of these people, all of these inner battles, all of these names, running around on this earth trying to find themselves, scrummaging for any hope, any remnant of a trace of themselves, desperate for a mirage of who they think they are in all of the dysfunction and confusion of the world.

When all we had to do was look inside ourselves to find ourselves.

Alexandre Dumas, one of my favorite writers, once said, "There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state to another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life."

It is by our own standards that we dictate what our happiness is. No one else's. It is, in fact, impossible to determine our lives based on another's. Who is the world to say what joy means to you?

Happiness, then, our own responsibility.

Responsibility scares people.

Friday was a beautiful day in so many ways unseeable.

I'm grateful to you, all of you!

I hope I'm better prepared for the next struggles I'm bound to face in this lifetime. But the next time, it won't be about finding who I am. It'll be about finding who I'll become.

Oh Gus, Where Art Thou

Dear Public,

While Sol was murdering my beloved car, Gus, I was busy murdering my facade of intelligence.

Sol crashed my car last weak.

"Why was he in the driver's seat in the first place, Ari??" you may ask. The answer is simple. I'm an idiot who lets other idiots drive my car.

Mostly because I'm a pushover/awesomely nice person. (which is how all pushovers describe themselves as)

I WISH. SLAP. ( haw haw haw, Sarah.)

So, anyway. Sam, my car guy (a.k.a. Sarah's weird brother) told me I need a new wheel. A wheel only found at the mystical land of Springville. Of course, me not having a car = somebody needs to drive me to Springydale.

Which brings us to my real point.

Laura drove me there :)

A whole 2 hours with one of my best buddies = I am now feeling so much better. (this post is in abundance of Mathematics)

She's the best. Completely non-judgemental. Never makes me feel like an idiot. and just accepts the ugliness that is my emotions with open arms and a grounded smile.

Anyways. I just love her. She reminds me of who I am and who I can be, and of the people that I forgot to remember to love. (?)

Auf VViedersehen

P.S. WE CREAMED pleasant grove. In their own town. Which was awesome. And I saw a guy there that basically makes my stomach want to escape the confines of my ribcage.

Alas, this is a story for another day, possibly never, on this public domain.

P.S.S.: : : Gus is back. With a new wheel... now he just needs new tires. I need a job. Somebody get me one, having nothing to do with food, please. Thank you, public.