Train of Thought

   DISCLAIMER: BLOG CONTENT 100% SATIRICAL COMMENTARY AND DEFINITELY NOT SERIOUS      The past year and the last couple months especially, I've struggled to hold a pencil or type. Even as I write this, I can feel my fingers become heavy as my condition sets in: Senioritis. With grades not relevant anymore, it can be so easy to disregard classwork in favor of other distractions, and the pull becomes stronger the closer we get to the end of the year. For most of us, our grades are as good as locked in and we won't be taking the final, so after 12 years of studying it can be so hard to keep pushing when it doesn't matter anymore. Every day feels defined by 11:59, with work being finished in record times as the hour approaches. To simulate the experience of senioritis (as I would absolutely never actually do anything remotely like it) I chose to wait until the night before the blog is due to get to writing.  10:20 - "Free choice blog? I wonder what I'll write about.&q

 When my parents named me, the main thing they thought about is that they wanted it to be both German and English to reflect my heritage. With everyone having a different idea of how to pronounce it, Stefan sounds foreign even to my own ears; sometimes it's Stef-ON, other times Stephen, with the rare Steven thrown in. Most often my name reminds people of twilight or an exotic real estate agent, but to me Stefan most often means school. Stefan means studying hard, getting called on, taking tests - all things intellectual. To me, Lemke references the athlete. Lemke is someone calling me over in the gym, or when I used to get in the starting block at a track meet. Plastered on the back of my jersey or hoodie, Lemke is a more comfortable name in the outside world, with Stefan reserved for school and my parents calling me down to dinner. My name sounds more familiar to me in German, as especially recently that's all I've been hearing. Like my name itself, my connotation of it is

After the first day of watching Godot, I decided to do a little more digging in an attempt to find meaning. What I found was not deeper understanding, but rather disappointment at the various missed opportunities for genuine commentary. In an interview, Samuel Beckett himself states that Godot is not meant to be a play on words to represent God, despite the various pronunciations Pozzo stabs at all sounding as such. Theatre of the Absurd plays on religious commentary to highlight absurdism of life, yet Waiting for Godot somehow lacks. Godot reminds me of a bad joke where no one laughs, and the joke teller digs themselves a deeper and deeper hole by explaining it's not meant to be funny. Supporters of the play explain how it's not meant to be enjoyed, but when so many of the opportunities to make a point are missed, I find it hard to even appreciate the attempts. Everything is interconnected, such as discussions of hanging leading to Pozzo appearing with Lucky on a noose. Simila

    Every time I open a comment section on social media, I see at least one saying that really pushes my buttons. Whether it be "No ❤️", or "Um child anyways", the overused sayings just get funnier and funnier every time I read them. Using one of these or any of the other sayings popular on TikTok ruins a conversation, just how having a wet sock ruins the rest of your day. Almost never do they add anything to a conversation (unless said conversation is discussing how annoying the sayings are), and they only serve to get on my nerves. The sayings often serve as a weak excuse of a comeback, and ruin any sort of friendly roasts. The worst part of these sayings? They absolutely refuse to die. Every time it seems as if they fade away, a new surge of No❤️ begins bringing with it a resurgence of my annoyance towards it.  After looking at Google Trends for activity in the sayings, I came to the unfortunate conclusion that these sad excuses for comebacks are in no risk of dy

After knowledge extinguished the last of the beautiful fires our worship had failed to prolong, we walked back home through pedestrian daylight, to a residence   humbler than the one left behind. A door without mystery, a room without theme . For the hour that we spend complacent at the window overlooking the garden,   we observe an arrangement in rust and gray-green, a vagueness at the center whose slow, persistent movements some sentence might explain if we had time   or strength for sentences. To admit that what falls falls solitarily, lost in the permanent dusk of the particular. That the mind that fear and disenchantment fatten   comes to boss the world around it, morbid as the damp- fingered guest who rearranges the cheeses the minute the host turns to fix her a cocktail . A disease of the will, the way   false birch branches arch and interlace from which hands dangle last leaf-parchments and a very large array of primitive bird-shapes. Their pasted feathers shake   in the afte

 A word that I find beautiful is symphony. Symphony by itself rolls of the tongue like silk, and ironically, the sound is  the meaning. Symphony can be used to describe an orchestra or a compositional work, and within the word hide soaring melodies and trembling lows. As a little kid, I would often fall asleep to the sounds of my mom practicing for her next concert as a professional musician. The notes she played would work their way up the stairs and into my room, where they filled me with serenity and peace. Now as an adult (technically), the word symphony brings me back to the magic and wonder only a child's eye can see, and I get part of the same serenity I fell asleep to oh so many times growing up. Now as a musician myself, symphony also reminds me of the nerves that always return before a big solo, the anticipation of wanting to deliver the same quality I listened to as a kid. I find moist an ugly word, as it somehow reminds me of a dark, dank basement. Whereas symphony flow