Follow up from “Stuck at School”

When you are new at a school, its not always easy to introduce yourself to people… there are so many new faces, teacher and students (even though you’ll have classes with only about 30 of them) that it can be hard to keep them all straight.

There are a few obvious ways. Facebook- befriend one, and strenuously go through their friends and add anyone in the same network as you or with their school added…

Or you could just try and strike up a conversation with them. When you’re new and they ask you what your name is, it normally helps to have an interesting (if annoying) name that might have a story or other to tell about it. People often ask me where mine came from. And of course my life’s story is far from dull…

I had one such experience today. I got to meet the nurse!

Yesterday evening, I experienced unbelievable pain in my hip. I immediately recognized that it must have been a ligament due to its location, the depth and the type of pain I was feeling. I’ve had many bone, muscle and ligament injuries and I think ligaments are by far the worst.

Anyways, stretching, nor a good bike ride did anything to relieve it (though on the upside, I broke my record of 32 km/h with an astonishing 36.5! Tour de France, here I come! :P) so when I got to school and it was still aching, i figured it was time to make one more introduction.

I put the heat pad on earlier this morning, for about half an hour during a spare period, and when the pain returned about an hour later, I was grateful to have another spare now (later in the afternoon). Gives me a moment to catch my breath and catch up with you guys!

Actually I should probably go off and try and choose a topic for my biology project now!

Hope you are all having a better start to the week, and year, than me!

Autumn Again

Well, it is nearly three weeks into the new school year, and I can honestly say I am nearly settled in:
to the new school
To the new house
to the new workload.

While it is all very intense here, and stressful being alone and without my sister at school with me, it is also very enjoyable.

And while boxes still speckle our house and homework dwells heavily in my mind, I decided to take two breaks today. One- to go apple picking. And another to share that experience with all of you.

Every couple of years my family and I would visit this orchard in the autumn to pick some apples and a few jugs of apple cider. This year, we went back for the last time. Next year, it will be more developments. After seventy years, the tractor rides will no longer go round the rows of trees.

So what better way to share with you, than with a poem I wrote while munching a fruit beneath the tree of Eden?

A Day In Tamed Wilderness

 

The day stretched ahead of us
Like the auburn carpeted path
Beneath our leather clad feet.

 

Memories, waiting to unfold
Hung-heavy- suspended
On weighted boughs.

 

The trees rear up to either side of us,
In contrast. One crimson, the other
Verdant still. Speckled with blood.

 

Fog looms up before us.
With a few, vigorous movements
It gleams in the sun once more.

 

A crunch. The tear of flesh.
And liquid life springs, dripping, from my lips
Along with a childish gleeful grin.

 

A plunk. A clank.
A shuffling scrape as the load rolls around
The still empty- soon to be bushel, basket.

 

A fire engine leers up before us.
Decisively and defensively he pulls out a switch blade
And slices into the juicy tissue.

 

There before us we see
A beautiful sight. One never seen before.
And never to be seen again.

 

A luminous star- startling black specks
On a striking, spotless white disk.
On a severed orb of scarlet silk.

 

We both take a half
Like an old fairy tale.
But this time, we both live.

 

We frolic and flit between the trees
Until another fruit lights up the sky.
With heavy hearts, we leave the orchard.

 

Knowing that if we return, next autumn,
This haven of tame wilderness,

Will be no more than more houses.