Kony 2012

We live in the age of connection, the age of knowledge, the age of internet. It's a strange thing, how much we know about people thousands of miles away.

This video tells the story of Joseph Kony. Heard of him? Probably not. However, he's number one on the International Criminal Court's Worst Criminal list. Why? He abducts children and forces them to do what he says. He forces them to kill, sometimes even to murder their parents. They become soldiers and slaves.

So why has no one done anything? Because no one knows. But we're in the age of internet. I'm writing this blog post and I've already shared the video on Facebook. It's easy to spread the word. And that's exactly what we need.

The Decline of Snail Mail

Today I wanted to buy postcards to send to my teachers and classes in America. I went into a toy shop, which my mom said probably had them.

"Do you have postcards?" I asked. The woman shook her head.

"Snail mail isn't a thing anymore," she said. "We used to have them, when it still was. But people don't use it."

The decline of snail mail is something quite sad, in my opinion. Letters go back thousands of years - I mean, practically since the written word there has been some form of written message. Email has sort of replaced it. But isn't it thrilling, in a way, to look in your mailbox and to have something that someone sat down and wrote for you as much as weeks ago without anything from you? And packages are even better, but I don't think they're going anywhere for the moment - at least, not until a teleporter is invented. Which probably won't be anytime soon.

Thoughts?

Hamlet

 My theater class went to see Hamlet today.

It was at the Cameri Theater, which is one of the most famous theaters in the city. The theater in which the show was performed was really quite an interesting concept: it was not just a crowd and a stage; it was a crowd within a stage. The seats could spin all the way around, to enable you to see what was going on at all times. There was an aisle straight through the middle of the seating area and stages all around the room. They supported this idea with the notion that the audience is comprised of "the silent participants" and that this brings the crowd further into the production. Sometimes the actors would interact with us and even walk between the seats. One girl (incidentally another Shira) was sat on by Hamlet. There were huge fans of his in the crowd, who were all extremely jealous of her.

The production was a more modern rendition of the play; electronics and modern dress were part of the show. In one scene, Hamlet is wearing headphones, supposedly listening to something - but the headphones aren't plugged in to anything (this is just after he begins to go crazy), so he's just dancing to nothing.

I enjoyed it immensely; the acting was phenomenal, the monologues well-done. And there was comic relief. Always important.

You know what? Shakespeare really was quite brilliant.

My depressed morning

I wake up at quarter of seven. Like I'm supposed to. Except I'm so exhausted I can barely do anything. My dream was something about finding paths, riding in bikes and cars and trying to find a way. It's hazy and cloudy and going-around-in-circles like the rest of the dreams I've had when I'm depressed and exhausted and I know I need to sleep. I stumble to the next room over, my parents' room. As usual, my dad's up already and my mom's still in bed. I crash down onto their futon and toss the covers over me. My mom reaches over and hugs me.

"Do you want to go to school late today?" she asks. I shake my head. If I go, I go on time. "Do you want not to go to school at all?" I think about it for about a second and nod. I close my eyes and stay in my mom's embrace for a few minutes. "Go back to bed," she says. I reluctantly leave the safety of her hug. I need someone to shield me from the world.

I toss and turn, then finally, after a few possible minutes of sleep, I grab the iPad, which has been here since last night. I check my email, Mugglenet, YouTube. I can't shut off the queasy uneasiness that is the familiar depression in my stomach. I reach over, pick up my nook. My friend told me to read It's Kind of a Funny Story so I buy it. I go back to the iPad. Then it's breakfast time. I eat my scrambled egg, a roll with some cottage cheese, some vegetables, and a cup of chocolate milk. My parents tell me we will go outside later today.

After breakfast I return to my room. I read the first two chapters of It's Kind of a Funny Story. It's a book about a suicidal depressed guy. He's worse off than I am, but his thoughts sound too familiar. I press the home button on the nook and toss it aside. Put my head in my hands.

I get on the floor and do twenty situps.

Nothing helps.

If I could talk to my friends now, I wouldn't. Maybe I would text them. But I can't do it when I'm like this. I can't stand knowing they're that far away. And they hate it besides when I text them in such a state. When I do talk to them, it feels okay. But after it I feel awful. I try to write it out in poems, prose, whatever - put it into words - but it doesn't come out right. Besides, no one really likes reading the words of a half-mad depressed person.

It's cloudy out. The sun doesn't even bother.

All the time I'm thinking, there's no way out.

I want to go home, but at the same time I don't. Home is where I first got depressed.

I don't want to do anything.

I want everything to stop.

Stop.

Stop.

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I wrote that just now. It is a log of this morning. It sort of helps. A bit.

The Missing-itis: Depression, take 2

Well, here we go again.

Lst January I thought I was over it, I really did. But hey-o, I couldn't have been more wrong.

The summer was when it started up again. There were days when I would stay at home and watch YouTube all day. It made me feel trapped again, trapped in my own life. No, I was not and am not going to commit suicide. But I still felt trapped. It was better when I got out and about, but still.

The fall, that is, school, looked really great in September. It was good all through the fall. But all along I was anticipating coming here. And towards November and December it went back. Then I get here and, WHAM. It's here. Full-force. For a while, singing to myself before I went to sleep helped, and sleeping itself always does, of course. But when I start texting and chatting and FaceTime-ing my friends, it comes back. Sometimes they'll say something like, "Oh, ___ and I are doing ___ tomorrow" or "I'm sitting next to ___" and I get this pang, the discontent just bubbling up, mixed with sadness. I cry sometimes before I go to sleep. I find myself crying at YouTube videos that I watched with my friends or ones that I watched a lot during the fall. I text my friends that I hate my life and then look back at our conversations and realize how utterly idiotically horribly irrationally pessimistic I sounded. And then I beat myself up over that. And then at school I put on my happy girl personality. It worked during the first couple of days of school here, but I find myself longing to speak English and be back home. That's another thing that's been bothering me. Right now I have no doubt that America is home. And then I realize that after this I will never again have one home, never again be wholly tied to one place. And then I get sad over that. It just goes on and on and on...and it's too much for one brain to hold.

A lot of writers go mad. No one knows exactly why. But my theory is that a mixture of solitude, perfectionism, self-judgement, and over-understanding brings it about. Writers have to know and understand people more than some in order to write a good story. Or maybe, as they say, you have to turn bad days into good stories. Perhaps writers have an over-abundance of those.

I don't know. At night I often really do hate my life, like a burning black candle that eats away at my sanity. And I hate that in itself.

A friend of mine recently commented that I shouldn't be depressed. It's true, I shouldn't. And that too sometimes makes me feel worse. I resolved to try, but sometimes it's no use. I can't have it all in my head. Which is why I'm writing this blog post.

I can't...

I can't...

I can't...

And I miss home...

I want to go home...

Internet Woes

There is some sort of mess with our router. The last tenant here thought the router belonged to her work, so she took it along. However, it belongs to this place. Bezeq won't give us another router, so we're just sneaking internet from wherever we can find some until she gets the router back.

I am so dependent on internet. Especially now we're in Israel. I have not spoken to any of my friends since Sunday night because of the non-dependable internet. Sigh. These are my internet woes.

Cups of tea: 7

New Year's with my buddies

I have borrowed my friend's computer for the moment. We are that obsessed with technology - we bring laptops to sleepovers.
Basically, it is the early hours of New Year's day, even though the blogger time might not show it because my account time is messed-up. At midnight, we opened a bottle of sparkling cider (miserably failing and having to use no less than three bottle openers). I am extraordinarily hyper. I really think there was something in those lemon squares, but it might be just sugar. My friends and I are like that, although I am the most susceptible to sugar. We have the strangest sense of humor - we find very eccentric things funny. I hadn't really realized that until today, or rather tonight, or - well - morning? I'm tiredly hyper. Don't ask me to figure this out.
Anyway, HAPPY NEW YEAR! May it be better than the last!

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I asked my friends to come over here and read my post to see if I should change anything, but they're just sitting on the pool table watching gruesome YouTube videos and listening to music on their iPhones. This is my life. Wince.
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And now I read that out loud to them. They didn't even listen. Just laughing at their iPhones. Double wince.
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Finally they listened to me. I told them they were included in my blog post, not necessarily in a good way. Then they looked back at their iPhones.