About Austin

Dear Allen Ginsberg,      For a school project, a group and I had to find a poem, annotate it in 9 different ways, and present our findings to class. My group chose your poem, A Supermarket in California. While this letter comes from a school assignment, I truly did find immense beauty in the way the message was delivered.      What stood out to me was the journey, the journey that both you and Walt Whitman somewhat took. In your mind, you went from the streets of California, to the superficial supermarket, to the “black waters of Lethe”. Yet at the same time, in the physical world, you start and end at the same place. I loved that. I loved the way you changed the way a typical “journey” is supposed to be, and used that to further emphasize your message. It was brilliant.      I would also like to take the time to ask a few questions. Your poem feels like a train of thought. It's a free meter and it has no rhyme scheme, so I would like to ask...

I decided to make my poem on not wanting to write poetry because I don’t want to write poetry. Here’s the first draft. I did the first draft as it came to my mind. Do i fr gotta do this I’m forcing myself to write Words come from the abyss To make this poem alright I just need to finish this blog Get to nine lines I’ll be like a dog I’ll follow all the guidelines Just give me a good grade Now the first thing I noticed when I went back is that I rhymed lines with guidelines. I don’t think that’s how the rhyme scheme is supposed to work. I don’t think I’m supposed to rhyme the same word with itself. So I decided to change that. I also thought the ending was a bit weird and I wanted to play more into the dog thing. I felt like it was a good joke as well because according to the Chinese Zodiac I’m a dog. I also changed the last line because I felt like it would be better if it was a more abrupt ending. To connect with breaking, I didn’t mean to write out “Do i fr gotta do this”. I was goin...

I think my childhood could make the eternal recurrence worth it. As a child, I was genuinely happy. I had no worries, no responsibilities. I just lived life in the moment and didn’t care about my future or past. Now, as I’ve matured, I’ve realized how much struggle there is in life. As my friends would say, we’re all stuck in the rat race. I know I’ll never find that childhood innocence in myself again. Therefore, I would love to be retold elements of my life, even if I had to endure all the struggle. This one element would 1000% make it all worth it. Now to connect this with Siddhartha. When Siddhartha can’t pay the ferry guy, the ferry guy says I know you’ll be back, because he’s enlightened, so he knows that life is just one big cycle. Every part of life will repeat itself. If you think about it, the childhood joy could be applied to this as well. When people get older and settle down, what do they do? They have children, and I think part of the reason why is because these children ...

Introduction This essay is about me. Everything is based on my beliefs and how I interpret certain experiences. Throughout this essay, I want to synthesize my interpretations from my experiences and answer the question: “How do different aspects of my knowledge shape my understanding of the meaning of life?” To do this, I want to put each piece of knowledge on a spectrum between the universe being absurd, or the universe having meaning. In my experience, there are no better books to reference this with than The Stranger, by Albert Camus, and The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. The Stranger For nothing, I want to base my views off The Stranger. The Stranger stars Meursault, a completely apathetic narrator. I want to focus on the ending scene, because this is where the philosophy of the book truly comes to life. In this scene, Meursault is sitting with the Chaplain. Although the Chaplain is rambling on about religion, Meursault still keeps his original viewpoint. He rejects the idea of highe...

 I guess this blog post is based on the thirteen ways to look at a blackbird. I’m part of a club at Troy High, and there’s a person, let's call George. George is an interesting person. I really enjoy his presence. He’s always laughing and smiling and he never seems to be down. But maybe also because he reminds me of childhood joy. After going through high school, I think I've lost that joy. But other people in the club have a different perspective. Before I move on, I just want to clarify something. I don’t want to hate anybody mentioned in this blog post, that’s not my intent. I just want to make that clear.   At the first competition of this season, one of my friends was talking to me about the freshman. Throughout the conversation they started making fun of the newly joined freshman in the team. George is a big fella and he does childish things. It’s easy to think of him as a strange guy. And I’ll admit, I used to see him in the hallways and before I got to know him, I reme...

I think for me, I always laugh at one thing in particular. I always, always laugh at something funny. Ok? So what’s funny to me? I think I love stupidity. I remember last year, during comp sci, I was trying to find jokes to tell to my friend and I ended up on the reddit page for antijokes. Antijokes are jokes without a punchline. You expect them to be a joke, but they just end up being a statement that’s obvious. For example, What’s the governments best kept secret? I don’t know. I remember just reading through it and dying. To my friend, they seemed stupid, and he probably cringed at me reading them out loud to him, but I couldn’t help but laugh. And not just with stupid jokes, it also ties into what I find funny on the internet. I remember finding this video, It’s something that any "normal" person should be able to watch with a straightface, but to me it was hilarious. One may say that I’m too “brainrotted” but I disagree. My thoughts aren’t consumed by “brainrot”. I don’t...