Manifesto Ultimatum: Day 4: Ashtanga With Addy, All I've Ever Really Loved is Semi-Colons

So look: There'd be this movie and they'd call it "All my Love, Addy" (runner up movie titles would be "Ashtanga With Addy: An At-Home Yoga Practice for Yogis Who Just Can't Get Enough: Yogi is the New Sexy" and "The Only Thing I've Ever Really Loved is Semi-Colons (and also my Family and Boys)").

The soundtrack (in no particular order) would be as follows:
1.) "Squealing Pigs" by Admiral Fallow
2.) "Mr. Brightside" by The Killers
3.) "Rivers and Roads" by The Head and The Heart
4.) "New Soul" by Yael Niem
5.) "Naive" by The Kooks
6.) "Oxford Comma" by Vampire Weekend
7.) "Killin' It" by Krewella
8.) "Bad Karma" by Ida Maria
9.) "Blood" by The Middle East
10.) "Casimir Pulaski Day" by Sufjan Stevens
11.) "My Body" by Young the Giant
12.) "Sister Rosetta" by The Noisettes
13.) "Good Day" by Nappy Roots
14.) "Take Me or Leave Me" from Rent
15.) "Fluorescent Adolescent" by Arctic Monkeys
16.) "A Beautiful Mess" by Jason Mraz (This song is about me. No joke. Go look up the lyrics. Especially if you know me. It's about me.)

Here's the thing: I wish I could cast this movie or name this movie or even tell you a real soundtrack for this movie (all I was really doing up there was naming my favorite songs), but I can't. I wish I could name my Love Interest (Ryan Gosling (See what I did there?)) or tell you how it'd go, but I can't. I'm only 17 years old. I have my whole entire life ahead of me. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow until it happens, and then if we made my movie today, it'd be outdated and inaccurate by the end of tomorrow. "I can't go back to yesterday, because I was a different person then."

"I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then."

I can't tell you about my movie, but I can tell you what I hope it will be, what I'm going to make it be, and something I can tell you is this: I'm going to be an English teacher, that's what I've finally figured out, because Shakespeare? He wrote with the beat of your heart.

William Shakespeare wrote because of your heartbeat, and that is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard.

The Olympics in 1942 were in Berlin.
All my love,
Addy

Manifesto Ultimatum Day 2: Zodiac Signs.

I'm a Leo, obviously. Obviously.

Don't call me a self-fulfilling prophesy, but some days I can't decide if there is fate and there is destiny because some days I want that and other days I don't.

Today, as a Leo, stubborn, vindictive, tired, I am crying over you because you asked me not to. It's a lame revenge. It's a beautiful revenge. I know about revenge.

Yesterday, as a Leo, bright, loud, beautiful, I didn't have the answers for you, but listen to the way I shape the words "I love you" and you will love me back, because we are the same.

And I have lion hair and I am not a self-fulfilling prophesy. I was born for this. I was born under stars.

"I try to remember my youth. It evaporates into just a handful of memories. One memory was that you believed the entire earth was made perfect by God, and that humans came and fouled it up, as God looked down, shaking his head, saying, "How could they choose terror and loss when I have offered them perfection?" And then you got older and didn't feel that way. And you thought maybe God never really wanted perfection if he designed the things he made with an instinct to screw up. Fighting and failing became beautiful, hard. Screwing up became part of the program. You can call it sin, you can call it human, but maybe there are codes built inside of darkness needing light and vice versa. It did not shake your belief in the existence of a God, but it shook your belief in the bland necessity for perfection."

Here's six shout outs to six other Leos that I'm a big fan of: Hazel Baird, Millie Baird, Connor White, Alex Barker, Margaux Canali, Blake Westover.

"I'm not that pristine."
All my love,
Addy

Originally, I was too indie for this. Turns out I'm just too pretentious. Either way, this is MANIFESTO ULTIMATUM: DAY ONE. My way.

"i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)" 

I hate my nose. Everyone hates their own nose. It's a thing. I'd be willing to bet that even Taylar Davis hates her own nose, and she has the cutest nose of anyone I've ever met. Except maybe Lauren Stratton. Her nose rivals all noses, and I know for a fact that Lauren Stratton hates her own nose; she told me so herself, right after I told her she has the best nose of anyone I've ever met.

People like their eyes, though. It's also a thing. I think it's because eyes can't possibly be an ugly shape. Or maybe they can, but it's just so subtle that I can't tell. Someone ask Billy Prilgrim, Optimologist, Unstuck In Time. He'll know. My eyes are the color of grass and also the color of mice.

I like my eyelashes the best, though. They're the most beautiful thing about me. Mostly only the makeup ladies at Nordstrom notice them, though. They say things like, "Girl! Your eyelashes!" and I walk on air for a solid hour after that.

Scientifically, men are more attracted to the left side of a woman's face than her right. This is ridiculous. Take pictures of the right side of my face all you want. If a man only wants to look at the left side of my face, I'll gladly have some choice words regarding feminism, gender roles, and also probably science for him.

I have eyebrows, and they look great for the three weeks after being waxed. God bless estheticians. 

Other people god bless:
-baristas
-French exchange students
-English majors
-yoga ladies
-poetry teachers
-Albert Einstein
-Andrew Garfield
-siblings that look a lot alike
-skinny boys

I like the idea of learning forever about what I want to learn about.

Someday, I think I will get a degree in English with an emphasis in Teaching, emphasis in Creative Writing with a double minor in theater with an emphasis in playwriting, Art History, emphasis Hellenistic Greece, Gothic Cathedrals, 20th Century.

Someday, I think I will get a Masters in English, emphasis in Creative Writing, playwriting. Masters in Art Restoration.

Someday, I might get a Ph.d. in Art History, emphasis in Gothic Art, especially cathedrals.

Someday, I'll just be a poet and write on the fire escape, maybe boasting a Ph.d. in Gothic Art just because I love it. Just because why not. Maybe I'll win a Pulitzer. Maybe I'll have taught English in the Bronx, restored great art just because it's getting older and older and older and older, but in the end, I'll just be a poet, and I will write from the fire escape, because "Someone asked me/what home was/and all I could think of/were the/stars/on the tip of your tongue/the flowers sprouting from your mouth/the/roots/entwined in/the gaps/between your fingers/the ocean echoing/inside of your/ribcage"

This has been day one of the Manifesto Ultimatum (my way).

And to all a good night.
All my love,
Addy

i am sixteen going on seventeen

Yesterday, I became seventeen years old, so young it's almost despicable. It seems uncanny, really, because as I've watched the people I love get new numbers of their own -- 18, 19, 44 -- I felt like I was growing old with them. Yesterday, I was reminded that I have not. I was reminded that I am not easing my way into adulthood or middle age-ed-ness along with them. I have been merely spectating their glorious debuts.

But today, I am seventeen, so young it's enviable, so much life ahead of me.

For once, I feel like I have something to show for this last year. I have something to celebrate this time; I have a thousand mistakes and a thousand kisses and a thousand battle scars from the whole thing. It's liberating.

Maybe it's because this was a leap year. Maybe it was because I had 366 days to create whatever beautiful disaster this year has been instead of the normal 365. Maybe I just had more time. Maybe I just had more hope. Maybe I just had a driver's license.

Last year, my own birthday terrified me. This year, after everything, I'm just so excited to wake up in the morning. Nothing will ever stay the same. There is nothing so constant as change. And that's okay with me.

A weird part of birthdays is the question "How does it feel to be such-and-such age?" It's taken me seventeen years to answer that honestly.

The answer is that I felt the same Monday morning as I felt on Sunday night, but I feel differently than I did the morning I woke up on my sixteenth birthday.

It's this: Life cannot be quantified in birthdays. "It's the little moments that make life big." Life cannot be quantified in Leap Years or pages read or hours spent or words spoken, because life, like intelligence, can't really be accurately quantified at all. Watching life happen isn't like watching a thunder storm. It's much slower. It just happens and there are so many things you cannot control. You are the master of your fate, you are the captain of your soul, but you are not the master of anyone else's fate or the captain of anyone else's soul, and your fate and your soul is intertwined with so many other fates and souls and you aren't going to become something else the moment your birthday comes around again. Your birthday came last year, too.

And life cannot be quantified in birthdays.

I'm just going to keep this short and finish it off with my own birthday toast, because today is truly a celebration of so much more than myself.

So, to my parents, to Sophie, to Hazel, to Millie, to Avery Taylor and Kaitlyn Lindley and Matt Davis and Kyle Somer, to Alex Barker, to Morgan and Chandi, to Connor and Benjamin and KP, to J, to Katie and Matt, to Emily Henson, to Emily Peterson, to my nana and papa and grandma and grandpa, to President and Sister Baird, to Kyoko, Elder Kishi, to Hayley Walker, Noah Jackson, Harli Mitchell, to Lauren and Christina and Holly and Diego and Landen and Stephanie and DJ, to Amy and Dean the yoga deities, Debbie and Julie and Val and Elaine and Arwen, Mallory Ash, Shelbie Shill, Emily Luse, and to anyone anywhere who has ever had any hope for me, any love for me: Here's to you. Without you, I wouldn't be celebrating something so beautiful.

"May God thy gold refine."
"You're not an alcoholic until you give up."
All my love,
Addy

Kurt Vonnegut is the love of my life and other reasons I'm an antisocial disaster zone.

"I would be a better girlfriend than her." -Matt Davis

"There was this girl in high school who hated me. Like, hated me. I would hide when I saw her because people told me she brought a knife to school. I thought she was going to murder me." What'd did you do to her?! "I don't know! I made out with her boyfriend." -Lauren Stratton

"Now that you've finished, the yoga can do you." -Amy the yoga goddess

Mine fields, paychecks.

All my love,

Addy