Yesterday, I received a new pair of Converse All Star sneakers that I customized myself. The shoes are all just one color, which is a purple-like maroon color. I opted for a personal ID and chose to have “plans” stitched on the lower rear in gray. I chose “plans” because it’s a song from Bloc Party’s album, Silent Alarm (which is actually my favorite album ever).

However, these shoes are replacements for shoes that meant a lot more to me since they had a lot more value. They were also Converse, but brown, torn and used. I got them in the seventh grade and have worn them since. These brown shoes had a hole in one of the shoes, but it wasn’t that bad. I would’ve still worn it if I could.

My brown shoes were thrown out by my mother. I’ll never understand why she felt the need to throw out something that I cared very deeply for considering that she is the one person I know who never wants to throw out anything. She’ll even keep pens that don’t have any ink in them and claim that she can make them work later on. In all honesty, I resented my mom the day I discovered that I wasn’t ever going to wear my favorite shoes again. I wanted to break and tear apart something of hers, but instead I sat on a chair and cried over my loss. Just thinking about my shoes makes me want to release a tear still, actually.

My shoes had personality, memories, and holes. They were dirty and they smelled, but I still loved those shoes. I was so devastated because if my life was a bildungsroman, then each scene would feature my brown Converse. It was as if I lost a souvenir of all the great times I’ve had and some of the downer moments, too. I had those shoes through my best moments and my worst, and I kind of wanted to have those shoes with me for the rest of my life. Forever.

People recognized me through my shoes (in a way). My dad and his friends meet occasionally and always bring their kids. Since taking off your footwear is a custom when you enter a Bengali household, my tattered, worn shoes always come off and sat next to the front door or wherever most of the guests’ shoes went. The son of one of my dad’s friends, Abraar, would sometimes say to me, “I knew you were already here because I saw your shoes.” I’ve even formed a friendship with a girl named Dorothy over my shoes. We first started talking about how cool we thought each other’s Converse’s were.

If there’s one thing my friends from middle school will remember me for, it’s for my love of Bloc Party. However, my fanatics toward the band were obvious only because of my shoes, which I scribbed their lyrics on. I also created my own logo for the band and it looked something like this. My shoes were the first canvas for that design and to my dismay, they’re gone and probably recycled.

I’ve always seen people on television losing something that means so much to them. Like, Stephanie Tanner on Full House thought she lost a stuffed bear that her late mother gave her. Luckily, she found it because her younger sister hid it. Ross from Friends thought Joey lost the ring his grandmother had when she first came to the country and passed on to the rest of her family. Alas, the ring was found after they had it surgically removed out of Joey’s duck’s body.

It was touching to watch all of this, but it reminds me that I’m never going to be reunited with an object of so much sentimental value. My shoes documented my tracels and is the only thing that shares the same history as I. My other shoes don’t mean nearly half as much as these now lost brown shoes do.

I’m not an emotional person. I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve, but when I discovered that I truly lost a childhood possession, I cried and cried and cried. I thought I was going to make more memories using those shoes and I thought I would keep those shoes as a keepsake of my teenage years. I don’t even have anything anymore that carries such a significance like my shoes did. No one understands what I felt when I didn’t have my shoes and I feel like no one will, but it’s hard to put into words what you feel about something when it’s been with you for so long.

My shoes are an unspoken subject among my family, seeing how distraught I was when I didn’t have them anymore. And I suppose that if there’s one thing I would ever hold as a grudge against my mother, it’s her deciding to throw out my shoes. But since I don’t have them anymore, most people would just suggest I get over it. For me, it’s the things I did in those shoes and when the shoes were present for those things. Again, it’s tough for me to explain why these shoes were so special because I come off as indifferent and stolid. I hope that one day I will be able to just shrug it off because right now, it still does bother me. My intentions for “forever” turned out to be something like my overused word, “whatever.”

Since I’m a freshman, I’ve decided to apply to sophomore English honors at my school. I have to work this weekend to write an essay in order to apply, but I’m still not sure what to write about. There are choices to choose from, but I tend to overthink the decision making process too much. Which is probably why I’ve never been a good test taker.

I pretty much have to choose one of three quotes given (“All conflict in literature is, in its simplest form, a struggle between good and evil…”). I still haven’t decided yet, so instead, I began to write a post here. I may procrastinate, but I do other things to fill in for the time wasted.

I have to mention two works of literature in my essay. I’m trying not to sound snobby, but I consider myself well read for my age group. I mean, not a lot of fifteen fourteen year-olds will tell you, “Oh, I love Thomas Hardy! Tess of the d’Urbervilles just broke my heart when I read it!” or even “That Raymond Carver is a great prose writer, you know? I think if I were to choose between my favorite short story authors, I’d have a draw between Carver and Salinger -who, I, by the way, don’t appreciate simply because he wrote The Catcher In The Rye.”

Okay, I sound like the middle line of pretentious and stupid, but I think that’s something that tends to happen when you blog about yourself. But anyway, I think I can nail the literary references part of the essay -which is a good amount of it. I may or may not get in, though. Yours truly believes in the latter.

My spring break is almost coming to its end, unfortunately. While I have a load of homework to catch up to, I can’t help but resent the fact that my family never goes out anywhere. We rarely go on a vacation or get out of New York. The last time my entire family went on an outing together was about two years ago to Maryland to show my aunt and uncle from Finland some other parts of the east coast. We only stayed for a night.

I have moments when I’m tired of New York sometimes. It’s like LCD Soundsytem’s song, “New York I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down.” I suppose you just need a time out from certain places, or even people.

In any case, the last book I read was The Little Prince. It’s a book set off by mood and it’s such a nice tale. The ending was a little upsetting, but that’s alright. I absolutely loved the book, though, and I will own a copy soon.

I’m listening to some Andrew Bird right now and sipping some really tasty coffee, so that might just make up for my boring vacation in the meantime.

On Facebook, friends are always tagging other friends to participate in all those meme’s. There’s the iTunes questionaire, 25 things about yourself one, and something for your friends to fill out to see how well they know you. Maybe the chain just hasn’t gotten as long yet, but I have yet to see a note about hated things. Such as:

I hate bad odors. Just two days ago, there was a completely disgusting smell all over one of the main staircases at school. It smelled like someone deficated. Most people held their shirts over their nose to block the smell, but when I was exposed to the stench, my stomach churned and I was ready to gag. I just cannot tolerate bad smells at all.

I hate it when people say “FAIL!” or “HAHAHA, EPIC FAIL.” Honestly, it’s stupid, and isn’t considered a true contribution to any situation where this may be applied.

I hate it when people dislike other people for small things. Just because a teacher assigns two tests in one week doesn’t mean you have to hate her.

I’m too lazy to continue on with the things I hate. I guess it’s not so much of a long list. And I was inspired to do this from seeing something similar online.

I’ve always pondered over how someone could have a blog that they often update if it revolves around their personal life. A music blog is different, however. But, yeah, I don’t know how some people always seem to be able to update their blogs frequently with lengthy posts, too. I don’t know, maybe I don’t have an interesting life, but I’m rarely able to write about my day if it’s not just a sentence or two.

One of my favorite parts about Livejournal is that you can read your friends’ entries all on one page. The friends I have on LJ aren’t actually people I know, though. Either I friended them because we share a common taste in certain things, or some people are actually interested in my blog. I think my friends have worthy blog posts. They’re not entirely pointless, but some of them are, occasionally. I watch this community of Moleskine notebook users, and they always upload their sketches online. Some have some pretty cool, abstact drawings.

Now that I think about it, this blog post itself is pretty useless and isn’t leading anywhere.

But anyway, I’ve been enjoying The Magnetic Fields a lot more lately. I’ve always liked them, but now that I’m revisiting 69 Love Songs, Stephen Merritt’s voice and his lyrics are a perfect blend. Another artist I don’t think I’ve been listening to enough is Patrick Wolf. He’s a really good musician, in my opinion, so I don’t know why I don’t have more plays for him.

It’s a snow day here in Brooklyn, so I don’t have much to do. So I’m going to blog about Joel Stein.

He is my favorite part of Time magazine. I love The Awesome Column and his occasional essays. What first caught my attention was an article he wrote about naming his first child (I think it was his first) and how he even contacted random people on Facebook for help. I like his use of humor because everything else in the magazine just seems so intense with seriousness, except for the 10 Questions section and the Pop Chart.

His writings don’t appear as often as I wish they did, so I started to collect his articles. Stein’s most recent article was about the housing market. He later joked at the end that we should all save our government money for necessities, such as high definition television converters. It’s sort of cheesy, but I like it.

There’s been a few movies released by Fox Searchlight that have been marked indie successes. Like Juno, which in my opinion, doesn’t have any impressing appeal or acting that is outstanding. Juno wasn’t even completely realistic. But anyway, I wanted to talk about (500) Days of Summer, an upcoming movie starring Joseph Gordon Levitt and Zooey Deschanel.

Actually, this post is more about Joseph Gordon Levitt. I first saw him in Brick and then noticed him in 10 Things I Hate About You as late Heath Ledger’s younger look a like. Even when I mention the character of Cameron, none of my friends know who exactly I’m talking about.

I have a feeling that (500) Days of Summer will be a success just like Juno and like Michael Cera, Levitt will be more well-known. I’m not sure I’ll be a fan of this (because I knew him first!). Maybe I just like being the one who knows about certain things before the mainstream. At my old school, when some of the kids started to hum out loud “1234,” I could never help but think, “I knew Feist before you! I liked her first!” I have a helpless case of indie snobbery; I’ll admit it.

So when Joseph Gordon Levitt becomes a newly found heartthrob (not that he isn’t already) like I suspect, and a teenage girl drools over his undeniable, on-screen chemistry with Zooey Deschanel, I won’t help but think, “I knew of his existence before you did.“

Because of school, I don’t get to read as many books anymore. This bothers me somewhat, and the only book I have been reading (for class) is The Odyssey. It’s not bad, but I want to be able to have the time to read Life’s Little Ironies by Thomas Hardy or The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Books that I want to read, not books that I’m assigned.

I was able to get through The Stranger by Albert Camus, maybe because it was pretty short and easy for the eyes. It’s a weird book, though. The main character is very intriguing. My English teacher told me she had read the book because of “Killing An Arab,” the song by The Cure. I read the book because I needed something to read at the time, and this book seemed interesting. And it certainly was.

The last movie I watched was Control. Actually, I’m halfway through it, but before that, I watched The Fall with Lee Pace in it. He seems like such a quirky Prince Charming in Pushing Daisies, but in this movie, he’s much more introspective and I guess manipulative in a way as well. During the winter break, I familiarized myself with a Korean drama titled You Are My Destiny. It really holds your attention, I’d say, because it’s easy to catch on to and the plots are interesting. The first episode I caught was one where this woman’s daughter, Yuri, lied about being pregnant so that she could marry the family’s former driver’s son.

All in all, everything is going well.

Instructions: Open up your iTunes and fill out this survey, no matter how embarrassing the responses might be.

How many songs total: 5281
How many hours or days of music: 13 days 14 hours 9 minutes 22 seconds
Most recently played: “Life In A Glass House,” Radiohead
Most played: “Tables and Chairs,” Andrew Bird (well, obviously)
Most recently added: The D’Urbervilles – We Are The Hunters

Sort by song title
First Song: “A.K.A. I-D-I-O-T,” The Hives
Last Song: “-,” ohGr
Sort by time
Shortest Song: “-,” ohGr
Longest Song: I don’t think iTunes sorts this one correctly, so never mind; otherwise, it’s a Foals song from a bonus disc.
Sort by album
First album: A.M. by Magnetic Morning
Last album: 69 Love Songs by The Magnetic Fields

First song that comes up on Shuffle
“Huddle Formation,” The Go! Team (such a fun song!)

Search the following and state how many songs come up
Death – 101 (It’s because of the Strange Death of Liberal England, Death From Above 1979, and Death Cab For Cutie…)
Life – 53
Love – 377
Hate – 22
You – 840
Sex – 16

When I get the time, I will make sure to check this stuff out.

Music
Mystery Jets, Les Savy Fav, Elephant 6, Eisley, Battles, British Sea Power, Yelle, Born Ruffians, Destroyer, Sons and Daughters

Books
“Dubliners” by James Joyce, “Invisible Monsters” by Chuck Palahhniuk, “Far From The Madding Crowd” by Thomas Hardy