Life lessons

Prompt: what are some questions/concerns you have about growing up?

When I first saw this prompt, the first thing I thought of was, dear god, when will this terrible stage of my life end. In TV all the adults spend their time laughing, and doing something with their life, but when I think about what my life might be like the answer seems so meaningless. I can’t imagine what life could possibly be like.

            

 Then I try to picture the other option. Doing something that I might possibly love, and all I can think of is stuff that would make me dead broke.

             

So sitting in class, all my dreams dashed I made a list. 

1   When will this hell be over?

2. Which is better, youth or adulthood?

3. Will I be happy with what I end up doing?

                

This list just made me more frustrated because instead of coming up with answers, I came up with more questions. I didn’t find any answers. This got me thinking about the whole exercise, what were we supposed to take away. Of course writing skills, but what else?

           

Can life lessons accually be taught to you? Or must you learn them through personal experience? many of the things that you learn in school are discarded after a few years of use. others last a life time.

Old Baz

We all are reading Romeo and Juliet, and so far for me the details are all mute. I feel like in many of the scenes I was not getting the full effect, I was only just getting the jest of it, nothing deeper.When I saw that watching Leonardo DiCaprio for two hours could get me extra credit I can't tell you how exited I was, maybe it was that thought, or maybe it was the fact that I was sure that watching this movie would explain it all. The movie was in short perfectly strange, mildly deranged and would not have been complete without a whole lot of guns.

You really got a feel of how they live their lives truly despising the other, of course you had to take into account the terrible acting that was done by the Montague boys, they get kudos for being just that bad.It made you wonder a little bit a bout Baz Lurman this movie was his creation, did he truly mean it to come out in this way?

When the movie first begins you zoom in and out on a television women reporting the recent events of horror, the next shot was of  the heads of the houses, Montague and Capulet rushing to the scene. You know that this must be one of those movies that gives you a short of the end first, before it goes into whats really happening.

Seeing this gave me a pit in my stomach, I hate that part of the title, the tragedy I have always wondered why they have to die. While watching this movie I got increasingly aggravated at both Romeo  and Juliet, Romeo for not seeing the letter from the priest, at Juliet for not saying something when she awoke to Romeo poised, about to down the poison.

The movie helped me see why they had to die, why they could never have lived. They could never have escaped their families while on this earth, their love only prevailing in the wost way possible. But for them, it may have been the only way for their love to work at all.

Thank you Baz, you really helped me out.

Marley and Me. (revised)

Let me get one thing straight, I am not the biggest fan of dog books; or animal books for that matter (even if many of you argue differently). Officially I have read three, Alex and Me , My Friend Flicka, and of course Marley and Me. When I read those other books, each was flawed in the way you might expect and animal book to be flawed. each one was either too sappy, or just not well written. This book did not over complicate the dogs life, nor rephrasing it to make him perfect. this book simply told you what the owners knew, the hilarious stories of the worlds worst dog.

this book also brings up an important point: mortality. most animal books are forced to end with the animal dying. That's what happened. Animals have so much of a shorter life span then a human. ours is long enough that sometimes we lose sight of it. They don't have that pleasure. for an Animal, especially a big dog, life can sometimes mean only ten years, they aren't given enough time to forget.

Plenty of people, from all over the world feel immortal at their prime, life becomes a game (a fun one at that), and feeling pain doesn't quite seem possible.

I was reading my book on the subway this weekend, and nearing the end of my book an old woman sitting next to me leans over and smiles, she says "I love that book!" I looked at her, her face was deeply wrinkled and her lipstick badly smudged. She wasn't immortal. I smiled back and engaged in a deep conversation about the book with her until my stop (basically comparing the movie to the book).

Around the middle of our conversation I realized that she thought I had never read the book before. Now to say that this was untrue was an understatement, I had read this book thousands of times; it never got old.

therre happens to be an episode o a show called Doctor Who, where there's this whole thing with Agatha Christie,  when he says how much he loves her books she shakes him off saying that soon they would be forgotten. And how wrong she was! It gave me an odd feeling to think that something that will out live us all is literature. In class we are reading the words of Shakespeare, the very same one that died five hundred years ago. the immortal, those who are going to outlive us all are not vampires, or zombies. It's the books.

Mentor Blogs

After reviewing most peoples blogs, i found out three things, 1) was the fact that many wrote for length 2) many many wrote for depth, and it turned out long; and 3)some people write for depth and end up with shorter posts that have more meaning then all the rest.

A good example of this is Tomin's blog, at first, he goes into what the poem meant to him and then explains his second take on the poem itself. after scrolling through his blog I found a few note worthy things. for starters, many of his posts were also poems. I read a few to discover that these were actually really good! my favorite was the revised version of hers, because it showed more than just anger but anger at her, for leaving.

Alberta's blog also stuck out to me, maybe its not only because of her posts, but because I can see the blog is one hundred percent hers. when you first see it your eyes are overwhelmed. nothing makes sense about the design, or the little comment thing under the blog title. Nothing relates to itself, but it is also totally Alberta's.

Lastly, I think Timothy's blog deserves mention because his responses are just screaming with his personality.  I can literally hear Timothy saying it as I read his posts. He also left a lot of stuff up for grabs, he didn't pick apart the meanings of every little thing. He gives you a starting thought or idea and lets you run with it, but does not necessarily reveal all.

Envy

I hate thine eyes, hate thine hair, hate thine lips
Thin translucent corners, surging upward
Prickling, fickle, thine hair at thine hips
Always that way, wishing to move forward
Pushing one such as me, further from thee

When I could  hear thy voice calling softly

Oh what's to do my love, oh, what will be?
 But not to me, she throws these words about
Her voice as sweet as honey trapping flies
Her web ensnaring me, drawing me in
Her syrupy voice lays out sweet, sweet lies
Loving her creation was not my sin
Twas’ envy that caused me to fall from grace
Twas’ jealousy that caused all my disgrace

Foreword

When I started this I had no idea what do about my theme for the poetry collection. But once I had read through all of my previously written poems, the central theme of them all became clear, lost. Not just simply lost, but lost on every level that being lost can be. The poem that share the titles name Lost, is being lost on the simplest level of being lost, it is physical. Wandering around unable to find one way is the most literal meaning of the word, but it can also lead to further finding needed.

The farther you go from something that once was important to you, the farther you are from it in your mind. When you are lost physically, you are also lost mentally. Many times you lose the ability to think strait, or to comprehend the situation.

Others were not specifically about being lost but more about not being found; the poem Today, is simply about the absence of an object, such as those mentioned. It presents the ideas of what would happen if certain things vanished from your life, not necessarily permanently but life must go on without them for some time. The same thing goes for the poem The Library, which simply about losing a person of importance; such as a dear friend or lover. But each in their own way are about how even if something important to you is lost, life still goes on.

On another note, there is something about being muddled that makes you needy, and it makes you long for the comforts of home, and by that I don’t mean just being found. Home does not mean the hotel room you were staying at when you went on the hike, home is the place of familiarity that you can actually relax in.

 So what if these things of familiarity left you? Even for just a day you can feel abandoned and helpless without that sense of home, whether you can pinpoint your exact location or not. Maybe you can tell anyone who passes by what street you are on in what city, but when people lose a place to simply go, they tend to feel without a purpose, and simply, lost.

My Papa's Waltz

My Papa's Waltz is a poem by Theodore Roethke can be intureperated in many ways. Some people see it as abuse, the dad is an alcoholic, they argue that even though he was not in his right mind at the time he was still purposefully physicly harming his son. others argue that he was simply waltz that got a little rough.

For me it depends on how you choose to see it, how do you know why the mother was frowning, was it because of her dissaproval towards the fathers actions with the child. Did she think that his roughhousing ad gone to far? Or was it because she was mad that their wlzing had caused her pots and pans to fall.

There is plenty of evidence that points in either direction; you beat time on my head implies a beating harsher than tapping. We romped until the pans/slid from the kitchen shelf romping, as we know (thank you Charlie) means to have "lively play" there is no note of sadness they are in the boys words, playing!

By no means does he meantion pain, or acual assalt. But then again we are missing some crucial information. First of all how old was this kid, did he understand what was happening; and if it was abuse, is he old enough to tell that it was wrong?

Was this an often affair for the father? Is the boy describing something that happened once? or something that happened many times? For me when /I had first read this poem I had no idea what it was about. People around me kept speaking about what a sad poem it is; and all I could think of was, why?

The more I read it the more I saw, the subtle referances to the waltz, the beating. But as I examined it more, I saw that in fact it could be different. It could have been one night in many and the father truely tried to waltz, it might have been a drunk waltz, but not abuse.

The more I read it the less is clear. Poems always seem to be that way, you think you've figured them out, that you've got all of their secretes. And then you find out. You don't.