It's ironic because today in class we did this excercise called a doodle journal in which you mindlessly scribble something really quick and then look for something in the scribble to bring out and illustrate even more. Today, I saw an hour glass. I colored it in and then drew a clock around it. I titled it "How much time do you have left?" Kind of frightening really, how short life is as cliche as that may sound.
Today
as i began to day dream in class about the boots that I am yearning to get once i save up my money, I realized how petty and materialistic I can be. In all actuality, as much as I love fashion, it does not bring be true happiness. I began to think of the things that do and I decided to start writing them down in my journal whenever I think of one or something good happens. It is so easy to be cynical in this day and age with all of the news coverage of troubling politics, horrible people and crimes, etc. But there really are so many wonderful people in the world and so many beautiful and kind acts performed each day that go unnoticed. For example, today in my class, my friend shared a story of how one evening she was in the Jack in the Box drive through and she decided to buy the car behind her their dinner. She ate her food in the car and watched the drive through line and saw that that person had kept the chain going and everyone in line was buying someone else's meals. I just found that so touching. Like, how perhaps, kindness is contagious. I want to start doing these things more often. I feel like I am pretty good with the simple things like holding a door open for people and letting people cut me in line in traffic. These things seem so trivial and petty but, they really can make someone's day.
So after recieving my second parking ticket in a week, I decided to start writing down things that bring me joy like helping someone or someone doing something nice for me, etc.
Also, yesterday, while working at the day care center this little boy of around 4 years old handed me a little "drawing" that he had done. It was a bunch of colorful scribbles and he said "I made it for you, I want you to keep it." For some reason, this almost brought joyful tears to my eyes. Children, in general, bring me so much happiness. They are so pure and unaffected by society and their imaginations are so beautiful. I think that we are the most ourselves in childhood. As we get older, we become more and more formed into who society wants us to be and what is "right."
I also was profoundly touched today when I stayed after class to talk to my creative writing professor about my grade. She is such an inspiring lady to begin with. She so warm and kind and gentle and yet, she is still so smart and a fabulous writer. She shared with me her published memoir in which she chronicles her experience with her husband taking his own life. I really connected with her today and it was so nice. I just find it so couragous and admirable of her to speak about something that is quite common yet, not commonly talked or written about. She said she found writing the book to be very theraputic for her as I do as well, with a lot of my work. It also just made me think, wow, I have nothing to complain about compared to so many people. I can't even imagine how traumatic that loss was for her.
It also made me realize that someday, I could write a book of my own.
On a lighter note, she said I was a good writer! which of course, is one of the best compliments I could receive.
I have been reading this great anthology of poems called "poetry 180" assembled by Billy Collins. There is some awesome contemporary poetry in it that I have really enjoyed and connected with. More importantly though, is the whole idea behind Poetry 180. Collins' goal is to essentially get high school students (and younger people) to actually enjoy reading poetry rather than a strenuous assignment in which one must try to essentially, translate a different language. With a lot of poetry that is taught in schools, it becomes very difficult because you must analyze the hell out of it, dig for hidden symbolism, and try to uncover the meaning through style, symbolism, diction, etc. We do this so much so that, we start to think of it as a chore or a foreign language that we will never undersnad so we lose the pleasure of simply reading it to enjoy it or connect to. Billy Collins is trying to persuade teachers to just read one poem each day without having students have to analyze it or anything like that. I think that is awesome because poetry is so powerful and so initmate, it really connects us as human beings when we read it and identify with it. It reminds us we are not alone.
Here are a couple favorite of mine....
I wish in the city of your heart
I wish in the city of your heart
you would let me be the street
where you walk when you are most
yourself. I imagine the houses:
It has been raining, but the rain is done
and the children kept home
have begun opening their doors.
~Robley Wilson
Love Like Salt
It lies in our hands in crystals
too intricate to decipher
It goes into the skillet
without being given a second thought
It spills on the floor so fine
we step all over it
We carry a pinch behind each eyeball
It breaks out on our foreheads
We store it inside our bodies
in secret wineskins
At supper, we pass it around the table
talking of holidays by the sea.
~Lisel Mueller
(so beautiful!)
My Life
Somehow it got into my room.
I found it, and it was, naturally, trapped.
It was nothing more than a frightened animal.
Since then I raised it up.
I kept it for myself, kept it in my room,
kept it for its own good.
I named the animal, My Life.
I found food for it and fed it with my bear hands.
I let it into my bed, let it breathe in my sleep.
And the animal, in my love, my constant care,
grew up to be strong, and capable of many clever tricks.
One day, quite recently,
I was running my hand over the animal's side
and I came to understand
that it could very easily kill me.
I realized further, that it would kill me.
This is why it exists, why I raised it.
Since then I have not known what to do.
I stopped feeding it,
only to find that its growth
has nothing to do with food.
I stopped cleaning it
and found that it cleans itself.
I stopped singing it to sleep
and found that it falls asleep faster without my song.
I don't know what to do.
I no longer make My Life do tricks.
I have the animal alone
and, for now, it leaves me alone, too.
I have nothing to say, nothing to do.
Between My Life and me,
a silence is coming.
Together, we will not get through this.
~Joe Wenderoth
This poem is challenging for me but so good. I can identify with it though I am not positive if I have my analization right. But, I enjoy it, as Billy Collin would want me to do. But, the thing is, I am so intrigued and so somehow connected to it, that I want to know just what he is talking about. I love how "My Life" is capitilized and how he personifies it into his pet that he thought he could control, only to realize, he can't control it. I love that sense of detatchment. How he seperates his Life as something that is not within him and something that he really doesn't know, undertsand, or even know how to take care of. I definately think that this poem may relate somehow to the poet's depression though, after reading it, I kind of began to get the feelings that perhaps his Life was a romantic partner.
Beautiful, nonetheless.
PS all the photos I posted today were by Hana Haley from the company of people.
