What is a Yellow Wood?

While trying to work on my research for the poetry project, I got stuck after the first line. What is a yellow road?? Googling it appears to be useless because it leads to thousands of sites with Frost's poem... not helpful. So the search continues.

Digging Through Old Notebooks

I grabbed an old notebook to take some notes at a meeting and found a poem that I had to write for my creative writing class a few months back. When I read it after a long time and now that my life has changed it was interesting how different I felt about it. So here goes my silly little, now very dear to my heart poem.

The Colors I Saw Today
Awaken by a bright white light,
There's mucky tan up and right.
To the left the light comes in
Through holes in the blue curtain.
The bathroom's painted dirty cream,
and the mess inside would make you scream.
In the mirror is a freckled face,
With dirty blonde hair all out of place.
The clothes are the same everyday,
all Navy blue while underway.

My mind: The Recycler

How do you write an academic essay on a topic that riles you so passionately and angers you so much at times that it makes you shake and tremble uncontrollably as if you’ve been out in sub-freezing temperatures for hours on end? How, if the topic is that upsetting and emotional, do you calm yourself down enough to compose logical and scholarly thoughts and put your best work forward?

This paper came at an interesting time in my academic career. You know how sometimes things seem serendipitous and you sit and marvel at how great it all works out? Well this is one of those moments but I cannot bring myself to rejoice just yet. The feeling is so upsettingly serendipitous that it makes me laugh while crying in wonder at how the world could be so cruel yet so helpful at the same time. If there is a puppet master up there, he must be giggling as he watches his plot unfold. I know from past experiences that these feelings will fade and that in a few days, weeks, or months I will not be so riled by this topic just as I wasn’t three weeks ago but events unfolded in a way to make this hit too close to home and that nerve is not just being pinched but more squeezed with no mercy.

I find that when I free write, which is how and why this tirade started, I calm down. Once I’ve expressed my thoughts then the raging energy that is running through my body is slowly released and I can calm down. A lot of people will say that I should talk to a friend or a shrink but the upside to writing, or talking to my faithful travel companion Jimmy the Rubber Skipper Duck, is that no one talks back. No one says, “well just breathe and calm down and things will be fine tomorrow.” Or any number of other obnoxious questions or phrases that are meant to calm me down or cheer me up but in reality just annoy me and get my blood boiling more. Can’t a girl just vent and let crap out? I mean everyone needs to take out the trash at some point or another. Yes there’s knitting or yoga or running but that doesn’t express the thoughts that are in my head that just uses up the energy running rampant through my body. So that brings me back to writing. The problem with writing when I am purging energy and thoughts is that it rarely ends in a scholarly or academically acceptable text. It makes for great reference material though. It’s always surprising to me that while I am typing and purging I am able to collect my thoughts and formulate academic thoughts to put down later. The mind works in mysterious. I suppose my mind is not purging my thoughts but recycling them into something of the same material but a different look. Personally I’ve always found I enjoy pieces, usually under the guise of art or craft, made of recycled materials much better than the original…

So now that I have purged, I maybe calm enough to compose the academic masterpiece that will be my English essay.

Sleepy by ANton Chekhov

When doing a little research for writing my paper on Sleepy by Anton Checkov, I found that there are many translations of the story since it was written in Russian. There are only slight differences like the description of the girl, Varka, as a "nanny" in one and a "nursemaid" in another. This has a profound influence on the reader I think even though it may not be completely obvious. Without using any sort of background information about the author I would have assumed that this story was set in the American south during the time of slavery and indentured servitude by the use of the word nanny and other setting descriptions but if I had read the version stating "nursemaid" as a description of the girl I would have been guided to the European context right away since the description is in the first line of the story.

Just a little observation. I decided to write my paper on Guests of the Nation instead.

War Stories

Today when we were talking about the love letters in class I chose not to share this but I think it is very important in understanding the mental state of men at war and how they cope with it. To explain this I will use an example from my family. I have two cousins, A and J, (brothers) that went to Iraq. A went and left his wife behind. When J went he did not leave anyone behind and he just had one or two friends and family to write to. This is important because A had someone to write to, a reason to get through the war and something to live for. J, started writing to family members he rarely ever talked to in the past and he had a "girlfriend." J, like the LT. in The Things They Carried, created a reason to survive.

War zones can really mess with a person's mind and cause them emotional turmoil. Without a reason to make it through, to go on every day, a person exposed to the toils of war may find themselves in an unhealthy state of mind. Self preservation allows that person to create a reason to go on and to make it through. I believe this is what was happening with our LT in O'Brien's story.

Sleepy and computer sabotage

I read the short story "Sleepy" for class today and of the four stories we read, I remember that one the best because I identify with the character. The exhaustion of the main character is conveyed to the reader in the slow, dull, pace of the story not just in the words themselves which I thought was interesting. That is not the only way I identified with the character though. I would not be as bold as to say that military service and servanthood are are equals but in many ways they are and there were many days I had to continue working on little or no sleep. One time in-particular stands out when I had only about three hours of sleep in a 72 hour period but had to keep working at my computer station until it was time to go out and hold the line for 2-3 hours of refueling and stores on-load. After that it was back to 40-50 degree air conditioning and my computer screen and more work until my shift was over but I was needed after my shift and there was work to be done other places after that. I had World Religions class for an hour and a half every day and two independent study courses. After about 65 hours of being up my LT. felt so bad he brought me Cappuccino from the officers' wardroom in a nice porcelain cup and saucer which was very nice compared to the styrofoam cup and machine powder mix coffee the enlisted people usually get! Near the end I had on at least one occasion considered sabotaging my system so that I could go to sleep while it got fixed!

Oops

I keep forgetting to write on here so I made a sticky not reminder on my desk...hopefully that works. During the class when we read Singapore I expressed it in class but I think it is extremely important that when we read poetry about cultures other than the authors, especially poetry that seems to be an observation, it is important to remember that it is not always an accurate depiction of a culture or a person but merely the writers perception. A lot of times I tend to take writings as truths, especially when it is a revered author and I would venture to guess I am not the only student or person that does so. It takes a conscious effort to remind ourselves that it is a work from the author's cultural perspective. Unless the author is educated in anthropology or makes a concerted effort to gain knowledge of the culture he is writing about I think people should be weary of taking writings, no matter how famed the writer, as accurate cultural depictions.

UNCW Meal Plans

This is completely unrelated to class but in order to best formulate my thoughts for a proposal it helps me to write them down a bunch of times so here it goes.

I transfered in this semester and live on campus in the University Apartments which means I have my own room and four of us share a full kitchen. I didn't sign up for a meal plan because I planned to cook all of meals in the apartment however it is required that if you live on campus you have a meal plan. The cheapest meal plans available to me are Suite 7 plus $450 food dollars or Suite 115 plus $400 food dollars for $1365 a semester. That breaks down to $85.31 a week for food. I can prepare three healthy meals for myself for $25 a week.

There are two other housing communities on campus that have kitchens. Students living in those communities are given the option of selecting from the same meal plans I can BUT they also have the option of selecting meal plans like Bonus 55 where they get $600 food dollars for $545 per semester.

I believe that it is unfair to not offer those same options to students living in the University Apartments when they are equipped with the same facilities as Seahawk Landing and Village. I am requesting that I not be made to have a meal plan, I simply would like the option to cook for myself when the facilities to do so have been provided to me through my choice in housing.

I understand that it is important for students to use the dining facilities on campus to promote socialization, campus involvement and the campus economy. I do not believe that a majority of the students would chose the meal plans where they would be preparing or providing for a majority of their meals on their own but I do think that the option should be made available to students residing in equally outfitted housing communities.

The chic in the car

So I re-read The Lady in the Pink Mustang a bunch of times (roughly 12) and I have decided that the voice in the poem is of a 50+ year old woman who has found out she is terminally ill -I'll say breast cancer- and she decided to buy a pink Mustang and drive across the country to experience what she can before she dies. Really she's running away for it under the guise of experience life. That or it's the voice of a hooker... maybe the hooker found out she has black syphilis and then takes a road trip.

Either way, I didn't enjoy the poem. I think that if you can't make sense of what you are reading after the 12th time than it's not any good. I also don't think that because a poet writes one or two really good poems means that everything else they write is worthy of notoriety that the good pieces are. That is why in the music business they have 'one hit wonders!'

The Lady in the Pink Mustang

Tomorrow for class I am supposed to be an expert on this poem. My initial opinion is that it was written by someone fairly senile or had no intention of making sense. I re-read the poem two more times and still don't make much sense of it. Maybe it will make more sense after a good night's rest.

What's Your Favorite Toy? Brickfish

Intro to Literature - ENG110

This blog was created for ENG110: Introduction to Literature Spring 09 at UNCW. It may eventually become my JRSD traveling blog but that's a bit down the road so for now there will be a lot of literature assignments and ramblings to read!