Dance..

One day...

One day I was walking back from the grocery store, several bags in hand,

when I stumbled upon a man sitting on a stoop, at the corner of an old, run-down liquor store that had been out of business for months.

Now the man seemed as though he was middle aged but, the bags under his eyes and dirt on his face added a few years on him. He had on black boots torn and scuffed at the sides, dark jeans that were dingy and frayed at the cuffs and a long trench coat that was three sizes too big for him.

But he was smiling…

Like he had just found out that his daughter graduated from college or that his wife was in the hospital ready to deliver his baby or like…

I don’t know…

Whatever it was, it stopped me in mid-step. It was like an inner peace that I’d never seen before,

Never witnessed,

 didn’t even think existed.

So curiosity and I took a step closer, leaned down towards him and asked him, ever so softly,

“Why are you smiling, sir?”

He didn’t answer. He just sat there in a daze still smiling. So I put my bags down and decided to sit on the stoop next to him and waited patiently for him to think a little bit. It was quite a while that the fierce winds were smacking the cheeks of my face so I proceeded again to ask him the same question, this time more stern.

“Sir?”

He shushed me.

“Why are you…”

He shushed me again, this time bringing my volume level in balance with his.

“Just look,” he said pointing to the people in the streets. They were arguing. The lady with the two kids on her side thought that the man walking past her bumped her on purpose. She continued to call him inappropriate names, and threw out slanderous terms, covering her children’s ear. I thought he must have been pointing to the couple making out on the street light pole so I tapped him.

“Sir?”

“Keep looking”, he said.

Sirens and ambulances were approaching the corner,

A lady walked by with an amputated leg,

Someone just lost their wallet,

“I’M HIV POSITIVE,” she was talking to her friend on the phone and began to cry hysterically

I found more and more things that made me wonder why someone would smile at this.

Pain

Misery

Loss

Greed

Lust

I became aggravated at what he was showing me and I told him no one can smile at things like this.

 “This is why I’m the luckiest man alive,” he said.

I was still confused.

He took a while before he opened his mouth and when he finally did I couldn’t help but hold his hands…

 “I have the air in my lungs which circulates in my body, every day I am here I am reminded of how much other people suffer and I am blessed. I don’t take anything for granted. I am alive and well. And though I don’t have much I know I am blessed because I am still here. Nature takes care of me, I have water when it rains and just enough food in this cart to last me a meal a day. I can’t complain because I know I have a purpose on this earth. I am ready to go whenever it is my time. But until then I will smile because I am living.”

My eyes dazed into his, feeding into his every word because

It was air

It was life

It was love

He told me to take a breath in and realize what I have.

As I looked as this man, I was still at awe that he found happiness in being poor. He didn’t complain about life or his situation or that he hadn’t washed or eaten or slept in a bed or…

I didn’t say much after that but…

“Thank you sir,”

I left my groceries next to him and left.

Every day I would visit him, sit on the stoop next to him, and watch the world in front of me.

I soon began to smile.

A Utopian World of Children

One morning I thought, what would it be like if I were a child again. I thought it should be one of the stories I will soon write. Please leave your feedbacks, comments, and thoughts....

When we think about children, we think innocence, purity, and free spirited. They play around all day and don't expect the world to turn against them. Playing in the dirt, getting their hands muddy, eating worms, laughing and giggling, the world cannot be this horrible place everyone makes it out to be. Think, if children knew what we, as adults, knew would they still be considered children?

Take this picture below for instance...What do you see? I see race. I see gender. I see three four totally different individuals playing together. They are indeed different. They all have different qualities, different parents, different backgrounds and different features, so what makes them get unite and come together?

It is because they do not have the social construct that society has drilled into our nogens and it states that "we are different". As a child, everyone and everythign is all the same. Isn't it crazy to think that children will be the most faithful living things on this earth and why you may ask? Is it because they have not been taught the key ingredients that make up this society? And if that, if children are never taught, that is in school, through their parents, or by social influences, will children ever grow up to be the way the world is today? Judgmental and Unfair?

It is crazy to think that I would love to be a child again when children are limited and constricted of so many things that this world has to offer but yet children are the only living things that won't turn their backs on you. They are just innocent! Maybe children should never grow up, or be taught anything, or go to school, or be influenced by social media? Maybe, but unfortunately this is impossible!

Post Modernism Piece (This is a poem based on my second story The Truth is Out)

My attempt at a Post Modernism Poem...

 Escape

Arms, Palms, hands are sweaty.

Breathing in and out

Looking into the bag for air,

Night falls on my head and the wind pushes my face sideways.

BOOM     BOOM     BOOM

What was that? I whisper.

The light at the end of the tunnel flickers.

Onandoff.

Onandoff.

Ssssshhhhhhhhhh.

Shadows run from behind.

Red light.

Green light.

Yellow light.

Wheels spinning round and round,

Faces turn from north to south,

Missiles dripping from the sky

Left and right heads turn.

Then shattering glass intertwines with metal and steel.

Crash,

C r 

        a ck,

Sp-lit.

As I wait to hear the sound of lightning running from behind me.

Because Lightning roars at the sound of terror.

A Reflection on The Pink Institution and Post Modernism

This book can be seen in a postmodern light because of the way it challenges the modern style that we read in so many books today. This book attacks the common roles that we find in book such as male versus female or blacks versus whites, but rather it attempts to create problems relating to modernism by creating characters that the reader often finds problematic and that we often have to figure out on our own from their exterior. In this postmodern work I found that Saterstrom created an open work, meaning she left the reader to think and supply our own connections and ideas as to how to interpret what we just read about the situation and the characters. “Postmodernism focuses on a vision of a contradictory, fragmented, ambiguous, indeterminate, unfinished, "jagged" world”. Looking at the relationship that Saterstrom has created in this book really got me thinking about characters in my book. Saterstrom  introduces, Abella who is married to the abusive Micajah who is an alcoholic policeman. His beatings and likely sexual abuse takes a toll on their daughter, Azalea.

When we focus on the poetic elements, I can say that this book was very tangible from the beginning where the daughter is eating crackers and all the mother could focus on was her messy hair. I loved the description from the very beginning and the way Saterstrom made a visual picture throughout the text really gave this book an extra specialness about it. This book has a lot of devastating stories and serious issues, especially Aza who tries to commit suicide all the time because of her terrible upbringing. The way the Saterstrom gets into describing scenes with such tangibility is great. Also she often leaves large spaces in between the words that allows the reader to figure things out on their own and that’s the thing I most liked about this book. I thought that Saterstrom's novel depicts a family that is dealing with their own disfunctions and I loved the picture that Saterstrom paints.  

Blogging about Emily Dickinson

The poem I memorized was "I dwell in possibility"

When I first read it, I had no idea what I was reading. I didn't know what cedars was and I didn't really know what the meaning of this poem was. So after I researched some words and read this poem over this is what I got from it. I think that she means that there are endless possibilities in the way that we live. I think that she is dwelling in all the possibilities, and that she's thinking of all of these things inside her head. She is invisioning the sky as the limits, and a house with many doors and windows. I think towards the end when the last stanza ends in "to gather paradise" that she was thinking that all her possibilities would somehow end in a great place such as paradise.  

Dickinson was very clever in the way she wrote this poem. The poetic devices and the words that she uses to describe the sky, the house. I love the vocabulary that Dickinson uses. If you really break down this poem then it would be endless of interpretations that you can think of because this poem leaves room for many possibilities.

Editing Story 2

In this process of editing I really found it difficult for me to really tap into the characters that I've created. I tried to add more scenes but that just seemed like it was too much going on at one time. So I added more showing then telling because I feel that this is always a plus and this allows the reader to really visualize the scene and the characters as well. I also made parts more tangible as well as adding more dialogue.