Racism

    Racism is almost always a sensitive subject when there are 'white' people involved. To me it seems that discrimination itself is what causes this sensitivity. I never saw the difference between myself and someone with a different skin complexion until other people began to point it out. To this day I still do not see the difference, save for hereditary levels of melanin and facial features, yet I've been called a white racist bitch in the past. Is that not stereotyping in which I was placed under a malicious category because of my own European descent?
    The Caucasian people do, indeed, have a history of bigotry and hateful acts towards other ethnicities. In fact, a few months ago I became physically ill after discovering a website devoted to a community of people who are convinced that the other 'races' are warring against the white race. At first I thought it was a joke, a forum created to poke fun at people who really are like that. I kept scrolling through all the different parts of the website, becoming more and more sickened. They hailed Hitler, saying his ideas about extinguishing certain people were genius. It was a website so full of hate that it gave me a headache.
    Yes, these people are white supremacist bigots, but that does not mean that I am, too. People should not assume that I am ignorant and narrow-minded because I have a sort of peachy-pink skin tone. And I am not saying that I am perfect and that I never discriminate or anything like that. I wish that stereotyping was not a part of daily life, but it seems to have burrowed its way into the media, into our society, like a nasty virus spreading from one person to the next. I think everyone has that little monster in the back of their mind, that tiny whisper.
    Personally, I think hatred has become a universal emotion. I do not know a single person who does not hate someone else. This hatred is easily morphed into racism, sexism, and other prejudices. These prejudices lead to misunderstandings and ignorance, which only leads to even more unnecessary hatred. On the website mentioned above I read a story in the 'Youth' section in which the kid felt he was being racially discriminated against because the 'negro' librarian told him to get off the computer so that someone else could go on. Because of his original mindset where he believed that other races are purposefully being discriminatory and making the white race into a minority, he automatically believed that the librarian was racist against him. He said later on in the story that he never went back to that library because he was so disgusted.
    But like I said, not all 'white' people are like that. It's like two sides of a hate fest: on one side is the white supremacists, and on the other side is everyone who has been discriminated against or treated badly because they have a different pigment to their skin. In the middle is all the people who really just wish everyone would stop caring so much about religion, 'race', ethnicity, nationality, and all the other things that, in the end, don't actually matter.
    So I often find myself not only angered with racist bigots who live in small worlds, but also angered by those that take the bait, that accept the challenge, that participate in the fight instead of just shaking their heads and walking away. It is why I believe that hate is universal. It is not just a one sided ordeal. There are many sides to every conflict, and everyone must take responsibility for anything they say or do. Even I must take responsibility sometimes for my mistakes because even mistakes may sometimes cause horrible things to happen.
    Maybe if everyone took responsibility for their actions, even the fundamentalist basket cases that use God to justify murdering 'witches' or the white nationalists that use their ethnicity to justify treating all other races with utmost disrespect, there would not be quite so much hate.
    Sometimes even that seems like too much of a farfetched idea.

Revolutionary

I was having a somewhat humorous conversation with my mother about the different levels of discrimination between different ethnicities and we began brainstorming exactly what it would take to draw the peoples of the world together. Perhaps some kind of terrible natural occurrence, like a massive earthquake that struck multiple parts of the world or a meteor shower. Then again, though, people would still group together and war over what resources are left, so that kind of thing might actually have the opposite effect in the end. 
    So what if all the great leaders of the world tried spreading equality in their countries and in others by speaking to large crowds and passing laws about discrimination and segregation and eliminating them? Then, of course, the media would get in the way. The media has a habit of doing just that, by going against whatever peaceful things the leaders are saying by dragging up the dirty details and making everyone look bad and shining a negative light on everything.
    After discussing various other ways, my mother and I finally decided on a science fiction way of looking at it, one that we had a lot of fun with. What if aliens came to Earth? Hostile aliens that only wanted our resources or perhaps to eat us for dinner? Then the world's populations would surely come together to fight off their common enemy. Then there would be no one who cares about the differences between dark skin and light skin, only a unanimous hatred against the green-skinned folks that have come to ravage the planet. We would call them Vertos. We would all fight against them, these aliens, until they would finally leave.
    But then, once the Vertos had left, would humanity continue to treat all peoples with equality? One for all and all for one? Or would mankind revert to the old way of thinking, in which certain peoples are less than others because of their culture or ethnicity? My mother and I reasoned that it would be a fifty-fifty thing. Some people would find absolute joy in the equality that they can share with others; some people would find their own brand of joy in tormenting others. Such is the way of life.
    It made me start thinking, though. How could we build equality without an alien attack? How could we spread tolerance and peace without having to go by the saying, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"? I began to imagine a great revolutionary, one like Gandhi, who stands up in front of a crowd and bellows, "I will respect you, but I demand your respect in return!"
    Scratch that. Rewind it. Erase, erase. 
    "I will respect you no matter what, even if you do not respect me!"
    There we go. The crowd is screaming now, bright grins on their faces as they holler his or her name. It is a chant, a prayer, calling up to the heavens to protect this man or woman who has dared to be great.
    "I will be the first to be tolerant! I will be the first to lay down my weaknesses and honesty at your feet and let you spit upon my own!"
    The crowd is wild beyond imagining. He or she is a hero, a wonderful madman who has brought hope to the eyes of little dirty children and their hardworking parents. He or she is the answer to late night wishes upon twinkling stars and fairy godmothers. He or she is the next Martin Luther King, Jr., the next Abraham Lincoln, the next Mother Teresa, and he or she has come to deliver this world from hatred and racism.
    Well, that is, if there isn't someone in the crowd with a gun ready to shoot him down. Humanity has an odd habit of extinguishing good things like that.

Final

In seventh grade I started up a blog. I kept it for a couple months before I forgot about it, another trivial piece of my online life that I did not really care about. I never posted anything particularly interesting anyways. However, when this year started I was unimaginably excited that we would be building new blogs and using them to our academic advantage. Maybe this time it would work, something would click, like those cheesy romance novels that everyone eats up. 

And for the beginning of the year, it was just like that. Before most people had twenty posts, I had fifty, and was feeling fairly celebratory about this fact. Like all new things, though, it did not stay quite so invigorating for long. I eventually grew tired of my blog and my posting slowed to a snail’s crawl. Instead of furiously typing away on my laptop every now and then, I began to simply sit and stare at the screen, lazily searching my brain for more bull to fill the gap where words were meant to be. The blog became just another assignment, like a child weaning from its exhausted mother.

Though, as I look back, I realize that my blog has had quite an impact on my life. When I started my freshman year of high school, I felt that I was an amazing writer, destined for success and fame and there was no way I could get any better because I was damn perfect. Having the blog helped change my perspective on that. I started to criticize my writing more for one thing, and it did not take long for reality to start screaming out the flaws in all of my pieces in bold, italicized letters. All of my posts became works in progress in my mind.

Of course, I do have a few favorite posts that I might rather leave just the way they are. My post titled “A Love of Music”, for example. This post marked an intense change in my writing style. I no longer wrote out exactly what I was thinking, copying and pasting the surroundings into my posts in dull ways. I do not know how the change happened, though I know that at the time I wrote it I had been severely tired and suffering from a stomach ache (I tend to write my best poetry when I am tired, so perhaps there is a connection?).

It was today that it finally clicked. I was sick from drinking coffee with an empty stomach, and in an exhausted haze I stumbled up to the piano and lifted the lid, staring down at the black and pale yellow. Before long I was mumbling to myself, squinting at the black and white blobs on old, wrinkled paper.

It has got something to it that even I have not fully comprehended. I guess I have just got to wait until the middle of the night, maybe toss in a fever, and then everything will make perfect sense.

And as the school year comes to a close, as all things do, I find an interest sparked once again in my blog. My problem now is not a lack of interest, it is a lack of knowing what to say. There is a wall in the way, some kind of syrup on my fingers that keeps me from typing like I know I can. It is the dreaded writer’s block. I do not know if it is because I am more awake and alert (which may or may not be a hindrances) or if it is because the year is almost over and my brain is starting to relapse into summer wonders.

The good thing about the end of the school year is that I’m tired more often. Whether I’m just burnt out after a long and vigorous year, or if I’m just not getting enough sleep in general, I wake up each day groaning and exhausted. As I said earlier, I tend to write best when I’m on the brink of passing out (especially when it comes to poetry). When I’m wide awake, there isn’t much I can do without it coming out sounding forced and weak.

At least I have something to be proud of. Unlike the ‘perfection’ that I used to scrawl out on binder paper during lunch, my works have definitely improved. My poetry, for example, is no longer the depressed ramblings of a preteen who thinks she knows all there is to know and then some. My poetry no longer focuses on deep, dark emotions and coldness and sadness and things like that.I have found that my poetry now reflects on my interesting topics,, which is something I have also found pride in. Early on in the year I posted one about a soldier, which, now that I look back at it, is terrible compared to some of my newer poems, like this one (yes, it is an older post, but the poem is actually from a time much more recent). I am not saying that my poetry is the best, though. I am constantly reading others’ poems and mentally attacking myself for not being ‘good enough’.

My vocabulary has also improved greatly. Instead of saying something like, “She had really tan skin, which showed that she spent a lot of time in the sun,” I would say something like “Her skin looked like light syrup, gleaming in the sunlight she spent so many tiring hours working in.” Or, if it was a poem, I would say something like, “The sun beats down on California kissed skin.” Though I often criticize my own works (“Oh, jeez, that conversation is completely dull” or “This poem is totally unoriginal”), I do acknowledge that, when I truly want to, I can use fairly interesting words.

The life of my blog has been full of ups and downs, like one of those roller coasters that goes in loops and makes half the passengers throw up.

Growing Up

For some reason, people seem to think that while a person grows, their taste in literature, music, or film has to 'mature'. Instead of reading shorter books with larger letters, people are expected to read thick books with thin pages and tiny words that are barely visible with a magnifying glass. Not that I'm saying those types of books are a bad thing; I often find myself getting lost in those books, like I myself was the protagonist.

It is, however, against all reason that I should be expected to simply give up childhood classics. I'm not talking about things like Peter Pan or Alice in Wonderland, though, which are classics indeed. I'm talking about my own personal favorites that more likely than not shaped me to be who I am today. Of course there's always Harry Potter, but everyone reads that. That's everyone's childhood sweetheart when it comes to books. 

Second grade was possibly my favorite year of school ever. Period. Done. I've never had a year like it. I grew closer to my friends, developed friendships, and had the most amazing teacher ever: Mrs. Wysocki. During the later part of the year, Mrs. Wysocki told my class that she would be reading us one of her favorites; evidently it was a book called There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom by Louis Sachar. It tells the story of a distraught fifth grader (who is much older than the rest of his classmates) and a new school counselor named Carla who helps him break out of the negative attitude he has towards himself, as well his nasty habit of taking his frustration out on his classmates. 

Since I had only been seven at the time, the book actually opened my eyes to the world of bullying and the things that might be going on inside the heads of those who are, themselves, bullies. 

Another book that played an important role in my childhood is the book Loser by Jerry Spinelli. It tells about Donald Zinkoff's rise through elementary school. It's another one of those books that's short with thick pages and size eighteen font, but it also deals somewhat with the psychology behind the actions that his classmates commit. Zinkoff, however, does not let it get him down. In a school race, he fails his team and suffers greatly with harsh words and angry teammates. The pain and hurt doesn't last long when his father comes to the rescue:

"Even in bed that night Zinkoff can still feel the shake and shimmy of the old rattletrap [the family car], and coming through loud and clear is a message that was never said. He knows that he could lose a thousand races and his father will never give up on him. He knows that if he ever springs a leak or throws a gasket, his dad will be there with duct tape and chewing gum to patch him up, that no matter how much he rattles and knocks, he'll always be a honeybug to his dad, never a clunker," (page 108).

Explanation for the last bit: His dad is constantly getting new used cars since the last ones are always breaking down, and while his dad is always calling them his honeybugs, Zinkoff and his mother call them Clunkers. 

So, as you can see, these books clearly aren't meant to be read once and then stuffed aside for new, Harvard approved books. I've been rereading a lot of my own childhood classics lately. When was the last time you took a peek between the pages of an old favorite?

"Sweet Split"

A poem I just wrote that I'm rather fond of. Might be because it's the first one in a while that wasn't directly influenced by myself or someone I know. I think it's amazing how much my poetic style has changed in the last two years. :D So anyways. This one's about drugs, even though it totally didn't start out that way when I was forming it in my head. 


------------------------------------


The sun beats down on California kissed skin
As she trades more Benjamins for another trip
Another vacation
Another escape from the world.

Sexy and sweet this girl of the street
Dancing to an endless tune so fine
So mellow
So snap your fingers and fall to the floor.

She says that walls are too confining
That she'd rather die than go home
Go anywhere
Go to any place where she can't spread her wings.

Needles in the crook and pinching heaven
Is she calling your name or mine?
Or is she praying?
Or is she crying out that God is a liar?

Blog Traffic

What is this? Porn sites are referrencing my blog? Not just any porn sites, sites for bisexual men. As well as a Russian website that looks like a place for happy families. You can see the Russian place here. Can anyone else read any of that?

Anyways, I'm not just getting traffic from the US. I'm getting traffic from Russia (of course), Canada, Germany, Malaysia, Australia, the UK, India, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Why the Netherlands? I mean, I don't have a problem with that, it's just so random!

And why the porn sites?

Edit: Apparently in the last month I've also been refferenced to by this. Why?

Comments

Christy-This sounds like a really great book. I might even check it out from the library myself. I like how you focus on the chemistry between the characters and the strength of believing.


David-So I thought this was an okay review. Not the best, since you haven't actually finished it, but it's okay. Also, he's probably depressed because he's been kicked out of school so much and his brother is dead and apparently no one really listens to him. Just sayin'. XD


Stan-You don't have an up-to-date review. D: Whyyy!

Confessions-Final Review

In the novel Confessions of a Pagan Nun, great injustices take place. The main character, Gwynneve, is a peaceful, gentle woman who lived her days trying to feed those who have no food and give medicine to those with disease. But what she really loved was the freedom that came with words, writing, speech, and thought. The book is split between two stories—the past and the present, which is called “Interruption”. In her tales about the past she speaks of the druid she was in love with, Giannon, as well as her mother and her love for the freedom that is brought by words. The Interruptions are much darker, displaying gruesome events taking place at a church.

The Interruptions mostly involve Sister Aillenn, a nun with a lack of sanity, and an abbot who brings nothing but harm. They also tell of a dead infant whose grave is constantly being disturbed. At one point the tiny corpse disappears, creating drama between the sisters and the abbot. At first it is just a horror that haunts the nuns and the abbot, especially Sister Aillen for, at the time, unknown reasons.

As the story progresses, she tells of how Giannon was taken away from her by Christians who hated him for being a druid. At the same time that she is telling of this, in the Interruptions, she tells of Sister Aillenn's story. It turns out that when Aillenn was younger, she'd fallen in love with the abbot, and he with her. To keep from ruining each others' purity, a terrible iron device was put around her pelvis. He then left her with her wounds from the device to live in a church. Her parents sent her away when she became depressed, and she ended up going to a church to become a nun...where the abbot also lived.

The story slowly falls apart, with sadness in the main part and ruined psychology in the Interruptions. In the main story, Gwynneve is searching high and low to find Giannon. In the Interruptions she tells of how she has been chained up because she has been accused of doing demonic things and being a heathen. The stories meld together as she finds out that the silent monk who lived on the grounds was, in fact, Giannon himself. His tongue had been cut out.

Gwynneve was then executed, to the sadness of the village people. In the epilogue, Giannon himself writes of her death, using his words to speak of how the villagers went to the well that she'd been pushed into and throw in pieces of food and flowers, and they would ask Gwynneve for help with problems or just for forgiveness for something or another, only to be met with silence.

At one point, Gwynneve writes, “Use words to please, to instruct, to soothe. Then stop speaking.” This is the last thing she writes before Giannon begins his part, before she is taken and killed. Words are so important in this book, and though they are lost behind the horrors and losses in the middle of the novel, they come back with importance greater than anything else. Gwynneve has perished, Giannon silenced, but people still went to her to hear the words she would never say, and Giannon kept writing. Their words went on past their silence, giving them the freedom, even in death, that no one could take away from them.

It says a lot about the way we should live our lives. No matter what happens, your words will live on past you. A lot of people feel incredibly insignificant, as though what they say isn't truly heard, but what they don't realize is that just having those words to say in the first place is an amazing gift that no one else can give or take from them. Gwynneve starts out talking about how words are free and she wants so badly to learn how to read and write, in order to have more freedom...so many people out there would rather play video games or sports than learn how to read or write.

Maybe if people could fully grasp the concept that just being able to think their own thoughts in their mind and use words that no one can take from them is the greatest freedom they will ever get. In the US Constitution, it says that, as Americans, we have a freedom of speech. Yet so many people hold back, keeping their words in their heads instead of letting loose their opinions and thoughts. So many people remain quiet, while Gwynneve let out her words in any way that she could, so desperate to take her freedom as her own.

For the majority of the book she talks about how she can only write about what happens, instead of actually speaking them. But then, later on, she gets fed up with the abbot's ways and speaks her mind in cunning, clever ways that make him mad. Though her words get her killed, they are still her own and she wields them like a weapon. Though Giannon cannot speak, he still writes of what has happened.

Truly, the ones in the book who have died are the abbot and Sister Aillenn, who try so hard to kill their own words. They tear themselves away from their own freedom by not speaking, not writing, and barely thinking without inflicting harm upon themselves.

Those with words can be silenced, but it is better to be silent and free than to be loud and restricted, imprisoned, a slave to the ways of thinking that others hold.

Confessions- Review- The Return

Last time, I talked about how the book has a strong message about words and writing being like that of freedom. This time, I'll be talking about one character specifically. She is called Sister Aillenn, and I am not sure of the pronunciation. Throughout the book she appears in every other chapter, or in every 'Interruption'. She is described as being young and beautiful, though somewhat insane.

At one point, in this church filled with religious people, there is a dead infant that they have to bury. In each of the following Interruptions, it talks about how the grave of the baby has been messed with. The cross pulled out of the ground, the stones flung in random directions. Each time, Sister Aillenn increases her negativity to the main character, Gwynneve, to the point where she calls Gwynneve a demon and blames her for everything. At the same time, Gwynn is constantly seeing Sister Aillenn run around outside her tiny cell of a home naked, in the cold, with small wounds on her body.

Later on, the reader finds out about Aillenn's past. She had lived in a Pagan tribe, a tuath, but her father, the chieftan, had wanted her to be Christian. He treated her horribly, and murdered her beloved horse in front of her. She became ill with grief. Then, a group of monks came to the tuath and one of them fell in love with her. Of course, he wanted to stay pure, so instead of just not having sex with her, he had the blacksmith make an iron thing that they put around her private area. It gave her deep wounds. Then he left her. So she travels near and far to find him and finally, when she does find him, he commands her to stay away from him so that he can still be Godly.

So she went insane. After she tells Gwynn of this story, at a time when they'd been embracing each other, "She separated from me then and struck me hard across the face, and she said that I had seduced the story from her and was a demon myself."

Yes, I do believe that she's insane.

Confessions- Review

     So I've been reading Confessions of a Pagan Nun by Kate Horsley. It's about a woman named Gwynneve who lives in sixth-century Ireland. She started out living a Celtic pagan life, but throughout the story she explains that at present time she is a Christian nun.

     I find it to be a very good book so far. It touches on many social issues from that time and gives great insight on what the people of today consider 'minor' historical events. But that's not what really interests me about the book. Gwynneve talks a lot about her ability to write and read, something that she says very few people know how to do other than druids and important religious figures. She says that words are equal to freedom, and when a man or woman has words, he will always be free.

"Even a man in a cage can speak words, or if his tongue be cut, hear them, or if his ears be filled with dirt, have them in his mind. In words he is free at least until he dies, and I do not know, nor did my mother, if a man has words after he is dead, other than what he has left behind in his writing, if he were literate," (Page 9, Paragraph 2).

She goes on to say that being able to write and read is like some sort of magical thing that she finds positively amazing. This written freedom comes up a lot, as the only reason why the story exists is because she was writing it down in between the translating of the bible.

    It's actually fairly inspiring. Words really are freedom, because they're the only thing that people can't take from you, the only thing that people can't completely control. Unless you let them, and that's you taking your own freedom away.

     I really like this book so far. :)

The Return of the Vignettes

So I looked through other peoples' vignettes and looked for parallels between theirs and mine. For example, in Mercedes' vignettes, she speaks, at one point, about losing family pets.

"We lost a lot of pets that year too... it seemed like they all got old suddenly and at the same time..." 

In my own vignettes, I also talk about losing a lot of pets while living at one certain house. This is in my vignette titled 'Bees'. For both of us, this death of animals has a great impact on the lives that we portray in our vignettes.


Elizabeth shows a different kind of fear in her vignettes. In her last vignette she talks about a monster that her and two boys are afraid of. In reality, there was no monster, nothing to be afraid of, kind of like how bees are nothing to be afraid of.


In Constance's vignettes, the fear that I'm finding is much more subdued, much more beneath the surface. Her character Feliciano is secretly a very shy person. He conceals his secret by acting like other people, which he is comfortable with. But when he begins wearing this amazing vest, his confidence plummets.

"In his ordinary, inconspicuous dress, it was easy to impose the pretend Felicianos over the real one. The vest, though, in its aggressive fanciness, was powerful enough to dispel the illusion. It couldn't be hidden by an assumed identity, and exposed the person beneath."

Feliciano is terrified of having his own personality, his shyness, 'exposed'. Just as someone might be afraid of bees, of losing beloved pets, or of monsters, someone may also be afraid of just being themselves.

Esperanza's Future

In The House on Mango Street, Esperanza is really Sandra Cisneros. The story by itself is simply realistic- if not Cisneros, then Esperanza may be someone that Cisneros once knew. However, there are to many key points that point towards it being Cisneros herself.


On page 109, it describes Esperanza as being a story teller. "I like to tell stories. I am going to tell you a story about a girl who didn't want to belong." This makes a strong connection between Esperanza and Cisneros. Cisneros has written countless other novels, and the book implies that Esperanza has done this as well. One of the most important parts of Cisneros being who she is has to do with her amazing writing skills; to say that Esperanza has also become a writer over time says that Esperanza is, in fact, Cisneros.

Another bit of evidence is on pages 10 and 11. Esperanza is describing just how much she hates her name, and how much she wants to change it. "I would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees." So. Sandra Cisneros might not always have been Sandra. Perhaps she really did change her name, and marriage could explain the last name.

Now. The prompt for the assignment was, in a nutshell, to explain what Esperanza's future is. What will she do, who will she save? I believe that her way of saving these people. That Esperanza, now Sandra, wrote this novel as a way of helping the one's that "can't out".

Okay what.

      Chapters eight and nine. The first sentence of chapter eight is okay- she's exhausted, okay, that's understandable, every person gets exhausted from something at one point or another. But then the second and third lines are,

"She hadn’t had a healthy appetite in forever and had a hard time sleeping the last few nights. But on the flipside, becoming a non-eating insomniac did wonders to a girl’s figure."

This is basically thinspo. This line is telling girls that it's a good idea to starve yourself and get absolutely no sleep, because then you can lose weight and be 'beautiful'. Both of these things are completely unhealthy and I find it appalling that the author is spreading this message like it's good advice. So no, I don't think that she's a relatable protagonist. Anyways, she's apparently a complete and total outcast with no friends other than Stella, who is supposed to be popular at this huge high school but she only has over two hundred friends. I mean, here at ASTI, this teeny high school, most students have over five hundred friends. If you're trying to be realistic, give her a larger amount of friends. Jeez. Get real.
      Another of the questions involves whether or not being Filipino is cool, or whether she should be a different ethnicity. Truth is, the ethnicity really doesn't matter. As long as she has a personality and good character development, no one cares. She could be African, she could be Italian, she could be Chinese, she could be Canadian... it doesn't matter.
      Also, it says 'heartthrob' twice, once in Dorothy's thoughts and once in Stella's speach. Change up the diction a little, will ya?
      And both Adrian and Dorothy are unrealistic characters. It's like you stuck in a Mary Sue and a Gary Stu and paired 'em up. Make them believable.
      Dialogue doesn't contribute or take away from anything. It's dialogue. It's in every fiction novel. I dare you to find one novel that is fiction that spans more than three hundred pages and has absolutely no dialogue at all whatsoever. Seriously.
      And no. Adrian is not compelling. I feel like stealing his wallet, taking all the money and cards out, and taking a crap in it before returning it.

Gender Inequalities

   In the book The House on Manga Street, a series of vignettes by Sandra Cisnero, the gender inequality is highly noticeable. Men aren't necessarily treated better, but they get away with more and aren't pushed to do as much work as the women do.
    In the vignette titled "Marin" it says, "She says he didn't get a job yet, but she's saving the money she gets from selling Avon and taking care of her cousins," (page 26). Marin is putting in quite a lot of effort in order to marry and live with her boyfriend, who lives in Puetro Rico, but he hasn't even gone out and gotten himself a job yet. People just accept this- they don't find it unfair or uneven, and they don't try to persuade Marin that this boy isn't worth it. They've been trained to think that the woman has to be a strong, hard worker, but the man barely has to do any work at all. This is also shown in another quote from the same vignette, "When the light in her aunt's room goes out, Marin lights a cigarette and it doesn't matter if it's cold out or if the radio doesn't work or if we've got nothing to say to each other," (page 27). Here, once again, is the imbalance. The girls are out there in the cold, waiting and waiting for some hormone driven boy to sweep them off their feet. They've already made it very easy for any boy to walk up and make a move. They've already done all of the hard work. Because women, of course, MUST do all of the work in order to make something, even a relationship, happen.

Holding Bubble Bees

Holding Bubble Bees

Table of Contents

1. The Bees
2. Her
3. No Fear
4. Amazing Grace
5. Funnies
6. Blowing Bubbles

The Bees

    I used to be afraid of bees. I used to scream at the sight of them, run away, hide in the corner of my room until Mutti came to get me. When I was younger there were a lot of bees where I lived. They were innocent, of course. All bees are. A bee will not sting a person unless it is necessary- for when they sting a person, they die. All of their organs pool out and they fall to the ground, only to be stomped on.
    There were a lot of bees in the backyard at the house that I lived in with my family. They lived between the trees, hiding in the grass and bushes. They hovered over the surface of the old pond and rested on the wood of the work bench that leaned against the house. I was never stung, but I always kept an eye out.
    We owned a lot of animals, too. I tried to keep them away from the bees, because I wanted to make sure that the animals stayed safe. But we had too many- we had a zoo in our house. Five cats, two dogs, a rabbit, four chinchillas, a cage full of rats, another cage full of mice, and a guinea pig. I couldn't keep the bees away from all of them forever, no matter how hard I tried.
    We owned a shovel. I never got to touch it, but my brother used it a lot. I never saw the holes, but I could always find the places where the grass had been torn away and the soil had been packed differently. I would stare at them solemnly and the bees would just fly away. I miss all of the small ones we buried.



    Her
   
    I was eleven when I met her. It was Thanksgiving. My uncle was bringing his new girlfriend and her daughter along for the meal. I shook hands with the daughter, and her hands were soft and small. My own were soft as well, though they were calloused. We shook hands, and we became fast friends, doing everything together, going everywhere together, playing games together, ogling at boys together.
    I had other friends, too, from school. I played games with them, pretend games that involved ghosts and magic. But we were growing up, and pretending was such an awfully childish thing to do. We acted as though what we did was real, and that the rest of the world was blind.
    I told Her about the ghosts. I wanted to impress Her, to make Her think that I was powerful or something like that, because we were constantly competing, trying to be better than the other.
    “I can see ghosts,” I told Her proudly. “And I have the ability to let them possess me.”
    Of course She thought it was spectacular. She wanted in on the game. Slowly but surly, over the next few months, I was forced to incorporate Her into the game- I had to act as though She were a mermaid princess. Then, as She developed her make-believe powers and Her supposed beauty, She wanted more. It was my job to supply Her,
    Some of them didn't even have names. Most of them didn't have personalities. They were Her boyfriends, the 'privileged' and made up souls that haunted my days. They were me, I was them. Rules no longer exist, or personal opinions. Reality was stretched, sexuality was disrespected. I was taken advantage of. I didn't tell anyone for about a year, though I did eventually tell my Mutti. Staring down at my hands, mumbling my words, and she didn't seem surprised. She just apologized.
    “I should have known,” she said, and she hugged me.
    My calloused hands grew ugly in my eyes, and I was sure that Hers were just as clean and smooth as before. It wasn't fair. None of it was fair.
    One day I called her mother, my uncle's girlfriend, and told her about what had happened. She didn't believe me, but that's okay because at least my hands weren't dirty anymore.




    No Fear
   
    I've never cried at a funeral before. I always cry after, when I've got my thoughts to myself. My grampa died when I was a year old, so I never got to meet him. But when I was five, we all visited his grave: me, my parents, my siblings, my aunt, and my gramma. The cemetery was fairly empty that day. I still remember how overcast the sky was, and how green the grass was, and how beautiful all the trees were. I didn't sit under them, though, on one of the many benches available. I sat on the grass, plucked at the flowers, and rested my chin on my knees, crying about my dead grampa that I never met.
    There were lots of bees there. My brother told me not to be scared, and that I was being ridiculous. He was always braver than I was, and still is.
    By that time I already knew that a bee would only sting a person if it really needed to. I kept this in mind as I approached one buzzing fellow, slowly making my way forward and bending to my knees. The bee ignored my presence, fluttering from one tiny flower to the next. I sat forward to see it better, and it was then that I saw just how fuzzy the bee was.
    It was adorable, this furry little thing.
    “Don't be scared of bees,” he said, my brother. “They're not going to hurt you.”


    Amazing Grace

    “My daddy can't see.”
    I've always known that he was blind. I can't think of a single time that I didn't know. Ever since I first knew how to blow bubbles, ever since I first started chasing butterflies, I've always understood that my father couldn't see a thing. Up until a couple years ago, he'd always had his guide dog, Bowler, who was a black lab with a bad hip. Bowler had been a part of the family since I was a month old.
    “Why's he got that cane?”
    People didn't know that he used his cane to sweep the sidewalk to make sure that he wouldn't run into anything. He had the cane, and Bowler, and sometimes he still ran into street signs or other people.
    “Can he see the faces I'm making?”
    Often times, my siblings and I, and sometimes my friends, would stand in front of him and make silly faces at him because we knew he couldn't see. What we didn't know was that he could feel the air shifting around us, and he could hear practically every move we made. My daddy had good hearing.
    “My daddy can't see.”
    I like to show him off, like a special pet. Whenever someone new meets him, whenever someone comes to my house, my tan and red house with the short pine tree out front, I always have to tell them that he's blind. He's my daddy, my daddy who can't see.


    Funnies

    People in my family know how to laugh.
    My brother’s funny is like medicine. He's a genius. He always knows just what he can say to make a person laugh so hard they cry. He makes jokes about life, about politics, about religion, and about subjects that would usually be serious. When I was really little, whenever I would scrape my knee or hit my head on the edge of a cupboard, he wouldn’t just tell me it was okay, like most people. He would make sympathetic jokes, and soon I’d be laughing more than crying. As I got older I stopped crying altogether. Now, if I accidentally hurt myself, the pain doesn’t last that long--the medicine of laughter lasts forever. My brother can cure anyone.
    My sister’s funny is a thorn. She likes to poke fun at people. Even if she admires someone, she'll make a joke about their personality or appearance. She talks about people that come into the store she works at, and about people on the Internet. She can be just as funny as my brother, but in her own way. Her husband likes to make fun of people, too, but more in the teasing sort of way. He says it to their faces, but in such a way that they laugh, too. He helps people to be able to laugh about themselves.
    My dad’s funny is a lot younger. He has a really dorky sense of humor. People don't always laugh at what he has to say. He gets really funny when he starts pretending to argue- he's really good at bantering with me or my mom, and we always end up giggling madly. I wish he would do that when my siblings were around- then they could see that dad can be humorous, too. They’ve never seen his funny before.
    My mom’s funny is like an old book. She’s the one that knows best. She's the wisest of us all, and because she knows so many years and so many tales and just so much about life in general, she knows which strings to pull and which buttons to press to make us laugh. She jokes like my brother. In fact, he got his funny from her. It's like when we start joking around, they become part of the same brain and they're always on the same page.
    I don't really know what my funny is yet. I'm young, undeveloped. I'd like to think that my funny is a mix of everyone else in my family- I know how to joke around just like each and every one of them. I can make people laugh about current events in politics. I can get people to laugh at themselves. I can argue playfully with someone to get them grinning. But I don't know what I'll be like in ten years, or how much my funny will have changed.

Roses and Tuesdays

      In the book The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros writes a series of vignettes following the life of a girl named Esperanza. In the book, Cisnero uses quite a lot of symbolism, and she repeats her utilization of certain things like feet, windows, and the color red. She also uses roses as symbolism, and Tuesdays. The roses seem to represent moments of warmth and happiness whiles Tuesdays represent losing something. However, the loss that comes with this symbol isn't always a bad thing, as though Esperanza is starting new.

      On page six, when she is describing her family through their hair, she says,

"But my mother's hair, my mother's hair, like little rosettes, like little candy circles all curly and pretty because she pinned it in pincurls all day..." (paragraph two) 

Here she describes the mother's hair as being like rosettes. Esperanza finds comfort and happiness in her mother, and one of the features that she likes the most is her hair. Then, on page 50, Esperanza is discussing hips with Nenny, Lucy, and Rachel.

"They bloom like roses, I continue, because it's obvious I'm the only one who can speak with any authority; I have science on my side," (paragraph four). 

She describes hips as blooming like roses because she feels comfortable with the subject, and comfort with the fact that she is being listened to.

      Roses may also be used to describe discomfort. On page 77, she describes the toes of Mamacita as being like "tiny rosebuds". Since the rest of the story is about discomfort and cutting herself off from the world, I believe that Esperanza uses this to explain that Mamacita tries to be comfortable with herself, but may fail at this. Then, on page 101, a chapter is titled "Linoleum Roses". The chapter in question is about Sally marrying a man who doesn't turn out to be the best husband. The chapter title symbolizes that Sally wanted to find comfort and happiness with her husband, and that she wanted to escape her home and her father, but that this happiness turned out very wrong. Like a gorgeous dress being made of sharp glass, these roses aren't natural- they're made of linoleum. Not silver, not copper, not any precious metal. Linoleum.

Now onto the topic of Tuesdays. I only have two quotes, and my idea isn't much more than that: an idea. A could-be.

 "You want a friend, she says. Okay, I'll be your friend. But only till next Tuesday," (page 13, paragraph two). 

Then, on page 42, it says,

"Lucy hides [the shoes] under a powerful bushel basket on the back porch, until one Tuesday her mother, who is very clean, throws them away. But no one complains."

 Cathy will be moving away on Tuesday, thus leaving Esperanza's life. However, Esperanza never really becomes her friend. They talk for a bit, but then Esperanza meets Rachel and Lucy and becomes friends with them instead. So she loses Cathy, but doesn't really care. And this happens on a Tuesday. Then, Lucy, Rachel, and Esperanza desperately don't want to have anything to do with the shoes because of what happened to them when they wore them. The shoes are gotten rid of on a Tuesday, but the girls probably feel relief more than anything else. Thus, Tuesday is a day of losing things in a good way.

Pirates

This is what I've written so far for a humorous piece I'm working on that is, so far, title-less. I think I like it more than Nolias. Thoughts?
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    Ttom wasn't used to pubs. Well, not ones with lots of ale. He wasn't used to drinking either, or gambling, or anything else like that. It was because of this that he stood out- he was clean and shaven and wore upper class clothing, a healthy pink in his cheeks. Perhaps to outsiders he would look like a strong young man; here he looked like a lumpy sack of flesh and bones.

    He stared around at loud, drunken men who laughed and roared between each other. In one corner, a group huddled together with pipes in their mouths, all of them cheating at their current game of poker. Near the center, a few men who'd had one drink too many were singing off-key to an old sailor's song. There were various arm-wrestling games scattered about the room, and the tinkling of gold coins after one man or the other would win. Ttom pushed his way through the room and, after getting lost a few times, eventually made it to the back where the bartender was.

    The man cracked a toothy grin at him. He was a large man, the kind who could easily crack your skull with one hand and still be able to read a book at the same time, if he so chose to. “Aye!” he said. “Wha's a shrimp like yerself doin' in 'ere?”

    Ttom glanced down at the yellow parchment he held in his hands and said, “Er... I'm looking for... Luna Zeget?”

    “'round these parts we call 'er Captain Luna,” the man said, passing a tall, dark drink to an old, sad-looking man. “An' wha' kinda business might yeh have with 'er, eh?”

    Ttom sighed. “Look, is she here or not?”

    The man pointed to one of the darker corners of the huge room. Sitting at the farthest back table were two people, a man and a woman. Ttom approached cautiously, and waited until he'd gotten their attention before speaking. “Er, hello,” he said lamely. “My name is... I mean...”

    The woman set her drink down and glared up at him. “Hey,” she said, stopping him as he tried to say a few coherent words. “Spit it out.”

    “Well, you see, my name is Ttomas Melmoor and, er...”

    “Boy-o,” the man said, taking a swig of what smelled like whiskey. “Git on with it. We 'aven't got all day.”

    “I wanted to know... if I could join your crew.” He gulped and stared Luna straight in the eye, trying to seem brave. She laughed wildly, catching the attention of those nearest to them for only a moment.

    “You!” she choked. “A scrawny thing like you!”

    Ttom's shoulders slumped. He supposed he should have expected this response. And even if he were to carefully explain his reasoning for wanting to join her crew, she probably still wouldn't allow it. But it was worth a try, wasn't it? “Listen,” he said. “I really need this.”

    “Boy-o,” the man said, chuckling. “Give it a rest, already. We don't need yeh.”

    “Wait, wait, wait,” Luna said, trying to calm her mad laughter. She took a long chug of her drink and said, “Yeh can have a job... washing floors!”

    Ttom hesitated. If he agreed, she would have to let him, even if she'd been joking around in the first place. However, doing such a thing would most likely rob him of any strands of dignity he still had left in him. Then again, what dignity did he have left after coming into this place, this pub full of pirates? None, as far as he was concerned. To other peoples, he would appear to be a strong, lean young man with a good future ahead of him... to these people, he was a wiry scrap of nothing.

    “Alright,” he said. “I'll take the job.”

    Luna howled with laughter. The man had an expression that was a mix between disgust and amusement. “I am Caption Luna Zeget, as yeh well may know,” she chuckled. “And this 'ere, this fantastic bastard is-”

    “Tobias Carlen,” the man said, turning in his seat. “Yeh'll call me Sir, though, or yer ass is dead.”

The Color Blue

        “The Color Purple” is an epistolary novel by Alice Walker is about a young woman named Celie who suffers through rape, abuse, racism, and the act of being stripped away from her loved ones. One of these people is her sister, Nettie. They are torn from each other at the beginning of the book by Celie's forced husband; on their separate paths they develop differently and have independent opinions about certain key things involved in the story, like religion, gender inequality, and education. Though they do have a lot of similarities, I believe that over the course of the book they gain more and more diversity from each other.

        At the beginning of the book, when the sisters are both young, the girls believe in God at nearly the same level. They both go to church (until Celie is forced to stay home, since she's such an embarrassing distraction because of her pregnancy), but Celie didn't even focus on religion as some might back then. In the beginning it says, “You better not never tell nobody but God. It'd kill your mammy.” (1) She's been told not to tell anyone about what happened to her except for God, which is why she addresses God at the beginning of every letter, which are very much like diary entries. She doesn't really feel religious, she just doesn't have a choice. Religion doesn't actually come into play until later. We find out that Nettie was living with a reverend and his family. She goes with this very religious family to Africa, where they set up a church in order to educate the people. Nettie describes Africans as “People who need Christ and good medical advice.” (131) This shows her love of God, of heaven, and of the Christian religion in general. She wants to bring what she believes to be peace to these people. At the same time, Celie gives up God in place of Nettie: “Dear Nettie, I don't write to God no more. I write to you.” (192) Then, later on the page of the book, she describes how angry she is at God because of the horrible things that have happened in her life that he could have stopped. She doesn't really believe in him anymore. So we've got two different points of view: Nettie feels that God is all spirituality, all that there is to life, but Celie feels that God is a fraud, a terrible father that she refuses to believe in. However, not all is lost- even though Celie and Nettie feel differently about religion for the majority of the book, near the end they both adopt the idea that God is everything. This shows that even though Celie is much more pessimistic about religion, she accepts that God does exist, and comes to the conclusion at the same time that Nettie does. They still feel differently- Nettie believes in God fully, as well as her new belief, but Celie doesn't really believe in him in the conventional way at all. This proves that, when it comes to religion, no matter what happens, Celie and Nettie will have ideas unlike the other.

        Celie and Nettie also feel differently about gender equality/inequality. Though it never actually specifically says anywhere in the book that they feel one way or the other, it comes across quite clearly through their choices and actions. For one thing, Celie isn't even attracted to men. She's a lesbian, and during the course of the story she falls madly in love with Shug Avery: “Shug, I say to her in my mind. Girl, you looks like a real good time, the Good Lord knows you do.” (81) She describes that calling someone a good time is something that men do when speaking to women, thus her thoughts are like that of a man's while she's near Shug. Nettie, on the other hand, is straight. She falls in love with the reverend she's been traveling with, the one that, evidently, adopted Celie's children. “We love each other dearly, Samuel told them, with his arms around me. We intend to marry.” (238) Celie might favor women because she's attracted to them and is a woman herself, whereas Nettie feels equality for all because she's attracted to men and is a woman. Also, Celie feels general anger towards men, a hatred for the gender, because of the rape and abuse she'd gone through at the wills of men. Her father raped her twice, and Mr. beat her constantly until Shug was around (making Shug her savior, and giving her another reason to respect women more). Nettie wasn't ever beaten, and she wasn't ever raped, although there were a few close calls in the beginning. She does not hate men because she hasn't had the same bad experiences as her sister. This just creates yet another wedge to separate the two sisters.

        As much as they're parted on other subjects, education isn't exactly a topic of opinion or beliefs. It's simply just another thing that draws them apart. Celie was taken out of school the first time she got pregnant, and so Nettie had a longer, fuller education. “The first time I got big Pa took me out of school. [...] You too dumb to keep going to school, Pa say. Nettie the clever one in this bunch.” (9) Normally, whether a person is dumb or smart wouldn't matter when it comes to personal relationships. However, when they write letters later on, Nettie has better grammar and spelling. And while she's using her excellent grammar and spelling, she's talking about how she's teaching people in Africa, helping the children to read and write. Not only do Celie's letters have worse grammar and, in some places, spelling, but because she isn't as educated as Nettie, she doesn't know as many things about the world and she, herself, could never teach children in Africa. It makes Nettie seem more intelligent in her thought process, and almost gives her a higher status. People tend to look up to smart people, and they look down on people whom they consider 'stupid'. Because of this, Celie and Nettie are separated even more- this time in the eyes of society.

        Celie and Nettie have a lot in common- they're sisters, they both had a terrible childhood, they both had very interesting and productive lives. As you can see, though, they have more distinctions than similarities. That's what really draws them closer at the end, when they finally see each other again- they're a negative and a positive and they can't helped but move towards each other like magnets. Celie and Nettie are contrasted strongly throughout the entire book of “The Color Purple”.