I Am Not a Writer

I am not a writer. I cannot write or do not write, well either way I am not a writer. I am in this class, its called AP English and I cannot seem to understand what AP stands for. Always Pray, Almost Poor, Alternating Personalities, Alligator People, Androids Probable, Altering Paranoia, Allegedly People? Some one once told me AP stands for Advanced Placement. I gave them the most disdainful look I could muster because they were most defiantly wrong. Writing means English and English means spelling and spelling and me have not been friends since the first time my kindergarten hand learned how to write A. So they were wrong, because if I was in Advanced Placement English there was something wrong with the system, dyslexia and English do not mix, it’s the definition of dyslexia. Dyslexia the inability to make spelling that makes sense within the random and often hard to understand rules that the English language puts forth often resulting in a type of spelling that makes far more sense then the English version of the word. (Taken from the American Dani Dictionary ©2011). So the person who said that AP stood for Advance Placement had no idea what they were talking about. Advanced Placement were the kids at school in Prism, Advanced Placement were most defiantly the Original Oratory at Speech and Debate who wrote their own speeches. Advanced Placement meant the students in creative writing Advanced Placement were the kids sitting in my lunch who discussed books. Advanced Placement was the students who had amazing writing skills, which means they were writers and I am not a writer there for I am not in Advanced Placement. Do not get me wrong I love poetry I am listening to poetry write now. They’re something magical about words whether written or spoken; they hold so much knowledge, so much power, so much understanding. Advanced Placement students were writers who knew how to wield those words to say just what they wanted them to. I am not that, I just write what I feel. I write what comes to my mind no filter, especially in poetry. I have written poetry in English class Creative Writing, about underwear, no filter, no meaning just words. I am not a writer though. I am a feeler; I feel the words flowing from my mind into my hands. I read the words on a page and feel them in me flying around looking for a place to nuzzle in my brain. I have written a hundred pages of an overly controversial story that no one could even tell was controversial till the last chapter. None of this makes me a writer and if I were a writer I would not live in an Advanced Placement class. None of this though means I don’t like my English class. No I quiet enjoy it. I write poetry in English. I read quotes from people much wiser then my self. I hear people talk every day that look at things in much different ways then my self and I learn from them. Its ironic, my sisters call me a writer, I am not though, I am a feeler. I am not in Advanced Placement English either just to clarify I am, though, in Always Pursuing English.

Ostracize- A Huge Ostrich or Something

Ostracize: to exclude, by general consent.
As I sat in English class I kept hearing the word over and over in my head. Ostracize and then it came back to me in the subtle voice of Anne Meeker. “We ostracize them”. My sophomore year she used that word in her Original Oratory speech the first time I heard it in a debate round I feel in love with the word. Some how I knew what it meant but to this day I can’t spell it with out spell checks aid. There was something magical about it I loved the way it sounded. I couldn’t figure out though beyond that why I loved it so much until yesterday. I listened to Ignatius J. Ryle and our discussions of him. Separated, out casted all words we used to describe Ignatius and the people he associated with. Jones, the factory workers or even Dorian, all of them minorities, outcast, leapers, or ostracized from society. Opposites attract at lest that’s what the experts say. So why then does Ignatius look for people just like him, ostracized. Why do teenagers look for people just like them self’s? It happens in lunch ever day tables full of people with something in common. Down casting any one who tries to invade. The same tables full of the same people for ninety days. Its not just teenagers adults do the exact same thing grouping together around water coolers at work, in church atriums, at school gathers, or in the teachers lounge. All secretly whispering about things only their groups are allowed to know. We’re all guilty of it and any one who says different most defiantly lies. The ostracism though steams from, the hatred of outsiders? (insert questioning voice here) Let me back track, we make groups of like people who have something in common, call it our niche, and they spew hatred at some one who wants to join the oh so cozy warm niche we have formed? (insert questioning voice again here) We are just like Ignatius we want our own perfect niche of friends and comforts. What happens when it all gets ripped away? We all face this impending doom (or gift?). Collage falls down on us like manna in the desert. My hope though, that we can deal with it better then Ignatius and his grey hound bus ride. Maybe we can take the change from ostracized niche and leave it with out PTSD that we feel the need to always talk about. Soon we will leave our ostracized society; maybe we can learn form Ignatius’ ostracizing mistakes.

Ms. Dickinson Please Meet Andrea Gibson

Emily Dickinson lives in the picture below.

Andrea Gibson resides in the image bellow

What do they have in common? Besides The Fact that Dickson and Gibson both survive through poetry. Wall we discussed Dickinson’s poem ”If You Were Coming In The Fall” this week in English I slowly heard Andrea Gibson’s poetry slip into my mind. I listen to it in photography (no its not an excuse) as if Gibson’s words would some how inspire my photography to grow in artistic value. That day though I had listened to her poem “Photograph” over, and over, and over agene. For some reason Gibson’s words struck me and stuck with me. As I delved into our English discussion I realized Gibson and Dickinson spoke on essentially the same issue. Dickinson speaker seems to portray this unwavering love that cares not about the pain her lover has ensued on her from leaving. The speak gives all still away to her lover so much as she would “toss..[her life].. yonder like a rind,/ and taste eternity”(15-16). The speaker gives no concern to the fact that her lover left her. the speak only seem to want the love she once back. As if two poets began to battle in my head Gibson words arose from the ashes of my segmented mind and led them self into the potion labeled English class bumping agents Dickinson’s structured dialog. “I never meant to fire you know/ I know you never meant to fire lover/ I know we never meant to hurt each other”(32-34) Gibson portrayed the same situation love gone wrong lovers hurting each other. As if Gibson wanted her poem and Dickinson to fallow the same issue Gibson stayed “this is going to hurt bowing to I love you/ I still love you”(50-51) Dickinson’s and Gibson suddenly clashed in my head both bursting with same knowledge. How could a poet from the eighteen hundreds have the same theme, same meaning as a poem from modern America twp thousand and nine. Unless the issue they discussed proved it self a timeless issue. The problem not caring what year it fell in only that it recede havoc on sets of lovers. Gibson and Dickinson seem to prove that the themes of poems repeat themselves over and over agene with different situations different people different years, but the same problem. I sit hear in utter amassment, because when I think of poetry I have written I can see the same painful them running through the lines ramped in taken blood just as it did with Gibson and Dickinson. Maybe Gibson and my self only re-write the wise words of those who came before us.
Andrea Gibson lives below

In the portrait below I express my inner self

We both fallow in the steady foot steps of highly intelligent poets who came before us.

Loosing Life to AP English

Once again my sister relentlessly badgered me,
“Dani why do you feel the need to analyze people.” She asks me this question constantly judging me for the constant need I have to discover some answer to what makes people tick.
“I don’t know, I don’t mean to” I mumble at her for the millionth time. It struck me though that day that this constant unintended, unneeded analysis of people occurs with every one I come in contact with. It does not matter how long I have known them, our relationship, or even their age. I analyze them, from their handshake. My sister, though annoying and antagonistic, forced me to realize I constantly analyze, with no true reason. Then it struck me, like the stench of week old milk, I sat in AP English, and with the angst of some one whose next words would determine their fate. We humbly, or perhaps modestly, discussed our newest endeavor in literature, A Confederacy of DUNCES. I sat there in my infinite amount of knowledge and began to ponder the main character, Ignatius Reilly. What I wondered, could make a thirty-year-old man say something as absurd as “for the sake of humanities future I hoped that they were all sterile”(52)? What would compel him to say such a thing? Could Ignatius have some form of Asperger’s, maybe he fell somewhere on the autism scale, or at least have some form of turrets? As if my sister was in the room her words lingered into my mind hunting me “Dani why do you feel the need to analyze people”. Suddenly the pieces fell together in my mind. I sit in a class five days a week, for at least fifty minutes not including time spent on homework, and am instructed to analyze, answer why, dig deeper. I sighed, half proud of my own detective work, one eighth saddened I could not put an end to it, one sixth confused at my new discovery, and one fourth completely and utterly aware that my life’s slowly becoming over taken by AP English.

The Gift Of Rediscovering

If I could pick one character in Jennifer Egan’s novel A Visit From The Goon Squad to give to things to I would have to choose Alex. Now I’m aware that birthday presence are normally nice and sweet things, but I’m not like that. I would provide Alex with the gifts of a backbone and himself. First a backbone, I know I know, not mine to give, but I’m giving it. “Alex felt unable to explain to Lulu the beliefs he shared with Rebecca”(321). Although the phrase at first seems trivial it’s a major point of interest to me. The words “felt” and “unable” are placed right next to each other making it seem as though Alex wants to tell Lulu, but his feelings stop him. If this was the case though then Alex would have just told her after the feeling passed. All though never tells her never corrects her witch is a Direct characterizes of him not being able to stand up for him self. This being the case I would give Alex a back bone the ability to stand on his own two feet. Giving Alex himself seem strange, but Alex him self says, “’I don’t know what happened to me’”(339). This directly characterizes Alex as loosing him self. Some where in all his years of life Alex lost touch with the person he was and became the person that he lives as now.
I presume I see some one like Alex, some one who sold out and I want to give him back what he had. I believe everyone should live the way they wish to live. If that means standing up for them self’s, and re-finding them self then that what they have to do. I believe Alex needs to grow a spine once agene to find his old self, once he finds that old self-maybe then he can feel hole agene. One Character in one book, that’s all Alex would be seen as. I feel thought that ever one no mater who they are has the right to find themselves whatever time in life they are. We can’t back track in life we can’t go back and do it agene, but we can rediscover, and that’s the real gift I want to give Alex to rediscover life.

Not So Funny After All

In Jenifer Egan’s novel A Visit From The Goon Squad, a novel wining the Pulitzer Prize, I found my self laughing or chuckling at almost ever turn. When Scotty so plainly thought “I’d toss it on the counter so causally, daring the gal to challenge me”(108) I could no longer hold in my laughter. Scotty’s use of “daring” and “challenge” make what he thinks about doing seem a huge adventure, in reality Scotty’s only dropping of laundry. The juxtaposition between reality and the fiction in Scotty’s head amuses me completely for its utter seeming lack of reality, until I read the last line. “And she would make it new again”(108). The use of it a non specific now instead of the use of the word suit proves /Scotty’s not just some delusional lunatic, believing laundry a huge feet. It seems to me Scotty doesn’t strive for a clean suit but the suit is symbolic. The suit and Scotty are one. Scotty longs to make himself knew agene like he does ever single week with his suite. In this short fraise Scotty proves how want to erase the past, like the cleaning does, to make himself knew agene.

At first I found Scotty’s obsessive suit cleaning amusing and interesting. When I looked deeper though I found in Scotty, what ever one wants. To erase. Scotty wanted to let go of the mistakes he had maid and be a clean and new agene. Scotty’s struggle is a common human struggle. I’ll admit there are things I wish I could go and erase that I’ve said or done; but I’m not a suite. I can’t send my self away for cleaning to become new agene. Why Scotty’s story for me turned from funny to pain came from his inability to realize the only way to move on form those moment is to let go. So yeah Scotty for me started of as funny, in the end though the punch line wasn’t Scotty but human imperfection and longing.

Adults the wisest? I think not.

Lou a character from Jeniffer Egan’s noval A Visit From Thee Goon Squad, or rather her compilation of stores that connected by one charter and never time. Egan a novelist featured in the New York Magazine who first lived in Brookline and San Francisco. Lou though a character Egan develops and redevelops in the matter of three chapters. At times I wish I could take Lou and pound into his head the things his missing. As an eighteen year old its surprising that I can find these moments with a “grown “ “adult”. He “cant tolerate defeat” “He has to win” “Albert is nothing…What matters now is that Mindy understands this”(79). Egan ‘s incredible strong diction in the use of “can’t” “has to” “nothing” reveals the characters she’s creating. A character needing do mince, needing control of something, and needing to assert his power through control of a human. Egan revels this farther when stating “But Charlie does know her father. He’ll marry Mindy because that’s what winning means”(80). Egan uses Lou’s daughter to magnify his problem. His addiction presents so promptly that his own daughter sees it.
I want to rip Lou from the pages Egan fills and tell him everything he misses by only looking for control in his relationships. Yes he gets to be the hero of ever situation, but what has Lou sacrificed for it? He misses so much, a daughter starving for attention, a son with wisdom beyond his years “’I don’t think those ladies were ever watching birds”’(83). I want to tell Lou how destructive he’s being, how selfish he’s being. A few pages later though Lou a miner character in a story some one else lives the role of the main character. Some how though I still want to tell him Lou you have no control let it go and just live, but he’s just a character in a book that for three hundred and thirty one pages has life through me.