Random Collections of Writing: February 2011

Monday, February 21, 2011

The Green Place

This is the poem I wrote to accompany my Billy Collins study. It was in part inspired by his two poems "The Blue" and "Night Letter to the Reader".

I want to stay standing barefoot,
in the soft, newborn grass.
To watch the wind stir the aspens,
and listen to the leaves rustle contentedly.

The sun gazes down at me,
at another grain of sand squandering the earth.
Indifference clear upon her face,
she glides on,
leaving me standing in the shadows of my leafy companions.

Her light filters through the emerald growth,
casting stained glass images over my skin,
and illuminating the veins in the fronds,
like a patchwork quilt.

The wind meanders by,
receiving greeting from the vegetation,
as he brushes past my face,
he whispers
of the reasons to remain.

I want to stay here,
as a part of this world,
not of the mistakes
that the rest of humanity
has planted on the shoulders of their children.

Nature never seemed more alluring,
nor did mankind ever seem so splintered.

I consent to stand in this flawless place until
the moon has bathed everything in silver,
and melted back into a crescent.

The summer rains have come
and left the ground cleansed.
The garments of trees
have fallen in a blazing cascade.

The snow has made the world
plead for the warmth of spring to come again,
like a blank canvas
aches for the vivid hues of paint.

But are not our lives riddled
with unkept promises
and flaws impossible to dispose of?

I will return to reality,
brushing it like the feet of a dancer
who’s trying to fly,
and with my head in this scene.

I fold this place into a small square
to keep in a pocket of my head,
to visit when I become exasperated,
or when I am completely happy,
or when this is all over.

Billy Collins!

In our Language Arts class our teacher gave us two full days of class and told us to "create or learn something". I studied Billy Collins' poetry. He was the US Poet Laureate 2001-2003 and the New York state Poet Laureate from 2004-2006. This is an excerpt from my project.

Lately I have found myself obsessed with Billy Collins’; addicted to the feeling of discovery and inspiration that forms after reading one of his poems. When I read one of his poems I feel as though I am looking into a mirror, the reflection of my mind. After further examination, I suddenly realize there is a thought or memory that has always been there, just never acknowledged. It is like he’s penning the extraneous strings of my thoughts into something tangible. Or perhaps his poems are like the water and sunlight for the of seeds of musings in my head, which germinate in response to the poem. Sometimes his poems seem rather bizarre and other-worldly, but then again, my thoughts don’t really ever fit together like puzzle pieces. His poems are so profound, and seem to inspire that indescribable expanding feeling in one’s chest.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Dear Kevin Brockmeier,

This was for the writing contest: Letters About Literature. The prompt was to write a letter to the author of book that has changed your life. I wrote to Kevin Brockmeier, the author of The Brief History of the Dead.

Dear Kevin Brockmeier,

Until recently, I felt severed from the world, existing mostly in my own mind. It’s not that the real world didn’t hold anything of interest, it was just so much easier to observe from the safety of my own thoughts. More and more I found myself caring only about perfecting the creations in my mind, as opposed to dealing with the tangible world. I didn’t care when my sister did stupid, dangerous things, only that it wouldn’t affect my thoughts. She brashly put herself in danger without regard for anyone that might care for her. She made stupid decisions that proved her obvious disdain for any sort of responsibility, maturity, and caution. She was the dictionary definition of a hedonist. She was walking backwards down her life so as not to see the almost certain destruction in the future. And I still quietly wrapped myself in a cocoon, blinding myself.

When I read The Brief History of the Dead, what struck me the most was its bizarreness. It seemed to be a long forgotten jar of glue, holding the strangeness of the real world to the eccentricity of the electrical impulses in my head. I quickly bonded with the disconnected Laura and her scatter-brained, intricate intellect. Laura found some sort of chaotic calmness in all of her memories and the jumbles of her thoughts. She had to emerge from her mind and deal with the harsh Antarctic, to not only keep herself alive, but help others survive. It was easier for her to do so while living with an army of thoughts in her head. Yet, she remained anchored to both places. I found Laura blazing a trail through every crevice of my mind. She showed me our similarities, and our differences where she had taken the correct fork in the road and I had chosen to seclude myself even further. The journeys, trials, and personalities of each person in the City accompanied her, and began to represent the shards of places in my mind.

I haltingly came to the conclusion that as a society, we are very interdependent. I am forced, without consent, into the world. Laura depends on her real-world memories to survive. Likewise the people in the City rely on Laura to emerge from those thoughts and trek through the tundra. As for me, I would much prefer to stay in my own fantasies, and yet, people still need me. My sister still needs me to inhibit her from willingly “leaping off the deep end.” She needs me to care, and to make her hold hands with her consequences.

And in my own almost imperceptible way, I add diversity to this world. Since the world has billions of personalities, we have to carefully examine ourselves and discern exactly who we are in all of that cacophony. You weaved a story of people depending on each other across worlds, and possibly even time. As in an orchestra, if just one musician is willingly missing, the entire web wrinkles very slightly. Thank you for showing me that I can’t seclude myself inside my picturesque mind, for showing me that I need the world, and that the world needs me.

Sincere thanks,

Abbi Chapman

I'd Travel into the Future....

This is a writing contest put on by tweentribune.com. Sadly, my entry was never submitted. The prompt was:

If you could spend a day with anyone alive or dead, real, fictional or imaginary…

Who would you pick?
What would you do with them?
When would you meet: in the past, present or future?
Where would you meet them?
Why would you pick them?

All in 100 words or less……

I’d travel into the future,
past the world that’d ended
and the regrets and mistakes,
to meet Billy Collins.

We’d read all his poems,
write new ones,
sit in the transparent nothingness
and try to make sense of it all.

He’d pass on his knowledge and inspiration to me,
like a grandfather.
I’d wrap myself in the words that he wrote.
We’d be at The Vanishing Point, in The Blue.

At the end of the day,
I’d return to this world and time,
perhaps I’d gained something more than just memories,
to help this world that is falling apart…

Lois Lowry Speech Summary

This is a summary of Lois Lowry's (author of The Giver) speech, The Beginning of Sadness, given after 9/11.

After 9/11, the country was forced to a sudden realization – that we can no longer protect our children from knowing pain. For the longest time parents could tell their children they were safe, and not lie. Children were thought to be immortal from the burden of loss. No such luck anymore. Lowry made an excellent choice to use the poem “On Turning 10,” because it perfectly illustrates this. “…If you cut me I would shine. But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life, I skin my knees. I bleed.” As a society, we have been attempting to drown out our fears by blinding ourselves. But, as Lowry explains, this IS the beginning of sadness. Children will lose parents, siblings, and friends to this greedy, corrupt world. The average person will fight for the politics of those that govern us. So, let us write things down; so that our pain will neither be forgotten, nor shall we drown in it.

Life's Little Guidelines

There is music everywhere, just listen.
A smile is a light in the window of your face, showing your heart is home.
Dance like no one credible is watching.
Obnoxious noises are, well, obnoxious.
Listen to your friends, even if they’re wrong. They are right because they care enough to give advice.
BOOKS ARE AMAZING!!!!!
Forgive, but don’t forget. You can learn from others mistakes as well as your own.
We’re only given a spark of craziness, you mustn’t lose it.
Mechanical pencils are better…
Smokey says you too can prevent book burnings.
Forgive your enemies, it’ll mess with their heads.
Grace = silly
Be yourself. Don’t try to be different, because you will be like everyone else attempting to be freakishly different.
Life is about being elegantly disheveled.
Meditate in the wilds of your mind.
Feel the aliveness of the frost.
Taste the wind for happiness.
See the artwork in everything. The shadow and light, the conflict and peace.
Warm each others feet.
Don’t force people to change to be like you. Understand how everyone else works. Then see how you fit in with them.
Keep your socks on and your spatulas clean

Food For Thought

“For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner … on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies. … That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that.” -Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer (1934-1996)

I really like this quote, because it reminds us that we aren’t the center of everything. Being humans, we are, in fact, quite conceited. About our intelligence, our ability to feel emotions, our potential to accomplish near impossible feats, and the belief that we are everything there is. It’s hard for us to take a step back and recognize the spectacles around us; to see the world through another creatures eyes. Our world is huge, perhaps even bigger than we might want it to be, and the universe is larger still. It is good for us to remember that we are nothing but the most microscopic of specs, in a giant, intricate web of galaxies. Yet, even in a smaller context, the same holds true. Out of the many diverse species on planet earth, we are by far not the most exceptional. If you look at the elaborate relationships of the animals around us, and how they have adapted to live in our world because we refused to adapt to theirs, we all of a sudden seem a whole lot less amazing. If only we could expand our minds, our emotions and our feelings, we might realize how small we are, and grow with that epiphany.

I Wonder...

Rushing mountain streams,

rippling endless golden fields,

Majestic jagged purple peaks.

I wonder…

If the robin sees the landscape below,

a beautiful pastel painting,

with texture, colors, and fog.

Or a polluted populace,

with smokey urban blocks,

surrounded by,

invasive cultivated crops,

encroaching in the home they love.

I wonder…

If the fish sees the rippling world above,

a place of wonders, warmth, and feast.

A glorious dream, far out of reach perhaps,

a place with weather change, failure, and advancement.

Or a place full of stomping boots and fishing hooks,

a world of lies, promises that don’t hold true.

I wonder…

If future generations will look back on us and see,

A time of great discovery,

advancements of every kind.

This and that causes, fighting to help.

A generation that gets an A+ for trying.

Or a time full of destruction,

deceit,

killing and war,

hypocrisy,

shame.

Were torture is looked on as barbaric,

but are we much better.

I wonder…

If the rest of the world cares,

wants to set a good example…

Or is it just me?

The Circle

The sun peeks over the hills,

hesitantly rising into the sky.

The birds chatter, sleepy at first, then with delight.

The moon falls as the doe rises.

Miles away the cougar languidly stretches,

bands of muscles rippling under a smooth coat.

The sun starts to smile,

with glee she throws out her life giving rays.

The birds now excitedly,

swoop, swirl, and dance through the air laughing with joy.

The doe daintily crops the grass,

ears pricked forward and alert.

The cougar glides from tree to tree,

bands of muscles rippling under a smooth coat.

It is midday now,

the sun beats down tirelessly on the loneliest places.

It is to hot now to be dancing under the sun,

the birds sit and sing quietly in the tree’s shade.

It is hazy now,

the doe stoops to drink but springs quickly away.

It is quiet now,

the thud of four padded paws on pine needles,

can be faintly heard.

Quick he is off, smoothing bounding after her,

bands of muscles rippling under a smooth coat.

The sun will not shine now,

sharing a last brilliant display,

a spectacular painting, looping across the sky.

The air is as cool as a teardrop.

the birds will not sing now,

all is eerily quiet.

The doe will not have to starve this winter,

A mercy death may sometimes be.

The cougar will not starve today,

gratefully excepting the does last gift,

bands of muscles rippling under the moonlight.

Colorado Joy

Gold and orange blazes across evergreen slopes,

Waving brown grasses whispering hopes.

Jagged white mountains, rolling plains,

Musty fall leaves wet with rain.

Snow in September,

Foggy days to remember.

Brilliant blue skies,

My heart fairly flies.

Crystal clear gurgling streams,

Calm deep pools, scales that gleam.

I carefully cast into the pool,

Awaiting the bite that will come from the jewel,

The line my hand seeks as,

Out of the water a silver arc streaks.

Reflections

Rippling reflections in glassy pools,

of brilliant gold drapes in the shades cool.

Sparkling pale pebbles,

a birds twittering song,

a high clear note sweet and long.

Soft textured grass, tough bark on trees.

Kneeling right down on my knees,

Weaving and braiding a posy chain,

Awaiting the chilled fall rains.

Scooping up a handful of soft moist dirt,

The sun so bright my eyes blink with hurt.

Lying on my belly,

watching clouds float down the stream.