Vacation

So what is suppose to be the best part of any vacation... getting away from it all. I can't imagine having to take all my problems with me like Carolyn did when they went to Hawaii. I mean to be a plural wife at home is one thing but when everyone else is only taking one wife on the trip and you are stuck with 2 sisters wives who are both super competitive and a mess it must have been more like hell than a vacation. You really can't help but feel for her not only in this situation but though out the whole book. It really shows you what most of the women in the FLDS have to go through, even if it isn't to the extreme of Carolyn's case it is still similar and therefore still seems unbearable. It next time I am on vacation I am sure I will stop and think and be grateful that I don't have three crazy people I don't like with me.

Final project

For my final project I am going to do a multi genre project on the memoir of Carolyn Jessop called Escaped I think it really fits in with the survivor theme of the rest of the memoirs we read in class and that it is a very interesting book with a very interesting topic, polygamy.

Bathrooms

Okay so I don't know if it is me or just my reading selections for this class but once again I am amazed by the conditions of hygiene and bathroom facilities in this book again just like in Farewell to Manzanar. Now of course the conditions are no were as severe as Manzanar but they still seem ridiculous to me. I had a hard time growing up in a 4 person family sharing one bathroom I can't even imagine what it is like with 30 siblings. Not to mention having to go without soap for long periods of time so everyone can eat. It just seems so unbearable. It really makes me thankful that I only have one sister.

Escaped

Just from the first chapter of this book you are really drawn into another world. I mean I for one can not imagine being afraid I would be hunted down if I left my house. The very thought is surreal. It really enforces what she says in the book it was a different world. One I know I would never want to live in.

Which of course brings up why would anyone want to especially women, the only answer I can come up with is that they don't know anything else that is at least the women of the FLDS don't. As for the women that I have read about in my research who live out in the outside world and were raised in 2 parent homes who chose this life that i don't know.

I for on see nothing attractive in the idea of sharing the person who is suppose to love you above all others. Especially if I found myself in a situation similar to Carolyn's with a man who didn't care about me at all. I mean there is enough divorce, and loveless marriages out there without throwing a third person in there to make it worse.

Do not go gentle into that good night

This poem is arguably one of the best known poems in the world and reading again for class today I can see why. The timing and words are beautiful. Not only that but the subject itself is so relatable. The other reason that I chose this poem is because personally I love it I love the forceful feel of his word choices and verses. You can feel the power in it as the poem progresses and you can feel his pain at the end. I have to say that I find this one of the most successful poems we have read so far in class.

Poems by me from class

Apple

Red mirror shining back
Looking up from the counter
Health


Doctor

The stainless steel tray shimmers
Carefully he wipes it on his shirt
Handing me the bright red apple








Summer


sufficed what they are
I lean and loafe at my ease,
every atom of my blood observing a spear of summer grass.

Retiring back, but never forgetting.

Poems

1.It's all I have to bring today (26)

by Emily Dickinson

I have always loved Emily Dickinson and I really love this piece her repetition and rhyming are just so hypnotic. I also her use of recurring images and themes, like of nature and fields. It is truly beautiful.



2. I May After Leaving You Walk Quickly or Even Run

by Matthea Harvey

I like this poem because the images are so beautiful and sad at the same time. The whole poem really just spoke to me I guess it because it reminds me of a poem I wrote and I felt like I could feel what she was feeling. It just felt easier to connect to the words for me. Like the line "Heads in the planets, toes tucked under carpets, that’s how we got our bodies through." It is so beautiful and almost bittersweet in feeling.

The other poems I liked

Good Night

by Wilhelm Müller



Your Catfish Friend

by Richard Brautigan



On His Seventy-fifth Birthday

by Walter Savage Landor



I know why the caged bird sings

by Maya Angelou

My father's garden

I think the poem that most spoke to me this time was my fathers garden. Not only did it feel simpler and cleaner among all the other flowery language but it also reminded me of my grandfather. Being told by my father of trips to the junk yard to shift through broken fan belts and old mattress springs it made it very easy to see his fathers hands looking though the metal. Looking for something to make, something to fix, something to toy with. As crazy as it sounds I think I identify with it so much because I can remember the lawn mower that had fishing line holding things together and would only start for him and I feel like that is usually lost in our generation. We are a generation of consumers, it is always cheaper to replace something than it is to fix things so we lose that. We lose what the author is talking about homemade toys, and hours spent tinkering and exploring.

Morning

Reading today’s selections I think the thing that stuck with me the most was the use of morning in “To His Coy Mistress” and “Morning”. It brought to my mind the piece had been discussing in class about the man who lets the painters in while he is writing. Not only did they all have similar feels in a way it reminded me how often time of day is used in poetry, and how powerful it can be. I mean when people talk about the dew on grass or the sweet clean smell outside first thing in the morning it is something we can all inherently see and feel it is something it is something so human. Poetry more than any other form of writing is about evoking emotion and that is what both those writers do when they talk about the morning.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the phones

Reading through all the loves poems I felt like this one really had the most staying power in my mind. That could be because I have heard it before but I think it has more to do with the feeling of loss. For the most part we all feel loss in the same way. Losing a friend, love one, parent, anything there is always that moment where you feel as though the world should stop but it doesn’t it sadly just goes on around you. Thinking about this I decided to write a poem about my own loss and love.






The Nursing Home Waiting Room


I sat in a garden of flowers on the maroon sofa
Electric yellow tennis balls dance across the floor on the end of walkers. In a Lonely Place flashes on the TV across the room,
Boggart murmurs to the old women in recliners. Today's menu is glowing bright;
Prime rib, mashed potatoes, peas.
It’s Thursday.

It all should be the same.

Everyone smiles.
I turn to watch the distorted trees and flowers through plastic windows.
The smell of floor cleaner and cooked beef surrounds them all.

It all seems the same.

Wheel chairs creak and turn down the hallway in front of me,
I pick up the old red New York Central hat and hold it close.
Nurses walk by, their white shoes squeak on the linoleum floor.

He is gone.
It all seems the same, it isn't the same.
There is nothing left but paper work.

My Savior

Over the water it bobbed, the yellow stone,
Never stopping, never sinking, floating,
Hiding itself against the rich blue
My eyes followed it searching the depths,
Over head the bird laughed, skating higher
With one last look at the warm friendly waves I turned away

Walking over the warm carpet of sand I went, away,
Wishing to once again find a magical stone
Spotting another spot if butter in the sand I felt a new high
As I moved towards it I felt myself floating
Reaching into the sand I dug deeper
But as I finally got it in my grasp the pebble became cold and blue.

I stared at the rock, wishing away the blue,
But it was still there. I could not will it away,
I felt myself drop the stone, sinking deeper
Turning back to the waves I threw myself in, becoming the stone
Forgetting everything, I bobbed and floated
Turning my face upward I watched the clouds smile from their height

Further and further my body danced away from the shore pulling me higher
From a distance I heard the horn you blew,
But nothing could pull me back from the calm of floating
I heard you call again but this time you were further away
I felt around searching for the yellow stone.
It was lost like you were now and the pain was deep.

I began to fight, reaching for everything I had in my depth
But I could not bring myself back from this new high.
It was all gone, even the stone
I looked around, nothing, all there was, blue
I had gone away,
I had lost my life float

I felt something wrap around me, you became my float
I was felt myself claimed by its once again enjoying the rich shade of blue
I felt you pull me back, away from the sea, away.
Reaching the shore I smiled and said the only word that was needed, “Hi”
And you took me in your arms giving me warmth, I felt it deep,
You reached out your hand and I saw it, the glittering gold of the stone.

You smiled back, I reached for the stone, I felt the joy float over me.
I looked one last time at the blue ocean, wondering at it’s depth.
The gulls made one more circle high and you took my hand leading me away.

Family ties

In every book there are moments that stick with the reader moments that really capture the book and the heart of the reader and I think one of the most important ones for me was a scene the narrator wasn’t even in. It was the short chapter where Woody visit’s the ancestral home. It just felt so real and so identifiable at least to me. I can honestly say that I have felt nerves and uneasiness of go to meet a relative you have never met or haven’t seen in years and feared the response. As he packed up the sugar hopeful that it would grant him a better reception I was right there with him. And when the Aunt cried over his appearance, showing him the grave that had been made for his father as they all feared his death my heart broke along with them.
However the most powerful scene was when the aunt was watching him sleep. As she shed tears over him and family trait’s the power of family, their family became so clear. One can little doubt that Woody came back with a renewed sense of familial pride and understanding . How can not remember meeting that one relative who is old and wise and holds all the magical stories about your parents or grandparents that no one else knows. Or walking through the old halls of your parents high school trying to imagine your father in a letterman’s jacket. It is our history to be found the same way that it was Woody’s and glimpsing it gave me a better understanding of Woody, his father and the family Wakatsuki.

Unreliable childhood?

The truth can often be a subjective thing and that is never more clear than when you read memoirs. The style of writing is so attractive, and easy to read. Usually by the first or second chapter you are drawn in just like you would be with a novel. So inevitably the questions come with every memoir written after the James Frey debacle is it true? Did that really happen? How reliable is the author and therefore the narrator?
I thought of some of these questions when I was reading Farewell to Manzanar. Not because I thought that she was the James Frey of her time but because she was a child. Looking back most things in childhood are surrounded by a haze at least for me and yet she seems to remember things so clearly. Now that being said I am in no way doubting her or her story I just can’t help but wonder if anyone else picking up this book looked at it and thought about what they were doing at age 10 and if they could remember this much.
I guess the bottom line is whether she remembers every detail or not her voice is strong and her story is based in reality and that is what matters most. Knowing that we could go to the broken concrete in the desert jut as she and her family did. We too can see the rocks that lead to nowhere and the faucets sticking up like weeds out of the sand. And we can see the little girl she once was and the woman she becomes and we trust her. In the middle of all the uncertainty of memoir and childhood you trust her and her voice and you overcome any doubts about an unreliable narrator.

Fear

One theme that she uses in the book as kind of a underlying idea is how much the fear was two sided especially in the beginning.. I was so struck when she talked about her brother’s relief of them being moved to camps. The fear they had of being persecuted and attacked on the outside.
Of course that being said you have to wonder if he would have been so eager if he had known the conditions he would be thrown into but all the same maybe he would. People in general will on a whole in my opinion put up with a lot for protection. However at the same time they had to in some ways be just as fearful if not more so of the people they were putting their trust in.
Another time this comes to the forefront is in chapter ten in her shot aside about the reservoir shack. Her brother-in-law and his fellow workers when staring to the faces of the soldiers saw fear similar to what was in their own eyes. It really shows how the whole internment situation had more to do with fear and lack of understanding rather than any real danger.

Privacy

Through this book in a lot of ways I am constantly amazed by the people’s in the camps ingenuity. They from the beginning take basically nothing and do the best they can with it. The scene I think that really first hit that home to me was the bathroom scene.
I mean she talks about the fact that it is basically a big room with toilets in the center no privacy, nothing just long lines of people forced to deal with it and do what they can to make it. The picture of the old woman lugging around a large cardboard partition is so striking. It really illustrates how far they went for just a modicum of privacy something everyone takes for granted. I mean the very idea of a little old lady lugging a huge piece of cardboard with her every time she went to the bathroom is inconceivable. I know even for a person my age it would be difficult and trying and to imagine a woman in her seventies doing it shows just how far they would go just for something so simple. I mean as she says the large cardboard is as big as the woman and to think she was doing that every time she had to use the latrine. I know as a woman I can’t imagine having to do it and I hope I would never have to.

A Souvenir of Japan

Reading A Souvenir of Japan I was struck by the major similarity in style to The Cathedral. Also using pronouns and the lack of names to distance the audience from characters. Carter keeps you removed from all the characters through out the story only allowing what she calls “a shadowy glimpse in the mirror” of the characters.
Her piece embodies this phrase through out in ways, first in removing the human element with many of the characters, starting with the grandmothers on the second page. Describing them as basically a cigar store Indians. She talks of them as stationary things to be mover or changed.
“They kept her very clean. They covered her pale cotton kimono with a spotless pinafore trimmed with coarse lace and she never dirtied and never moved.” (Carter, pg. 267)
Although the grandmothers take up such a small section of the book the way they are talked about is very telling in the story and the way she speaks of Japan as a removed observer. She follows this up with a story of her and Taro and right from the beginning she does the same thing she did with the grandmothers, removing his humanity. In the first sentence describing him she completely removes him from humanity comparing him to a god, giving him godly characteristics while removing him from the human plane. She puts him on a different level from herself and the grandmothers she puts him in an untouchable position above herself and that is made clear by her description of him through out the book as she continually talks of him in ambiguous or conflicting terms.
These two seemed to be the more glaring examples to me but there are many more to be found though out the story.

Me

I have nothing exciting to report on my life. I was born and raised in Jackson Michigan and have one sister who is 5 years older than me. I also have a roommate in the class Charlotte. We both just got puppies who are 8 weeks old. I am also an English major in creative writing.