Tuesday, October 16, 2012
It sucks to be poor.
This is what I told my mother yesterday as she apologized to me for not having money to let me get breakfast. Now, before you start thinking, oh my goodness, this poor girl, no. No poor girl. I could have eaten breakfast at the house, I just didn't have time. That's beside the point, though. The point is, I'm broke, and my family is poor. What's the difference? Well, I'm broke, meaning I will have more money in a certain amount of time in the form of a biweekly paycheck from my job. My family however, is poor. Meaning no matter how hard we try, and believe me, we try, we can never seem to get up on top of our financial problems. I've heard the phrase "third job to pay for your second job" thrown around in reference to my mom doing Mary Kay. So far it's been a bit of a money pit, and just thinking about her continuing to cause our family to go even more into the red just makes me sick to my stomach. And she wonders why I have a hard time supporting her and her "career"...three guess why I don't.
Monday, October 15, 2012
This sent chills down my spine.
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. -Romans 1:16
holdtightthroughthis.tumblr.com
Aparently, Amanda Todd was bullied by people in her life and so she decided to end it. Now, dozens of people are making pages about her life and memory all over facebook because she, like so many other young people, posted a video on youtube talking about how she was still holding on even though things were tough, and then right around a month later, killed herself. The pages all show her death as 10.10.12 and that was just a few days ago. Finally, I got so fed up with seeing yet another "RIP (Insert Name Here)" tribute page that I decided it had long since been time to do something. So, I started a blog on tumblr for just that reason.
I describe it as a advice/confessions column/blog along with an inspirational "it gets better" safe haven for people to find solace from the bullying and other problems they may encounter in daily life.
I currently have 6 followers, and one terribly stupid anonymous hater. I'm kind of beyond them though, I just hope that pretty soon it catches on. I want to help people, and like me and several others have pointed out, if I help even just one person, then it's all worth it.
I describe it as a advice/confessions column/blog along with an inspirational "it gets better" safe haven for people to find solace from the bullying and other problems they may encounter in daily life.
I currently have 6 followers, and one terribly stupid anonymous hater. I'm kind of beyond them though, I just hope that pretty soon it catches on. I want to help people, and like me and several others have pointed out, if I help even just one person, then it's all worth it.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Words
When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother “What will I be? Will I be pretty? ” Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? What comes next? Oh right, will I be rich which is almost pretty depending on where you shop. And the pretty question infects from conception passing blood and breath into cells. The word hangs from our mothers’ hearts in a shrill of fluorescent floodlight of worry.
“Will I be wanted? Worthy? Pretty? But puberty left me this funhouse mirror dry add: teeth set at science fiction angles, crooked nose, face donkey-long, and pox-marked where the hormones went finger-painting my poor mother.
“How could this happen? You’ll have porcelain skin as soon as we can see a dermatologist.” “You sucked your thumb. That’s why your teeth look like that! ” “You were hit in the face with a Frisbee when you were six, otherwise your nose would have been fine! ”
Don’t worry; we will get it all fixed she would say, grasping my face, twisting it this way and that as if it were a cabbage she might buy. But, this is not about her. Not her fault she, too, was raised to believe the greatest asset she could bestow upon her awkward little girl was a marketable appearance.
By sixteen I was pickled by ointments, medications, peroxides. Teeth corralled into steel prongs, laying in a hospital bed. Face packed with gauze, cushioning the brand new nose the surgeon had carved.
Belly gorged on two pints of my own blood I had swallowed under anesthesia, and every convulsive twist, like my body screaming at me from the inside out “What did you let them do to you? ” All the while, this never ending chorus groaning on and on like the IV needle dripping liquid beauty into my blood.
“Will I be pretty? ” Will I be pretty like my mother, unwrapping the gift wrap to reveal the bouquet of daughter her $10,000 bought her? Pretty? Pretty.
And now I have not seen my own face in ten years. I have not seen my own face in ten years, but this is not about me! This is about the self-mutilating circus we have painted ourselves clowns in. About women who will prowl thirty stores in six malls to find the right cocktail dress, but haven’t a clue where to find fulfillment or how to wear joy, wandering through life shackled to a shopping bag, beneath those two pretty syllables.
This, this is about my own some-day daughter. When you approach me, already stung-stayed with insecurity, begging, “Mom, will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? , ” I will wipe that question from your mouth like cheap lipstick and answer no.
The word pretty is unworthy of everything you will be, and no child of mine will be contained in five letters. You will be pretty intelligent, pretty creative, pretty amazing, but you will never be merely “pretty.”
When I was in high school I was on the debate team; I didn't argue with people, but I did what is called an individual event so named because I was the only person up there at any given time. Within the catagory of individual events I did Prose Interpretation and Poetry Interpretation. Now, what those are is exactly what it sounds like, I find a piece of writing fitting to me as far as character and situation and then I interpret it. It's like acting, but I don't especially become that character as much as I give that character a little piece of me. I portray whatever character,but I'm in there still. It's not as strict as theatre I guess you could say. So I dropped the class senior year, but not before I went to a competition where I heard this piece performed. And you know, the girl wasn't even that good, but the piece, my God, this piece had me on my knees at the end of it. The parts that are highlighted are the parts that did me in. I can't explain how it made me feel, because it's not like I experienced this with my mom, but just the words. "I will wipe that question from your mouth like cheap lipstick and answer no." sends shivers down my spine. It's powerful. Just another example of how words can make even the strongest break.
“Will I be wanted? Worthy? Pretty? But puberty left me this funhouse mirror dry add: teeth set at science fiction angles, crooked nose, face donkey-long, and pox-marked where the hormones went finger-painting my poor mother.
“How could this happen? You’ll have porcelain skin as soon as we can see a dermatologist.” “You sucked your thumb. That’s why your teeth look like that! ” “You were hit in the face with a Frisbee when you were six, otherwise your nose would have been fine! ”
Don’t worry; we will get it all fixed she would say, grasping my face, twisting it this way and that as if it were a cabbage she might buy. But, this is not about her. Not her fault she, too, was raised to believe the greatest asset she could bestow upon her awkward little girl was a marketable appearance.
By sixteen I was pickled by ointments, medications, peroxides. Teeth corralled into steel prongs, laying in a hospital bed. Face packed with gauze, cushioning the brand new nose the surgeon had carved.
Belly gorged on two pints of my own blood I had swallowed under anesthesia, and every convulsive twist, like my body screaming at me from the inside out “What did you let them do to you? ” All the while, this never ending chorus groaning on and on like the IV needle dripping liquid beauty into my blood.
“Will I be pretty? ” Will I be pretty like my mother, unwrapping the gift wrap to reveal the bouquet of daughter her $10,000 bought her? Pretty? Pretty.
And now I have not seen my own face in ten years. I have not seen my own face in ten years, but this is not about me! This is about the self-mutilating circus we have painted ourselves clowns in. About women who will prowl thirty stores in six malls to find the right cocktail dress, but haven’t a clue where to find fulfillment or how to wear joy, wandering through life shackled to a shopping bag, beneath those two pretty syllables.
This, this is about my own some-day daughter. When you approach me, already stung-stayed with insecurity, begging, “Mom, will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? , ” I will wipe that question from your mouth like cheap lipstick and answer no.
The word pretty is unworthy of everything you will be, and no child of mine will be contained in five letters. You will be pretty intelligent, pretty creative, pretty amazing, but you will never be merely “pretty.”
When I was in high school I was on the debate team; I didn't argue with people, but I did what is called an individual event so named because I was the only person up there at any given time. Within the catagory of individual events I did Prose Interpretation and Poetry Interpretation. Now, what those are is exactly what it sounds like, I find a piece of writing fitting to me as far as character and situation and then I interpret it. It's like acting, but I don't especially become that character as much as I give that character a little piece of me. I portray whatever character,but I'm in there still. It's not as strict as theatre I guess you could say. So I dropped the class senior year, but not before I went to a competition where I heard this piece performed. And you know, the girl wasn't even that good, but the piece, my God, this piece had me on my knees at the end of it. The parts that are highlighted are the parts that did me in. I can't explain how it made me feel, because it's not like I experienced this with my mom, but just the words. "I will wipe that question from your mouth like cheap lipstick and answer no." sends shivers down my spine. It's powerful. Just another example of how words can make even the strongest break.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
HTML, anyone?
I had to take a quiz in History today, and I'm almost guaranteeing that I failed it. I don't try to not pay attention, it's just when you combine my add with the most boring and monotonous teacher teaching HISTORY together, it never ends well for me.
The worst part of History class though, was when we finished the test with 20 minutes left in class, and he kept us until the last minute possible droning on about the Russian Revolution which I now have no notes for because I was too irked to take notes. I turned to the girl next to me and was like, "Are you kidding me? Is this really happening right now?" The only up side to History class was that I learned not to judge a book by it's cover. See, the professor's computer wouldn't let him get on, so at the end of class, he got an ITS guy to come in and look at it, and at first glance, you wouldn't think that he knew his way around a beer can, he just had that Larry the Cable Guy style going on, but he also kind of fit the profile. Anyways, he gets on the computer and he's like boom, boom, click. enter, boom. click. click. enter. done.
And then I felt really bad because I thought about how I didn't think he would have a clue, but he was super duper good at it. And that got me thinking that I want to do something like that too, like Don does? So I decided to come up to the library and read up on HTML and other computer programming languages. It's not like I don't have loads of time on my hands or anything, so I figured, why not learn as much as humanly possible in college, all the while having fun and keeping my morals in tact.
The worst part of History class though, was when we finished the test with 20 minutes left in class, and he kept us until the last minute possible droning on about the Russian Revolution which I now have no notes for because I was too irked to take notes. I turned to the girl next to me and was like, "Are you kidding me? Is this really happening right now?" The only up side to History class was that I learned not to judge a book by it's cover. See, the professor's computer wouldn't let him get on, so at the end of class, he got an ITS guy to come in and look at it, and at first glance, you wouldn't think that he knew his way around a beer can, he just had that Larry the Cable Guy style going on, but he also kind of fit the profile. Anyways, he gets on the computer and he's like boom, boom, click. enter, boom. click. click. enter. done.
And then I felt really bad because I thought about how I didn't think he would have a clue, but he was super duper good at it. And that got me thinking that I want to do something like that too, like Don does? So I decided to come up to the library and read up on HTML and other computer programming languages. It's not like I don't have loads of time on my hands or anything, so I figured, why not learn as much as humanly possible in college, all the while having fun and keeping my morals in tact.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
My Two Cents
Am I the only one who absolutely loves that poem that I posted?
I swear, I get chills every time I read it.
It's wonderful.
Don't get me wrong, I can't really say that I understand every single line in there, but is that really the purpose of poetry? Does it really matter if out of all of Shakespeare's sonnets, plays and other writings that the only thing we can remember is the first line of Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" soliloquy, if we feel something when we remember that line?
To me it doesn't. See, to me when I think about poetry, I view it as art, art in written form. And with that definition in mind we then define art is something that illicits some kind of emotion. So by those two definitions, poetry = art. Everybody in agreement with that? Still together with me? Okay, sio if you read Hamlet's infamous soliloquy and don't grasp that the main idea here is whether he should kill himself or be a man and fight through his struggles, but you're reminded of the time you were going through an identity crisis with the opening lines of "To be, or not to be" and you feel some kind of emotion; good, bad, or otherwise, then it's okay. You got something out of it. Which I think that in the long run, is way more important than being able to accurately analyze lines 10 through 15 of Shakespeare's 51st sonnet, but that's just what I think about it.
On another note, I totally love how I had intended for this blog post to be about the poem I posted before and why I love it, and then talk about something else, but I sort of got off topic here. That's alright. This is my blog. I'll just save my ideas for another post.
xx, b.
I swear, I get chills every time I read it.
It's wonderful.
Don't get me wrong, I can't really say that I understand every single line in there, but is that really the purpose of poetry? Does it really matter if out of all of Shakespeare's sonnets, plays and other writings that the only thing we can remember is the first line of Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" soliloquy, if we feel something when we remember that line?
To me it doesn't. See, to me when I think about poetry, I view it as art, art in written form. And with that definition in mind we then define art is something that illicits some kind of emotion. So by those two definitions, poetry = art. Everybody in agreement with that? Still together with me? Okay, sio if you read Hamlet's infamous soliloquy and don't grasp that the main idea here is whether he should kill himself or be a man and fight through his struggles, but you're reminded of the time you were going through an identity crisis with the opening lines of "To be, or not to be" and you feel some kind of emotion; good, bad, or otherwise, then it's okay. You got something out of it. Which I think that in the long run, is way more important than being able to accurately analyze lines 10 through 15 of Shakespeare's 51st sonnet, but that's just what I think about it.
On another note, I totally love how I had intended for this blog post to be about the poem I posted before and why I love it, and then talk about something else, but I sort of got off topic here. That's alright. This is my blog. I'll just save my ideas for another post.
xx, b.
Shake the Dust-Anis Mojgani
This is for the fat girls.
This is for the little brothers.
This is for the school-yard wimps, this is for the childhood bullies who tormented them.
This is for the former prom queen, this is for the milk-crate ball players.
This is for the nighttime cereal eaters and for the retired, elderly Wal-Mart store front door greeters. Shake the dust.
This is for the benches and the people sitting upon them,
for the bus drivers driving a million broken hymns,
for the men who have to hold down three jobs simply to hold up their children,
for the nighttime schoolers and the midnight bike riders who are trying to fly. Shake the dust.
This is for the two-year-olds who cannot be understood because they speak half-English and half-god. Shake the dust.
For the girls with the brothers who are going crazy,
for those gym class wall flowers and the twelve-year-olds afraid of taking public showers,
for the kid who's always late to class because he forgets the combination to his lockers,
for the girl who loves somebody else. Shake the dust.
This is for the hard men, the hard men who want to love but know that it won't come.
For the ones who are forgotten, the ones the amendments do not stand up for.
For the ones who are told to speak only when you are spoken to and then are never spoken to. Speak every time you stand so you do not forget yourself.
Do not let a moment go by that doesn't remind you that your heart beats 900 times a day and that there are enough gallons of blood to make you an ocean.
Do not settle for letting these waves settle and the dust to collect in your veins.
This is for the celibate pedophile who keeps on struggling,
for the poetry teachers and for the people who go on vacations alone.
For the sweat that drips off of Mick Jaggers' singing lips and for the shaking skirt on Tina Turner's shaking hips, for the heavens and for the hells through which Tina has lived.
This is for the tired and for the dreamers and for those families who'll never be like the Cleavers with perfectly made dinners and sons like Wally and the Beaver.
This is for the biggots,
this is for the sexists,
this is for the killers.
This is for the big house, pen-sentenced cats becoming redeemers and for the springtime that always shows up after the winters.
This? This is for you.
Make sure that by the time fisherman returns you are gone.
Because just like the days, I burn both ends and every time I write, every time I open my eyes I am cutting out a part of myself to give to you.
So shake the dust and take me with you when you do for none of this has never been for me.
All that pushes and pulls, pushes and pulls for you.
So grab this world by its clothespins and shake it out again and again and jump on top and take it for a spin and when you hop off shake it again for this is yours.
Make my words worth it, make this not just another poem that I write, not just another poem like just another night that sits heavy above us all.
Walk into it, breathe it in, let is crash through the halls of your arms at the millions of years of millions of poets coursing like blood pumping and pushing making you live, shaking the dust.
So when the world knocks at your front door, clutch the knob and open on up, running forward into its widespread greeting arms with your hands before you, fingertips trembling though they may be.
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