End of the year poem

Tough Transitions
Author's Note: It's the end of the year, and next year, I'm off to high school. I wrote this poem to show my thoughts on this transition.

What seemed so long went so fast

Weeks after weeks

All have blown away

You've made the best you could of this year

And now the thought of it ending hurts

This end bring you to a new beginning

A fresh start not far away

You know you can always visit your past

But are afraid the future will fill up your time

What if it's to hard?

What if  you never see the friends you've come to know?

Will this beginning tear away at what you love?

Each day feels longer

The time is approaching

So much lies ahead, but many amazing things drag you back to your past

The door opens up ahead, ready for you

But you still are figuring out if you're ready

Past or future?

Middle school or high school?

But do you really have a choice?

DWA Poem

At this moment

At this moment….everything is happening

At this moment, life is blooming

At this moment, death is creeping out of the shadows

At this moment, friends are laughing uncontrollably at the thought of an old memory

At this moment, someone is weeping where no one can see or notice

At this moment, marriages are sparking and celebrations are taking place

At this moment, divorce has started and once happy families tragically separate

At this moment, excitement spreads contagiously around, those with the disease thinking of their future

At this moment, depression and angry fill and overflow poor souls, leaving them helpless to its power

At this moment, goodness reaches new heights

At this moment, evil digs deeper and deeper trenches

At this moment….

DWA Essay

Trying to Change

Author's Note:This piece is for the District writing assessment  and I wrote it for a score in text analysis.

            Changing is a curse. But why do we try to change? People change to feel better about themselves. People change to impress others around them. Bernice does both of these. In “Bernice Bobs her Hair”, Bernice changes for popularity,  like in our society today and in different stories.

            The whole transformation of change started when Marjorie started criticizing Bernice. “No; for instance, you never take care of your eyebrows. They're black and lustrous, but by leaving them straggly they're a blemish. They'd be beautiful if you'd take care of them in one-tenth the time you take doing nothing.” In our society today, there are these kinds of girls. The “popular” girls. The ones that have evolved to new heights of perfection and always look at themselves as what the rest of us wish we could be. Marjorie tries to put herself above everyone else, by taking advantage of people and insulting them. Like when Bernice asks if her dress was ok, Marjorie just says “I didn't hint anything," said Marjorie succinctly. "I said, as I remember, that it was better to wear a becoming dress three times straight than to alternate it with two frights." Sadly this is what really happens today. Bernice changes because she sees herself with many flaws.

       Fitzgerald does a fantastic job of showing both viewpoints. For example, when Bernice first started to change, she’s not really sure about the idea. Later, she realizes that people like the way she’s changed and are beginning to accept her. But from Marjorie’s view of things, this is all a game. Find the “sad birds” in the crowd and dance with them to spark some attention. But isn’t this what people do today? Try to get attention? Of course! People just like having the spotlight on them, to feel like everyone is focused on them. But Bernice’s main way of attracting attention is saying that she’s considering bobbing her hair. “Do you think I ought to bob my hair, Mr. Charley Paulson?... Because I'm considering it. It's such a sure and easy way of attracting attention." is a frequently used quote of hers. And she even admits that she's just doing it for the attention. As the story progresses, Bernice seeks for popularity almost as much as Marjorie does.

      This sort of seeking for attention occurs in other stories like Stargirl and Ten miles past Normal. In Stargirl, Leo changes Stargirl to make her look cooler and fit in more. But soon she really tries to gain back her popularity. At one point, she's not even Stargirl anymore, she's completely different. In Ten miles past Normal,  Janie has always been a farm girl. She seems to slip into the background. When she decides to join the rock band, her reputation completely changes. Soon she realizes that her friend Monster is making her get attention. Both of these stories have someone who is trying to change for the attention.

     To conclude, this attention grabber is found in a lot of things, our society and our stories. Bernice’s new change may have gotten attention, but in the end it backfires. When she really bobs her hair, she understands that the change didn’t help with her image, it just covered up the real her.Trying to change for attention and popularity never ends up working, it just disguises yourself. 

Hemingway Story/ Short movie Analyse

Missing the Importance
Author's Note: We read "A clean, Well-lighted place" by Ernest Hemingway and watched the short movie about it in class. 

             Two waiters, one old man. In the story, these waiters are working at a bar, but there is one customer left that won't leave. The story really plays on light vs. dark, with the old man in the shadow of a tree and the waiters sort of in the light. We learn later that the younger, rushed waiter is really the light while the older waiter is the dark. The story has this feeling of trying to stay in the light.
             But the short movie a little different. In the movie, the old man is directly in the light. The whole idea of the old man being in the shadow was to make it look like he was trying to escape the darkness. The fact that he was completely in the light made it seem like he was ok, that  nothing was wrong. Also in the movie, they dragged out the part with the old man finally leaving. I sort of liked that because it had him almost disappearing in the darkness, which is what he was trying to avoid by going to the cafe. 
              The last part of the short movie was nothing like that movie. The gurgled  "nothing, nothing, nothing" part at the end was really annoying, but it made sense since all those people were in the dark. In the story, the older waiter gets a coffee because he wants to stay awake. As he says, "I am one of those who doesn't what to go to bed." But in the movie, he just gets some wine or something. I think the movie didn't really catch that the coffee was important. Overall, the short movie missed some of the important details of the story.

Stories Response

Mirror Reflection
Author's Note: In class, we read the two Hemingway stories "Indian Camp" and "A Clean, Well-lighted place". This is just a quick response on what I thought of the stories.

   Before even looking at his stories, we researched Ernest Hemingway. His life was full of action and adventure, but when it came down to it, he was just a man living in darkness. Suicide was part of his life, and of course his own death. His writing reflects this. The story "Indian Camp" is about a Indian woman who is giving birth, but her husband kills himself. The screams of his wife probably pulls him over the edge. This might have been how Hemingway lived, always hearing the screams. Feeling all the pressure of life pushing on him. In his story "A clean, well-lighted place", it is all about the light and the darkness in different people. Some people, like the old man, are stuck in the middle of these different worlds. By the end of the story, you realize the older waiter who hangs in the light also feels the dark. He may seem like an ok person, but on the inside there something darker. Ernest Hemingway reflects his own life and feelings in his writing. Reflects them like a mirror.

Poem O_O

Thoughts and Loneliness

Author's Note: We all have those classes, those classes with none of our friends. I wrote this because of the awkwardness of that class.

"She never talks"

Why?

Why would you say that?

Maybe

Maybe you should consider the facts…

Consider…

That I don't want to talk to you

That I am stuck in this awful class

Where none of my friends are here

I'm stuck

As far as "new friends"

I don't like the people here

They don't seem to like me

Consider…

That you all think you're so cool

You have stupid conversations

Over me

So I sit in the corner

Avoiding all of your eyes

I roll my eyes when you can't see

I mumble about you under my breathe

I am filled with relief when I finally get to leave

Consider….

That I'm just annoyed

As if a hated this class enough

Now these morons are here

They don't understand

How I feel

To be trapped like this

To have to come here every day

To have turn my shoulder to you

And use my hand to shield me from your dragon's fire gaze

Wouldn't that annoy you?

Maybe I feel trapped here

In my separate cage

Maybe you aren't

As AMAZING as you think you are

Because while you talk and laugh

I try not to scream

But what would happen if I screamed?

Would you notice?

Would you look at me weird?

Would you ask what's wrong?

Reading this, you might think, Let it go

But how can I?

It's every day

It's on my last nerve

So maybe I will "move on"

But I'll never forget

So I'll sit here

In my bubble of thoughts and loneness

Waiting for the bell to set me free

Symbolism Essay

The Dark, Dying Death
Author's Note: This essay is for my goal for idea development.

     The cold, bitter death; its feeling sweeps through everything. The awful feeling of not knowing what to do or say when death comes. When someone dies, part of you dies too. Wait, they left something behind, something dark behind. In the books Fever and Thirteen Reasons Why, the people who die leave something dark behind, as a reminder of their awful death.
      What the dead leave behind is the black liquid. It splatters everywhere, and even when the body is removed, it's still there. Waiting till it is scrubbed away. But how can you remove black from a white sheet? You can't. The death is always lingering. In Fever, this is actually what happens when yellow fever spreads. Thousands of souls leave behind their mark. It even smells of death, as described by the book.Emotions are left too. Mourning and misery leave Philadelphia in a ghostly gloom. The memories, like the black liquid, can not be scrubbed completely away. Mattie remembers some of the people who passed away in the fever, including her heroic grandfather. By just remembering these people, it makes them impossible to forget.
      A girl who killed herself leaves tapes. All have a story, one on each side. Tapes look sort of eerie, black and mysterious. You never know what you're going to hear until you press play. In Thirteen Reasons Why, Hannah Baker makes these tapes right before her death. They are passed around to people on Hannah's list, and when Clay listens to them, the words can never be erased. Like the black liquid, they probably will never be completely scrubbed away. But these tapes have a meaning, not just to make people suffer. To remember. To know why she left. To know what she had been thinking all this time. I mean, if you kill yourself, you wouldn't want people saying "Yeah, that girl was just plain crazy." No, you want them to understand through the dark tapes. Clay understand completely; during that one night, he is listening, regretting, crying, shaking, vomiting. Remembering. As the feeling goes through, he understand all the mistakes he made by not helping this girl feel....alive. So when she is dead, he follows her dead footprints around town to feel her there. To imagine her there. To remember her there.
      Both Fever and Thirteen Reasons Why have awful deaths that occur. That shouldn't have occurred. But in a way, the dead find a way to keep moving on. To be remembered and never be erased. Remembered by  their dark death. Even the people who survived the fever or listened to a dead girl's tapes still feel the suffering of those that have passed. They are never erased, but the people impacted by this still find a way to keep going on. They find a way to get past the dark, dying death.