Darnel Don’t Read Good
“Yo Angela, whachya writin?
“Oh nothin special, just some poems for class, thoughts and things.”
“Poems, sounds like nerd stuff. Whadaya doin that fo. We goin to da movies wit da boys and they girls so drop that shit less go.”
“Shit? Uh, excuse me prince charmin but I’d rather be writin this “shit” all up and down the sidewalk fo the world ta see before anyone see me witch yo ignant ass out at a movie. You know what Darnel if you got a problem with me expressin myself then why don’t you go express yo self wit some trashy hoe up the block. These are my words and they mean somethin ta me.”
“Awe come on baby, I didn’t mean it like that. Shit, uh, baby, I thought you wanted ta see the girls is all I’m sayin. I mean if you wanna write n shit instead of goin out we can jus chill here, before yo parents come home.”
“Boy take yo damn hands off me, whatsa matter wichyou. Can’t you understand whas commin outta my mouth. You ain’t bein the man I need right now, you ain’t bein a man at all. As a matta of fact Darnel lately all you been is juss some uneducated thug. You out wit those no good pushers pullin gang shit when ya should be goin ta county like ya said you would.”
“I told you girl, I ain’t got no money, gotta have money ta go to school.”
“The way you wearin that ice on yo neck and those rims on yo car don’t say you broke. It ain’t yo wallet that’s empty, it’s yo big head.”
“But baby…”
“Shut up, sit down, and listen. This is a poem I wrote, and I’m tryin ta make it mine, with my own voice, and my own words. This comes from inside me, and it’s very special. I want you ta hear it cuz I want you to understand somethin, and if you want anythin ta do with me for the rest of my life you’ll pay attention, no questions asked.”
Well, it is a fine day on the set.
The sun shines between the run down flats
boarded up, my people hiding out in the dark.
No, I ain’t got no money when I wake up,
put pants on, put shirt on, not much to choose from.
Breakfast is a luxury whenever I make some extra doe
otherwise it’s off to work we go.
And I work harder than the clowns at city hall.
But my jokes are funny
and theirs make my home girls homeless.
I work like well tuned piano played by mozart,
like the mule driven by a tired slave.
I work like gods magic
when I need a paycheck to keep my petty apartment.
No, I aint got no money when my work is through.
When my work is through, thats a laugh.
I pedal my way past the pushers to class.
But school ain’t so bad
when it’s time for me to push and pull my pen
around the corners of my soul,
and take myself off the block,
off the grid
into a world I aint never seen before.
before I have to come back to my place,
notice the bills on the floor.
“Naw naw naw girl it didn’t rhyme right”
“Get the hell outta here Darnel, and say hey to those trashy hoes up the block fo me.”
Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I waited till the last minute to do a lot of blog entries. I shouldn’t have, it was silly. But I bet I wasn’t the only procrastinator. I’m sure there’s a few other Writing arts students who just felt they had better things to do. Well, I guess I wish that these were checked every week, that way I would not have to do nine of them today and tomorrow. Oh well, no ones fault but mine. I do have one suggestion for Writing Arts Processors on how to make this mandatory blogging better; Let the students sign up to whatever blog they want. Don’t worry about them writing about the reading, we talk about them in class anyway. This way they may have a greater interest in what they are writing as well as more diverse feedback from various peoples.
Get me out of here
Wow, I am so tired of writing. It feels like these past three weeks I’ve been doing nothing but writing papers, notes, last minute projects, an then studying what I’ve written. I think everyone could use a month to chill with the friends and family. Really, my brains are dribbling out onto the paper and I need a break. You would think we are being graded on the word count of our documents, because a lot of these last minute assignments I keep getting contain very simple questions and ideas, but I am expected to write pages and pages about it when the real answer is only a few paragraphs long. Ugh, I want to go home and sleep.
Directions
I was just making mac and cheese and I realized how much information I could get from reading the packaging. First I read the big “Macaroni & Cheese” sign hovering over a big bowl of the orange goop. In between the two, a little smaller, it claims to be “the cheesiest,” although it doesn’t matter if it is or not. The advertisement stands. It even says “dinner” on it but I am eating it around lunch time. It was produced, “published,” by Kraft. On the one side of the box I see the nutritional facts, but I don’t read those, don’t want to know. The other side is the important side. It has the directions. Reading these tells me exactly how to make them. We can accomplish so much from the knowledge of written directions. First I have to boil water, then dump in the macaroni for about 7 minutes. Next I strain the noodles. Finally I put the noodles, the cheese, and the margarine all back in the pot and mix well. Whoever wrote this knew what they were doing. Without written language I would probably have to interpret how to make it from pictures, and that just would not be specific enough. We have formed this language to tell us just what we need to know, and then some.
Writing Crimes; Graffiti
Graffiti is another form of writing, but instead of pens and paper the author uses spray paints on concrete structures. It’s also a lot of fun. My friends and I often go out at night down to a tunnel that used to support train tracks. We’d also write and/or draw stencils around town. It’s pretty harmless as long as you choose your positions tastefully, but it is against the law so if you decide to write on concrete, be careful. Check this site out, it’s a big collection of works by various artists to give you some examples of style.
Poetry
I wrote a poem in free form for Creative Writing and just had to edit a line of it so I could submit it into my portfolio. Editing a poem? I feel like that shouldn’t be allowed unless it was the author’s choice. Anyway, I decided to post it to feel a bit better about my creativeness!
The first line used to be: The moonlight held my gaze,
The moonlight trickled down,
As the grass cradled my body.
The crickets chirped,
and the conviction in their song was unmistakable.
Then came the rain.
Oh, how it fell.
As each drop passed me by,
oh how it soothed my body.
If only to show,
what I could never have.
The blog in comparison.
I was watching a re-run of Frasier last night as is my usual choice of TV if I’m awake at midnight. Most people are familiar but I’ll briefly summarize: Frasier is a radio talk show host from Seattle with a psychiatry degree who listens to problems of callers-in and offers advice. As I watched the show, last night’s episode featuring a particular caller on his radio show that went along with the storyline, it reminded me of blogging.
The blog is seemingly the remediation of the radio talk show format that has been around probably since the creation of radio. In the radio talk shows, the host offers their own opinions, speaks about whatever is on their mind or perhaps follows a particular topic (Frasier for example is a psychiatrist, Howard Stern, well, he’s got his own thing going on, etc.). Then listeners call in with questions or comments of their own to carry on a conversation among people, often strangers, over a large geographic setting. The show is a scheduled program that followers know they can tune into when they expect it to be on.
The blog is quite the similar format but through a different medium: the internet. The “host” of the blog, the blogger, writes about whatever may be on their mind or a designated topic that categorizes the blog (such as this is a writer’s blog, we’ve committed to blogging about writing and related subjects). Blogs offer a comment or reply option for anyone to respond to postings. This parallels the act of callers participating in the radio show. And the blogger can always go back and respond to the comments of course. So a conversation among strangers over a vast geographical setting (even larger than the reach of a radio show because the internet pages can be accessed worldwide) takes place. Sometimes the blogger schedules a posting time so followers know when to check for updates (such as PostSecret which updates weekly on Sundays). The blog is an improvement to the radio talk show format in continuing a conversation because a blog never has to sign off or take a break whereas the radio show must either end at a certain time or give the host a break. A blog is unrestricted on time limits but serves the same purpose as the radio talk show.
I thought this to be an interesting parallel that I have yet to hear anyone else comment on. This could be used as a future example in teaching remediation: how the blog is the remediation of the very old radio talk show. Just a thought. If this turns into anything, I want the credit.
Oh my aching fingers
Damn, this semester just won’t die! Seriously, I’d love to take a small break from writing but it’s just not possible cause I still have to do stuff like this. Always writing writing writing writing writing. I guess I can’t complain though. I mean, it is what I wanted to do with my life after all. I wouldn’t say I’m exactly living my dream but I suppose this is a start.
Anyway, I didn’t really have a focused topic for this post since I was up til 7 am and my brain is a little fried. I just wanted to throw the question out there that to the rest of my group as to whether they wanted to keep this blog alive after the semester ends. I don’t have much blogging experience, except the one man blog I made for writing research and technology which wasn’t any fun because talking to yourself on a blog defeats the purpose. I like having a place to write where I know that people come by and read it. I don’t even care if they’re really that interested, but every now and then one of y’all will comment on what I write and I like having that. Really, I feel like if this were less of an obligation and more like something I can do on the side, I’d be more interested in this. Some of you may feel the same way, some of you might not, just let me know.
Revising and Editing… OY!
My stomach is in knots. I just handed in a final copy of a short story I wrote for Creative Writing. I’ve decided revisions are my least favorite thing in the world. Granted I’ve never written a perfect first draft, but geez revising and editing is so boring! My story was something along the lines of a priest murdering 11 others and then himself, while Death narrates. My whole class read it and we work shopped in it class. While they were very helpful about encouraging me to fix some parts of the story, it also made my editing a lot harder since I had to keep in mind all of their opinions. Some of the things I didn’t want to change at all, and then realized that I probably should listen carefully to my professor’s suggestions since she’d be the one to grade it. I’m pretty sure I never want to read that story again, and I’d love to never find out the grade I receive on it. Not to mention that besides being stressed, I’m completely drained. I think editing does that to a person; it makes them want to sleep for days. Maybe I’ll try doing that this weekend!
A poem, just because
Here’s a little something something I wrote a few weeks ago. It’s nothing special, I just decided to thro together a poem one night. It’s kind of uncharacteristic of me because I’m not a real huge fan of poetry. Never been into reading it so much and have always hated writing it, but every now and then I get in a mood to write a poem. Go figure. Here it is:
For all that I am
I have little to show,
Strived hard to become this
but it’s taken its toll
Come a ways down this road
without a heart on my sleeve,
Withholding all my passion
til I burst at the seam
Growing intrinsic to this
I’ve started to turn cold,
Yearning for that fire
to keep from getting old
Goals always on my mind
they border on fantasy,
They’ll never satisfy me
til they gain tangibility
In this shallow world
to survive requires credential,
But time is my enemy
and it corrodes my potential
As a slave to its whim
I can only press on,
To sharpen my mind
til my faults begone
I’ll continue my own path,
this I swear by my pen,
To become the man I want
apart from all other men.
I’m pretty sure Robert Frost is turning in his grave right now. I don’t know how to write poetry, I just kinda gave it a whirl for no particular reason. I like it though. It’s raw and it sums up exactly how I’ve felt throughout most of this semester. I’m think I may just dabble in it a little more sometime soon and see where I can take it.
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