It's Where I Am That Matters

A.N. I wrote this story in 7th grade. One of the few that I really like. I forgot this even existed.

“See that dog?” the old man said, pointing towards a pack of black dogs, scrounging for meat “That dog will be the finest seller of wines and spirits you’d ever have seen”. I nodded in agreement, though I didn’t see how this could happen, and said “They’re unlike any dogs I’ve ever seen, already.” He chuckled and told me “Oh, that’s not all! It’s just the one. It’s the special one”.

My friends and I went out on The Freeway, that morning. We saw the dogs. The Freeway, of course, was a very deep state of sub-consciousness that was popular among children at the time. Not so many people go there anymore. On The Freeway, you were physically alone but despite the lack of people around you, you were still in contact with the people who came there with you. I probably should have mentioned that the freeway was a concrete road, suspended in the branches of a canopy that was so thick, you couldn’t see the sky. Endless. I have no Idea what made us so attracted to it but we were there and we had all seen the dogs. They ran right up to us and you could see their own future in their eyes. We couldn’t see each other or feel each other and there was certainly no trace of anyone else but for some reason, we could all see the dogs. They were with us.

I walked down the road, as I usually did and I found that the dogs plagued my thoughts. Of course they did. They had showed up in my sub-consciousness. And the dogs, unlike any I had seen before, were there for my life. My life to stay theirs. It kills me to leave it in the hands of others. But then again, wasn’t it always? I needed them out of my head. As we all knew, to get off The Freeway, you just have to jump off. Let it all be done and go back to your horrible monster of reality. Just jump off and that’s all.

You don’t remember exactly what it feels like after you’ve left The Freeway. When you yourself are in The Freeway, you can’t help but think that going there is just what you’ve been living for. And that the whole day was worth it. Some people go missing on The Freeway. You don’t remember how it feels but you always find yourself going back there. It can get to the point where you just can’t help it.

The wine I drank that day was bitter and tasted of ashes. As did all the wine I drank until the day I saw the dog again. It must have been many years later that I saw him. He was wearing a long, dark overcoat and a gentlemanly hat upon his sharp eared head. He looked like a man with business. He was a man with some purpose to his life and swiftness in every two legged step. I ran to him in a great admiration and said “You’re the dog! You’re him!” He looked at me in disgust as though I was discriminating against him for his possession of a dog’s body. “Show some respect,” he said. He eyed me suspiciously and then courteously nodded his head. “I’m sorry for any offense I caused you,” and bowing his head once more, he continued “I am quite famous for my accomplishments as a wine maker. What is it that you wish of me? I can offer you many things”. During this time, all that I could muster was silence. All I knew was that I wanted to taste the sour flavors of wine again and I was a fairly contented man.

We used to go fish in the river that waters the grapes, me and my friends. They told me that one side of the river was luck and the other side was skill. I tried fishing on both but I never caught anything as good as they did. The fish that I caught were the color of swamp dirt and ate the trash from the river. Some couldn’t get anything from the side of luck and had gotten their lines snagged in the grape vines. It was refreshing that I was better than some people. It a feeling almost half as good as I’d imagine The Freeway being.

The river was beautiful if you looked at it in the right way. In one way, it was muddy and full of scrap metal that people had thrown in but in another way there was beauty in that.

Schlachthof Fünf

Response to slaughterhouse five. The author wrote the book after he survived the firebombing of dresden, a famous massacre in world war two. This poem plays on some of the themes in Slaughterhouse five.


Today
a house burned down
Nobody was there to
start a fire
or end it
It just
happend

20 years ago
A world burned down
and I
hid myself
I saved myself
And nobody else.
Others died
They lived as I did

Today
my house burned down
and I can't complain

Not Much To Say

Looking back on some of the things that I wrote at the beginning of the year, all that I can think of is how terrible most of it is. While reading it, I would at times say “Wow” or “Oh my god” completely involuntarily. A lot of the stuff has remained off my blog and as I read it I feel thankful that it has stayed that way. Not only do these terrible stories reflect on my poor writing skills at the time but, me as a person as well.

One of my regrets about this class is, I didn't write much that I wasn't already being forced to write. Other than that, it was a pretty good class that helped me evolve the way I write into something that actually has a voice and not a complete monotone.

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. It reflects growth, I guess. I’m definitely not going to miss eighth grade, however. Actually, I might. High school is gonna be hard and I’m really glad that I did take the time to look over old stories. Makes me think that while you will never be the best, there’s always someone worse than you. Handle the problems that you already have. Trust me on this one, that really relates to this class.

Truman Show Response 1

I wrote a thing then turned it into a poem by pressing "enter" a bunch of times
It's called "Truman Show Response 1"

I like to stare
off into the distance.
Into far off horizons
so real that they
look like oil paintings.
When I'm looking at
those certain gleaming horizons,
they never change much.
Always the same picture
They are always perfect,
but I do not
Want to see them
for the rest of
my life. There are
other landscapes in places
that are far away
and those distant horizons
will lose their beauty
in the years that
I must stay here.

I don't really like it but, it's something to look at.

District Assesment

Many people have died for the sake of one. An uncountable amount of people gave their lives to a king. Millions have been slain in the name of a god that they didn’t believe in. Jane Yolen’s “The hundredth dove” is a story that shows how placing all of our trust into one god or government to fill a void in our lives can have terrible consequences such as disappointment or the death of others.
Some call their blind loyalty faith or patriotism. The main character in the story, Hugh, devoted his life to a monarchy, for reasons that were clear only him, blindly the kings every word. Not only did he give up his life as a master Fowler because of his undying loyalty but, he knowingly killed his kings fiance.
The Hundredth Dove represents a part of us difficult to accept, even to those as loyal as Hugh was. Our nature, where we choose to put out trust, matters more than we believe it does. At times it has shaped history. Other times it has changed lives.

Bukowski

this is the poem that my poem is based on
"A Poem for my 43rd Birthday"

To end up alone
in a tomb of a room
without cigarettes
or wine--
just a light bulb
and a potbelly,
gray haired,
and glad to have
the room.
and you turn over
to your left side
to get the sun
on your back
and out
of your eyes.
----------
My imitation poem

The wind is freezing
my face and the sheer
atmosphere of the
bars and neon lights
advertising beer
and a dark room for
you to drink it in
is even colder.
My shoes fill up with snow
My coat is torn and
I want to go back
to my cold bed
and my cold apartment
and be alone there
instead

Life of Pi Essay

Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi is, among other things, strongly anti-agnostic. While the book offers atheists a small amount of leeway, it condemns agnostics, deciding them to be without imagination and artistry. Pi, being of numerous faiths is, of course, a wonderful storyteller and a dedicated artist which somehow proves that agnostics aren’t either of these things.

Agnosticism is different depending on whom you ask. Some say it is a belief in God, but a statement that we cannot know the nature of God. Some people omit first half of the former definition, saying that God may or may not exist. Or, to many, it's a claim that we can never truly know if a God exists. Either way.

During the beginning of the book, Pi describes agnostics as doubtful and ignorant saying that “To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation”. He feels that agnostics are weak and unable to move forward in life however, for many agnostics, it is not about doubt and not knowing. It is about being honest that it is impossible to claim to know.

Pi is designed to be an open-minded character, not discriminating against any religion. The authors voice does shine through as it should in any book but it seems as though, Pi hardly recognizes agnosticism as a religion at all. While Pi does compare it to other religions it is almost shown to be lack of religion. What Martel fails to see is that agnosticism is not lack of wisdom, but the beginning of it.

Vonnegut story

One day, Hank couldn't breath. One day he woke of and was so sick of the world that he nearly suffocated. When he woke up he had trouble breathing and by the time he got to his art gallery, only a few blocks from his house, air would barely enter his lungs. he stumbled into his office looking for his phone and he, to his surprise, breathed. He wasn't breathing air. he can't anymore. Paint fumes are what saved his life.

Hank lives in a contained space, filled with various chemicals, paint fumes among them. things from his life that he has learned to adapt to. He does nothing but paint. It is almost as vital to him as eating and sleeping are to us but, he doesn’t care about that, he cares about art and when more paints are coming to him and when canvas is coming to him.

I am his caretaker. He can’t see me. To him I could be anyone -- any number of people. I get him his meals and serve it to him through a slot in the door, wearing a mask to make sure that the people in the real world don’t die.

Desert of cloth

A.N. what should I do at the end of the story? How should it continue

I walked over the dunes of shredded fabric, ripped apart by fierce winds and the ragged shoes of those who have also walked through the desert. I walked for miles. There were no signs of life. The only landmarks I came across was the occasional dead tree. If anyone else had passed through here, there was no way to tell. As I moved on, the hills became taller, the valleys became deeper and I felt as though the desert would never end. I reached the top of each mountainous hill, looked out across the desert. And kept walking
(something happens)
The city was strangely alive, though every aspect of the world it inhabited was dead. It's people wrapped in coarse, worn cloth to protect them from the harsh winds so that all you could see was their eyes, their hands, their feet. I felt strange, wearing only a faded overcoat and a pair of torn pants though, I did not draw their attention. I entered the flow of cloth dwellers and made my way through the crowded streets until I saw a structure that looked like it might have something to eat, something to drink. The sign hanging over the doorway was was written what didn’t look like writing at all but instead deep interlocking gashes in the wood that showed no comprehensible pattern or reason. I was in luck. The building I stumbled into was indeed a bar; however, I had no idea if I could even purchase any of the drinks here let alone force them down my throat. The bar was filled with patrons, . That should usually have been a sign that the food is alright but the constant burning sensation in my nostrils told me otherwise. Regardless, I walked up to the bar and, in a desperate effort to buy myself a drink, put all the money I had in front of what I assumed was the bartender. I only had a few dollars and I was certain that he had never seen the currency I laid in front of him but he went on and said a few words that sounded enough like a list of drinks. I rolled each possible beverage around in my head for a while and eliminated ones that sounded too foreign. I finally made my decision and let out a few syllables that sounded enough like drink I was ordering. To my surprise, the bartender turned around and filled a glass with water. The bartender then opened a cabinet to his right and then proceeded to add elements from a variety of different bottles and jars until the result was a liquid that looked like the bartender has filled a glass with mud from the bottom of a lake. My thirst got the best of me and I chose to stay. I watched as he slid the glass in front of me and watched me. I raised the drink to my lips and let the liquid flow into my mouth. Swallowing it was comparable only to having a large number of snakes crawl down my throat at once. My mouth went numb and soon that numbness spread across my face, down my throat, into my eyes.

Brave New World

Jared Abbott

Possibly

In the book Brave New World there is no God. There’s no religion, art, no music, no spiritual pilgrimages. “God is incompatible with machines,” we’re told. Eliminate suffering, and you don’t need God to give you comfort. In Brave New World, all of these things are sacrificed for happiness.

The protagonist in Brave New World likes a girl named Lenina but upon speaking to her, he finds that she is as shallow and empty headed as the next person. This is because the protagonist is one of the few people who has an individual Personality. Having these unique thoughts is one of the few things that separates human beings from machines. but that’s just the way Brave new world works. one big machine with everybody playing their part.

Aldous Huxley implies that by abolishing mental pain, people in brave new world have gotten rid of the most profound and sublime experiences in life. Instead of having the heavy burden of critical thinking and making choices, citizens choose the easy way out by taking government issued drugs like Soma that create a false sense of happiness.

Logically, Brave New World is far better than our own but, there is no real emotion. All thoughts and conversations and books are superficial. Other books on dystopian societies think that, to make it’s people thoughtless robots it would ban books. Aldous Huxley believed that there would never be an need to ban books. People just wouldn’t care enough to read them.

Waterloo Bridge. By Claude Monet

A.N. This story is supposed to reference Claude Monet's loss of vision later in life. just for those of you who thought the vision loss thing was out of randomness.

Almost dark and so foggy, I could hardly see. Was it the really fog, or was it my own eyes that were going. I’d left the car behind many blocks ago. My apartment had to be just ahead. Cars drive by, only visible by their headlights. I turn and look for my street at the crosswalk. The fog covers everything in sight. A small glimmer of light escapes from the clouds, if only for a brief moment, and flashes across the water. I can see the outlines of bridge leading to my apartment, shining on the horizon and I can see clearly. The black haze that usually shrouds my eyesight is gone. The sun completely separates itself from the clouds and for a brief moment, breaks through the fog. and then.. The clouds come back, enfolding the sun. the water is bleak, the fog blankets the city and I know, I will never see the water so beautiful again.

Fahrenheit 451 essay

Guy Montag represents a vision of American here there are no free thinkers. No people who spend time alone to read or think. A place where technology fills depression, love, every empty gap. Guy Montag lives in a world much like our own.

Even family is replaced by television. A popular program called “The Family” gives the viewer a spoon fed experience of what it is like to have an actual family. However The Family is not real. It is a superficial glance at what a family might be. although the television bradbury experienced was very different from the wall screens in Fahrenheit 451, television in the book is not all that different from television we experience today. People can get sucked in to it for many hours and not come out, go back to the same program, day after day.

In Fahrenheit 451 Montag’s wife is Vacant, Ignorant and obsessed with television. She has no love for Montag and see’s him only as a provider of money. This is the average person in Fahrenheit 451. Yet, Mildred is deeply unhappy. She’s severely bothered by the fact that her life is empty and filled with hours of mindless television. But in this world, it's Mildred’s job to be happy. In fact, it’s hard to say that anyone’s happy when they have no free will.

It is clear that even today we are close to this reality however, there are ways to avoid it. . we always try to overlook our problems and pretend that we can do no wrong but, to continue doing this is exactly what leads to Bradbury’s nightmarish vision of the future. But just as Motag stopped and thought about his life, so can we. We can break away from passive thinking and make our own choices and perhaps make a difference in which way we are going as a whole.

fahrenheit 451- beatty

Really, I think Beatty wanted to die. He understood the world around him better than Montag and knew that there was no way out of it other than death. It's ironic that Beatty, despite being the chief firemen is the most well read character in the entire novel. Beatty also seems to be making biblical references. Even when Montag gets away from the city, he's uncertain where he's really going and Faber is on a bus to a place that likely doesn't exist anymore. Beatty, in his old age, has actually tried to rationalize the dystrophic world he lives in by making a point against books. Beatty, I've always pictured as an older version of Montag. One that doesn't see hope in the world he lives in and has lost the will to live. Beatty only threatened and provoked Montag so that he could die. The only thing that separates Beatty from Montag is age.

Patriots essay

What is a patriot? A patriot is someone who serves his or her country but, to many words, there is a deeper meaning than a simple definition can show you. People all take the meaning of patriotism differently so, when you twist and bend the meaning enough, you get an end result that isn’t quite patriotism anymore but, ethnocentric. As America grows older, people bend the meaning of words like ‘patriotism’ more and more. So a question arises: does patriotism even still hold its original values or has it been debased beyond meaning?
What is a nation? A nation is the world? Yet, to many people, ethnocentrism has replaced patriotism. The love for their country is still there but, a love or even acceptance of others is not. Patriotism isn’t just confined to a single country. Aren’t all people on Earth our fellow countrymen? Though political borders decide our physical prison they will not decide the fates of our minds. Other denizens of Earth may not think as we do, speak as we do, they may not even like our ways of life but is killing and discriminating against others really what America stands for or was built upon?
What is a patriot? If you need to have meaningful definitions of the word then find anyone who devotes themselves to their country and their fellow man. Though the word ‘patriot’ is always flexible, will always bend to your will, a real patriot will not. A real patriot will stand by what he believes in right rather than conform to the will of someone who has no morals. Patriotism is a part of much deeper feelings. Some that has not even been put to words yet. When loyalties go that deep even the greatest wordsmith cannot bend them. For those feelings and emotions are not in his heart and mind and if they are, they are only on the surface. A true patriot is a person who respects all others. A person matters.