Journal 4: Photo story

The picture I chose was a picture of me, my older sister, and my two older cousins. We are all basically babies. I am barely one. Every other child in the picture is unusually wide awake. Me on the other hand is as sleep as can be. I was told to tell a story about his picture. But the storyhas nothing to do with the paricular day. It is a story about family. This picture doesn;t hesitat to tell it like it is.

Journal 3: My favorite physical feature

My favorite physical feature is my eyes. But, then again, I think eveyones best feature is their eyes. Eyes are mysterious. Secretive. Sometimes very guarding. But, if you look close enough, they tell everything. Everything. I like to think you can look at someones eyes and know them. Experience their depths, if even for a moment. My eyes are brown. Light brown, almond shaped, and very large. But that's not all they are. They say somwhere down my long line of ancestry that somebody saw something surprising. Their eyes grew large and now my eyes are large. They are filled with little specs of blue and oulined in grey. Saying that I get alot of stuff in my eye. I'm very observant. The grey being the same color of murky water whose bottom you can't see. And I think you can't see how deep I am either. Depending on the day my eyes tell a different story. Sometimes they are understanding, sympathetic. Sometimes sad. But usually very dreamy. As if I am asleep even when I am awake. Yes eyes are very telling.
And very secretive.

Response 2: "How to tell a true war story" by Tim O'brien

I think that O'brien has the right idea. Being a writer I find myself in a position were I can't remember a key detail all the time. Instead of completely omitting it, I find myself having to fill in the details from what I feel, rather than with what I know actually occured. I always find that filling in the details gives my story a completeness it wouldn't have had otherwise. So what he says about basically sometimes having to tell a "lie" to accurately tell the truth makes sense. This can most definitely be applied to stories in geneal. I can't be made to believe that every author that ever wrote a personal story had it completely accurate. They just coulnd't have. But they know how the momment felt. They remember the momments entirety. So they tell what the felt and fill in everything else as they know it to be true. I like this story. It has a realness to it. O'brien says "I don't care what anybody has to say, I'm going to tell what I think". That boldness is something I truely respect from anyone, especially a writer. Overall, O'brien's style of writing may not be the most eloquent, but it easily hits home. He has the ability to make you feel something deep inside because he speaks to you like a close friend. In my opinion Tim O'brien really knows how to tell a true war story.

Journal 2: Favorite Childhood Place

My favorite childhood place on Earth is in my apartment. Not necessarily the whole apartment, but this one awkward area. There is a huge couch in my livingroom, so large that it goes from one wall, over the corner, and to the next. Where it passes the corner is a little triangle of space. But when I sit there it is huge. It automatically becomes somewhere different everytime. No longer a corner behind the couch. Sometimes I imagine its a house. I put pillows on top to make a roof. It's a nice cool breezy house. And its all mine. Sometimes its a car that only I can drive. But mostly. Usually. It's just a thinking place. A calm place where thoughts that swirled incontrollably before are calm and quiet and make sense. I sit here and think to myself how serene the entire world seems when you have your own place. A place of your own where you can escape. Escape even yourself. My favorite place in the whole world and it will be gone. Soon. It will leave when we leave this apartment. And then, I can only visit in my memmory.

This was written from my childhood point of view.

Response 1: Exerpt from The Names: by N. Scott Momaday

1. They are illusion-wind and rain revolve
And they recede in darkness. and disslove

2. They know, ain'it? The terrapins know
A day, two days, before, they go.

I chose these two specific pieces to respond to mainly because of their rhyming. Since not all of the exerpt rhymes. I feel the parts that do are stronger because they are poetic. I am very drawn to anything of poetic nature. I also like the first's use of imagery. As I read the words I can feel the wind and see the rain and darkness as it disappears. Finally, I also oddly enough enjoyed his use of incorrect grammar in the second. This connected with me on a personal level( because I often say the word ain't). But, it also gives a sort of bilingual quality to the exerpt. It speaks of his upbringing, background, and culture.

Journal 1: Childhood in the Park

The park I remember isn't much of a park. It is a playground from my elementary school. I went to John H. Vohr Elementary in Gary, Indiana. There is no other place on Earth like it. Every memmory I have in that playgroundd is warm. Just like the weather usually was. very warm. With floaty little pieces of cotton in the air. The sun was always beaming on certain little patches. Sometimes illuminating the green grass, and sometimes frying the concrete. As hot as it sometimes was, there was always a cool breeze. A breeze that ran through your hair and whispered fun in your ear. Different parts of the playground smelled differently. I smelled the logs of the log cabin, the trees from the nearby patch of forest, or aloe vera gel. There were aloe vera gel leaves in that forest and whenever we cut ourselves on the stick-a-bugs we would fill the cut with the oozy stuff from inside the leaf. I could always hear the pattering of young feet. Constantly. I could hear the screeching of the old swings. I could hear the swish of children going down the slide. Yet all these wonderful things are left behind, in another place. But maybe. Just maybe. Some other child on that playground at John H. Vohr Elementary in Gary, Indiana will share the same memmory as me. Share my memmory of the play ground.