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.