Western Writing Round Up
I'm kinda excited about the happenings of today, which actually means yesterday, Wednesday. The morning wasn't so good, and I slept most of the day, but the evening was pretty awesome. What I just wrote sounds like I had a hangover, but I didn't, so now I'm gonna clear that up. The morning wasn't great because Rabbit said one of the most frightening things to me at about 6:30, and I broke down in tears on the Bekins porch. After that I showered and fell asleep on my lovely, smelly couch until 5:00 in the evening. Very refreshing. I went outside to try to make myself feel better, and to work on my first poem since I was in 5th grade. That's when things started getting better. As I sat on the lawn with my notebook and shiny pink pen that I would only use to write poetry, and honestly I'm pretty sure it has only been used to write poetry, this one particular poem, two published poets walked by. One of them, Paul Zarzyski, asked how my poetry was going. You see, we had met in my monday evening class a first time, and then again in my Tuesday morning class. He was aware of my struggle, and my fading yet longstanding hatred of poetry.
"I'm stuck," I said with a smile. He walked over to where I sat and crouched down next to me to see what I had come up with so far. I read him the one poetic segment I had written that I had planned to keep, and I showed him the poem that the segment originated in. He asked to read it, so I let him, expecting that he would find the same flaws that I did.
"What's wrong with this?" He asked to my surprise. "I wish you'd tell me because I don't see it."
That's my favorite part of that part of the day, so in less detail, the events that followed were thus: I pointed out the things I didn't like about my poem, and convinced him that they needed to be changed, and proceeded to take his advice on the lines I didn't like. I spent some time trying to figure out ways of improving the poem while eating a hamburger supplied by the other published poet, John Dofflemyer, for the community dinner which was, of course, barbecue. When my brain went numb I followed Topher up to my home floor and watched 5 courageous friends venture west on the Oregon Trail where they encountered a variety of nature's own WMDs such as raging rivers, broken bones, disease and exhaustion, yes exhaustion. There was even a case of death. The victim didn't survive.
This turned out to be a bad idea, though it was fun, since I was then forced to spend the first few minutes of the "Round Up" rewriting my poem so it could at least be legible. The readings commenced, and in the end I felt really good about the whole thing. I would explain more, but I really don't feel like it, since it is 5:12am. Or maybe I will continue since I've got nothing better to do, except maybe clean up the Johnston computer lab which is where I am at right now. Hmmm. . . The words are actually refusing to formulate inside my head, so I don't think I will tell the rest of the story, but I will say this night was probably life altering since it was the first time I'd ever read anything of my own to a good sized group of people outside of class, and it was also the first time I'd ever come face-to-face with a microphone, two of the actually. It was terrifying, but since I lived I guess I should move on to bigger, better things, like going to Disney Land. Cool place if you've never been there. Captain Hook himself tried to kidnap me the last time I went which was nearly a year ago when my high school marching band destroyed SoCal. Yeah, we were cool. That was also when I saw SpongeBob SquarePants walking around at Universal Studios. He is real, I saw him.
Wow, the things that are coming out of my brain and from my fingertips this morning are slightly bizarre. I can't tell just `what is sparking these seemingly random memories. I suppose this normal, but I'd never really thought of how strange it is before now. I quit. It's time to do other things since the keyboard has left the table and has situated itself on my knees which are bent just enough for me to be able to see the letters on the keys, and to have to hold it up with my left thumb and right palm. Done.
And since brevity is the soul of wit, I'll end here.
"I'm stuck," I said with a smile. He walked over to where I sat and crouched down next to me to see what I had come up with so far. I read him the one poetic segment I had written that I had planned to keep, and I showed him the poem that the segment originated in. He asked to read it, so I let him, expecting that he would find the same flaws that I did.
"What's wrong with this?" He asked to my surprise. "I wish you'd tell me because I don't see it."
That's my favorite part of that part of the day, so in less detail, the events that followed were thus: I pointed out the things I didn't like about my poem, and convinced him that they needed to be changed, and proceeded to take his advice on the lines I didn't like. I spent some time trying to figure out ways of improving the poem while eating a hamburger supplied by the other published poet, John Dofflemyer, for the community dinner which was, of course, barbecue. When my brain went numb I followed Topher up to my home floor and watched 5 courageous friends venture west on the Oregon Trail where they encountered a variety of nature's own WMDs such as raging rivers, broken bones, disease and exhaustion, yes exhaustion. There was even a case of death. The victim didn't survive.
This turned out to be a bad idea, though it was fun, since I was then forced to spend the first few minutes of the "Round Up" rewriting my poem so it could at least be legible. The readings commenced, and in the end I felt really good about the whole thing. I would explain more, but I really don't feel like it, since it is 5:12am. Or maybe I will continue since I've got nothing better to do, except maybe clean up the Johnston computer lab which is where I am at right now. Hmmm. . . The words are actually refusing to formulate inside my head, so I don't think I will tell the rest of the story, but I will say this night was probably life altering since it was the first time I'd ever read anything of my own to a good sized group of people outside of class, and it was also the first time I'd ever come face-to-face with a microphone, two of the actually. It was terrifying, but since I lived I guess I should move on to bigger, better things, like going to Disney Land. Cool place if you've never been there. Captain Hook himself tried to kidnap me the last time I went which was nearly a year ago when my high school marching band destroyed SoCal. Yeah, we were cool. That was also when I saw SpongeBob SquarePants walking around at Universal Studios. He is real, I saw him.
Wow, the things that are coming out of my brain and from my fingertips this morning are slightly bizarre. I can't tell just `what is sparking these seemingly random memories. I suppose this normal, but I'd never really thought of how strange it is before now. I quit. It's time to do other things since the keyboard has left the table and has situated itself on my knees which are bent just enough for me to be able to see the letters on the keys, and to have to hold it up with my left thumb and right palm. Done.
And since brevity is the soul of wit, I'll end here.