Comp Assignment-The non-essay essay
I'm putting this up on my LJ but will soon create a filter for just this kind of stuff and my further writing both Comp and personal.
If you want to be on my writing filter, speak up. If you don't ... speak up too ... I added some of you based on past comments.
Where I Live.
From: Rod Landreth {scrwtape@sunflower.com}
To: Mark Stinson {mark.stinson@gmail.com}
Date: Feb 03, 2008 11:50 PM
Subject Re: Re: Salutations!
Mark,
I know we haven’t been corresponding long, but you asked some interesting questions in your last post to me. I hope I’ll be able to answer a few of them with this post.
When you looked over my profile on Livejournal you expressed fascination by all the various “geeky” interests I am involved in. For me, these “trappings” fuel my imagination. I think I spend most of my life in that faraway place long, long ago.
In some of my earliest memories of playing with my toys, I don’t mean with them in my hand going “vroom” or “whoosh,” but as them being something greater, more alive. I had a pet shark (hey, dinosaurs fascinated some kids … I jumped past them into carcharodon megalodon {en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalodon}, twas the time of Jaws and I was confronting my fears by understanding them) that I got on a trip to the Florida (that and a pair of orange mouse-ears were about the only good about *that* trip). He told me about life under the ocean, many of its creatures. I remember him walking and talking, moving about telling jokes.
Yeah, I know … now your questioning my “sanity.” I learned long ago (from an imaginary friend named Gary, mind you) that you’re not supposed to tell people about their existence. However, at 36, I don’t care anymore.
To me, I am more real and more … myself, when I am in my imaginary realms. I’m the Jedi with the resilient will during Vader’s pogrom who still strives to live up to the Jedi code. I’m the Incarnate of this Plane’s magic keeping the balances right and making sure nothing from places Man-Should-Not-Know oozes their reality-bending taint into ours. I’m a starship captain who with his valiant crew fights off an enigmatic race bent on consuming humanity. I’m the scion of an ancient fallen Seraph fighting against the denizens of the Hells with super-strength and two celestial shards in the form of Kukri’s. I’m the 12 foot tall werewolf that sees both the encroaching patterns and the tatters, and with his sorcerer lover try to break and mend them for their city. I’m an O’Jan Elgan warrior hunting a Tigron that ravaged my clan’s home. I’m a young stoner sorcerer pulled into a Fiendish Shallowing, protected by a Jock who was his enemy and now Bonded somehow to him.
All of these and much more are where I spend most of my time. I learn from them, and I think they shape me far more than this mundane place called reality. Sure, I know all of these are just coping mechanisms for this mean old world (you get physically abused for 13 years of your life and you can’t help it {shrug}) but aren’t these places much better and heck of a lot more fun?
This was a very difficult assignment, not the subject but the constraint. It could be no more than 2 pages. In MLA, that's only a few paragraphs! I wanted to do a "script" where I could actually show various "scenes" in my imagination. I had all these plans for "stage direction" and such ... all out the window the day I actually wrote the assignment. I'm upset ... but I also know I would have been more upset had i tried to cram a script into at most 3 pages.
Opinions, comments. Don't Grammar-nazi me ... that's not the point at this juncture. Did you like the piece and then why!
If you want to be on my writing filter, speak up. If you don't ... speak up too ... I added some of you based on past comments.
Where I Live.
From: Rod Landreth {scrwtape@sunflower.com}
To: Mark Stinson {mark.stinson@gmail.com}
Date: Feb 03, 2008 11:50 PM
Subject Re: Re: Salutations!
Mark,
I know we haven’t been corresponding long, but you asked some interesting questions in your last post to me. I hope I’ll be able to answer a few of them with this post.
When you looked over my profile on Livejournal you expressed fascination by all the various “geeky” interests I am involved in. For me, these “trappings” fuel my imagination. I think I spend most of my life in that faraway place long, long ago.
In some of my earliest memories of playing with my toys, I don’t mean with them in my hand going “vroom” or “whoosh,” but as them being something greater, more alive. I had a pet shark (hey, dinosaurs fascinated some kids … I jumped past them into carcharodon megalodon {en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalodon}, twas the time of Jaws and I was confronting my fears by understanding them) that I got on a trip to the Florida (that and a pair of orange mouse-ears were about the only good about *that* trip). He told me about life under the ocean, many of its creatures. I remember him walking and talking, moving about telling jokes.
Yeah, I know … now your questioning my “sanity.” I learned long ago (from an imaginary friend named Gary, mind you) that you’re not supposed to tell people about their existence. However, at 36, I don’t care anymore.
To me, I am more real and more … myself, when I am in my imaginary realms. I’m the Jedi with the resilient will during Vader’s pogrom who still strives to live up to the Jedi code. I’m the Incarnate of this Plane’s magic keeping the balances right and making sure nothing from places Man-Should-Not-Know oozes their reality-bending taint into ours. I’m a starship captain who with his valiant crew fights off an enigmatic race bent on consuming humanity. I’m the scion of an ancient fallen Seraph fighting against the denizens of the Hells with super-strength and two celestial shards in the form of Kukri’s. I’m the 12 foot tall werewolf that sees both the encroaching patterns and the tatters, and with his sorcerer lover try to break and mend them for their city. I’m an O’Jan Elgan warrior hunting a Tigron that ravaged my clan’s home. I’m a young stoner sorcerer pulled into a Fiendish Shallowing, protected by a Jock who was his enemy and now Bonded somehow to him.
All of these and much more are where I spend most of my time. I learn from them, and I think they shape me far more than this mundane place called reality. Sure, I know all of these are just coping mechanisms for this mean old world (you get physically abused for 13 years of your life and you can’t help it {shrug}) but aren’t these places much better and heck of a lot more fun?
This was a very difficult assignment, not the subject but the constraint. It could be no more than 2 pages. In MLA, that's only a few paragraphs! I wanted to do a "script" where I could actually show various "scenes" in my imagination. I had all these plans for "stage direction" and such ... all out the window the day I actually wrote the assignment. I'm upset ... but I also know I would have been more upset had i tried to cram a script into at most 3 pages.
Opinions, comments. Don't Grammar-nazi me ... that's not the point at this juncture. Did you like the piece and then why!