Free Writing

Select a much older or deceased person who has meaning for you. Describe what this person looks like as if you have a photograph in front of you. Give the facts as you know them to be. (date and place of birth, where he/she lived, who he married, how many children she had, what he did for a living, what she is famous for, how and when he died, etc.) Include a short piece describing an experience you had with this person, or an experience with this person that someone described to you.

When I knew James Femister, he was old, he had gray, average length hair, a few inches maybe. It’s a little more gray than white. He had a large, round nose, and a few pimples dotting his face. He had dentures for his top teeth, but you often couldn’t tell until he popped them out to show you. He always had on his white button down shirt with a few little stains on it, and khaki pants. I don’t know where he lived when he was young, I believe somewhere in New York. He was born on September 19^th. He married a woman who, before he married her, was named Dolores Henry. He and Dolores had two children, James and Jean. (Jean Femister then went on to marry John Coté.) He was once a food scientist, he worked a lot on creating almond substitute for people who were allergic to almonds. He did all sorts of strange experiments in his garage and basement, making strange pasts and cancer causing black dust. He wasn’t famous for anything, at least not to my knowledge. Once, when my immediate family and I were vacationing to FA for a week, my parents decided that the option that would be the best for the well being of my hamster would be for it to stay with my grandparents for the week. The week turned into two weeks, then two months, then two years. Once during that time period I went to visit them, and decided that I wanted to take a look at (formerly) my hamster. My grandpa picked it up, and put it directly down his shirt. His shirt had been tucked in, so the hamster just sort of ran around in its little pocket. I looked at him, dumbstruck for a few moments, then laughed. Yes, he was a little strange, but he never caused anyone any harm.

Workshop

To be honest, I have never really gotten used to sharing my writing with others. No matter how many times and high school we would have our "peer evaluation sessions" it still made my cheeks light up red and burn. Even then, it was mostly essays, mostly concrete facts that I could defend, that I could reason for, but not this time. I very rarely, if ever, share my creative work with others so this workshop was a very different experience for me. A lot of the comments were concerns that I had already had, but it's hard to put that across when you're not allowed to speak. It was also a little overwhelming, trying to keep track of 11 voices at once, especially when they're all saying different things. I think maybe it would be beneficial to have face to face sessions with more than one peer beforehand, because it seemed like there were a lot of differing opinions which make it a little difficult to come up with revisions that satisfy both viewpoints. I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it, looking back, but it was definitely an interesting experience to have.

Lost In Translation (Just a heads up, there are movie spoilers in here, a little.)

I must say, I enjoyed it at first, the way it looked at people. I thought it was really funny, I found myself laughing a little too loudly at things, hoping not to disturb my neighbors. It shocked me, at first, how different Japanese culture seemed from our own, and it is different, somewhat, but then I realized that a lot of things are the same. As I watched Rob Harris watch TV I thought, oh, there's nothing like that on American TV, people trying to feed other people spaghetti in awkward positions, but I thought about it a little harder and thought, oh wait, what was Double Dare and all those other kid game shows. A lot of things are similar. I liked it right up until he slept with the singer. That red haired devil. It made me so angry, how could he share so much beauty and care with the one girl but sleep with another....I couldn't stand it. It made the emotion seem less valid, it made him seem so lost, I was so lost. The moments that he and Charlotte share were so poignant, so wonderful, it made me remember that there are people in the world that are still searching, still defining what they're meant to be and who they're meant to be with. It was beautiful, up to a point.

jellyfish, fireworks, engagement rings

A couple in an aquarium on the Fourth of July?
No, Vietnam.
According to this war hero, jellyfish move like death feels, only dead people are heroes, and you don't mess with the vietcong. Those are the essential points that I got out of this movie, Little Dieter Needs to Fly. Before I began watching the movie I was unaware that it was a documentary. It was so raw, the cinematography and soundtrack so strange....its lack of flare did not contribute to its drama in any way. At least the chapters made the plotline obvious...but really, the subject matter was much more exciting than the grey/blue slides with white text made it seem. The horror, the pain, the endless torture, the despair, it was certainly beyond anything I would like to imagine. Who wants to become a pilot because THEIR VILLAGE IS BOMBED?! It wasn't like, "oh, I want to be a pilot because I want to fight back," he just thought it was godly. And then he talked about peeling potatoes for years in the military, and I thought that was sad. Oh no. Once he finally learns to fly and gets sent over to Vietnam, they shoot his plane down, and somehow he survives, tortured and beaten but hopeful, for MONTHS, before he is rescued. The whole story is dramatic, but when they started playing freaky weird music right in the middle of his dialogue, it lost a little bit of impact for me. I mean, come on, the documentary is about this guy, let the man talk! And that music, oh, that music, how weird can you get? It was sort of like a combination betwen a baby crying and rhythmic shouting. My favorite parts, however, were the aforementioned nuggets of wisdom. Right before death you feel like you're walking through this thick media....jellyfish=DEATH. You don't mess with the Vietcong. Nuff said. And only dead people are heroes, and therefore he doesn't think of himself as a hero. Well I was glad for that one. He has some interesting stories, and what they did to him was obviously beyond the realm of sick and evil, but the movie itself was not so stirring. They should have either cut out all of their ridiculous cinematics or played it up Hollywood style. It amazed how it could be so depressing but terribly boring at the same time...maybe the fact that they could make torture and imprisonment boring was sad in and of itself. So, ultimately, definitely not a movie that I would call an upper, and as a final rating on a scale of friggen awful to the best thing ever, I would give it a "meh".