Vocab Poem

Vrrr thump. Vrrr thump thump. Little scraps of paper, an old staple, a crusty old cheerio all vacuumed away. Man that car was bedraggled. Call it what you please asinine, naïve, or stupid but inside the left cup holder next to the drivers seat were three little microcosms of my world. They were small balls of clay, perfectly shaped and as colorful as a rainbow. I had given them to my mom after she had picked me up from pre-school. Bright Beginnings. They sat in the cup holder for a long time. Simple symbols of love. I would take them and roll them in my hands and even though the sun had baked them into hard flaky balls they still retained that smell- that smell of youth. Got everything you need Mam? It will take about twenty minutes; you are welcomed to wait in the lobby area. A strange mixture of fake pine scent, citrus, and cigarettes hung heavy in the air. Soft somber muzac played. The receptionist looked like a wax figurine a small permanent counterfeit smile tattooed on her face. Where’s Waldo was growing old and it was time for our car to go through the obstacle course of foam, fans, scrubbers, and rubbers and I was going to have a front row seat. There she was- the old Plymouth Voyager undergoing another gallant journey. And as she emerged through the flaps of an all to familiar expedition my heart sank. I had abandoned them there, forlorn and nonpareil to the sucking, washing, and drying of the car wash. No sir I didn’t get everything I needed- my childhood dreams were still sitting in the cup holder. MOM! I left them in there! Do you think they swept them up!? What are you talking about honey? The clay pearls I made! Oh, I’m sure they are still there, now calm down we are almost out of here. A cool pseudo reassuring smile and a fraudulent pat on the hand. Cha- Ching! That will be Thirteen Ninety Five Mam. Would you like them to wax it for an additional four ninety-nine? Please say no! Please say no! Please say no! I just want to get out and see if they are still in there please please please let them be there. No, another time maybe. Thank God! I looked up and caught one of the counterfeit smiles. A mad dash to the car unlock the door unlock the door! There not there. Oh, honey you can make more. My childhood dreams that smell of a carefree youth with no worries but only hope- replaced with a complementary artificial pine scent air freshener. Come See Us Again. Have A Great Day.

Music essay

You know a song is great when then first time you listen to it the world stops and for those couple minutes the beat overtakes your body and from deep inside your bones you feel alive. You know an artist is great when he changes the face of music forever and in the process creates a counterculture movement that alters history. Bob Dylan epitomizes this greatness.
Although influenced by blues artist Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie and Jesse Fuller, responsible for inspiring Dylan’s famous harmonica rack and guitar, Bob Dylan is most known for the many artists he himself has inspired. From John Lennon, Patti Smith, and Bruce Springsteen all the way to Bono and David Bowie Dylan’s influence can be seen across the music spectrum. Which leads to the question: what is Bob Dylan’s music genre? I do not believe this question can be answered, I believe if someone does categorize him in one specific genre it would go against everything Dylan stands for. On Dylan’s never ending recreation artist Bono says it best, “Dylan has tried out so many personas in his singing because it is the way he inhabits his subject matter. His closet won't close for all the shoes of the characters that walk through his stories.”
I, along with the rest of the nation and world, have been deeply effected by Dylan’s song Blowin’ in the Wind. The song has a very spiritual rhythm to it, Dylan even sung it at a Catholic Church Congress in 1997.The rhythm comes from an African American spiritual song called “ No More Auction Block”, because of this, the song became one with the pulse of the civil rights movement of the sixties. Throughout the song Dylan ask many questions such as, “how many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? And how many times must a man look up before he can see the sky?.” These deep meaningful questions all receive the same response, “ The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind; the answer is blowing in the wind.” The entire pace of the song mimics the wind blowing, causing us to feel the wind and words of the song and know the answer without knowing. In these lyrics, Dylan is letting us know, that much like how we cannot see the wind we also cannot see the answer to our problems. However, if we reach out and feel the wind we will feel the answer within our hearts, but this will not be easy, just like the impossibility of grasping the wind.
No one can deny Dylan’s greatness when he wrote the worlds best protest song in just ten minutes. Blowin’ in the Wind conjures questions of humanity, freedom, love, peace and war. The song became a very powerful instrument at many anti-war protests during the Vietnam War, and even today has been sung at protest against the war in Iraq. Countless artist including Elvis Presley, Stevie Wonder, and Dolly Parton have covered the song. The song has also been covered in many different languages and referenced numerous times in pop culture. This song left such a mark on society that the Rolling Stones is not only naming this song the greatest of all time and Dylan himself the greatest singer of all time. Bob Dylan has changed music, as we know it, and all for the better.

This piece of hypnopaedic media is based on the phrase: You’ve got to have better than the best; you’ve got to have better than the rest. This phrase epitomizes our society, which thinks that in order to be successful you must be best and that means having the best, having more than the rest. The phrase pushes societies message of consumerism and the need to have more than what is necessary. I utilized pictures of large fancy objects to show the best of things; then I came back and showed the same objects just extraordinarily excessive. Also, the pictures and words flash and move quickly in order to hold the viewers attention, mesmerize, and convince them that they need the best and even better than that. The phrase rhymes making it catchy and uses parallelism to make it easy to remember. Finally, the video is set to a fast passed song in which the singer continually screams, using the most out of his voice, “I’ve got to find a better way.”

Dramatic Monologue

I do not want it
But I need it
I so desperately need it

I feel as it puts those weights on my eyelids
Making them heavier
Heavier now
Heavier

But I fight
I resist
It is my nature
It is my only choice

It takes every ounce of me-
But I do it

It is the beast of the night
But it can’t consume me
I am stronger than it
But Oh! How I wish I were weaker

It has been twenty nine hours now
Since I have had even a moment with you

I hear it calling out my name
It started as only a whisper
But there is a pounding in my head now
A pulsating pain running through my veins
A cold shiver down my spine
I can hear it in my ear
Now- screaming my name

See what I used to be like
Smiling
Laughing
Joking

Not anymore
These feelings have been replaced
Cranky
Angry
I am going to snap at any moment

I hear them talking about it
She got six
He seven
And that one ba$%@&* nine

NINE! HE GOT NINE!
And I- none
I can no longer think
It has finally taken over

I am going to have to give in
To break down
To lie down
To let it consume me

Here I lie
Prostrate on the bed
My eyes wide shut

Sleep is a fickle monster.

college essay

A fascination with color occurred within me the first time my mother set me down at the two foot tall yellow table with blue trim and a matching blue chair. She sat me there with a bright white sheet of paper and a pack of twenty-four vastly different brightly colored crayons just screaming to be used. At first, as any child, I grabbed randomly at all the crayons and went to town scratching the points across the paper and snapping the thin bodies in half, but as I grew older and continued to use color throughout my life, the process of picking which crayon I wanted became more important, for now the color carried another meaning besides the name stamped on its wrapper.

Yellow instantly attracted me. Bright and flashy, it easily caught my eye; however, as I looked back on drawings done in yellow, the color has lost its luster. I strained my eyes to spy the faded brilliance. Yellow represented times when I jumped in feet forward, disregarding the florescent cautionary tape. Once- at the ripe old age of eight, I experienced a “marigold” moment in the kitchen as a young chef. It was my uncle’s birthday, and my aunt sang happily as she made his cake while my cousin and I played outside. I ran inside for a quick drink of water and saw the mixer beating away. Next to the mixing bowl sat a supposed- nice, sugary, light, fluffy substance resembling icing. I drew a spoon out from the drawer. I dug deep into the bowl and piled the spoon high with “icing”. It went directly into my salivating mouth. Oh! What I tasted sure shocked me! Instead of a light, sugary delectable treat, I got a thick mouthful of unsalted sweet cream butter! Thus, yellow became a color I used sparingly, highlighting important aspects of the sketch.

In the seventh grade, I pulled a dark green crayon from the box. At first I liked it very much. Its endless possibilities paralleled my fascination for its rich color. However, I quickly learned that this alluring depth and darkness had its downfalls. My mother had always warned me of the power of this color, but I never truly understood. In middle school I had gone to school with the same group of children for about eight years, but somehow, seemingly overnight, things took a drastic turn, and I stood on the outside looking in. The girls began to talk of their new designer purses their mothers had bought them that had cost roughly two hundred dollars. New jeans now cost three hundred- not twenty dollars. I could not comprehend those numbers; my shirt, pants and purse from the discount store had cost less than her pair of jeans and suddenly that made a difference. I became completely distressed by this and my mother, wanting to make me happy, decided she would treat me to a shopping day. My mom took me to the designer store where she withstood the blasting music and bit her tongue as girls my own age walked by scantily clad and looking an easy ten years older. There, we purchased three new shirts totaling just about how much we spent on groceries for the week. About two months passed and it became evident that I only had three of these designer labeled garments, yet it seemed that the other girls never wore the same shirt twice. I began to feel entitled to these expensive things and developed an attitude about not getting them. I refused to wear my discounted clothes, so my mother decided to pack them up and bring them to our local abused women’s shelter, and she forced me to go with her to drop them off. This was one of the best things she ever did for me because there I saw the women so appreciative of my used clothing. In that parking lot, as I unpacked the boxes of discounted used clothing from the car and handed it to the smiling thankful women, the green crayon I had been holding slipped from my hand and shattered into a million pieces before me; I became happy, for I now understood my true source of wealth lived in generosity. Once I stepped back and looked at the paper, I easily noticed how the greedy green overpowered my sketch, forcing me to learn one of my most valued lessons -the importance of sharing this particular color with others.

The next crayon I chose happened to be the one that usually remains unused- white. As I pulled it out from the box, I noticed flecks of other colors that speckled it. Once I dragged it across the page, it lost its purity, tainted by the colorful smears of the surrounding crayons. Once I picked off all the other colors from it, I tried again to draw with it, but nothing appeared for the paper itself was white. I learned a new appreciation for the color, for it was the basis that allowed all the colors to be seen. White comes in many different shades. You have eggshell, ivory, cream, chantilly lace, stark snow and then you could even consider shades of gray as forms of white. I tend to look at things in shades of gray, for I refuse to jump to a black and white assumption on anything. This aspect of my personality has flourished largely because of growing up in an extremely dogmatic environment. After withstanding thirteen years of Catholic school and staunch conservative opinions- I have learned to appreciate genuine exchanges in authentic dialogue and conversations. For this reason, I never press my pencil down very hard on my paper. When I print; instead, I sweep it across, making light, but recognizable marks. Though they may not scream for your attention, if you take a step back, you may just see how these light strokes add up to something great. I wait and carefully mold my thoughts and beliefs. I do not fade into the background; in fact, just like white, I build a strong foundation based on well-rounded ideas. I gently place the white back into the box for safekeeping. Even though I do not always have it out in use, whenever I see it there in the box, I smile knowing it is making its own silent impact.

Currently red is the color I choose most often. It’s singular character, definite confidence, and sanguine ability to breath life onto the page imbues every piece of paper it touches. Just like red, I have an optimistic and enthusiastic view on life. I bring a cheerful attitude to most situations, adding a spring to my step and allowing the curls to bounce on my head. Red simply exudes passion, for I am often found around campus involved in some debate advocating the rights of the oppressed or getting censored for my ideas that seem too red-ical. Often times I find red on other papers in my life, either congratulating me on a job well done or pointing out mistakes I have made so I can correct and learn from them. Another aspect of red that keeps me holding on, is its ability to mix with the other colors and make new beautiful ones like purple and orange. Although I have been working on my drawing for a while now, it is far from finished. Red will not be the last and only color I use for the duration of my life, but for now this red crayon fits comfortably in my hand.

Nothing shall make God blaze

Blinded by the unwinking blood works of man
God lacked the essential confidence to destroy love through future past.
So forever was the fate of man:
Keep a guilty God in the lot or
Deny all relation to him.
but because knowledge doomed knowledge
This knowledge bound man to die
Hands together- ripped for eternity form God-Almighty.
The heart of man knew-
Under different circumstances God would have been just a plain saint.
But pain is the cost to loose thyself below the quagmire of truth.
He knew nothing in life was ever free.

mini research paper

Eugene O’Neill can be considered an unseen narrator in his play A Long Day’s Journey into Night (Mann 1). He wrote the play later in life because of this, he had time to reflect and think about the impact his family had on him as a person and most importantly as a writer. Throughout O’Neill’s A Long Day’s Journey into Night the characters often find themselves in situations which are nearly identical to O’Neill’s own personal life experiences, because of this the play can be viewed as a biographical reading in which events and personalities presented in the work have roots in the authors own history.
In the play Mary and James Tyrone clearly parallel O’Neill’s own mother and father, Mary and James O’Neill- their names just begin the similarities between the characters and his parents. O’Neill’s mother was of Irish decent; she grew up Catholic and went to a Catholic school. She had a very strong talent for music and while in New York met then actor, James O’Neill backstage after seeing one of the plays he stared in. The two fell in love and married. Mary left her dreams behind as she followed James on his acting tours. While away with James, Mary’s oldest son Jamie infected their other baby with measles and after his death Mary developed an addiction to morphine (Stilling 1). Mary O’Neill’s story is nearly the same exact one that Eugene O’Neill depicts as Mary Tyrone’s. O’Neill’s father James’s life story is also almost identical to that of James Tyrone. James O’Neill was an Irish immigrant who loved Shakespeare and eventually became a very popular actor. After his marriage to Mary and start of their family together James bought exclusive rights to the play The Count of Monte Cristo which grossed him a large amount of money but left him with feelings of “regrettable abandonment of his dream of becoming a great Shakespearean actor in Booth tradition” (Stilling 1).
The Tyrones and O’Neills both have eldest sons named Jamie. Jamie Tyrone and Jamie O’Neill both felt responsible for the death of their younger brother and throughout their lives, both real and fictional, struggled with the guilt left from this experience. Mary Tyrone leaves no question that Jamie was directly responsible for the death of baby Eugene; in a letter that Eugene O’Neill once wrote he questions Jamie O’Neill’s intentions and responsibility in the death of their brother Edmund (Hinden 1). Both Jamie Tyrone and O’Neill were role models for their surviving brother influencing him in the ways of literature, alcohol and sex. At the end of the play Jamie is a drunken mess fixed in his ways, and Edmund is struggling with the need to break away from the destructiveness of his brother and the immanence of being sent to the sanitarium. What will eventually become of Edmund is left unknown but it is known that when Eugene O’Neill returned from his stay at the sanitarium he managed to distance himself from his brother Jamie, become a successful writer, marry and even stop drinking; “as Jamie destroyed himself, Eugene thrived” (Hniden 2). From the knowledge of O’Neill’s past experiences we can infer that Edmund’s future, left untold in the play, will turn out similar to his own; his flourishing as Jamie’s crumbles.
This incredible use of autobiographical elements in this play leaves the reader with a better knowledge of O’Neill’s past and its impact on his life. While Edmund Tyrone represents O’Neill in his younger naïve years when he was unable to realize how his mother, father, both brothers, and the experiences associated would shape who he would become the O’Neill which narrates the novel is grateful as he can now recognize how his family and familial anguish helped him to become the writer he was at the time he wrote the play (Mann 1). The Tyrones take on the four names of O’Neill’s family that influenced his life, that at one time caused him much pain and strife, but finally after much time had passed Eugene was able to “… face my [his] dead at last and write this play, write it with deep pity and understanding and forgiveness for all the four haunted Tyrones (O’Neill 1).”


Works Cited
Hinden, Michael. "O'Neill and Jamie: a survivor's tale." Comparative Drama 35.3 (2001): 435. Literature Resource Center. Lee County, Fort Myers. 18 Sept. 2008.
Mann, Bruce J. "O'Neill's 'Presence' in Long Day's Journey into Night." Drama Criticism 20 (2003): 15-30. Literature Resource Center. Lee County, Fort Myers. 18 Sept. 2008.
O'Neill, Eugene, and Harold Bloom. Long Day's Journey into Night. New York: Yale UP, 2002.Stilling, Roger J. "Eugene O'Neill." Nobel Prize Laureates in Literature, Part 3 331 (2007). Literature Research Center. Lee County, Fort Myers. 18 Sept. 2008.

Table of Steel

Table of Steel

I sit at the table of steel
wondering, wondering how do I feel?
It is so cool to the touch
fearing, fearing is this too much?
I leave little imprints behind
will they, will they fade with time?
I sit at the table of steel
wondering, wondering how do I feel?
I can’t get these thoughts out of my head
filling, filling it up with dread.