Haiku

I have some haiku on the side, down below "quotes", but here are some new ones:

Spring rain

puddles grow

in the basement

Drip, drip, drip

icicles pit

the snow drift

Milky way floats

in the sky

doubled in his eyes

Peaceful night

polaris floats

by the water lilly

Haiku Guy

Over February break we had to read Haiku Guy (cover on the right), a telling of the life of on of the famous haiku master, Issa's student "Buck-Teeth." I really enjoyed this book, the writing was a mixture of quietly yet powerfully descriptive and bluntly humorous, and this, I think, helped me most of all enjoy the story. Haiku Guy is set it Old Japan and New Orleans, giving the book a nice kind of juxtaposition, much like a haiku. David Lanoue tells us a story that he insists is being sent to him by a Buddha from the beyond and is full of colorful characters, most of whom we know only by their bamboo brush names, Buck-Teeth, Cup-of-Tea (Issa himself), Mido, Shiro, and Kuro are only some. We also meet people from the present, people in David’s writing group who give him advice on the book, and sometimes even enter its pages. This book is what you could call an instruction manual from the art of writing haiku, using the stories of Buck-teeth and his colorful friends as lessons, and then giving anecdotes from the authors own life to enforce the point he sis trying to make. I don't usually read instruction manuals on rainy Saturdays, but this one is really a great example of a rule breaker, because you would never know was it really is. The morals or the stories are so nicely wrapped up in elegant words and profound thoughts that you would never know you are learning the language of poetry. I would suggest this book to anybody, it has a bit of everything, its great for those rainy days you know your in the mood for something, but you don't really know what. Who knows you might become the next Cup of Tea with a little help from the master himself.

Last Words

This is our last "class required" post, but I'll try to keep posting questions, thoughts, and movements, because I've put A LOT of time into designing this bog. I don't really know what to say, do you ever know what to say in situations like this? Goodbyes are not my speciality, so I'm glad this isn't one of them. I feel like i just started this blog, and there are a lot of things i still want to post on it, so in the immortal words of The Beatles:

"You say goodbye and I say hello...I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello."

I'll write more soon!

Pointed Questions #2

I got kinda obsessed with questions, so got ahead and answer these if you want, its not class required or anything, but I think its just fun to see peoples responses.

1. If you had to live with one kind of the weather for a year what would you want it to be like?

2. Who is one person who has changed your life (for better or worse)?

3. Who is your role model?

4. What do you think happen after death?

5. Do these beliefs interfere with the way you act from day to day?

6. What is your favorite quote?

7. If you could change anything about yourself, what would it be?

8. When you blow the candles out what do you wish for?

9. If you were going to change your name, what would it be?

10. You have been told you have one more day to live, what would you do, who would you visit?

11. (I know I stole this from Clara, but its a good question) Whats the first thing that comes into your head... NOW?

Questions

1. You've just discovered a new planet, what do you call it?

2. what would be the most epic way to die?

3. How do you want to travel the world? I mean, everyone wants to travel the world.

4. Who would you die for?

5. Whats your favorite TV show?

6. What would your mutant power be in X-men? More importantly, what would your name be?

7. What would you say if i told you i dont like either pancakes or waffles?

8. Whats your favorite color? Why?

9. Whats your opinion on the Turducken? (if you don't know what it is, check it out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turducken)

10. How long did it take you to answer of these questions?

2021

This commercial really shows what I think the world might be like in 2021 if we don't do something about it, and this also ties into valentines day. I am not endorsing Motorola by posting this, I just like this commercial, so hears the link.

I don't really think that the world will be so Orwellian, but there will probably be some kind of loss of free will, not to sound too conspiracy crazy. It may already be happening, and we wont realize it until someone comes along and breaks the norm. I would like to think that the world would be like some of my favorite sci-fi novels. I'd like to combine all of the wonderful things of the future and leave out all of the control, normalcy, and conspiracies, but though I'm a daydreamer, I'm not that stupid. I know the world wont be full of hover boards, and anti aging pills, but we can still dream about it.

To someone who died in 1980, the world is a totally different place, but we think it's normal because we have grown up with it. If you think about it, we have computers so small that they fit into our pockets, and we have achieved flight, both within and outside of this atmosphere. We have just grown up learning everything by brand names, and single nouns that sum up what amazing things we have created, and that makes them seem like ordinary, everyday things. If we really look at the things around us, cars, plains, trains, computers, TVs, even our buildings, and we take them back to their fundamentals, they are much more extraordinary than we realize. Tin cans that can fly, drive, and hurtle through untamed country for miles, are what we have created; boxes that show pictures, pictures that move! And that can help us see people who are thousands of miles away. We even have "shelters" that are more than 1,250 feet tall. We have to face the fact that the future is hear, we have to stop trying to create it. This is it.

Movement of the World Post #1 Musical Motions

The man was tall. Tall, with overly long arms, and legs that must have been a disadvantage on small planes. He traveled a lot, it said so in the program I clutched in a seat at the back of the auditorium; to England, inland, Scotland, and all over Europe, so I am sure he has had experiences with planes, of all sizes. Even from up in the balcony, I could see how tall he was. He dwarfed his full sized, 300 year old instrument hunching over it protectively as he tuned. When he straightened up he didn’t say anything to the audience, no puns, no explanation; he knew what we were there to see, or rather hear, and it wasn't him cracking lame jokes.

The room was more than silent as he put horsehair to metal, the air was think with baited breaths and even the dust particles stopped to watch as he drew, in a long streak of crimson, the bow across the string, creating the first note of the rest of our lives.

I don’t believe that any art form, even this one, with its infinite words and phrases, metaphors and similes, can describe another, and that is why I will not waste my time with a lengthy description of what can never be conveyed in words alone. For that to be possible, this would have to be written in the curves of base clefs, and the lines of quarter notes, the periods at the end of my sentences would be marking dotted half notes. There is no way I can live up to the magnitude of his playing, but I can describe the way he moved, and interacted with us, his instrument, and the air its self.

His long fingers looked as thought he wasn't even holding the bow, as if it were floating thought the air, mealy guided by his arm. It would glide and then jerk, as if it were a ship on a stormy sea. He wore a blood red shirt with black slacks, the classic attire for a cellist, male or female. His shirt was so neat and crisp that every crease stood out clearly black against the crimson. Mountains, valleys and plains formed on his right sleeve, as he played first soft then loud, slow and then fast. He seemed to be acting out the music as much as playing it, his arms the curtains, fingers running up and down the fingerboard the actors, and his instrument the set.

His shadow, a warped double of himself, stood with him and bowed when he finished. he sat again, cleared his throat, adjusted his glasses with spidery fingers and then started the whole spectacle over again.

this is a description of a concert i went to last weekend with the world renowned cellist Steven Doane at Kilbourn Hall at the Eastman School of Music. Ben Doane, Steven Doane's son, plays at the same school that i do, with the same teacher, so i have met mr. Doane before, but this time I actually heard HIM play, and it really changed the way i look at playing an instrument.

Hot Air

I dont know if this is cheating, because this is one of my own pictures, but i really like the lighting, and mood of the picture. I took this one when i went to balloon festaval in dansvil with my friend and her grandparents. though few of the balloons took off because of wind, they were all inflated and tethered on the ground, this is a picture of one of my favorites being blown up, there are more pictures from the fair at the bottom of my page in my flickr photo stream.

Pointed Question #1

If there are gods, do they sleep? If they do sleep, what do they dream? If they dream, what must their nightmares be like? What scares gods so much that they wake up sweating?

Profoundly Random Thought #1 Paper Reflections

Have you ever looked at yourself in a fun house mirror? Or ever noticed your reflection in a rain studded puddle, or grime streaked subway window? I might go as far as to ask, have you ever looked up, late on some wet night, and seen yourself staring back at you through your black, rain streaked skylight? If you ever have seen your reflection warped, ripped, shattered or bent, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Walking down the street you pass broken glass, embedded in the mud beside the sidewalk, glittering just for a moment as it caches the sun. The grass, wet from last nights rain, is reflected, shattered in the broken bottle beside the daises. The white petals are fragmented, barely recognizable in the dirty glass resting in the shade of their leaves, but yet you know that they are a daisy, pure white and glowing in the warm spring sunshine.

It's the same with writing, this blog even. we write, and our images, our personalities are fragments, mixed up and cobbled together again, yet we know there is a human being on the other end of the wire, typing furiously to finish the post before the class it up.

you know that i am a high school girl, assigned to write this blog for my creative writing class, that my name is Amelia Carter, and you think you know me, but are you sure its not just my outer shell, with glittering bits of broken glass embedded in it, reflecting your shattered image back at you?

Posting

OK, i have to explain how I'm going to do this, or else this isn't going to make any sense to anyone but me. I'm in a book club outside of school, and in it we read The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery, which is partly writing in journal entries. These journal entries are grouped into "Profound Thoughts" and "Journal of the Movement of the World", pretty self explanatory. I really liked this book, and have been using this format of recording thoughts for a while, so I thought I should start using it here. I've just changed the titles to "Profoundly Random Thoughts" and "Movement of the World." I've also added a category called "Pointed Questions" which are just question that make you think, you are not suppose to answer them. I just wanted to let you know how the posting was going to work, if its just me myself and I, and not school stuff, or other random things I think of. Thanks.