Eyes on the 30th

Today is September 30th, which means a number of slightly significant things:
1. It's the end of my first full month of my senior year.  Which is not okay for several reasons, but we're not going to talk about that.
2. It's the end of the month, which means I have to make a new bulletin board for October.  Luckily, I was struck by inspiration and I made a bulletin board about Banned Books Week (which ends tomorrow, but whatever).  It's a pretty awesome board, if I do say so myself.
3. Today is the last day of Poem-a-Day September.

So this September I successfully wrote one poem each day.  Surprising, because my commitment to projects is shakey (as demonstrated by my commitment to writing a daily blog post...), but as of tomorrow I will be in the possession of 30 new original poems by me.  Rough drafts, of course, but that's a pretty decent number.

It has been suggested to me by a couple people that I continue my poem-a-day project for an entire year.  This suggestion intrigues me because the idea of having a whole 366 (because 2012 is a leap year) poems by next September is a really interesting concept.  Just the thought of having 366 of anything is strange to me.  366 rough drafts of 366 different poems.  I don't even know if I know enough words to fill up that many pages.  Plus if I continue my habit of writing my poems during my business classes, my grades may not like me very much.  This idea is also daunting just because I'm not sure I have enough ideas for all that considering when I look back at a couple days in September, I used itunes to write poems for me.  It got that bad one day.  Bright side, I struggled through it and wrote something anyway.  I'm wondering if I take the challenge...would my poetry get any better?  Because I wonder if I just keep writing daily, won't I just be stuck in the same mindset over and over again and write the same quality poetry?  As if I'll be stuck in the same spot writing-wise.  Because how can I really get better if I don't let myself revise?  Then again, if I let myself revise right away, that probably wouldn't make Writer Brianna feel much better.  Anyway.  It's something to think about.

---------------------------------------------Creativity Time-------------------------------------------------

Choose one of your physical features and write about how you can change or disguise that feature. (Thanks, http://creativewritingprompts.com/)

Eyes.
I have green eyes.  I don't care what anyone tells me, they're green.  If you choose to argue with me, I will just stomp my foot and insist that they're green.  Anyone who says that my eyes are blue will receive the silent treatment for a good day or so.  I don't really time it, but they would deserve it.

I can easily disguise my green eyes with contacts.  No one would suspect it either because they all expect me to have blue eyes anyway.  So I can wear blue contacts.  Or maybe brown, that would throw everyone off.  Then there's also the fairly simple disguise of mirrored sunglasses.  Or my everyday glasses, because how many people really look past someone's first set of eyes anyway?  And changing my eyes?  Well, they can dye eyes in the Emerald City, so why not in real life?  I feel like this should be something that goes along with laser eye surgery.

It's all about misdirection.  If I wear something particularly outrageous, no one's going to notice the color of my eyes.  I'm thinking feathers and sequins should do the trick.  There's also the "Hey look!  What's that over there?!" misdirection trick.  I have a feeling that everyone around me will fall for that one.  I know I would...

"The eye sees a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination awake."

- Leonardo da Vinci

Shuffle shuffle shuffle...

Q:  So it seems you've abandoned your question and answer blog format-ish.

A:  Oh, you noticed?  Hm.  Well, it was unintentional, there were just days when it didn't really seem to fit so....

Q:  Yeah, well, I understand, it's not a big deal.  What are you going to do today?

A:  Today I'm going to cheat by using itunes.  I found these surveys on Google while I was looking for something to write about, and it reminded me of all those itunes survey thingys where you use your itunes to answer the questions.  So I'm going to do that!

Q:  Hooray?

-----------------------------------------Itunes Shuffle Experiment----------------------------------------

1.  Put your itunes on shuffle.
2.  For each question, press the "next" button to get your answer.
3.  You MUST write that song name down no matter how silly it sounds!
4.  Tag friends...on your blog...sure...

If someone says "Is this okay?" you say...
A New World -- Shakespeare in Love soundtrack

What would best describe your personality?
Revolution Now -- Josh Woodward

What do you like in a guy/girl?
No Good Deed -- Wicked soundtrack

How do you feel today?
Any Moment/Moments in the Woods -- Into the Woods soundtrack

What is your life's purpose?
A Night to Remember -- HSM 3 soundtrack

What is your motto?
Crushcrushcrush -- Paramore

What do your friends think of you?
Vanilla Twilight -- Owl City

What do you think about very often?
Each Coming Night -- Iron & Wine

What is 2 + 2?
Three Little Birds -- Bob Marley

What do you think of your best friend?
Skyway Avenue -- We The Kings

What do you think of the person you like?
Vegas -- Sara Bareilles

What is your life story?
Absolutely Zero -- Jason Mraz

What do you want to be when you grow up?
So Nice So Smart -- Kimya Dawson

What do you think when you see the person you like?
I Really Want You -- Plain White T's

What do your parents think of you?
The End. -- My Chemical Romance

What will you dance to at your wedding?
How Can You Mend a Broken Heart -- Michael Buble

What will they play at your funeral?
I Guess This Is Goodbye/Maybe They're Magic -- Into the Woods soundtrack [Yay!]

What is your hobby/interest?
Cruising Together -- Huey Lewis (in Duets)

What is your biggest secret?
Suspicious Minds -- Elvis Presley

What do you think of your friends?
The Phantom of the Opera -- Phantom of the Opera soundtrack

What's the worst thing that could happen?
Thriller -- Fall Out Boy

How will you die?
Everything I'm Not -- The Veronicas

What is the one thing you regret?
Shameful Metaphors -- Chevelle

What makes you laugh?
Sing -- She & Him

What makes you cry?
Somebody Like You -- Keith Urban

Will you ever get married?
Come Fly With Me -- Michael Buble

What scares you the most?
Goodbye L.A. -- Green River Ordinance

Does anyone like you?
Power of Love -- Huey Lewis & the News

If you could back in time, what would you change?
Someday -- Plain White T's

What hurts right now?
I Want It All -- HSM 3 soundtrack

What do you do most when you're bored?
Boycott Immorality -- Chocolat soundtrack

So thank you for playing, huzzah!

Sunset and Sunshine

Friday morning at precisely 8:15 AM, Brianna's phone vibrated under her pillow, shaking her awake.  After springing out of bed and very hastily (taking the span of an hour) doing everything that needed to be done without getting dressed in real clothing, Brianna sat down in front of Jacques and realized that she hadn't written a blog post in ages.  Which could be considered a problem, if she didn't realize that she had a very good reason for neglecting said blog.  Because she forgot.  That not being the point, Brianna shook her head and remembered the wonderful poetry slam which she had attended the previous evening and how she had spent two hours after the poetry slam doing nothing but lying on her tile floor staring at her accounting homework and wishing she could write some poetry.  That sentiment will manifest (hopefully) itself in today's blog post.

"Create a poem using Emily Dickinson's 'Bring me the sunset in a cup' as a starting point." - creative writing prompts

Here we go.  Yay rough draft!

Bring me the sunset in a cup
or perhaps just a shotglass
of sunshine.
Let it warm me
up like a glow light
from my stomach
radiating outwards.
Reaching fingers and toes,
transforming them into Disney
flashlights a la Beauty
and the Beast.
I want to drink in the sunlight,
or bottle it up and save it
for one of those rainy days
when I really need
a "pick me up."
But sun also burns
and what if I'm scalded
from the inside?
Searing internal organs
and blistering my heart
until its scarred over
past recognition
neither broken
nor whole.
I want to drink the sunlight
because the danger is too much
to resist.

"Bring me the sunset in a cup,

Reckon the morning's flagons up..."

- Emily Dickinson

Forget You?

"The calendar says March 10th, but the last day you remember is March 1st."  (Thank you, Twitter!)

I woke up on someone's couch.  It was this squat puke green number with the stuffing oozing out of one of the arms and I was sprawled out across it.  I blinked a couple times in an attempt to get my bearings right up until I realized that my glasses weren't jammed onto my face in their usual position.  As I sat up, the room swayed around me.  I closed my eyes and felt around on the floor next to the couch for my glasses, coming upon them only after nudging aside what I hoped was a dog's chew toy.

Once my glasses were in place, it was much easier to get a handle on where I could possibly be.  One side of the room was made up entirely of very dirty windows that looked out on a rusted metal fire escape.  The walls of the room were plastered with old movie posters and torn up wallpaper.

"Where...am I?" I croaked, discovering only then my sore throat and the fact that I must not have spoken in a good amount of time.

It was then when I saw the day-by-day calendar lying on the coffee table next to my makeshift bed.  March 10th.  March 10th?  That couldn't possibly be right.  It had to be some sort of joke.  I grabbed my hair and squeezed my eyes shut trying to remember the last date I could.

March 1st.  Again.  It couldn't be right.  March 1st.  My best friend's birthday.  What had we done that night?

I wrenched my eyes open and surveyed my surroundings again.  Same movie posters, same torn wallpaper, same dirty windows, and a half empty coffee mug on the table near the calendar.  Non-descript, and virtually harmless.  Hopefully.  I examined my arms, looking for some sign that I had been abducted or kidnapped or beaten brutally and then sent into a nine day coma.  No luck.  I did find a stamp on my hand in the shape of a fleur-de-lis, but that could be from anything, right?  I searched the pockets of my jeans and found my cell phone (dead), a wad of singles, a crushed gum wrapper, a penny, and an arcade token.  Leaving me with...no indication as to what I had done nine days ago or what I was doing here right now.

And leaving me essentially...at a loss.

That is, until there was a rattling at the door.  Someone stuck a key into the door and turned it, allowing them entrance into whatever prison or haven this might be for me.  I opted for the most logical method of defense: playing dead.  I flung myself back across the rundown couch and promptly shut my eyes, realizing almost too late that I was still wearing my glasses, giving me about a half a second to throw them onto the coffee table and return to my sleeping position before the stranger came walking towards me.  I froze, expecting the person to turn and walk away at any moment, but I could hear them coming closer until they were kneeling on the floor next to me.  I felt gentle fingers brushing the hair off my face and heard an exhale of breath before they stood and retreated, leaving me where I was.  I could hear the stranger rummaging about in one of the connected rooms, but they collected whatever it was they meant to get and left without a word (which makes sense considering they believed me to be asleep.  Or dead...).

Once I heard the lock click, I bolted from the couch, grabbing my glasses as I set off to explore this place where I had woken up after days of whatever it was.  The kitchen was just as sad as the living room where I had awoken, with dirty dishes in the sink and very small amounts of food in the refrigerator.  There was only one bedroom which was dark, but fairly neat.  The bathroom I left for last because I figured it would be the most revealing.  And I was right.  When I opened up the medicine cabinet, I found the usual aspirin and Band-Aids, but I also found a single prescription bottle made out for Keri Kalman (thank you, random name generator...) as well as nail polish remover and a modest collection of earrings.

So I had been kidnapped by a woman.  Okay.  I could deal with this.  I was sure I could take her.
But then there was that hair brushing thing.  And she took care of my glasses.  No kidnapper would be that worried about their prisoner.  Unless they wanted their prisoner for other things that they needed to be kept alive for...like ransom...or being sold into slavery.  I wasn't sure my parents would pay a ransom, and slavery was out of the question, so my only conclusion was that I would have to escape.  Unless this Keri Kalman had saved me from something worse.  The apartment was modest, and may have looked rundown, but all signs pointed to the resident being good-hearted or at least having good taste in movies.

March 1st.  March 1st...it was Marcella's 21st birthday.  We thought we'd go out with some friends and make a tour of the bars and clubs in town.  Your average 21st birthday celebration.  We had about three of mine and Marcella's mutual friends with us, and we had hopped three bars.  We were feeling a little tipsy by this point.  It was my idea to check out this new club in town...

"Come on, guys, it'll be fun," I giggled, grabbing Marcella's hand and making my best puppy dog eyes at her.  "Marcie...pleeeeaaaaase?"


Marcella was willing to do just about anything at that point, but our friends decided that it was high time that they went home.


"Fine!" I called after them, my interest turning swiftly back to the peeling paint on the front of the new club's door.  You would think that they would repaint before opening said door for business, but apparently not.


I dragged Marcella inside only to discover that the club was dark, the only light coming from the green strobe light at the front of the place where the DJ was playing some strange music that seemed to combine an Irish jig with your typical rap beat.  I may have been further gone than I thought at the time, but I could have sworn that I saw a guy with goat legs approach me and Marcella, shoving a Solo cup of some liquid into my hands and taking Marcella out onto the dance floor.  I looked down at the cup that I had taken out of reflex and bent my head to sniff the liquid.  It smelled like a mix between honey and roses, and the second the scent hit my nostrils, it was all I could do to keep myself from drinking it all in a single gulp.  The substance called to me.  "Drink me!"  It was like the bottle from Alice in Wonderland had a voice and was conspiring against me to be rude to this random guy.  But he and Marcella were halfway across the dance floor and it didn't look like they were coming back anytime soon.  Why not?  "Just a sip" turned into "finishing it off" and then I was being handed another cup by hands I didn't recognize.  By this time Marcella and the guy were nowhere in sight.  The last thing I remembered was throwing my third cup of the same sweet liquid into a trash can and giggling maniacally as I climbed up onto the bar...

Poetry Friday -- I Need to Be More French. Or Japanese.

Today is Friday, which means that Brianna should be reading and "analyzing" poetry.  So here we go.

This week I read Beth Ann Fennelly's "I Need to Be More French.  Or Japanese."  I read it aloud on YouTube, but you can feel free to read the poem all by yourself on the link that I'm attaching to the title of the poem riiiight...now.

First off, the title of the poem flows pretty nicely into the actual text of the poem, and I respect that.  I can never get my titles to do things like that, but I think it adds a nice effect to the poem.

One of the big themes/thoughts of this poem is the idea that the speaker isn't subtle.  She (I'm going to call the speaker a "she" for now because pronouns are fun) prefers California win "its big sugar, big fruit rolling down [her] tongue" (53) and she says that she wears a lot of yellow, thereby "pledg[ing] to wear more gray, less yellow" (53).  The tension in this poem lies in the idea that the French and the Japanese are more subtle, more refined, and less boisterous than the speaker.  So this idea that the speaker needs to be something that she's not is interesting.

The imagery is centered on French and Japanese...things.  I don't know how else to describe it.  The speaker uses a quote from Cezanne to illustrate that people sound smarter in French, and "The Japanese prefer the crescent moon to the full, / prefer the rose before it blooms" (53) which is an interesting image because it sounds as if the Japanese prize potential rather than the finished product.

The first half of the poem focuses on this clash amongst French, Japanese and the speaker's tendencies, all the while illustrating how not French or Japanese the speaker is.  The French designer who makes an appearance in the poem disdains the speaker for this "not Frenchness," so perhaps the speaker has been confronted with this "not-ness" before?

The turn (which one of my poetry professors would be SO excited that I'm pointing out) takes place (I think) around "OK: I didn't really.  But so what..." (53).  At this point in the poem, the speaker is embracing her true self.  She's owning her qualities.  But at the same time, she's still comparing herself to the French and Japanese, which makes things interesting.  She writes "If I were Japanese I'd write a tone poem / about magnolias in March, each bud long as a pencil...I'd end the poem before anything / bloomed..." (53-54) because the image that the speaker paints for the Japanese is all about potential.  Before anything bloomed.  Perhaps the speaker can consider herself one of those magnolia buds?  In contrast, "If I were French, I'd capture post-peak, in July, / the petals floppy, creased brown with age..." (54), making the French sound like the "day after" a party.  A really good party.  But the images of both beginning (from the Japanese) and end (from the French) come together as the "red-tipped filaments" all over the lawn signal an end for the French, but a beginning for the Japanese because they look like matchsticks.  "..and it's matchsticks, we all know, that start the fire" (54).

PROMPTS:
1.  Fennelly uses a lot of landmarks/geography in this poem.  We've got the temples of Kyoto, the Pont Neuf, and Wrigley Field.  Write something that integrates landmarks.  Subtly, of course.
2.  Are there objects or images that can symbolize both a beginning and an end just the way they are?  Write about it.
3.  Find a way to integrate dialogue into your poem and give those people some character, like the French designer in this poem.
4.  End your poem with spent firecrackers, since Fennelly didn't, but said that she would.
5.  "I hereby pledge to be reserved."  What kind of character would make such a pledge?

"I have stood on the Pont Neuf, and my eyes,

they drank it in, but my taste buds

shuffled along in the beer line at Wrigley Field."

- Beth Ann Fennelly in "I Need to Be More French.  Or Japanese."