not-so-improbable

"Nothing is impossible, the word itself says 'I'm possible!'" - Audrey Hepburn

[not-so-improbable]

Different Mediums:  Graphic Novels

I have had to read a few graphic novels for a class I’m taking this semester. It has been an interesting experience. I never really got into the whole comic book scene. The way the layout makes you jump from box to box, how sometimes the order is confusing and you have to guess which box to read next. And don’t even get me started on mangas that require you to read from right to left. It’s always caused me a headache trying to get through any graphic novel. Maybe I’ve just not been reading the right ones. I have surprisingly enjoyed the three I’ve read so far:  The Kite Runner, Maus, and Persepolis. All were very politically charged and heart wrenching at times. It’s interesting to rely so much on pictures and not so much on text to tell the stories. It takes showing and not telling to a whole new level. When there are no words to read, the reader has to turn to the drawings of the illustrators to interpret what it going on. It requires more work for the reader, but it is worth it in the end. I’m not sure if I am completely sold on graphic novels or not, but I might be more willing to try them in the future.

[not-so-improbable]

It’s A Wonderful Life:  Movie vs. Musical

I got to see a theatrical production of “It’s A Wonderful Life” this weekend, and it was truly inspiring. It is interesting to me to see how the same story is told through different mediums. I had seen the movie before, but the musical version of it truly took my breath away. When characters are able to express themselves through song, I feel it gives them more freedom to delve deeper into their emotions. George Bailey could stare at the churning waters below the bridge he stands on, or he could belt out a tear-jerking solo about what is going through his mind. Music does something to us that words alone cannot. This, I believe, is one of the reasons movies have musical scores. There will be mood music playing in the background of many movie scenes in hopes of evoking a subconscious emotional reaction from the audience. With musicals, the music is anything but subtle. It can be up front and honest about the emotions it tries to evoke from you. Musicals are not sneaky like movies. But sometimes a little sneaky isn’t so bad when it comes to story telling. “Show don’t tell.” Musicals tell a lot, but in a way that is effective. Movies show a lot, also in an effective way. I guess, in the end, it’s all in how you want the story told.

[not-so-improbable]

Jo Walton:  Character Development/World Building

I had the unique opportunity to attend a class led by Jo Walton. She led us in a character developing/world building activity that sparked a lot of interesting ideas. Everyone wrote down three character traits on slips of paper and put them in a bag, then everyone pulled out three of those papers at random and built a character based on what they got. The end results were beautiful. We had a world of land dwellers warring with thespian sea dwellers. There were dragons and dental hygienists, hipsters and theater directors. It was neat to see how trying to fit so many random characters into the same story shaped the development of their world. Well, if that character has gills, he must live under water. If the bad guy is flamboyant, perhaps he owns a theater. It was cool to see how character development and world building didn’t have to be two separate things – in fact, I think they work best when done simultaneously. Letting one shape the other lends to a more cohesive story.

[not-so-improbable]

Sucking. A lot.

The best writing advice I ever got was from a youtube video. Maureen Johnson, in her video “DARE TO SUCK” said, “Dare to suck. Let me let you in on a little secret, when you are learning to write, you are going to suck. You are going to suck a lot. You are just going to keep sucking for a while and you’re gonna feel like you’re sucking and actually that’s a sign that you’re completely on the right path.” 

When I was twelve, I decided I wanted to be a writer, so I busted out my spiral bound, college ruled journal and started to scribble a story about a girl with super powers. I thought it was the best thing. I thought I was great. I thought, “Dang son, call a publisher, this is ready to hit the press!”

Hahaha-NO. 

I found this story years later and started to cry I was laughing so hard. It sucked. A LOT. Like, I spent two pages describing this girl’s clothes and her hair and her earrings and it was terrible. Also, she apparently had a thing for her neighbor, who was such a flat, one-dimensional character I’m surprised he could even be seen on my two-dimensional paper. Awful.

As for current-day-me, when I write, I feel like I suck. And I know I suck. But I also know, I will revisit this sucky work and reform and reshape it until it sucks less and less. I have yet to get to a point on any piece where I’ve said, “this doesn’t suck anymore!” But I am hoping that day will come. Although, to be honest, I don’t think it ever will. I think I will always think my work sucks, which is okay. It keeps me humble, and it keeps me perpetually striving for that area of sucking-less-than-before.

[not-so-improbable]

What if...

What if someone could see every word you’ve ever spoken? Would you be embarrassed? Intrigued? Would you want to know what they thought? Or better yet, what if someone could see every thought you’ve ever had. Every unfiltered inkling that has flickered in our consciousness. Would there be things you’d like to explain? Could you explain them? What if someone could see the world through your eyes? Literally your eyes. They would look where you looked, see what you see. Would you become more careful of where you let your eyes wander? Would you have things to hide? Or do you think they would become bored with your life run by monotony? Would this other person like what they saw? Do you like what you see? Would this give you the incentive to change the things you don’t like about your life? Would you gain an outsiders perspective on your life? Or would things continue as they usually do? How different is your private life from your public one?

[not-so-improbable]

Emotional Validation

I wish this was something we taught our children more about. It is what makes so much of what we do significant. Why do we read the same book over an over again, watch the same movie, listen to the same song? Why do we share our feelings? Why do we write, compose, create? Why do we get out of bed in the morning? It is all in the hope that someone, somewhere feels what we feel. We are all desperately searching for others that know our pain and our joy. We do not want to be alone in our own heads. We desire companionship, but we do not understand that it can come in many forms. For instance, I do not need a physical person to tell me I am not alone. Sometimes all I need are the lyrics of a song. Sometimes there doesn’t have to be words at all, it can be the way notes are strung together, or the way an image on a screen is translated by my eyes. Whatever it is, we are all searching. We are searching for something, but few of us know what it is, and that is truly troubling to me.

[not-so-improbable]

Mr. Rabbit. Mr. Rabbit!

Mr. Rabbit! Don’t fall down the Rabbit Hole! Don’t leave me alone with my questions.

 I’m afraid this snug jacket will cut off the blood flow to my brain and make me crazy.

 The food I eat and the water I drink do that enough as it is. Things labeled “eat me” and “drink me” warp my realities.

Through them, I am robbed of myself. Please do not steal yourself away from me too!

 I do not care what you are late for! You are too pure to hurt me. I know you will not truly leave, despite the appointment you are so harried to get to.

 For even when you go, you are not truly gone. You are everywhere I am. You live in my eyes – behind my eyelids, in the gleam when I glance in the mirror, in my tears when they roll down my face. You vacation on my pillow after slipping down the slopes of my cheeks.

You reside in my peripheral vision. Sometimes the things I swallow push you even more to the side, but they never make you go away completely. I see you there now, forever oscillating between looking at me and frantically glancing at your pocket watch.

[not-so-improbable]

A Sweet Tale

Our numbers are dwindling rapidly. The last swipe decimated half our ranks. Curse the Hitachi triplets and their racially insensitive Native American costumes! I know my time is coming soon. I was made to die. Gumballs, we all are. Don’t know why I thought maybe I’d be different. Besides, maybe this is the more humane way to go. My Uncle Kit was left in a hot car. I hear the results were garishly…sticky. And there was my Cousin Hershey. Poor sweetie fell out of a kid’s bag and was ran over by a car, then carried off by a dog. Almost took the dog down with her. Always was a fighter that one. And there was my Great Aunt Ree---Oh no! It’s Alice Dunfee!!! Everyone knows she has a soft spot for Dum Dums likes me! Barbaric child, she’s a chewer! Why can no one just lick us?! NO No no nononononono! NO! Don’t pick ME!!!! Liquorish, does she have a tight grip. Release me you sweaty-palmed-wanna-be-princess! W-W-Wait, why is she unwrapping me now?!?! ALICE, you’re supposed to let your mom check me for poison!!! FOR ALL YOU KNOW I COULD BE DEADL-*CRUNCH!*

[not-so-improbable]

What advice would you give 30-year-old you?

Sometimes we hear the question, “what advice would you give ___ year-old you?” This ___ is usually a smaller number than our current age. What would you tell 10-year-old you? What would you tell 15-year-old you? And so on. But seldom do we hear, what advice would you give 30-year-old you. I suppose this is because we do not yet know this version of ourselves, but perhaps we can imagine. I might tell 30-year-old me to stop and breathe. I might be rushing around trying to please everyone without truly taking time for them. Maybe I would tell myself kudos on caving and getting the short, mom-bob hair cut. Or maybe I will say kudos on not and keeping my long, too-young-for-me-but-who-cares-anyway hairdo. I might tell myself to pause and read more of the things I enjoy, because what use are books if you can’t enjoy them. I hopefully won’t have to advise myself to renew my passion for my work and my students. Just as I hope I won’t have to remind myself to say certain phrases more often, like “I love you” and “I’m sorry.” I have no idea where/who I will be when I’m 30, but thinking about where I might be and what advice I might need to hear might prevent me from going in negative routes. For example:  if I foresee myself slacking in telling people I love them, I will then make a conscious effort to say I love you more.

[not-so-improbable]

Reading Combating Discrimination

I recently read ““Master Harold”…and the boys” and it got me thinking about the books I’ve read that have shaped my opinions of racism and discrimination. “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, “Loser” and “Star Girl” by Jerry Spinelli are all worthy of noting. All of them, in some mode, spoke to the issues of racism and/or discrimination. I read somewhere that those who read gain greater empathy than those who do not. I imagine this is because we can enter into another’s brain, follow how they think and perceive the world, even if it’s just for a short while. Also, I think it allows us to be an impartial third party to some of the atrocities of the world. (I use the word “impartial” lightly, for we certainly get attached to the characters we read about.) We see how foolish it is for pureblood wizards to discriminate against muggleborn wizards, which we can translate into our own world and see how foolish it is for certain raced people to discriminate against other raced people. We see how unfairly Hally treats Sam, and how blind he is pretending to be against all of the wonderful, fatherly things Sam has done for him. We have our hearts broken by the shunning of a kind hearted boy just because he is a little different-though we do not see his differences, we only see him. We cheer every time Huck goes against his society and what they think it right by being kind to Jim. Books can teach us in ways other things cannot. Maybe if more people read, really read, more books like these, our world would be a slightly less discrimination place.

[not-so-improbable]

Salman Rushdie “Imaginary Homelands” Appreciation Post

Salman Rushdie makes the interesting observation that everyone’s perspective of the world (and the past) is unique to them. His India is his India. I think this is so true. Do you ever find yourself telling a story only to be interrupted by a friend who was also there correcting you on one point or another? “No, the man was sneering, not smiling!” – or something to that effect. Our memories are clouded by bias. The minor details we remember may not match up with someone else’s, and that’s okay. When we write about our experiences, the readers can fill in their own blanks; they bring their own experiences to the table to help fill in the whole picture.

Rushdie also spoke to the idea of maintaining your roots, while still being a part of the larger community that is the world. If we only stayed with similar people, our perspective would be limited. He spends much of this article speaking of his Indian roots, but on the last few pages talks about rejecting a ghetto mentality. That is to say, to “confine ourselves within narrowly defined cultural frontiers” (Rushdie). I think that must be such a difficult and brave thing to do. To immerse oneself in a different culture, to resist the urge to group up with like-people, to adopt (in some sense) the language and nature of a foreign land. Also, how brave to still write about your old land. Rushdie questions the right he has to honestly write about India when he is not risking his personal safety to do so (as those within India would be). The way he sees it is “[l]iterature is self validating” (Rushdie). If the quality of the text is high, it does not matter who is doing the writing. An author does not have to earn the right to write about certain things. I hesitate to agree fully with him. If I were to write a great story set in India, but all my facts were wonky, would that count as self validated literature? (However, if my facts were wonky, would the story truly be great? Probably not.) So, I think you have to have at least a little validation/qualification as a person to get away with this.

[not-so-improbable]

Should Some Books Come With A Warning?

I recently read “The Kite Runner:  Graphic Novel” and was very much caught off guard at some of the content. For those of you who know “The Kite Runner” you can probably guess which scene I am talking about. For those of you who have not, all I will say is that it was a showing of one of the absolute lowest things that can be done to a person. I had never read “The Kite Runner” before. Perhaps if I had read about the scene in question, I would have been more prepared for the visual assault. To be fair to the author/illustrator of the graphic novel version, they were not gratuitous in their showing, but they also were very clear about what was occurring. Though this scene caught me off guard, I imagine my reading experience could have been worse had I had something similar happen to me or to someone I loved.

Personally, I think there should be a trigger warning when content like this is in books. Like it could have a list of the triggers and include page numbers, so if people want to skip over them, they can. I think this list should be placed at the back of the book though. That way, if one wants to look for the triggers beforehand, they can. If one does not want to and wants to be surprised and taken off guard, as the author probably intended, then they can read the book without having to flip by the page of warnings.

It is a small service to those who quite frankly don’t want to see/read about certain things.

[not-so-improbable]

Unfinished:  A Tale of Potential Hypocrisy

Why can’t I finish the books assigned to me? I love reading, but the second a book becomes a requirement to read, it is almost impossible for me to finish it. WHY? I want to teach one day! I want to assign these boring books! I want to grade papers written about them! I bring all this up because today I took yet another quiz on a book that I did not finish reading. No big deal, right? Well, I have been assigned this book FOUR times. It must be an important book for four different teachers to think it necessary to put in their curriculum. Yet, do I find it in me to finish it? Nope.

When I HAVE finished books assigned me, I’ve loved them. The Awakening. The Great Gatsby. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. All are books I’ve been assigned that I’ve loved. So, it’s not like the books I’m assigned are bad.  In fact, I know a lot of them are great by reputation. I just do not understand the side of myself that rejects these assigned books.

I refuse to be a hypocrite, so I will read any and all books I assign to future students. I should probably read them when they are assigned to me though – and not two years down the road before I assign them. But that would just make too much sense, wouldn’t it?

[not-so-improbable]

David Griffith

I had the pleasure recently of hearing author David Griffith speak. Griffith is definitely a well-read individual. He drew from an almost overwhelming amount of sources for his talk. Likewise, he addressed an almost overwhelming amount of topics – all good, but still vast in number.

One topic that stood out to me was the topic of why we write. Rather, why we keep writing, even when what we’re writing isn’t something we necessarily like. Why do we bother to try to break through writers block, what makes it worth it to type the same word over and over and over until it springboards us to our next not-necessarily-spectacular idea? His answer:  so we can feel the way we did when we wrote that one great thing. He likened it to hitting a baseball. The player knows how to hit a ball. They’ve studied the game; they’ve practiced and perfected their swing. But do they don’t hit a homerun every time? Certainly not. But they do hit a homerun sometimes, and that’s enough incentive to keep them in the game.

Another topic he addressed that resonated with me was the idea of finding balance between the practical and impractical, the day job and the art making. He pointed to the extremes saying we could starve materially while we are fed artistically or we could be fed materially and be starving artistically. Personally, I don’t find it hard to live in the gray floating between the two. However, the career I am aspiring for is the perfect marriage of material and artistic. Teaching English. I will not be gorging myself on material or art, but I will be sustaining myself on both. For me, it’s the best of both worlds. I think we all have to find that balance in our careers and daily lives, lest we torture ourselves via starvation – creatively or physically.

All in all, David Griffith had a lot of great things to say, and I would enjoy hearing him speak again.

[not-so-improbable]

More Than Meets The Eye

Just the other day, a friend told me I should take the time to be more aware of

everything. The little things we miss everyday just because we didn’t

see it necessary to pay attention. It could be something like a breeze to cool

us, or a particularly good smelling flower. I wonder why it is that we never

stop long enough to notice. An elephant could dance across the road while we

Lovingly stare at our phones, oblivious to it. A more realistic example would be

overlooking the gifts God provides for us daily. These gifts can be physical –

very late, we hit all green lights. Another gift - God giving us peace in an

extremely stressful moment. We can miss out on great things because

sometimes we are too caught up in our own lives. How sad is that?

Yesterday, I tried to step back from myself and a step towards the blessings,

obvious only after I took note of them. There can be multiple blessings sitting

under our noses without our noticing. We should look at things more closely.

[not-so-improbable]

Banned Books Rant

In a country where “freedom of speech” is proclaimed, it seems odd to me that there is such a thing as banned books. This oximoronical conundrum has me stumped. We can say what we want, but we can’t read what we want? Absurd! We should have the right to police what we read. I understand that a lot of book banning goes on in schools. I grasp the concept that it is to protect young, sponge-like minds from absorbing the “wrong things.” However I do not think it should be left up to the schools, or committees, or governments to decide what these “wrong things” are. If something is questionable, the child should be offered an alternate assignment. But I want this to become a norm, so the child isn’t shamed by his or her peers for opting to do the alternate assignment.

The whole concept of banning books seems foolish to me. You know what I want to do the second I hear a book is banned? Read it. I want to know just what is so bad about the book. Also, like most humans, I do not like to be told what I can and cannot do without valid reasons. The phrase “I do what I want” comes to mind. The second you forbid something is the second people are going to seek it out. It’s human nature.

I do not like hypocrites, and this whole book banning situation reeks of hypocrisy. I say, let the people read what the people want to read.

[not-so-improbable]

Six Word Stories Are The Best!

Can we discuss six word stories?! Seriously, language can be so cool! Six little words made me cry! Six words gave me goose bumps! Six word stories can be amazing. Ernest Hemingway’s story is the best.

“For sale:  baby shoes, never worn.”

Say you didn’t cry, you liar. There are other good ones too. I found a few on Pinterest:

 “The smallest coffins are the heaviest.”

“Brought roses home. Keys didn’t fit.”

“I met my soulmate. She didn’t”

“Voyager still transmitted, but Earth didn’t”

“One bullet is a lifetime supply.”

“Mom taught me how to shave.”

“Introduced myself to my mother again today.”

“I just saw my reflection blink.”

“Strangers. Friends. Best Friends. Lovers. Strangers.”

“An only son, a folded flag.”

“Passengers, this isn’t your captain speaking.”

“Jumped. Then I changed my mind.”

“He hit send, then a tree.”

“Ever see a chalk outline that small?”

“It’s our fiftieth, table for one.”

 I tried to write one once. “Change is the only constant. Crap.” (I’m a fan of alliteration too.) It is harder than you think. Much is said in six words. But it’s hard to limit oneself. We like to use many words. We hate to condense our thoughts. What if we can’t convey everything?

It’s good to try it though. I challenge you to limit yourself. Limit your words; expand your mind.