In this blog post I will be talking about select videos from The Wizard of Oz. In The Wizard of Oz the main character Dorothy is thrown into a foreign state where she has to find her way home, as she is finding her way home she meets three characters; the tin man, the lion, and the scarecrow. Each of these characters believes that they are missing an important part of their life, the heart, courage, and a brain. In my narrative project I talked about receiving the news of my grandfather having cancer. The conversation I had with my father was one of the hardest that I have had in my life. When writing my memoir I had to think back to about four years ago and recall the conversation that I had with my dad. The emotions that I felt during that conversation and over the span of the next three years have been immense, the ups and downs have been really hard to keep up with. When we first found out that he had cancer things were down, he was not feeling well. Now he is feeling better. The reason that this post was a “high stakes” post, is because of how private of a conversation it was, and vulnerable it made me feel. At the time of this conversation I really thought that I was going to lose my grandfather. At the time the conversation was so private that we did not even tell my little brother. I believe that life shapes our identity. We spend our whole lives making decisions to make our lives easier even though the hard times are what shape you as a person. When times are easy people tend to not change their lives, but when times get hard people try their best to get through them. Our identity is who we are as a person, what makes us different than the person next to us, and just like a fingerprint everyone is different from the day they are born. Every moment in our lives change us, sometimes even terrible things like cancer can bring a family together, before my pop pop was diagnosed. My dad and him talked maybe once a week, but now they talk every single night, they are closer than they have ever been before. The main takeaway from The Wizard of Oz for me is that we always have the power to be the person we want to be. We just need a push in the right direction to get there.
0 Comments
One of the emotions experienced in Hills Like WHite elephants written by Ernest Hemingway is sadness. The women is making a the very hard decision to get or not get an abortion. In this narrative I bring my emotion of sadness from a rough experience in my life. When I met her, I never knew. I never knew I’d love her. I never knew she’d change my world. I certainly didn’t know she’d shatter my heart into a million pieces.
She really was something else. She had this aura of happiness that could light up an entire room. Her laugh filled me with warmth and brought joy into my sadness. Her voice was more calming than weed, just hearing her talk could calm me down in an instant. She was everything I didn’t know I needed. With her, I knew what love was. I knew what it meant to be happy with another person. I learned how to let go of myself and have fun around her. I could fill a book with every adventure we had together. From movie night with Domino’s pizza to Ocean City, there was never a dull moment when she was around. I spent more money than I had on her, but she found a way to make me happy for just $5. She was so excited about her present for me, it had me wondering what she could be so excited about. It was small, but it meant everything to me. What she gave me was a jar fill with blue and pink post-it notes (blue because it was my favorite color, pink because she used all of the blue) with “99 reasons to love you” written on it. Every post-it had a reason why she loved me scribbled out in her half-cursive, sloppy writing. Ya hella cute. I’m safe with you. You always put time aside to make sure I’m okay. 99 post-it notes of all the ways she cared about me. Every single one. That little jar meant so much to me. It was small, but it was everything. No matter if she was asleep, at school, or doing something else, I still had her with me. I was always reminded that I was loved by her, and why. Even when she was mad at me or when we fought, I always knew she loved me. That jar got me through countless sleepless nights when I was plagued with anxiety and despair. But all it took was one lie. One simple, stupid lie that ruined it all. Everything came crumbling down around me as she drifted further and further away from me. I was losing her and nothing that I did seemed to bring her closer to my heart. I no longer trusted the girl who had made my last two years amazing. “Who is he?” I said. “He is just a friend from my biology class.” she said. “Why does your friend from biology text you all of the time?” I said obviously slightly upset. “He just wants to hang out.” she said. I might as well have thrown that jar right out the window. It didn’t matter to her anymore. What once gave me joy was only a stab in the heart with every piece of paper. I kept it anyway, at least for a while. Mostly, because I was in denial that the girl of my dreams was gone. One lie, that made everything crumble. An element of creative nonfiction writing is emotion, adding emotion to your writing is a very important step in connecting with the reader. Emotional connection is what allows you to show exactly how you were feeling in the moment you are writing about. When I fondle my object I feel happy. The object that I brought in is my very first rubik's cube.Rubiks cubes make me happy because they are one of the things that brought my friend and I closer together. This 2x2x2 may be the easiest cube to solve however it holds a special place in my heart because it is the first one that I learned how to solve. It is colorful having a total of six separate colors; white, yellow, green, blue, orange, and red. I remember when I first learned how to solve this rubik's cube in 9th grade, all of my friends already knew how to solve rubik's cubes even the full sized 3x3x3 cubes but for some reason I couldn't figure them out, until one day my friend Ethan gave me the 2x2x2 for my birthday. On this day i thought that i would never be smart enough to learn how to solve even the most basic rubik's cube, however after a little bit of practice i was able to. Once I had it I didn't and couldn't put it down until I figured out how to solve it, it only took me about an hour before I was able to solve this rubik's cube. I was hooked instantly and I immediately went out and bought my next cube, the 3x3x3. To this day when i'm upset I get my 2x2x2 and solve it just for fun or to see how fast i can solve it, it takes my mind off of whatever bad things I think of. Each and every rubik's cube is fun to play with, there's something about the different motions that you can do that make it feel natural. My favorite thing about my rubik's cube is that it is something i can fidget with, it has moving parts but is still durable enough to bring with you when you know that you are in a very fidgety mood. The only downside is the size, rubiks cubes are relatively large compared to a lot of the puzzle games or fidget objects that they make nowadays.
The roundtable writing process is the idea that all thoughts are equal and that they should all be written as equals. A roundtable is just what it sounds like, a round table where people can share thoughts equally without any being judged. This idea is relevant to writing because it allows creativity to flow and not be interrupted by criticisms. “Don’t look back. Yes, the draft needs fixing. But first it needs writing.” -Don Murray
“No matter how careful our criticisms, they do not help the student since when we teach composition we are not teaching a product, we are teaching a process.” - Don Murray “Rewriting is reconsideration of subject, form, and audience. It is researching, rethinking, redesigning, rewriting” -Don Murray “Each page takes you somewhere you need to travel before you can land in the next spot.” -Mary Karr “Rewriting on the page is safer then revision in, say, painting, where you can paint past a good place and wreck a canvas. Performers can’t revise at all. A writer can always go back to an earlier draft. The point is to have more curiosity about possible forms the work could take than sense of self-protection for your ego.” - Mary Karr “When it works, it’s like a spell has been cast. For me, it’s less the old world that comes in clear as the old me—how I felt, what I schemed about, who I lied to. But the writing’s seldom pretty—the sentences are just banal.” - Mary Karr “All I am going to do right now, for example, is write that one paragraph that sets the story in my hometown” - Anne Lamott “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make it the whole trip that way.” - Anne Lamott “It reminds me that all i have to do is write down as much as i can see through a one inch picture frame” Anne Lamott “While writing let your mind be open not closed off” - Jason Merth “Sometimes it's not when you are writing that you think of the best ideas” - Jason Merth “See where the words take you, not where you take the words” - Jason Merth The Proust Questionnaire is a list of thirty four questions, these thirty four questions when answered, are said to reveal a person's true nature. The proust questionnaire was created by novelist Marcel Proust. These questions range from “what makes you happy?” all the way to “what is your greatest fear? __1.__What is your idea of perfect happiness?
My idea of perfect happiness involves having no worries and not having to work another day in my life. I also would like to see my friends and family taken care of. __2.__What is your greatest fear? My greatest fear in life is being alone. I do not like the idea of being without my friends or family, sometimes even when people are with me or around me I feel alone. __3.__What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? I deplore my laziness and my inability to function in the mornings, sometimes I find it very difficult to get up for work or for school even when I know that not showing up will only affect my negatively in the end. __4.__What is the trait you most deplore in others? My least favorite trait people show is ignorance. When people are ignorant to facts or block them out with emotions. __5.__Which living person do you most admire? I most admire my grandfather. I most admire him because he was raised with little money, however with hard work was able to pick himself up and become successful. __6.__What is your greatest extravagance? My greatest extravagance is and always will be my car. I originally purchased it for roughly $4000, but over the past 2 years I put closer to $3000 more into it. __7.__What is your current state of mind? As I am writing this my current state of mind is stressed. There is a lot of homework and work to do. __8.__What do you consider the most overrated virtue? Being temperament, or having a lot of self control. __9.__On what occasion do you lie? To spare a person's feelings. __10.__What do you most dislike about your appearance? My freckles, I wish I had a more even complexion. __11.__Which living person do you most despise? I don't think I really hate anyone or anything. __12.__What is the quality you most like in a man? The ability to pick themselves up even when they have been beaten down or hurt. __13.__What is the quality you most like in a woman? Their ability to show and express emotion so openly and vividly. __14.__Which words or phrases do you most overuse? I overuse “like” too much. __15.__What or who is the greatest love of your life? My current greatest love of my life is myself. __16.__When and where were you happiest? My happiest place is in Black Lake New York. __17.__Which talent would you most like to have? I wish I was able to test better, it would make school a lot easier. __18.__If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? How easily I get distracted, I wish I could start a project and just finish it without getting distracted as easily as I do. __19.__What do you consider your greatest achievement? So far in my life my greatest achievement is graduating high school. __20.__If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be? Not sure. __21.__Where would you most like to live? I would most want to live at Black Lake New York, or in Seattle. __22.__What is your most treasured possession? My most treasured possession is my car. __23.__What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? Not sure __24.__What is your favorite occupation? My favorite occupation that I have worked so far is working at starbucks. __25.__What is your most marked characteristic? __26.__What do you most value in your friends? Their loyalty __27.__Who are your favorite writers? My favorite writers are Neal Shusterman, Rick Riordan, and Alexander Gordon Smith __28.__Who is your hero of fiction? My current fictional hero is Rowan aka Scythe Lucifer from the series scythe written by Neal Shusterman, he is my hero because he is willing to sacrifice his eternal life to save not only one person but to also take down a corrupt system. __29.__Which historical figure do you most identify with? __30.__Who are your heroes in real life? Police officers because they risk their lives every day to save people that they do not even know. __31.__What are your favorite names? Oliver, and Elizabeth __32.__What is it that you most dislike? People being ignorant or selfish towards other people __33.__What is your greatest regret? My greatest regret is not trying as hard as I could have or should have in high school, especially now knowing that if I had just tried I would have succeeded much more than I have now. Not trying then set me back a few steps now. __34.__How would you like to die? I want to die doing something courageous or helping another person. |
Jason Merthin this blog I will put my thoughts into words Archives
March 2019
Categories |