Imagination

I suppose that I was a lot more imaginative when I was younger.

I think part of this is because I was much more curious about, well, everything. I constantly asked questions, kept strange objects, and most importantly wrote, drew, and danced.

When I was little whenever I ran into a new word, I would always ask my dad what it meant. After a while I'm surprised I didn't stop asking him, because every simple definition I asked for turned into a 20 minute speech about roots, stories, and proper uses of the aforementioned word.

Part of this general curiosity of new words led me to creative writing. I was so interested in the power of the word, as I still am.

In middle school I attended the creative writing club we had, and always wrote original pieces for the dramatic arts competitions we had each year (I won second place in 7th grade!). I can look back at all of the poems I wrote and see more than anything the errors, but also the inspiration. Nowadays it's pretty difficult to come up with a purpose behind a poem or a story, that I might not of considered necessary before I started writing when I was younger.

Every once in a while I still do have some sudden inspiration. For some reason, this seems to happen a lot after exams. Maybe it's just my boredom, or maybe it's the universe's subtle way of laughing at me, because I am never able to keep the poems I write during exams. Although I never really do keep my favorite poems (I like to give people my favorites as presents).

This time though I remembered the poem as best I could, and then in a way sort of edited it.

It's kind of dark, and not based on any personal experience, but I still kind of like it.

Her silent protests,

his mindless words.

Her colorful arms

record his unprovoked rage.

She stopped fighting

to break his control.

The control that crazes him,

the control that tells him

to add blossoming purple flowers

to the garden that decorates her body.

The garden that is tended only by his unwanted love.

The Final Countdown

As first semester is ending, my life seems to be exploding. I have a lot of exciting things going on, so I figured, why not share some of them?

Foremost, the thing that has thoroughly taken over my life is the spring play at Blair, Taming of the Shrew. It is endless fun, but also endlessly tiring. Until the show, (opening night is on January 31st!) I have rehearsal every day (with the small exception of next Sunday) but the rest includes Saturdays. I am really excited for the show, and one of the things that makes it even more exciting is that the stage is being used for a black box performance. A black box performance means that audience members are seated on the stage inches from the actors. Although this type of performance is extremely exciting, it's also extremely nerve-wrecking.

One of the reasons I am so excited for the show is because it is Shakespeare. I have always had an interest in Shakespeare, but performing Shakespeare is an entirely different beast than reading Shakespeare. There are so many little complexities, so many unwritten directions, and also cases where the language has changed so much that meanings of words and lines have changed.

I find that these changes are extremely interesting. Over time, language has a tendency to degrade in its meaning. An example of this that came recently at a rehearsal was the word "naughty". Nowadays, the line, should "naughty" be included, would get a laugh. But this is only because the meaning and power of the word naughty has degraded. Naughty used to be a description of something evil, quite terrible actually, but now it is more used to describe a disobedient child.

Some of the other things coming up are:

The Novagondy Ball (Yes I get to go to a ball!)
Exams (Not exactly exciting...)
SAT Math 2 Subject Test (Yay more tests!)
The British are coming, the British are coming!

Also, my mom just designed a website for her dad, my grandfather, who is a watercolor artist, who has apparently won many more awards than I thought he had (check out the awards section on his website!). Also, just go and check out his paintings! Some of them are from when he first started painting professionally and we are slowly uploading more recent ones. He's really excited about the site, so please go and check it out! It is at www.davidneilmack.com.

Documentary Review

Michael Moore's documentary Bowling for Columbine examines America's culture in relation to guns and the atmosphere that could be behind the Columbine shooting, and other acts of such gun violence. Moore uses no dramatic aspects only using interviews and other a-roll, b-roll, and archival footage. He uses few cinematic aspects, and when he does use them, they are not easily visible to the viewer, such as a couple scenes where he had to of shot multiple times, but was passed off as being taken once. The one aspect of film that Moore uses heavily is the literary aspect.

Even though none of his characters are fictional, he chooses either very interesting characters. Some are very emotionally poignant, such as two survivors of the Columbine shooting he takes on an adventure, some are made off to be ridiculous or antagonistic, such as the Charlton Heston, the NRA president, and James Nichols, the brother of one of the bombers connected to the Oklahoma City Bombing, but all are interesting.

Although Moore uses other points of view in all of his documentaries, including this one, his documentaries have some aspects of propaganda that impact the theme and overall message.

I would recommend this documentary, but I would recommend it with caution, making sure that the viewer is prepared to see more than Moore's view and try to see more of the issue, which is important, particularly lately.

Bowling for Columbine, 120 minutes, rated MA

A Terrible Thing

Friday, December 14th, 2012.
The Sandy Hook shooting will not, and should not be easily forgotten.
This should be a time of togetherness, a time for community, and support, but instead there have been people turning it into an opportunity for debate.
People have been using it as an emotional argument against gun laws.
The man responsible for this tragedy did not just up and go on a shooting spree simply because he had the access to firepower. But that is not the point.
Ryan Lanza, did commit a crime. He committed an atrocity. But he did this because he was he was suffering. Because no one was there for him. Because something was wrong with him and society only amplified this.
Now, people are calling him a pervert, a monster, and countless other things. Isn't this, in a way, just perpetuating the hate that in some way played a part in this tragedy?
If we are to learn anything from this terrible event, it should be that we should try our best to accept everyone. Try our best to help everyone.
And in this awful time, try to remember, "The world is a good place and the number of hugs per gunshot victim is very, very high." -Hank Green

The Holidays

I've always loved the holidays.

Christmas was honestly the most wonderful time of the year when I was a little girl.

I would begin singing Christmas carols on December 1st, sometimes even on the day after Thanksgiving. I would anxiously wait for the snow to come and create a beautiful and pure winter wonderland. As December wore on, I became more and more excited to go to my grandparents house.

Christmas at my grandparents house was always so traditional. A bit because of our own traditions, and a bit because of the classic traditions my grandparents followed.

What I consider Christmas started at around 5 o'clock on Christmas Eve. As a family, we would drive up about 45 minutes to my Dad's grandmother's house. We'd spend the evening trading presents, playing board games, and generally playing around with our first cousins in the incredibly crowded house. My grandmother had 8 children who all got married and had multiple children of their own, and so on, resulting in a HUGE family gathering.

At about 9 o'clock we'd drive home. Every year I would fall asleep in the car, and even though I would wake up when we got home, I would pretend to sleep on, so my dad would carry me into my bed and tuck me in.

With the morning came presents. I woke up relatively early, excited for the long day ahead. My parents had taught my sister and I about St. Nicholas, who Santa was based off of, so we always knew the truth about Santa.

After unwrapping presents, we'd go to church for the nativity service, and quickly leave after to get on the road. The Christmas day road trip to my grandparent's house in retrospect wasn't that long at only 3 hours, compared to the current 10, but boy did we dread it every year.

Exactly at the half point of the car ride, we would stop at a Waffle House in Wapakoneta, OH. Every year. Without fail. The waitresses that were stuck with working Christmas day, always remembered us, and our single annual appearance.

Finally, after 3 excruciatingly long hours of sleeping and staring out the window at the corn fields covered in snow, we pulled up at my grandparents house.

My sister and I would run up the walk surrounded by snow to see who could use the knocker first. Of course our family could always hear a loud clunky van coming from a block away, so their surprise was always ruined.

One of the best parts of Christmas for me was the entire atmosphere. It was as if my grandparents house was doused in magic from the 24th until the 31st. My grandparents live in this fabulous cozy little home with the best backyard and a magnificent garden.

Every year, without fail, my grandmother goes through the pains of decorating the entire house with stocking and dolls, right down to the little light up villages that ran along all endges of the rooms, decked out with little figurines and tons of fake, sparkling snow. My two favorites I can picture clearly: one with a little ice rink that had automated magnets underneath it, perpetually dragging three smiling ice skaters in looping figure eights, and the other with the none other than Mr. Scrooge spinning in circles in the top room of his office with the ghosts of past, present, and future. These were more entrancing than the tree and even the little automated train running around it (although I had my fair share of playing with that).

I could go on for ages and ages about her decorations, how their house looks out on the perfect snow, into the backyard where we even saw a bright red cardinal, many a time.

Christmas dinner was probably the most traditional part of the holiday with the exception of the decorations and atmosphere. We'd all sit in the beautifully lit dining room and go through our meal, with all of our plates and utensils (even the fancy unnecessary ones) and share a classic holiday meal together, with my added chocolate milk, of course.

Christmas was always the best time at my grandparents'.

Experimenting

This week I tried, for the first time, to make an animated GIF. I started by writing out one of my favorite quotes from John Green with a kind of typography. I ran into a challenge when my printer spazzed out and I couldn't scan my piece. Once I got past this, I used Pixlr to create a series of photos that I uploaded to My Space Gens, and created this gif.

Another challenge I ran into was just uploading my gif once I finished. You can't do it right through blogger. So I had to create a photo bucket account and then use the html code to put it into this post.

Capture the Fall