Why is my heart a 

Black hole? My mind a windy 

field of barley. 

I am not so sad 

As the waterfall world, but 

I want to wail. 

Final for Intaglio Printmaking!

Love Song to Inertia

The main focus of  “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock” is the tension of inertia. Throughout the poem, Prufrock poises upon the edge of taking action or formulating an opinion, but time and time again, he backs down and drifts away on his underwhelming train of thought. This inaction is supported by TS Eliot’s use of repetition, imagery, and a nontraditional rhyming pattern. 

            Repetition in the poem helps to tie the stream of consciousness style of writing together, threading the entire thing together and uniting it with repeating questions and echoing lines.  The protagonist of the poem constantly asks, “Do I dare?” (676) about some unnamed action, and never really states whether he dares or not. Prufrock also asks variations of “How should I presume?” (676), somewhat echoing the thought of “Do I dare?” (676). In addition to these almost direct line repetitions, several lines are referenced or shuffled and rewritten at the ends of stanzas. For example, “If one, settling a pillow by her head,/Should say: ‘That is not what I meant at all./That is not it, at all.’” (677) and “If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,/And leaning toward the window, should say:/ ‘That is not it at all,/ That is not what I meant, at all.’” This restructuring of previous lines in the poem is a particularly clever way to retain continuity in an otherwise fractured stream of consciousness piece. 

            The poem’s use of imagery reinforces the theme of stillness and inaction. The first stanza introduces the inaction with the lines “When the evening is spread out against the sky/Like a patient etherized upon a table;” (675) This line, though strange and dissonant if you think about it too hard, immediately conveys a feeling of lethargy and inactivity. The reader is thus prepared for a long, dreamlike collection of images and phrases that slowly build and then contract throughout the poem like the deep, passive breathing of a tranquilized patient. This sleepy image is reinforced throughout the poem, with lines like “And seeing it was a soft October night,/[the fog] curled once about the house and fell asleep” (675), and  “If one, settling a pillow beside her head,” (677). The poem’s theme of inaction is conveyed with sleepy and dreamlike imagery.

           Finally, the use of rhyme in the poem imitates the feeling of thought, bouncing up and down then trailing off. Throughout the poem, the pattern of rhyme bounces from line to line, then falls dead before being picked up again.  There is no constant abab pattern of rhyme; more often than not the pattern is aabbcaa, or aabacdefe. The rhyming flits about at its own discretion, rhyming some lines, then not others, and then rhyming two lines in a row. Both rhyming and non-rhyming lines carry the poem forward and create pauses after stanzas. An erratic thought process, or a state of dreaming are brought to mind by the pattern of rhyming, further conveying a feeling of inaction. 

            The poem “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock” seems to mainly focus on a feeling of inertia, while the protagonist leads up to and down from the question of “Do I dare?”. Prufrock never comes to a decision, merely allowing his thoughts to trail off. He avoids taking action, choosing to stay still at the brink of acting. All of the elements of the poem including its use of imagery, repetition, and rhyme, help to convey the tension and release of inaction.

Abcarian, Richard, Marvin Klotz, and Samuel Cohen. Literature: The Human Experience. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2013. Print. 675-777

Climb the Tree, Come Down Only for Green Mangoes

The eyes of my heart were broken
on the continent's brow.
Flash of yellow light, stars
and the world was outlined in red
and yellow, bright blue and salmon walls.
Pounded down by a waterfall,
strong enough to stay standing.
Wore me down and built me up,
little sandcastle human,
shaped by the branches that reminded
me of my own softness.
Surrounded by new colors, I forgot
what my own shell looked like.
Sycophant, the outside reflected the inside
reflecting self of surroundings.
A continuous, silver song
White on white
on blue on verdant on saffron
Goldenrod azul.
Butterfly, blue. 

A Realization

I was somehow lucky enough to visit Colombia for ten days this Spring.
While I was there, I was completely floored by the absolute beauty of the countryside and the cities of Medellín and Santa Fe de Antioquia. I am but a small desert girl, and being surrounded by all of that greenery was absolutely breathtaking. The flowers were everywhere, blooming from bushes and trees, flashes of orchids in the mountains and gardens in the cities. The color quenched and awakened a thirst in my eyes.
I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to stand being back home, in the mud and grayness of Winter giving way to Spring.
Surprisingly, a film had been washed from my eyes in Colombia, and I looked at my landscape with clear vision. The beauty here, so different from Colombia, pierced my heart just the same, and I discovered just how much I love this landscape. The wild trees in my valley, rocky mountain juniper and cedar, may be shorter, stockier, and less lush than those in Colombia, but they are still so beautiful. The blue-grey, scaly fields of sage, low to the ground feel like home.
Don't get me wrong, though, there are desert landscapes in Colombia too, around drought and just normally dry areas near the mountains of Antioquia. I saw cacti there taller than what grows close and nearly invisible to the ground in the hills of my valley.
The spring flowered here, sweeter smelling than Colombia, absolutely white on campus as the trees donned gowns of popcorn balls all along the sidewalk. The black locusts in my backyard were blooming until just yesterday, when the tiny, orchid-like flowers began to fade and flutter to the ground, spent.
I wasn't able to truly appreciate the beauty of my home until I traveled to Colombia, and experienced a land incredibly beautiful, in many many ways. I cannot say that one is more beautiful than the other, but my experience of both has opened my eyes, and I love them dearly. 

Occupying space

Despite the assumption that Rosa parks suddenly decided to keep her seat on the bus and stand up to the tyranny of racism, the actual fact of the matter is that her decision was years in coming, and she had trained in activism for several years. For twelve years she helped to lead a chapter of the NAACP, and she had recently gone to a civil rights workshop.
This very much relates to something I've been thinking about lately. I very much admire people who I see as spontaneous, and public. Those videos of people messing around in airports? I think they look like fun, and I admire the courage and audacity of the people who perform and record them in public.
However, the other day, I realized that such things are not as out of the blue as they may seem. The people who create those videos of random acts of publicly strange behavior spend a lot of time in those places, they are comfortable in them and they understand how they work.
Rosa Parks spent a lot of time in the abstract space of activism and social change, so she felt when the time was right to keep her seat, she felt comfortable in her decision to own the space she was in.

In realizing all of this and linking it up, I realize that in order to inherit or develop the qualities of those I admire, I must first become comfortable in that space of activism, public connection, or private, instantaneous connection. 

Reader's Write Response: Immigrants

(Written for English 1010, Fall Semester.)

Some people think of their grandmothers. Others think of their parents or their friends. Some people even remember their own journeys as emigrants from their home countries. When I think of the word “Immigrant”, I think of the students I work with at my college’s English Skills Center.

They are all bright and quick to laugh, and they are all married, most of them are Mexican women with children to take care of and homes to clean. One is a married man with a job; he often has to leave early so he can go to work. A lady from Saudi Arabia attends as well; her husband is a Business student at the college. In addition to all of these people in my life right now, I also think of the little Mexican girl who lived next door to me when I was four. All we could do together was count, and say hola and adios. 

            To Jodie in the November 2008 issue of SUN Magazine’s Readers Write, Immigrant meant a colleague, Maria, who worked hard and gave back to everyone around her, but wasn’t allowed the same opportunities as many other people because she was living as an undocumented immigrant. Maria spoke Spanish and translated for visitors to a nonprofit associated with AmeriCorps, where Jodi was volunteering. Among the credentials given by Jodie, Maria also worked as a waitress while attending college full time and helping out with her siblings. Maria, had lived in the US for ten years, but she wasn’t a recorded citizen. Because of this, it was challenging to get her on a plane for a convention, but they eventually decided to show Maria’s student ID, and say that she hadn’t gotten her driver’s license yet. The plan worked, and Maria was able to attend and speak at the convention. After Maria graduated from university, she continued working at the same restaurant, getting paid under the table. Because Maria was undocumented, she wasn’t able to move on to Medical School.

            Judy Chow wrote about her experience growing up in Philadelphia after emigrating from Hong Kong with her family. She was two years old at the time, so her identity hadn’t been cemented as Chinese. After becoming accustomed to being surrounded by white people on her block and at school she would forget she was Asian as a child until she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. People would ask where she was from, and she would have to explain to them that she “was originally from China”. After moving to Virginia in her late thirties, she realized “‘Home’ may not be a place but a state of mind”.  She writes that she has begun to speak with a southern accent, and she forgets that she looks different from her Caucasian neighbors. Finally, she says, “There are days when my neighbors forget that I look “foreign, and I become just another person, colleague, friend.”

            Being an immigrant often means struggling with feeling different, possibly learning a new language, and becoming accustomed to a new culture and environment. Sometimes all of this can be very difficult, especially for school age children. Oliver French emigrated from Germany to Switzerland in 1933in the wake of the Nazi takeover of Germany and the boycott of Jewish businesses. At boarding school, Oliver didn’t speak the language, and found the other children’s customs strange. Because of the language barrier, the other children would try to get Oliver and his brother in trouble with dirty words and double entendres. In spite of the difficult period of assimilation, eventually the boys learned the language and became generally accepted by their classmates. As Oliver writes, “Some of the kids would still refer to us using slurs for Germans, but we no longer felt German. We were refugees from the Germans. We were immigrants.”

            The people who exemplify the word “immigrant” are often running away from turmoil or oppression in their home countries, like Oliver and the people involved in our modern Syrian refugee crisis. Just as often though, immigrants are moving toward something, a brighter future for their children or more opportunities than they are afforded in their home country. In doing so, they face a lot of hardship like the peril of traveling across a closed border or a wide ocean, or the difficulty of adjusting to a new culture and language. Most immigrants do their very best to make a living and a life in their new home.

Scars Are Supposed To Fade With Time

Seeing your truck three times 

In one night

Made my heart drop, deflated blue lead balloon

Straight to the bottom of my shoes, 

And then into the center of the earth.

What is left is a ghost, 

An echo of what you were to me for so long.

It's better that way.

Please stop reminding me that you're real.

Final Project for Relief Print Making

Attending College Without a Car

Believe it or not, it is entirely possible to survive college without owning a car. I did it for one and three quarters of a semester, and I didn’t even live in town. I lived too far away to walk or ride a bike, so I carpooled with my dad to and from college. For half of my first semester, I had one class on Fridays, when my dad didn’t drive to college. A couple of times, I tried to catch a ride with other commuters from my town, but eventually I found a friend to steadily carpool with every Friday. On campus, I walked to my classes, and a couple of times, I walked five or six blocks down to my credit union and Wal-Mart. It was hard not having a car because I didn’t have anywhere to store books or class supplies, but this isn’t much of a problem for students who live on campus or in town, and something I assume in this set of tips for surviving college without a car.

            If you look at it from one point of view, not owning a car can be beneficial in two ways, and it positively impacts the earth in another. When most people don’t have a car, they tend to walk, bike, or board more places. They use their own body power and muscles to travel. In a nutshell, they get more exercise. In doing this, they can also save money that would otherwise be used to pay for insurance and gas. Most importantly, going without a car lessens the individual’s negative impact on the environment around them; they aren’t burning air-polluting gasoline or contributing to traffic congestion.

            In order to live without a car, you have to walk everywhere humanly possible. Walk to the post office, walk to the store, walk to the movies, walk to friends’ houses, and walk to class. It will seem like a lot of walking, but think of it as dual-purpose exercise. You are accomplishing two purposes with one act, important for college students with a heavy load of homework and up to six classes. Sitting around too much doesn’t do anybody much good, and this makes going without a car a blessing in disguise. Walking can be enjoyable and easy; it allows you out into the fresh air and sunshine, and most college campuses are designed with pedestrians in mind, meaning that quite a few people also walk. This can be a good source of social interaction, so don’t ignore your fellow pedestrians; greet them with a “good morning”, or just a simple “Hello” and wave of the hand. If you feel uncomfortable walking alone at certain times, or just in general, find someone to walk with. They can be a fellow classmate or one of your friends. Finding a walking companion is a particularly good strategy at night, when most people feel insecure or unsafe on their own.

            When a destination is too far to walk to get a wheeled vehicle like a bike or skateboard. It is essential that you enjoy and feel comfortable riding your particular human-powered vehicle; otherwise you’re better off walking. When I was without a car (and occasionally nowadays) if I needed to go somewhere fast or far away, more than four or five blocks, I would ride my long board. A lot of people on my college campus use longboards and bikes, with the occasional person riding a penny board or a scooter. I have even seen one kid ride to classes on a unicycle. There are a ton of human-powered alternatives to cars, what you end up choosing is dictated by your preferences and comfort zone.

            Carpooling is another fantastic strategy for automotive lacking college students. You can carpool with someone if you need to go somewhere too far for walking or biking. Carpooling is a good way to conserve gas, and most people are happy to share the ride. If the ride is short, there’s no need to offer to pay for gas, but it is courteous to offer if it’s longer than fifteen minutes, or out of the driver’s way. It’s also nice to chat with the driver. Don’t get in the car and ignore them for the whole ride, and definitely don’t text. On long drives, it’s thoughtful to bring snack food to share. If done right, carpooling can be beneficial to the passenger and the driver.

As you can see, it isn’t impossible to survive college without a car. All of the alternatives to driving take more physical effort, but they save money and provide a chance for exercise. A lot of driving alternatives also provide an opportunity for conserving resources and reducing your carbon footprint. In my own experience, it was hard not having a car during my first semester, I had to walk a lot of places, which made Ephraim seem a lot bigger than it was. In other ways, being without a car was also easier. I saved a lot of money on gas, and I didn’t have to pay car insurance or repairs. I rode with other people to and from college, this gave me the opportunity to get to know people better and spend time conversing with them. Because of this experience, I am not too attached to my car, and I understand what places are possible for me to walk to. While enjoying the benefits and working through the challenges, I found that surviving without a car in college was entirely possible.