Currently reading

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Lately in my creative nonfiction class, we have been reading and writing memoir. To help me write my own (short) memoir piece, I read Chasing Daylight by Eugene O’Kelly.

Eugene O’Kelly was the CEO of KPMG before he died in 2005 of brain cancer. The memoir, written in the three months between his diagnosis and his death, was published posthumously in 2008.

If someone hadn’t read memoir before, this book would be a good one to start with. It does not use extensive figurative language, it has a lot of summary, but it is relatively short and extremely powerful.

The subtitle of the book is How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life. O’Kelly didn’t have much time to live, but he had enough to obsess over it and let it ruin him. That is not what he did. Instead, he thought of the dying process similar to how he approached his business organization. Instead his first line of the first chapter is “I was blessed. I was told I had three months to live.”

I do not usually recommend reading the end before reading the middle of a book, but O’Kelly’s wife, Corinne, wrote a phenomenal afterword. In it, she wrote about the events right around his time of death, the events that he could not. In the afterword, a hospice doctor visits and tells her about patients who was not close to his family and was severely agitated until he died, restless. The hospice doctor told Corinne that “Your husband isn’t agitated. He’s peaceful.” He had accepted his disease and resolved any unresolved relationships.

I can’t help think of my grandma who has Dementia. Her husband made a choice not to tell her what disease was setting in, so she never knew what was happening. And when she dies, she will have no concrete memory of the past six years. At least Eugene O’Kelly knew and could say goodbye, could make amends.

Death has always puzzled us. It has intrigued us. It is an unknown that many have conquered, but none truly understand.

The Power of Forgiveness

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Last Friday, I got the opportunity to see the film “The Power of Forgiveness,” which is directed by Martin Doblmeier, in my philosophy class. Afterwards, I got to sit in on a Q & A with the director himself.

In the film, Doblmeier explores the idea of forgiveness in communities that have been wronged grievously, including Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, the Amish in Pennsylvania, the Jews, those in the Columbine shooting, and some others.

The documentary did not try to educate its audience on how to forgive. Quite the contrary, it acknowledged that everyone, every community  has a different approach to forgiveness. For the Amish, forgiveness is almost automatic, something that they are taught to do all the time. They even applied this concept to the school shooting that happened in their very own backyard, so to speak. Some members talked about how it was a little more difficult than usual, but still they forgave somewhat out of habit. That does not mean that they forgot or even became less angry. Oh no. After all, forgiving is not forgetting. It is letting go of the pain.

I am in my early twenties. I don’t think I have enough years of experience and wisdom to forgive everything and everyone.

I do forgive my roommate from my freshman year who hurt me greatly.

I do forgive mean comments that have come my way over the years.

I do not quite forgive James Holmes, the man who opened fire in a movie theater that I have grown up going to.

I do not forgive Hitler, a man who lived and died before I was even a thought, but still instills terror in me.

One of my classmates stood up at the end of the period and asked if forgiveness isn’t a little selfish because it is typically done for your own well-being and not for the good of the one who wronged you.

I can see his point, but I think the opposite of forgiveness is vengeance and letting the wrong destroy your life and is infinitely more selfish. By letting your pain consume you, you are saying that it matters more than everybody else’s pain.

And the truth is: everybody is in pain of some sort. You are not alone, even if struggles vary from person to person. And it very well may be that part of that struggle is forgiving someone. And forgiving is hard. Hard to understand and do.

But I think that forgiveness brings us together and gives us peace, which is, I believe what human beings crave. In the end.

Why I Write

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This is from a paper that I recently wrote for a class. Therefore it is a little longer than normal.

 

I do not know why exactly I am a writer. Maybe I am one because my experiences made me one. Maybe I am one because I was born to be one. Whatever the reason, I know that my family as well as my school experiences are big part of how I am able to write.
My father has always been a huge supporter of my writing. He sometimes jokes (Or at least I think he’s joking. I am not altogether sure.) that when I get to be a famous author like J.K. Rowling, he and my mom will come and live in the mother-in-law apartment of my fancy house in the mountains. Before he started saying things like that to me, he was my first critic. He read over my academic papers for school as well as my poems and stories and taught me how to take constructive criticism well. And always, without fail, he will answer my questions about something out of the blue that I decided that I wanted to write about. In fact, he has come to learn that when I say, “I have a random question…” it means that I am writing something new.
I have always done well in English and it has always been my favorite subject, which is part of the reason why I’m an English major. It is also part of the reason why I am a writer, although I know that not all writers are English majors and not all English majors are writers…

In a way, I have always been writing. My sister tells me that I started when I was second grade. But of course, I started out as a reader. Or rather, a listener. I listened to Is Your Mama a Llama and Green Eggs and Ham and The Horse and His Boy. I listened and I imitated. I imitated my sibling’s ability to read, much like I imitate cursive before I learned it in school. My parents have a picture of me sitting next to my oldest brother in the living room, him in the rocking chair and me on the couch, both of us perusing magazines. His is a Nathional Geographic and mine looks like it’s about Astronomy. It looks like a snapshot of a teenager and a toddler fairly advanced for her age, until you peer closer and notice that my magazine is upside down.
As soon as I did start reading, I did it everywhere and any time I could. I read secretly after my lights were supposed to be turned out. I read on my way to church when I was supposed to be cleaning my room. And several times in school, I would become so engrossed in my current book that I would have to be reminded that class was starting. I read to draw closer to my family and friends and I would read to escape.
My sister recently told me that “when you like something, you really like it.” That is especially true with books. I read The Boxcar Children over and over until the first book of the series literally split in two. I read A Little Princess and The Secret Garden until I could have recited them verbatim.
It was The Secret Garden that really started me writing, I think. I copied each chapter into notebooks and when I got tired of that, I made up my own endings for Mary, Colin, and Dicken. Or maybe my writing started even before that. Perhaps it started in preschool when I would dictate stories to my dad and I would illustrate the little booklets he made with my scribbles when my neighbor, MaLia, and I created an invisible spy who had adventures in my backyard.
I might have always been a writer in some fashion, but I did not actually start considering myself one until I was in middle school, maybe even in high school. It started with poetry. I have to admit that they were not all that good, but I wrote them anyway. I pasted them on homemade candles and gave them as gifts for Christmas and showed them to my dance teacher. I once showed a poem to my sixth grade English teacher and he said, “Ooh! Someone’s in love!” I was so incredibly angry at what he said that I did not show anything to anyone for quite a while… But I got over it when I was entered into an advanced English class in eighth grade, which seemed more like a Creative Writing class than any English class I had ever taken before. In it, we were required to participate in NanoWriMo (National Writing Month) and write a good portion of a novel as well as the script part of a graphic novel. Then, I tried my hand at fiction, even though I still preferred poetry at that time.
At the beginning of eighth grade, I entertained the idea of applying for Denver School of the Arts for dance. I told my dance teacher this and she told me that I should also consider their Creative Writing program because I had a real talent for writing. I did not listen her because my heart was so set on dancing and I did not believe I was good enough at writing. I ended up attending a different high school as I figured out that dance would not make me happy in the end.
My freshman year, I discovered darkness and my writing became more meaningful and much better, in my eyes, as I had something hard and deep and dark to convey. I also started journaling. My first journal was very succinct, but my next couple became more involved and much longer. I had to ask for a new journal every year for my birthday because I filled them out so fast. The act of journaling introduced me to the genre of Creative Nonfiction, even though I did not realize that the genre had a name at that time.
During my freshman year of college, I took a Creative Writing class and the teacher talked about this relatively new genre called Creative Nonfiction. I immediately fell in love with it and found that I was more at ease with it than fiction or poetry. And in my first two years of college, I manage to get two pieces published in riverrun. I hoping to get published in national magazines, starting with the ones that are specifically geared for emerging writers.
The idea of getting published is a scary thing. Exciting, but scary. It means that I might be able to join the likes of Sylvia Plath and Joan Didion. Or I might not. But whether or not I get short pieces entered into recognized journals or get my novel which currently has only two chapters written, I will be a writer.

There are many reasons why I am a writer. Maybe it is because of my experiences. Maybe it is because I was born to be one.
Or, maybe I am a writer simply because I write.

 

Recently Read

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Sorry for the sporadic postings of late. Life has gotten increasingly busy in the last few weeks with school and work.

The book that I read recently that I want to share with you is “The Empathy Exams” by Leslie Jamison. It is quite different from all the other books that I have reviewed on here.

1. It is Creative Nonfiction (If you haven’t heard of this genre before, look it up because it’s brilliant. I mostly write in this genre).

2. It is a book of essays, primarily personal and journalistic.

3. I had to read it for class, not for myself.

My professor shared a review of the book with us that said that each essay is worth reading individually, but not compiled together. I have to agree. Since I had to finish this book in two weeks, I had to read one essay after the other without much pause. By the end, I started to feel overwhelmed by her personality, which is strong and not very much like mine.

But many of the essays are worth reading by themselves. The first one, “The Empathy Exams” tells of a trying time in her life using the framing of her experiences of a medical actor. I would also recommend “The Immortal Horizon” and “Fog Count” as they are connected by one character, even though they aren’t really connected by plot.

The essays that I felt could have been revised more or thought on a little more are “In Defense of Saccharine” and “Devil’s Bait.” Although both of them were interesting, “Saccharine” was too long and seemed too experimental in form to really make sense and “Devil’s Bait” made me a little irritated with Jamison because she preaches empathy, but didn’t really practice it.

Leslie Jamison is only in her 3os and “The Empathy Exams” won the 2011 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. Yes, her essays do have flaws, but I think it is utterly remarkable that a woman who is only a decade older than me was able to win such a prestigious prize. I think that by the time she reaches her 40s or 50s, she will truly be an amazing writer who has both an amazing grasp of form and a wonderful understanding of how to portray herself.

Furthermore, this book helps me realize that I really can be a writer if I practice. If she can be successful, I can. I just have to write, write, write, write, and then write some more.

 

2 Minute Personality Test

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My friend and I recently went to Chipotle for dinner. Chipotle lately has been printing short short stories on their cups. This time, my cup held the 2 Minute Personality Test by Jonathan Safran Foer, which is a series of questions that I found interesting.

Here are my answers:

1.What was the kindest thing you almost did?

I saw a shopping cart in the exact middle of the parking lot. I intended to put it away so the employees didn’t have to. However, by the time I had parked, I had completely forgot about it. Until now, obviously.

2. Is your fear of Insomnia stronger than your fear of what awoke you?

No. But I have been afraid to sleep because of nightmares.

3. Are bonsai cruel?

We are talking about the tree, right? No, I do not think they’re cruel. I think they are amazing.

4. Do you love what you love, or just the feeling?

Both, I guess. For example, I love writing for writing’s sake and for the euphoria I get when I write.

5. Your earliest memories: do you look through your young eyes or look at your young self?

I look at my memories with my young eyes. And for some reason, these memories are all sort of yellowish.

6. Which feels worse: to know that there are people who do more with less talent or there are people with more talent?

The first, most definitely.

7. Do you walk on moving walkways?

I think I’m rare in the fact that I prefer to actually stay still. It’s slower, but more peaceful. But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t walked on them.

8. Should it make  any difference that you knew it was wrong as you did it?

Yes.

9. Would you trade actual intelligence for the perception of being smarter?

Most definitely not. Since I wore glasses in middle school, I got so tired of people assuming that I was smarter than I felt I was.

10. Why does it bother you when someone at the next table is having a conversation on a cell phone.

It is when they’re texting in the company of someone else that I get bothered. When they’re having a conversation on the phone, most of the time I’m too focused on eavesdropping to be bothered by it.

11. How many years of your life would you trade for the greatest month in your life?

None. I want to live every year of my life and remember it, no matter how bad, good, or disappointing they are.

12. What would you tell your father, if it were possible.

Sometimes it feels like I don’t appreciate you enough, but I completely, utterly love you.

13. Which is changing faster: your body or your mind?

My mind, hopefully.

14. It is cruel to tell an old person his/her prognosis?

No. I think its cruel to not tell them.

15. Are you in any way angry at your phone?

Not directly. I’m more annoyed at how reliant I am on it.

16. When you pass a storefront, do you look at what’s inside, your reflection, or neither?

What’s inside.

17. Is there anything you would die for if no one could ever know you died for it?

The earth, maybe? I would sooner die for a person or persons than a thing.

18. If you could be assured that money wouldn’t make you any small bit happier, would you still want more money?

I just want enough money so I can support myself and my family in the future.

19. What has irrevocably been spoiled for you?

Coconut. I choked on it when I was little and I haven’t like it since.

20. If your deepest secret became public, would you be forgiven?

I’m not even sure what my deepest secret is, but I hope it would.

21. Is your best friend your kindest friend?

No, but she is one of the kindest I know.

22. Is it in any way cruel to give a dog a name?

I don’t think so, but then again that hadn’t even occurred to me.

23. Is there anything you need to confess?

I’m a little nuts. And so are my friends and some members of my family. That’s why I picked them. Or they picked me. Either one.

24. You know it’s a “murder of crows” and a “wake of buzzards” but it’s a what of ravens, again?

No idea. But I can’t help thinking of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven.”

25. What is it about death that you are afraid of?

The same reason why I’m afraid of darkness: the unknown.

26. How does it make you feel to know that it is an “unkindness of ravens?”

Unperturbed, but gradually getting curious about the phrase.

 

 

Writer’s Toolbox

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I created this post/story using “The Writer’s Toolbox,” which was created by Jamie Cat Callan.

In this delightful box, are three bundles of sticks. As I wrote, I drew one stick from each bundle and tried to include it in my story.

The first stick I drew was “The only way John could pass the exam was by cheating.” The second: “If you don’t take chances,” said the man in striped pajamas, “you might as well not be alive.” The third: “He was skating on thin ice – that’s all I can say.”

Here goes:

The only way John could pass the exam was by cheating. John was ashamed to be even be thinking of doing it. He had never had to cheat before, but his life had become quite chaotic and suddenly, he found that he didn’t have enough time for his studies. He was a junior in high school who got straight As, but now he felt like everything was falling apart.

It started last week (how could have it only be a week?, he constantly asked himself) when his father came home drunk for the third time in four days. John’s mother was in one of her moods and screamed at her husband until he left, the screen door slowly coming to a stop. The next day, John found his dad dead on their neighbor’s driveway. He had been driven over as the car rushed to work. The funeral was set for tomorrow, the day after this miserable exam.

The day that John saw the body and called 911  was frozen. It was the first day that John had missed in a year. He remembered a man in striped pajamas was there watching the body bag’s route to the ambulance. John asked the man who he was and the man turned to him with eyes that were turned inward and said, “If you don’t take chances, you might as well not be alive.”

His father’s funeral was set for tomorrow and he had to pass this stupid test. He thought of the strange man’s words and thought that whatever he did with this exam was a chance. But if he cheated, he might have a bigger chance of getting a better score. He tried to see the paper of Samantha Goldstein, who sat on his right and who he had an on and off crush on for years. The first question asked who Henry VIII’s first wife was. John was pretty sure it was Catherine of Aragon, but Samantha had selected Anne Boleyn and now he wasn’t sure.

He considered the man’s words again, closed his eyes, and picked the first answer his pencil alighted on. Well, he thought. At least I’m not a cheater. He looked through the rest of the test. There were a couple answers that he knew right away, but on the rest he executed the eyes-closed-pick method. He was skating on thin ice, he was sure, but he did it anyway. His life had changed and so had he.

 

Things I Know about Dementia

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Last night my brain was keeping me awake by thinking, so I wrote this, titled Things I Know about Dementia:

1. It creeps on you slowly. Your loved one is tucking you in at night and then she’s wandering down her street trying to catch a bus home.

2. You visit her in the nursing home and she’s aware enough to follow you to the door begging you to take her home.

3. You can’t take her anywhere anymore, even to Thanksgiving dinner with family, because she became so agitated after last time that she broke a window.

4. You are told that she is losing a lot of wight and she probably won’t last a year.

5. Your sister cries, but you never do. You write instead.

6. Your dad tells the nursing home staff how much she likes dessert. She instantly gains weight.

7. You hear that a resident punched her after she took their food an you laugh. It is the only way to cope.

8. She doesn’t ask to go home anymore. She can’t say a full coherent sentence.

9. She hasn’t recognized you for a long time.

10. You go off to college. The next time you see her, you are shocked by the changes. She is now so frail that she cannot walk. She’s in a wheelchair and uses her feet and the walls to push herself.

11. You visit her whenever you come home from college, scared that you won’t be able to say goodbye.

12. You pass a lady who is screaming because she couldn’t get out of the nursing home. You can’t help feeling glad that your loved one never did that.

13. You hold her hand while your dad pushes her. She drops your hand for a second, but grabs it suddenly like she was afraid you are the one leaving her.

14. You study her face and try to remember what she used to look like.

 

“Real” books

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Sorry its been a fairly long time since I’ve posted. Its been a crazy two weeks finishing up my summer class.

Recently I saw this quote by Laurie Halse Anderson, the author of Speak:

“You can tell a book is real when it makes your heart beat faster. Real books make you sweat. Cry, if no one is looking. Real books help you make sense of your crazy life. Real books tell it true, don’t hold back, and make you stronger. But most of all, real books give you hope. Because it’s not always going to be like this and books – the good ones, the real ones – show you how to make it better. Now.”

This got me thinking about books that I’ve read that have done these things for me. In a way, all books have done this for me, but some have been forgettable while some have stood out in my memory for a variety of reasons. And then some of them have changed my life or at least my way of thinking.

10 “real” books that I’ve discovered:

1. Just Listen by Sarah Dessen

2. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

3. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

4.The Storyteller’s Daughter by Cameron Dokey

5.Send by Patty Blount

6. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

7.Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

8.Darkness Visible by William Styron

9. Green Angel by Alice Hoffman

10. Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

There are so many “real” books that have devoured me. These are just the ones (excepting The Bell Jar) that I have on my bookshelf.

What “real” books have you read?

In memory of 7/20/12

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Some of you may not be aware that yesterday marked the 2nd anniversary of the Colorado theater shooting which took 12 lives and injured 70 more.

I remember quite distinctly that I was out of state visiting family when I heard, or rather saw, the news on our hotel’s TV in the breakfast room. I watched the story, which was played over and over, trying to figure out what building the reporter was standing outside of. Having grown up in the area and having gone to the theater too many times to count, I knew every building in the surrounding area.

The rest of the day was quiet as my family digested the news and hoped fervently that no one we knew was seeing the movie that night. As it turns out, one of the girls that I graduated with just a few months before was in the theater. She wasn’t hurt, thankfully, but I will never forget the way my heart stopped for a few seconds before I found out that she was okay. I cannot possibly imagine hearing the news that your loved one was shot while enjoying the midnight premiere of a movie about a hero or being the one who saw their loved one shot as you survived. I will only say that I am sorry that your loved one was so cruelly taken from you. It is the truest thing I can say.

The first college class that I attended after that summer was a Philosophy class. We went through introductions and when I said where I was from, the professor asked, “That’s where that movie shooting was, right?” He immediately realized that his tone wasn’t quite as respectful as it should have been and apologized, but I was used to the questions and said it was fine.

The first few months after the shooting, there was a petition for keeping the theater open despite some calling for its closing. I signed that petition because it showed that my community was strong despite the actions of one mentally ill person, whose name is not important right now.

The names that are important are the names of the ones who lost their lives.

Violins, waking up slowly, and hands/planets

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I recently observed a workshop in which the presenters gave an unique approach to writing. I think this technique could be most useful for creative writing, but also could be helpful for anyone in academia who has writer’s block and is struggling to put forth words on the page.

Many creative writers, including myself, have expressed the need to have music in the background while they write. I had never thought of music, especially music without words, as an inspiration for a story or even an academic paper, but the presenters changed my mind entirely.

The presenters played a couple music clips and told us to free write while listening about what we felt about the music. After each piece was played, some people shared what they wrote. Some wrote about the instruments that were being played. Some created stories. I wrote a poem for one of the songs.

For this blog entry, I listened to three songs via Pandora’s “Electronic for Studying” station and wrote about what it sounded like to me. I tried to use as many original phrases as possible.

1.Neptune by Ronald Jenkees http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG6FQnbXI0s

Deep red electronic violin pulling and pushing lightly. Summer breeze plays with the hair that refused to stay this morning. Things are slowing down at the end of the day. Wondering what tomorrow will bring. Pushing orchestrations pull my heart and little steps leading to garden of blue redness.

2.Moon by Little People http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK5I4cTkL-E&feature=kp

Waking up slowly, sleepily. Day starts without me willing it to. Day ends with a violet shade of relief. Stuck in one place, fast paced but not really moving. Voices speak to me. Don’t know what they’re saying, but it sounds like “rise.” It gets rough but my shoulders can bear the burden as long as I have this pen, I think. Pause. Break. Rise again please. I want you to be awake when I see you.

3. Hands of Love by Deuter http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnPhtFzXlHc

Hands-planets-stars, surround me. Sweet, res-o-nating flute music trills and climbs the side of my leg. Echoes. Can anybody hear me? We are alone on this planet, but not lonely because hands around surround me as gentle as… a candle lit in the autumn evening. A vanilla candle, not too cloying, but peaceful. Wavering, but always there. Now the flame-the hands-are double. Little? Big? Big enough.

I would love it if my readers would follow the YouTube links and listen to the songs I wrote to. And if you feel so inclined, do some music inspired free writes of your own.