2010 was Year of the Newlywed
Had a blast. Came out surprisingly unbitter.
2011 was Year of Full (Appropriate) Disclosure
It took some adjusting, especially while learning what constituted "appropriate."
I've decided to make 2012 Year of the Poem
I'm going to write (what amounts to) a poem a day with the hopes that at least 10 of them will be good. I've tried this during Lent for a couple of years, and it worked out pretty well. For the most part. My current roommate does NaNoWriMo and meets with a group of people every Saturday. I'm hoping this will be good motivation for me to go with her at least occassionally to type up what I write and fine tune the ones with potential.
I'd also like to read more poetry, but I'm not quite sure how to incorporate that into my reading "program." For those of you unfamiliar with my reading "program" or "cycle" here it is:
Something Old (a classic)
Something New (within the past 3 years)
Something Random (typically re-reads, YA books or stuff that doesn't fit any other category)
Something True (not fiction)
But the thing about poetry is that it varies much more in length than books. I can't pledge a poem a day. A haiku is not the same as the Faerie Queen. I thought about setting my goal at a poet a month, but there's no real standard for that, either. Basically, setting a quantified poetry reading goal is impossible. The best I can come up with is to read a poem every time I finish a book.
Which, now that I think about it, doesn't sound that bad.
Suggestions welcome. But please make them here.
2011-12-20
2011-12-12
Writing Journal
Hoarfrost Haiku
You know what? What I
think I thought was snowfall was
hoarfrost falling down.
If you don't want any backstory; stop reading.
If you want just a little, skip to the end. (I'll bold it for you.)
Long ago backstory:
I have a friend with whom I have an inside running (I guess you could call it a) joke about the word "hoarfrost." It reared it's head 3 times in one month's time a few years ago and he took a really awesome picture of some during that time.
More backstory:
At one point, he asked if I remembered where in the scriptures the word was used. I searched my notes diligently. I remembered the time of the year it first came about, but must have run out of notebooks because I didn't take very in-depth notes. We were pretty sure it was in the Doctrine & Covenants and I thought it was in a particular place on a page so I leafed through. I was really spending a lot of time on something so silly, so I gave up and went to bed.
The next day, he came to visit me and I told him about a dream I had the night before. Well, one of them. I think I had like 4 that night. Anyway, one of the dreams was just an image of my scriptures opened and seeing the heading for Section 121 of the Doctrine & Covenants. Now, as any believer will tell you, if you get a dream that specific about a scripture, you had better read it! There, in verse 11, was the word "hoarfrost."
My friend's reaction was "He gives you a specific scripture to answer a question, and that's the one He chooses?" Yeah. I guess so. To me, it serves as proof God loves His children, even in the little things. Here He was, providing me an answer (in a way He knew I would understand and know to be from Him) to a question so trivial I hadn't even bothered asking about it.
Least amount of Backstory:
My friend texted me (just as I was thinking about him, which my friends have to stop doing; it freaks me out) on Saturday morning, telling me there was hoarfrost. So I started looking for it as I continued the walk I had barely started. It looked like the tree branches had some snowfall on them, which seemed to be verified by some white flakes drifting down, ever so lightly. I texted back as much; it was just a light snowfall far as I could tell.
Then I looked up and saw some tall tree branches a few blocks away and decided maybe it could be hoarfrost after all. So I took a closer look and decided that what I thought was snowfall was really the hoarfrost falling off the trees, since it was about 10, 10:30.
As I tried to get my message as close to 160 characters (and knowing an immediate response wasn't neccesarily expected), I came up with this:
You know what? What I think I thought was snowfall was really just the hoarfrost falling from the trees. Like tree dandruff.
I thought it was rather poetic, but, really, where can you go with that?
Haiku-land, that's where.
You know what? What I
think I thought was snowfall was
hoarfrost falling down.
If you don't want any backstory; stop reading.
If you want just a little, skip to the end. (I'll bold it for you.)
Long ago backstory:
I have a friend with whom I have an inside running (I guess you could call it a) joke about the word "hoarfrost." It reared it's head 3 times in one month's time a few years ago and he took a really awesome picture of some during that time.
More backstory:
At one point, he asked if I remembered where in the scriptures the word was used. I searched my notes diligently. I remembered the time of the year it first came about, but must have run out of notebooks because I didn't take very in-depth notes. We were pretty sure it was in the Doctrine & Covenants and I thought it was in a particular place on a page so I leafed through. I was really spending a lot of time on something so silly, so I gave up and went to bed.
The next day, he came to visit me and I told him about a dream I had the night before. Well, one of them. I think I had like 4 that night. Anyway, one of the dreams was just an image of my scriptures opened and seeing the heading for Section 121 of the Doctrine & Covenants. Now, as any believer will tell you, if you get a dream that specific about a scripture, you had better read it! There, in verse 11, was the word "hoarfrost."
My friend's reaction was "He gives you a specific scripture to answer a question, and that's the one He chooses?" Yeah. I guess so. To me, it serves as proof God loves His children, even in the little things. Here He was, providing me an answer (in a way He knew I would understand and know to be from Him) to a question so trivial I hadn't even bothered asking about it.
Least amount of Backstory:
My friend texted me (just as I was thinking about him, which my friends have to stop doing; it freaks me out) on Saturday morning, telling me there was hoarfrost. So I started looking for it as I continued the walk I had barely started. It looked like the tree branches had some snowfall on them, which seemed to be verified by some white flakes drifting down, ever so lightly. I texted back as much; it was just a light snowfall far as I could tell.
Then I looked up and saw some tall tree branches a few blocks away and decided maybe it could be hoarfrost after all. So I took a closer look and decided that what I thought was snowfall was really the hoarfrost falling off the trees, since it was about 10, 10:30.
As I tried to get my message as close to 160 characters (and knowing an immediate response wasn't neccesarily expected), I came up with this:
You know what? What I think I thought was snowfall was really just the hoarfrost falling from the trees. Like tree dandruff.
I thought it was rather poetic, but, really, where can you go with that?
Haiku-land, that's where.
2011-12-01
Reading Journal
I finished this year's reading of O! Pioneers in the gym while trying (but failing) to help my team win the cardio challenge. Every year I read it, I find myself identifying with different characters or situations than I did the last time. This year, it was the Emil-Marie relationship I found most parallelling my own. Granted, not everything aligns up perfectly and I've discovered it's possible to feel a connection to characters with seemingly opposing points of view.
Without getting into much detail, either personal or plot related, here are a couple of selections affirming my parallel.
"She sighed despondently. "Everything I say makes you cross, don't it? And you never used to be cross to me."
Emil took a step nearer and stood frowning down at her bent head. He stood in an attitude of self-defense, his feet well apart, his hands clenched and drawn up at his sides, so that the cords stood out on his bare arms. "I can't play with you like a little boy any more," he said slowly. "That's what you miss, Marie. You'll have to get some other little boy to play with." He stopped and took a deep breath. Then he went on in a low tone, so intense that it was almost threatening: "Sometimes you seem to understand perfectly, and then sometimes you pretend you don't. You don't help things anyby pretending. It's then that I want to pull the corners of the Divide together. If you won't understand, you know, I could make you!"
Marie clasped her hands and started up from her seat. She had grown very pale and her eyes were shining with excitement and distress. "But, Emil, if I understand, then all our good times are over, we can never do nice things together any more....And, anyhow, there's nothing to understand!" She struck the ground with her little foot fiercely. "That won't last. It will go away, and things will be just as they used to....I pray for you, but that's not the same as if you prayed for yourself."
...
"I can't pray to have the things I want," he said slowly, "and I won't pray not to have them, not if I'm damned for it."
p.80
"When she reached the stile she sat down and waited. How terrible it was to love people when you could not really share in their lives!"
p. 131
And, as always, I reccomend this book to everyone who enjoys reading. It's an easy read, pretty light, a good balance of exposition and dialogue and I have the most amazing time with character analysis while reading this. Cather really gets a grip on this, and it's why she's probably the closest thing I have to a favorite author.
Without getting into much detail, either personal or plot related, here are a couple of selections affirming my parallel.
"She sighed despondently. "Everything I say makes you cross, don't it? And you never used to be cross to me."
Emil took a step nearer and stood frowning down at her bent head. He stood in an attitude of self-defense, his feet well apart, his hands clenched and drawn up at his sides, so that the cords stood out on his bare arms. "I can't play with you like a little boy any more," he said slowly. "That's what you miss, Marie. You'll have to get some other little boy to play with." He stopped and took a deep breath. Then he went on in a low tone, so intense that it was almost threatening: "Sometimes you seem to understand perfectly, and then sometimes you pretend you don't. You don't help things anyby pretending. It's then that I want to pull the corners of the Divide together. If you won't understand, you know, I could make you!"
Marie clasped her hands and started up from her seat. She had grown very pale and her eyes were shining with excitement and distress. "But, Emil, if I understand, then all our good times are over, we can never do nice things together any more....And, anyhow, there's nothing to understand!" She struck the ground with her little foot fiercely. "That won't last. It will go away, and things will be just as they used to....I pray for you, but that's not the same as if you prayed for yourself."
...
"I can't pray to have the things I want," he said slowly, "and I won't pray not to have them, not if I'm damned for it."
p.80
"When she reached the stile she sat down and waited. How terrible it was to love people when you could not really share in their lives!"
p. 131
And, as always, I reccomend this book to everyone who enjoys reading. It's an easy read, pretty light, a good balance of exposition and dialogue and I have the most amazing time with character analysis while reading this. Cather really gets a grip on this, and it's why she's probably the closest thing I have to a favorite author.
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