Blog 10: Experience, Reflection, and Writing for Essay 2

I had an easy time writing my essay number two. I'm glad that we had the private sessions with the professor because it guided me in a totally new direction that helped me out in a major way, It all stemmed from a journal entry that took us to another journey and it helped me to reach some things that I haven't really taken the time to do on my own. What I did was take the first paragraph of my first essay and use it as the first paragraph in this one. For the second paragraph I incorporated some of the sentences and did the rest of my essay over. I truly do think that it came out to be a great essay. This is what I had so far at this point.

Nothing is worse than not realizing that there is something underneath this thing called skin that looks like fresh turkey meat but it’s called tissue, but you don’t wipe your nose with it, and then some liquid coming out of it that seeps out to slow, but way too fast for comprehension, and you have to sop it up like thanksgiving bread on gravy, all in 8.5 seconds.

            At the age of eight I was when I got my first scrape on my body. I was rushing to get home from an elongated day at school but the ground was too big and fast under my little feet; I missed a step and fell straight to the ground. When I was a little kid this seemed like the worst thing in the world, but it’s funny how I paid so much more attention to the process my knee was going through aside from the fact that I just scraped myself. I understood that there was something underneath my skin and there was something that kept all of this stuff inside. It was kind of scary; the fact that there was something underneath. I don’t know if it was more scary that something was underneath my skin or the fact that my skin was scraped off and the inside was coming out.

The Skin        

I’ve lived with my mom for most of my life, so it was at a very young age that I realized that my mom and dad were two separate people. Most kids that have parents that have been together throughout their entire lives almost think of their parents as one entity; but I knew different. They were separated since I can remember so it was just me and my mom at the hospital the day I was born.

            I wanted my parents to be together; what kid doesn’t. But as I got older I appreciated them not being together, but until then I was forced to understand why they weren’t. One day I was playing the video games and I reminded me of my dad, because whenever I would go over there that’s one thing we enjoyed doing with each other- well- one thing that we could do without him getting emotional on me. But anyway I asked my mom, “Mom, why don’t you like daddy? He likes playing video games and so do you.” She replied with a hesitant and a comfortable uncomfortable, “I know Nashira, but there’s other things.” I sadly fixed my face back to the television and kept playing the video game while I thought of other things I could ask her that had to do with her and my dad. After my mom not responding the way I wanted her to I kind of gave up and started to take out time to understand why they were not together instead of finding things that may spark up something, in my mom more so than my dad, that would make her want to be with daddy again.

            I lived with him for a small portion of my childhood, but mostly with my mom and for a little with my grandparents and my mother in the same house. For the time that I wasn’t with him, my sister and I would go to his house every other weekend. We dreaded it. That’s the front I would put on, because every time we would leave my sister would be ready to walk straight out the door and make a b line to the car. But me, I would cry like a baby coming out of a mother’s womb that was about to be disconnected from the umbilical cord. I couldn’t help it. Just the thought of leaving him and him giving me that last hug before we left made me cry so hard.

            Living with my mom was cool but her and I disagreed on what seemed to be quite a few things. I grew up as a grown child knowing more than the average child knew, but not in a bad way. I was very knowledgeable. Our relationship was more like a sister relationship. Some things she would tell me that I shouldn’t have known until I got older. There were some questions I would ask that the average thirteen year old wouldn’t ask. There were certain things she would ask for that a fifteen year old usually wouldn’t give or a mom wouldn’t feel comfortable asking. This is why we were more like sisters because stuff like this was normal for us.

The older I got the more I saw how I wasn’t like my mother. We were two different people. I shared her features but not her personality or traits. In my spare time I liked to write or read when it was time for my mind to want to read. I found it soothing to write because if I was angry or upset about something, the second after my pen and paper knew my secrets I would feel better. It was also during these times when the best stuff came out. I had a certain love for music. I didn’t listen to what everyone heard on the radio; I actually got annoyed by it after a while because nothing new would play. It would be the same songs that meant and said nothing valuable and had no value in the instrumentals either. While I would write my poems or expressions I would doodle on the sides of my paper and they too also represented a piece of me. Most of all I loved to sing. That was another way I got out my feelings. It may have been to myself and to close friends but I held it dear to me along with the songs I would write about things going on in my life. I was more in touch with my creative side and it helped me to see inside of myself. I never really saw this side of my mother. In her spare time she would be working on work, and when it wasn’t her spare time she was doing work. If she did have a journal of some sort, it was in private because she never mentioned it or had any pieces of paper or napkins with notes on it about herself until recently. In this respect she played the mom role; she would work so that we had a roof over our heads and go to sleep. Briefly my mind would reach out to see where I got this love of art from and it had to be my dad, but that’s as far as it would go; no farther than thinking about him or sending out a text, because I didn’t have the right things to say.

Layers of Tissue

            Living with my mom, of course I got her side of everything and I didn’t know anything else, but I did have a mind of my own. My dad would always call me or reach out to me in some way asking me if I got the money he sent me and my sister, and I would say no. then he would tell me about how “someone” must have been taking the money because he sent it to me and it was not in the mailbox. I didn’t know what to think. My mom would tell me that there was no money in the mail for me from my father.

            My mom was married to my stepfather since I was five, so he was the father figure in my life. I knew that he and my mom were serious when I was in my bed one night before they got married and they both thought I was sleep. They were in the kitchen, which wasn’t too far from my bed since we lived an apartment and I was on the lower half of the bunk bed. My mom wasn’t fully clothed and there he was with his baseball umpire uniform on kissing my mom. I quickly closed my eyes before they saw that I saw them.

My dad wasn’t around too much so he was the closest and fastest thing that came. I started to call him dad and everything, but my sister knew better. She may not have liked our dad but as soon as she heard me call him that she snatched me up and said, “ Don’t call him dad, he is not your dad so do not call him dad!” From them on I called him by his first name, Kelvin.

The Blood Coming Out

            I had a conversation with my dad, and he told me that he moved. It was news to me, because evidently he had been there for a while. When I got there it didn’t seem to matter too much because I made myself feel right at home as if it were his old house that I made memories in.

Blog 11: Draft for Essay 2

Nothing is worse than not realizing that there is something underneath this thing called skin that looks like fresh turkey meat but it’s called tissue, but you don’t wipe your nose with it, and then some liquid coming out of it that seeps out to slow, but way too fast for comprehension, and you have to sop it up like thanksgiving bread on gravy, all in 8.5 seconds.

            At the age of eight I was when I got my first scrape on my body. I was rushing to get home from an elongated day at school but the ground was too big and fast under my little feet; I missed a step and fell straight to the ground. When I was a little kid this seemed like the worst thing in the world, but it’s funny how I paid so much more attention to the process my knee was going through aside from the fact that I just scraped myself. I understood that there was something underneath my skin and there was something that kept all of this stuff inside. It was kind of scary; the fact that there was something underneath. I don’t know if it was more scary that something was underneath my skin or the fact that my skin was scraped off and the inside was coming out.

The Skin        

I’ve lived with my mom for most of my life, so it was at a very young age that I realized that my mom and dad were two separate people. Most kids that have parents that have been together throughout their entire lives almost think of their parents as one entity; but I knew different. They were separated since I can remember so it was just me and my mom at the hospital the day I was born.

            I wanted my parents to be together; what kid doesn’t. But as I got older I appreciated them not being together, but until then I was forced to understand why they weren’t. One day I was playing the video games and I reminded me of my dad, because whenever I would go over there that’s one thing we enjoyed doing with each other- well- one thing that we could do without him getting emotional on me. But anyway I asked my mom, “Mom, why don’t you like daddy? He likes playing video games and so do you.” She replied with a hesitant and a comfortable uncomfortable, “I know Nashira, but there’s other things.” I sadly fixed my face back to the television and kept playing the video game while I thought of other things I could ask her that had to do with her and my dad. After my mom not responding the way I wanted her to I kind of gave up and started to take out time to understand why they were not together instead of finding things that may spark up something, in my mom more so than my dad, that would make her want to be with daddy again.

            I lived with him for a small portion of my childhood, but mostly with my mom and for a little with my grandparents and my mother in the same house. For the time that I wasn’t with him, my sister and I would go to his house every other weekend. We dreaded it. That’s the front I would put on, because every time we would leave my sister would be ready to walk straight out the door and make a b line to the car. But me, I would cry like a baby coming out of a mother’s womb that was about to be disconnected from the umbilical cord. I couldn’t help it. Just the thought of leaving him and him giving me that last hug before we left made me cry so hard.

            Living with my mom was cool but her and I disagreed on what seemed to be quite a few things. I grew up as a grown child knowing more than the average child knew, but not in a bad way. I was very knowledgeable. Our relationship was more like a sister relationship. Some things she would tell me that I shouldn’t have known until I got older. There were some questions I would ask that the average thirteen year old wouldn’t ask. There were certain things she would ask for that a fifteen year old usually wouldn’t give or a mom wouldn’t feel comfortable asking. This is why we were more like sisters because stuff like this was normal for us.

The older I got the more I saw how I wasn’t like my mother. We were two different people. I shared her features but not her personality or traits. In my spare time I liked to write or read when it was time for my mind to want to read. I found it soothing to write because if I was angry or upset about something, the second after my pen and paper knew my secrets I would feel better. It was also during these times when the best stuff came out. I had a certain love for music. I didn’t listen to what everyone heard on the radio; I actually got annoyed by it after a while because nothing new would play. It would be the same songs that meant and said nothing valuable and had no value in the instrumentals either. While I would write my poems or expressions I would doodle on the sides of my paper and they too also represented a piece of me. Most of all I loved to sing. That was another way I got out my feelings. It may have been to myself and to close friends but I held it dear to me along with the songs I would write about things going on in my life. I was more in touch with my creative side and it helped me to see inside of myself. I never really saw this side of my mother. In her spare time she would be working on work, and when it wasn’t her spare time she was doing work. If she did have a journal of some sort, it was in private because she never mentioned it or had any pieces of paper or napkins with notes on it about herself until recently. In this respect she played the mom role; she would work so that we had a roof over our heads and go to sleep. Briefly my mind would reach out to see where I got this love of art from and it had to be my dad, but that’s as far as it would go; no farther than thinking about him or sending out a text, because I didn’t have the right things to say.

Layers of Tissue

            Living with my mom, of course I got her side of everything and I didn’t know anything else, but I did have a mind of my own. My dad would always call me or reach out to me in some way asking me if I got the money he sent me and my sister, and I would say no. then he would tell me about how “someone” must have been taking the money because he sent it to me and it was not in the mailbox. I didn’t know what to think. My mom would tell me that there was no money in the mail for me from my father.

            My mom was married to my stepfather since I was five, so he was the father figure in my life. I knew that he and my mom were serious when I was in my bed one night before they got married and they both thought I was sleep. They were in the kitchen, which wasn’t too far from my bed since we lived an apartment and I was on the lower half of the bunk bed. My mom wasn’t fully clothed and there he was with his baseball umpire uniform on kissing my mom. I quickly closed my eyes before they saw that I saw them.

My dad wasn’t around too much so he was the closest and fastest thing that came. I started to call him dad and everything, but my sister knew better. She may not have liked our dad but as soon as she heard me call him that she snatched me up and said, “ Don’t call him dad, he is not your dad so do not call him dad!” From them on I called him by his first name, Kelvin.

The Blood Coming Out

            I had a conversation with my dad, and he told me that he moved. It was news to me, because evidently he had been there for a while. When I got there it didn’t seem to matter too much because I made myself feel right at home as if it were his old house that I made memories in. I didn’t know that they had two new dogs and that my two dogs that I grew up with were sold. Neither did I know that the little that was “adopted” was my blood little brother born out of his marriage. But that’s beside the point.

            We sat at the table and he started to tell me about my family on his side. My grandfather was considered a genius too many. My grandmother used to correct him and his siblings whenever they spoke grammatically incorrectly and she would make them wake up in the morning reciting the eight parts of speech. My aunt Mickey is a lawyer and lives in New York, and he has another brother in Georgia that he wanted me to meet. He told me how I was a intelligent, and how there is a difference between people whom are smart and intelligent. He told me not to waste it. He started talking about how certain things run through me that are on his side of the family and how just because I have lived with my mother for the majority of my life, not to let that get in the way of me not finding out the other half of me. He said, “If you take the time out to really get in touch with my family, you’ll find out some things about yourself that you didn’t know it will make life easier on you because you’ll know where it comes from. It comes from your family.” He goes on to talk about how I show a lot in my eyebrows and how I do have a temper from him. At this point tears started to roll down my cheeks. I tried to cover them up by not looking at him as if he couldn’t see me if I didn’t. I guess I started to cry because I realized I am my father’s child. Things made sense.

It Healed and Scabbed

After the talk I had with my dad, I felt more whole than I had ever been. I felt like a child that went through the adoption process, looked for, and found her real parents.

By me talking to my dad that day, I had fallen and scraped my knee.

Like all soars, I am fine and have a mark on my heart that reminds me every now and then of the things I knew then and what I know now.

Blog 9: What went well, bad,or whatever you say about your first essay?

As me and the professor went over my paper for this first project, we discovered that it was great writing and very descriptive and fun. This by itself that I have written so far would be great just to read aloud describing my scar that I got when I was eight. But we had another idea.

I really wanted incorporate something from another journal entry we wrote in class. This one was about things that would be important to us if we had little time before we were going to die. I had ideas like:
-Travel outside of the country, juste relax and let time go
-write and publish something/ finish my book that I  am currently writing so that when I am gone my writing will still be here,legendary like Dickinson
-Speak spanish fluently and comfortably
-Spend time with my little sister, humble, loving
-Mom and boyfriend's mom
-Learn not to worry so much, anxious, anxiety
-Love/Romance if I've achieved not to be so anxious

The next question that was asked was how did I become this person, and it made me think hard, but not too hard. There weren't so much of events that made me this way, and that person is my father. It was kind of funny because he was with me in my childhood up until the age of 10, and then wasn't active in my life until the age of 20. I realized several things that are big about me that had to come from him.
-He'd be the one to say I love you
-He was a writer and a DJ and loved music
-He loves hard like a female would to people that are close to his heart

So I had a question of was this genetics or....?
Is it that the age 1-9 really impacted me?
What was it?

So now in my paper the beginning description will stay there as a metaphor to the inside and outside but the rest will be changed and be about me and my father's strange connection.

In the beginning I  will be talking about my cut and how there is something that separates the outside of the skin and what's underneath the skin; the membrane. It will be separated into three sections; what's on the surface, what's on the other side and how that all meshes together in the end and how I got my dad's traits. I can make metaphors about bones, the cut, and blood. Then I can make sense as to how it healed and now I know what's inside of my body/me --> my dad. What I knew then I what I know now.

Blog 7: More Brainstorming for Project 1

I've pretty much got everything I want to write together in my first essay. My approach is to write as if I am describing this to someone that cannot see. You have to write so that you are painting a picture. At first I thought that this was going to be one of my hardest classes, but now it's becoming easier now that I am grabbing the concept of what it means to write creative non-fiction.

I find that in this class i don;t write outlines for my essays. It seems easier to flow off of your memory and the exercises done in class and just let the thoughts come out onto my paper instead of making a format. This may not work for everyone else but it works pretty well for me.

I was going to try to incorporate my other cut that I got when I was in a car accident in the paper. But the paper seems to be doing well with just the one story. Although I could use a little more meat in the paper, it would just take a little more time to fill it all in.

Blog 13: Reflection on Day of Writing

The day of writing was beautiful!  I didn't expect it to go so well. At first I was hesitant to go because I wasn't feeling so well about something and I didn't know if everyone was going to enjoy my writing; but like they say, you are your own worst critic I thought I was the first person but I was the second and it made me even more nervous after going after someone with such a great story. I went over with Marg, and when I got up there the crowd wasn't so bad considering it was just us. I read three selections; First essay draft, Entry 47, and The Day. On my first reading everyone loved how descriptive it was. They loved how I took an average scrape on the knee and turned it into something delicious and scary for little kids and music to the ears. On my second reading, Entry 47, at first everyone was a little giggly. As it went on the crowd became quiet. At the ned, everyone eyes were on me and you could here a in dropped. They were surprised at the ending of my poem. The professor was overwhelmed with joy from my writing. The last piece I read also had a good response and overall I had a great outcome. Professor Chandler said delightfully, "So, you're a writer!" This all made my day and uplifted my spirits. i was glad that I actually came. I got to hear some great stories from my peers. Especially one in particular named Click. he intertwined different things he dealt with in life that associated with different sounds of clicking. It was a brilliant piece. I was glad that I came and would not mind doing i again.

When you come to things like this, you realize how much you love writing and it brings you back to your pen and paper. I believe I found my pen and paper again.

Blog 8: Draft #1

Nothing is worse than not realizing that there is something underneath this thing called skin that looks like fresh turkey meat but it’s called tissue, but you don’t wipe your nose with it, and then some liquid coming out of it that seeps out to slow, but way too fast for comprehension, and you have to sop it up like thanksgiving bread on gravy, all in 8.5 seconds.

School was as ordinary as it was any other day. I had the same teacher that I had in the third grade that I did in the second. “How is everyone doing this morning?” That’s what Mrs. Barnett would ask us every morning. I don’t quite remember if any of the other kids responded, probably because they didn’t; but I always did. “Fine!” I would say. We would hand in the homework that we brought home the night before and begin new work. I remember the red apple sticker she would put on our papers if we did well that matched her deep burgundy nail polish on her pretty nails. Lunch time came and went and I always had my lunch brought from home while I looked over and wished I could have some of Simone’s lunch that she got to buy from school. That was usually on Friday when the school brought pizza from pizza hut. Recess came and we would run outside like there was a fire and we had to get out. We played outside like wild animals. There were no rules on the playground. Some kids hogged the swings the whole time, others played on the one set of monkey bars we had, and some kids just ran wild until the school bell rang. When it was time to come back in, we would drag like the fire we just got out of had burnt down our house and we didn’t want to return. The rest of the day went fast. Mrs. Barnett told us what our assignments were that we were to bring back the next day and then she would let us talk for the rest of the time until our parents came. By that time my mom would be getting off work to wait for me at home when I got off the bus. But this day was different. My mom had to meet up with my teacher and I was anxious to go home. The time went by slow, but finally when I saw my mom’s head pop out of the classroom, and I knew it was time to go, I dashed out the back door. The ground was to fast and big under my small feet; I missed a step and fell straight to the ground. The steps were concrete and my skin wasn’t strong enough to stay in one piece. The sun was much brighter on the right side of my face now. My eyed zoomed in microscopically at skin that wasn’t there. It looked like a clean white sheet with tiny little blocks. But it wasn’t clean anymore when this red stuff started to take over the white. It was all so slow but it seemed like the red sea was taking over my knee. I looked up at the sky and could barely seem my mom because my thoughts made my sight blurry and the sun was in my face. I cried, “Ahhhhhhhhhhh!” My mom came to my rescue and realized that I got my first cut on my body. After that my world was no longer the same. I now knew that there are things there that we can’t see. This was the start of whole new way of thinking.

 This is all too humorous now, but extremities and dramatized surprising endings seemed to be my destiny. Things like this didn’t end at the age of eight. Now that I look back at it, I can pick it apart like a scientist.

Brain Storming for Project 1

One Idea for a story comes from the Journal Entry about scars. I wrote two scar stories that had to do with physical appearance.

1.) When I was younger I missed a step on the concrete outside and fell down on the ground cutting my skin open on my knee. My knee was scraped down at least to the second or third layer. This was the first time I realized that people had more than one layer of skin and that we had cells and tissue. Of course at this age I did not know the right terminology. It was fascinating but more scary than anything. For the time I was looking at my knee, I know it was only for a few seconds before i started to cry, but now that i look back at it, it seems like I was looking at it forever because i remember exactly how the cell tissue looked and how slowly the blood started to seep out and how white my skin was underneath in contrast to the rest of my leg. When my mom came and picked me up, I walked back to the car with her help, but I walked back as if my leg wasn't just scraped but as if my leg was just amputated!
2.) I got into a car accident with my friend and her guy friend. We were driving on route 22 to go pick up my boyfriend at the time and a car hit us directly on the driver's side making a 90 degree angle and we got pushed off the side of the road into the parking lot of P.C. Richards. There was blood all over the place and none of us knew where it was coming from. Come to find out, it was coming from me. I had to get stitches and now I have a battle wound. Eleven months later, there was still a small piece of glass in my chin. I went back to the hospital and they took it out and threw it into the garbage before i could ask for it. I am going to sue.

Possible themes in these two stories are:

-fear in paranoia, humor, suspense
-inside vs. outside
-realization
-American Culture, the way we focus so much on beauty
-Blood inside coming out
-Not liking doctors

Explanation of themes

-fear in paranoia, humor, suspense- (story 1) this section is a core of the story. paranoia often leads to irrationality and I thought I was going to lose my mind when I saw my knee. It is humorous now because a scrape on the knee to someone my age is nothing, but the reaction of a scrape on the knee of an eight year old that has never seen an open cut before is quite humorous. The suspense is built as I see the different layers of my skin, and how they were white at first, and then turn red as my blood starts to seep out slowly.
-inside vs. outside- this is knowing the difference between the inside and outside.
(story 2) I don't like doctors and I don;t endure pain too well, so when this happened to be a combination I started to lose my mind, The entire time I was shaking, from the time we drove to the hospital,, to the time i got out of the car to get into my house.

-realization- (story 1) almost an epiphany, understanding that there are other parts to the human body.
(story 2) realizing that the blood was coming from me. Realizing that I had to face my fears and get stitches and that I had no other choice.

-American Culture- (story 1 ) one of the first things I did when I realized there was blood on my everywhere, was look down and notice that there was blood on my coach sneakers that I had just bought and worn for the first time with my hard earned money. Even after I realized that the blood was coming from me I was still more worried about my sneakers instead of my chin being cut open. This goes to show how in our culture we focus a lot on our outward looks and sometimes worry about it too much. Life, Death, or Looking good!

-blood inside coming out- (need more thinking)
-not liking doctors- (story 2) I don't like anyone that can give me bad news and essentially those people are doctors and dentists. That night I had to go to the hospital to see a doctor, and on top of that, he did not want to be there.

-Not liking doctors- (story 2) I do not like people who can give me bad news so I don't like doctors or dentists. That night I had to go to the hospital and on top of that he did not want to be there.