Free Write 1, Week 10

How to Roll the Perfect Cigarette.

Good cigs start with good papers,
perfect smokes start with good tobacco.
Bugler sucks, Tops and Drum are just OK, but Pueblo leaf is perfect.
'Fumer perjudica gravemente su salud y la... la la la' smoking kills you.
To start, crush the skins between your fingers to make it more maliable, like adding water to clay.
Then select a unreasonable amount of cancer to be placed into your L and roll it down using your thumb, pointer and middle fingers of each hand.
You will not be taking seriously if you require a cigarette roller, the fanny pack of rolling cigarettes.
The hardest part is closing.
Carefully add a layer of saliva to the gummed end of the pape(the yellow end that seals).
If you use to much, it won't stick.
If you use to little, it won't stick.
Such is life,
the only way to be good at smoking is to do it often.

Junkyard quotes 1-4, week 10

'And now this land, means less and less to me without you breathing through its trees.' Mumford and Sons.

'I preferred it when the Bros and prostitutes lived on the block.' -Roommate

'You know what? You can't do that back to me. If we're upset, your job is not to get upset back at us. Our job is to be upset. If I get mad and wanna eat you, then you have to say: "Oh, okay. You can eat me. I love you. Whatever makes you happy, Judith." That's what you're supposed to do!' -Where the Wild Things Are.

'A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men' -Willy Wonka

Response 2, Week 8.

These are some wonderfully thought provoking quotes. I especially like the one by Tee Tee. The heart is such a guiding force in our lives, it takes and gives indiscriminately and sometimes a great deal of suffering comes with our human desires. The quote does a great job a explaining the very complex issue of want vs. need, meaning often our wants come from the heart, where as our needs spring from the mind. The Rosten quote is also powerful and speaks to the importance of denying happiness for the greater good. Sometimes the more important think is the harder thing. Like the quote, 'I didn't say it was going to be easy, but its going to be worth it.'

Response 1, Week 8. Erickson

Erickson I love the use of musical imagery and the references to the classic jazz age musicians. The personification you create with the music was also something I really enjoyed. The artful way that you present the music and jazz as things that reside in your hair and how the guitar riffs drench the streets create such a powerful and visual image for the reader. And the ending alteration/personification 'raining rhythm' is good writing and really fleshes out the themes weather and jazz. The nickle and the angles line needs to be reworked because its awkward to say. Also I think the phrase 'real music never dies' is a little poesy and should be eliminated. I really enjoyed reading your work.

Free Write 1, Week 8

Operation Odyssey Dawn for a hundred.
I think it was Bukowski who said that when writers don’t have anything think to write about they write about writing. This coming from the man who has ‘Don’t Try’ written on his head stone in San Pedro, California. It’s a funny thing sitting in a stupid uncomfortable library chair, surrounded by stories and I struggle for a hundred words. Sixty nine and still have said absolutely nothing about the Libya crises or the Everest steep gas prices choking the salt of the earth or why the guy at the computer across from me doesn’t speak to his father, the drink. So many lives without words to back them and it’s my fault, because I’m writing about writing and not about living.

Sign Inventory 1, Week 8

a song in the front yard by Gwendolyn Brooks
I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.
I want a peek at the back
Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.
A girl gets sick of a rose.

I want to go in the back yard now
And maybe down the alley,
To where the charity children play.
I want a good time today.

They do some wonderful things.
They have some wonderful fun.
My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine
How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.
My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae
Will grow up to be a bad woman.
That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late
(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).

But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.
And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,
And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace
And strut down the streets with paint on my face.

-Speaker is a child and a girl
-Personification of weeds as 'hungry'
-Contrast between the neat and orderly front yard and wild and unkempt back yard, speaker exhibits desire for freedom and fun of the 'back yard' life style.
-'Rose' is a symbol for the pretty, perfect life style of the speaker.
-Active verb uses like 'strut' and 'sneer'.
-Three, four line stanzas and one eight line. The eight line stanza tells a story of the speakers mother and established the bigotry that the girl will assume when she is no long a child.
-Personification of stockings as brave. The stockings become a symbol of childlike confidence.
-Lots of repetition of 'they' and 'are'
-'Charity Children' poor kids, have more imagination and fun because they have less materiel possessions to work with.
-The overall tone of the work is childlike naivety. The speaker desires to rebuke the neat and orderly life she has in favor of the mystery and excitement of the lower class. This also creates a sense of irony because she wants to move down the socioeconomically hierarchy.
-The imagery used is gritty and dark. The author uses images like hungry weeds, winter, ‘night-black lace’ and jail to contrast the assumed neatness of the speaker’s front yard.

Junkyard 1-4, Week 8?

Man no offense but that's some weak-ass thinking. You equivocating like a motherfucker. -Bubs; The Wire

1 in the air for the people in here.
2 in the air for the father thats there.
3 in the air for the kids in the ghetto.
4 for the kids that don't want to be there.
none for the niggas tryn to hold them back.
5 in the air for the teachers not scared to tell them kids that are livin in the ghetto with the nigga's holden'em back that the world is theirs. - Lupe Fiasco

She's just so relentlessly positive. A complete foil to me. I think I'm gonna marry her. Or at least torture myself with the idea of her. Either is fine with me. -(A fairly intoxicated) Benjamin.

Your not obliged to swallow anything you despise. Those unrelenting buzzards want your life. And they got no right, as sure as you have eyes, they got no right. -The Shins.