Not because of its fine-tuned phrases, though that is part of it, but because of its capacity to evoke emotion.
There is something beautiful about poetry that perfectly conveys an emotion or feeling. When I read something and sense the feeling that the poem evokes (happiness, despair, grief, bliss, etc.), I can't help to really appreciate the art behind poetry. It manages to bring out feelings that I had forgotten and I am reminded of situations associated with those feelings, for better or for worse.
I can't say I enjoy poetry (in that I wouldn't actively seek out a book of poetry for leisure) but poetry has value in ways that prose can only try to emulate.
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Children
are beautiful little things.
They're so cute and funny!
Oh dear, my biological clock is ticking.
But really, children are able to do nothing, to something, and then they become adults. I think that it is interesting to see the development of people from little people, to people who think they know better (but don't), to adults (who are people who don't know any better, but acknowledge that they don't, all the while pretending that they do).
Oh the cycles of life, how interesting they are. Who would have thought that I would have two beautiful little nieces, that I would have the privilege of watching their development and their awesome little quirks?
They're so cute and funny!
Oh dear, my biological clock is ticking.
But really, children are able to do nothing, to something, and then they become adults. I think that it is interesting to see the development of people from little people, to people who think they know better (but don't), to adults (who are people who don't know any better, but acknowledge that they don't, all the while pretending that they do).
Oh the cycles of life, how interesting they are. Who would have thought that I would have two beautiful little nieces, that I would have the privilege of watching their development and their awesome little quirks?
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Reading
As I read, sometimes I feel like the book is opening me up as I open the book, open to the next page, open up the plot, I feel the book unfold in my heart. My heartstrings ring word after word and the ineffable bubbles up from deep inside.
Can't help but to...
The phrase implies a lack of control - an impulse - that forces someone to action. Someone is compelled, impelled, propelled in a way where they see no other choice but to do what is stated.
Control is something I fight for, control over my impulses, my desires, and my thoughts. I think that what amazes me and perhaps what fascinates me are people have incredible amounts of self-control. Perhaps I simply lack the discipline, but when someone is able to exhibit great self-control, I internally applaud the person and hold them in secret awe because they are able to achieve something that I so frequently fail to do.
I suppose I am impulsive. It's something that I enjoy about my character because there's a certain amount of fun associated with it. In the end, it isn't healthy, for me and for the other parties involved, if there are any. Usually the only casualty is me.
It's weird, the things I want to do conflict with the things I do, yet when I do the things I want to do, I feel suffocated. I feel like I'm forcing myself to do things that I want to do, when all along, I wanted to do it to begin with. The forcing of myself to do that thing makes me feel like I shouldn't want to do it and thus, I feel restricted, hence the feeling of being trapped. ADHD much? What a troublesome cycle. Am I tricking myself into thinking that I want to do something that I don't want to do? But when I do it, I enjoy it, which means that I want to do it. Then why is it so hard to start? That's where I think I have difficulty. In the starting.
Well, I'm reading a book called Start by Jon Acuff and it's actually quite helpful in all this. ^^ I want to be awesome. I am choosing the road to awesome and I am starting now. (Well, really I started yesterday) but I will continue to start. Of course I would imagine it to mean less for someone who has not read the book, but that's pretty much the whole premise (at least up to chapter 4)...
All, that, just because I wanted to talk about getting lost in a book (but in putting what I tried to capture at the moment at the end of this blog entry does it no justice. I will create another entry for it).
Control is something I fight for, control over my impulses, my desires, and my thoughts. I think that what amazes me and perhaps what fascinates me are people have incredible amounts of self-control. Perhaps I simply lack the discipline, but when someone is able to exhibit great self-control, I internally applaud the person and hold them in secret awe because they are able to achieve something that I so frequently fail to do.
I suppose I am impulsive. It's something that I enjoy about my character because there's a certain amount of fun associated with it. In the end, it isn't healthy, for me and for the other parties involved, if there are any. Usually the only casualty is me.
It's weird, the things I want to do conflict with the things I do, yet when I do the things I want to do, I feel suffocated. I feel like I'm forcing myself to do things that I want to do, when all along, I wanted to do it to begin with. The forcing of myself to do that thing makes me feel like I shouldn't want to do it and thus, I feel restricted, hence the feeling of being trapped. ADHD much? What a troublesome cycle. Am I tricking myself into thinking that I want to do something that I don't want to do? But when I do it, I enjoy it, which means that I want to do it. Then why is it so hard to start? That's where I think I have difficulty. In the starting.
Well, I'm reading a book called Start by Jon Acuff and it's actually quite helpful in all this. ^^ I want to be awesome. I am choosing the road to awesome and I am starting now. (Well, really I started yesterday) but I will continue to start. Of course I would imagine it to mean less for someone who has not read the book, but that's pretty much the whole premise (at least up to chapter 4)...
All, that, just because I wanted to talk about getting lost in a book (but in putting what I tried to capture at the moment at the end of this blog entry does it no justice. I will create another entry for it).
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Why I enjoy words
Not literature, but words.
Perhaps it is the cadence. The music we have been taught in the form of language that communicates in ways deeper than we can comprehend.
Fun words roll around in my head and in my mouth as the meaning of the word and the sound of the word are aligned to create the perfect expression.
Today's words of the day are
happenstance
It just happened by circumstance.
verisimilitude
A similarity to truth (verity) (or google's definition: "the appearance of being true or real")
It isn't just the sound though. Perhaps it is also how it looks, the art of the word. The visual appeal that the letters create. The dips, peaks, and tittle islands that create an image (yes, tittle sounds like a dirty or frilly word, but it's just the name of the dot above i's and j's). Sometimes words have balance.
I like words. :]
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Incompetence
It's that feeling of one's own incompetence that leads to such enervation.
I don't want to do anything anymore. Perhaps I'm just depressed.
Perhaps I'm hard on myself or perhaps this is truth.
Perhaps this is why I hate it when other people are incompetent.
Today I felt like a failure. Not in the sense that my students didn't learn, but I was left feeling like I could have done better.
There's no solution except to suck it up and be better next time, but failure is an ugly, smelly, unwelcome friend that I have no desire to become intimate with.
Is this really the only way to success?
(ugh, what an emo post - I guess I am still a child, aren't I?)
I don't want to do anything anymore. Perhaps I'm just depressed.
Perhaps I'm hard on myself or perhaps this is truth.
Perhaps this is why I hate it when other people are incompetent.
Today I felt like a failure. Not in the sense that my students didn't learn, but I was left feeling like I could have done better.
There's no solution except to suck it up and be better next time, but failure is an ugly, smelly, unwelcome friend that I have no desire to become intimate with.
Is this really the only way to success?
(ugh, what an emo post - I guess I am still a child, aren't I?)
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Forgetfulness
I hate it when I'm at the precipice of a thought and then it escapes or something distracts me from taking the thought to completion.
The folly of humans can be seen in this:
The thoughts we have that contradict reality show how foolish we can be, or perhaps how blind we are to truth.
Perhaps I'm simply twisting things, but today, as I was doing the dishes, I noticed that there were no pots and pans (and it made sense because I had leftovers for dinner). I noted to myself how nice it was not to have to clean such unwieldy implements, and finished washing up. Now, I had forgotten that I had poured soup from a pot for dinner earlier, emptying the pot and leaving it on top of the stove (and thus the pot remained uncleaned until just now, when I happened to see it, empty and dirty, as I walked by to get a glass of water).
In forgetting, we only see what is in front of us, and if our brains are able to observe so much, but only bring into our consciousness a fraction of what has been observed, then could a thought that I had had ("oh, there are no pots") actually be two concurrent, conflicting pre-thoughts (there's a pot on the stove - drawn from my memory) and (there are no pots in front of me - drawn from visual data) colliding and creating a sense of misplaced satisfaction in noticing that I did not have to wash any pots? So by the time those two conflicting thoughts had arrived into my consciousness, all I thought was, 'Oh, how nice. I don't have to wash any pots' when my brain was actually trying to remind me of the pot behind me.
Sometimes we place so much value in observation and in the tangible that we forget that there are thousands upon thousands of factors that we are missing, both forgotten and unseen. Then, when belief systems, science, and other truths come out, our brain reconciles the information into a misplaced thought of 'Oh, how nice.'
I wonder if the separation between religion and science is something like that? We've conceived it to be so irreconcilable that we've forgotten that in both, there could be truth that we're simply missing out on.
Eh. It still bothers me that this other thought is unfinished. Hm. Well, I'm marinating on this one. Perhaps there will be more.
The folly of humans can be seen in this:
The thoughts we have that contradict reality show how foolish we can be, or perhaps how blind we are to truth.
Perhaps I'm simply twisting things, but today, as I was doing the dishes, I noticed that there were no pots and pans (and it made sense because I had leftovers for dinner). I noted to myself how nice it was not to have to clean such unwieldy implements, and finished washing up. Now, I had forgotten that I had poured soup from a pot for dinner earlier, emptying the pot and leaving it on top of the stove (and thus the pot remained uncleaned until just now, when I happened to see it, empty and dirty, as I walked by to get a glass of water).
In forgetting, we only see what is in front of us, and if our brains are able to observe so much, but only bring into our consciousness a fraction of what has been observed, then could a thought that I had had ("oh, there are no pots") actually be two concurrent, conflicting pre-thoughts (there's a pot on the stove - drawn from my memory) and (there are no pots in front of me - drawn from visual data) colliding and creating a sense of misplaced satisfaction in noticing that I did not have to wash any pots? So by the time those two conflicting thoughts had arrived into my consciousness, all I thought was, 'Oh, how nice. I don't have to wash any pots' when my brain was actually trying to remind me of the pot behind me.
Sometimes we place so much value in observation and in the tangible that we forget that there are thousands upon thousands of factors that we are missing, both forgotten and unseen. Then, when belief systems, science, and other truths come out, our brain reconciles the information into a misplaced thought of 'Oh, how nice.'
I wonder if the separation between religion and science is something like that? We've conceived it to be so irreconcilable that we've forgotten that in both, there could be truth that we're simply missing out on.
Eh. It still bothers me that this other thought is unfinished. Hm. Well, I'm marinating on this one. Perhaps there will be more.
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Things I need to stop buying...
but keep finding an affinity for them.
Mugs.
Tshirts.
Hoodies.
I like them!
I like mugs because they give that extra garnish that comes with a nice hot drink (which is usually coffee during the day and decaf or non-caffeinated tea at night) and tshirts and hoodies have fun designs!
I have too many mugs and far too many tshirts.
Boo for being an adult and having to look a certain way to give a certain impression. If I was better at art or at graphic design or something freelance or creative, I would have a gabillion tshirts. That's right. A gabillion.
Mugs.
Tshirts.
Hoodies.
I like them!
I like mugs because they give that extra garnish that comes with a nice hot drink (which is usually coffee during the day and decaf or non-caffeinated tea at night) and tshirts and hoodies have fun designs!
I have too many mugs and far too many tshirts.
Boo for being an adult and having to look a certain way to give a certain impression. If I was better at art or at graphic design or something freelance or creative, I would have a gabillion tshirts. That's right. A gabillion.
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