Life As a Chair

The day a woman bought me at the store, I was the happiest chair on earth. Life as a chair was great. I obtained the most beautiful cushion — one with big, pink and yellow roses — which lie on top of me. The house I lived in had wallpaper complementing my colors perfectly with other chairs at the table that looked just like me. They were really nice. Children in this house were little and easy to hold up. Luckily, I had had the youngest little boy who felt about 30 pounds! At that point in my life, I felt invincible! One day, about 14 years later, things went downhill. The woman who purchased me did some redecorating and took off my cushion. It made me feel all naked and insecure! The youngest child had been so spoiled by his rich mother that she fed him much more than he needed to be. He went from 30 pounds to 300 pounds! Then one day, he plopped right onto me and broke all my legs. The large man started crying. I was the one with the broken legs, so why was he crying about it? The mom picked up every piece of me and put me into the smelly garbage. I had gone from the top of the world to the bottom.

Along the Road to Nothingness

I was an outcast.
Nobody wanted to talk to me.
Everyone stared at me
Because my clothes weren't like theirs.
I liked my clothes,
So colorful and bright,
But they clashed,
So they said.
I was shy,
And didn't like them looking at me.
I cared what others thought.
I wanted to have friends.
So I changed.
I changed myself
To be someone I'm not.
That's when someone told me,
"Why try so hard to fit in
When you were born to stand out?"
I realized at that moment,
That I liked the way I was.
I didn't need to change
Like conventions urged me to.
I was along the road
To being nothing,
Someone who was average,
Concealed, hidden in the crowd.
I believed in myself enough
To embrace the way I was.
I stood out,
And that was just fine with me.

The Truth of Numbers, the Lie of Life

Author's Note - the thoughts about life in the point of view of the main character, Christopher John Francis Boone, in the novel The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Humor:
An idea I fail to understand.
Why do people lie
To try to be funny?
Lying is not funny.
It's mean
And very confusing.
People are hard to understand.
They say things
That they don't mean,
So why do they say them?
They don't speak the truth
And that is very rude.
People are not like numbers.
Numbers are easy,
So structured, so exact,
Not like what my teacher teaches me.
She tries to teach me body language.
I fail to understand body language.
I need pictures of emotions
In my pocket.
How else will I know
How someone feels?
Feelings are inside,
Not outside.
People make faces
To show emotion,
But I can't read faces.
I can read numbers.
Numbers don't have feelings.
Sometimes I feel like a number,
Not knowing how to feel.
Life confuses me.
It's not always the truth.

A Priest Can Have a Family, But Only a Family With God

Author's Note: The Power and the Glory - discussion about the priest's inappropriate relationship and strange daughter

The typical priest is married to the church, so devoted to their religion and beliefs and convictions, and has no family except the family of himself with the Lord. For a priest to have a relationship outside of the church is not only frowned upon, but forbidden. The irony in the novel The Power and the Glory is so strong that this priest—one with no recognized name symbolizing nothingness—is an alcoholic attempting to feel nothing in his life who breaks the regulation a priest should have by having a short association with a woman named Maria. The outcome of this wasn’t just failure for the priest to obey rules, but along with their relationship arrived a baby. Due to the conspicuous fact that this was wrong behavior for a priest, the priest left Maria alone with a baby to raise on her own.

Years later, the priest encountered his daughter and Maria to find his daughter, Brigida , had no value to her life. Children should obtain innocence, however, Brigida ironically seemed so stoic and adult like. She doesn’t get along with other children because she grew up so quickly and her family wasn’t traditional with a mother and a father. With her dark, twisted personality, you wouldn’t expect her to save her father from being caught by the police and being arrested, yet she manages to accomplish that in this novel as well. The priest’s convictions, unfortunately, were not the same as Maria’s, leaving Brigida suffering from being an outcast, a nobody, nothing.

The Perfect Friend Named Forney

Author's Note: Where the Heart Is - reflecting the character Forney, a friend of the main character Novalee
In the book Where the Heart Is, a 17 year old girl is pregnant when she is abandoned at a Wal-Mart in the middle of Oklahoma with only $7.77. With no one around, her only option is to live in the Wal-Mart. Eventually, she explores this town and meets the character Forney in the library. He comes off as a strange character as he nearly sprints around the library, isle to isle, to find a book for Novalee.

The moment that Forney seemed like he was truly a nice person was when he set up the spectacular dinner for Novalee's 18th birthday. She was thrilled to have a real meal rather than survive off of the snack food at Wal-Mart. He rehearsed what he was going to say to her so that he wouldn't seem so awkward but Forney has this innocence that Novalee adores and she treats him with such respect back. Since Novalee has been living in Wal-Mart, she values what she has more than she used to and learns to see through Forney's strange self to his inner beauty; his personality is so abstract, yet, somehow, Novalee can figure him out perfectly. Forney is aware that he's a little weird around Novalee and it's so nice that he's trying to clean up for her. Novalee had such a bad experience with her old boyfriend, Willy Jack, that Forney seems so perfect as if he were magic. Their friendship grows so strong that he has become Novalee's best friend -- one to help her through bad times, to enjoy and celebrate good times, make the best out of average times, and make the best of each other.

Sister Husband's Tornado Experience

Author's Note: Where the Heart Is - viewpoint of Sister Husband, the woman who welcomed the main character Novalee into her home, during the tornado

"TV just put out a tornado warning. They spotted a funnel cloud over in Vian," I said.

The sky had started to turn a greenish color, darkening by the minute, clouds growing taller, starting to twirl just slightly. Everything was so still, not a sound stirred. Suddenly, a flash of lightning came, the thunder clapping 4 seconds after. Then came another flash and immediately, there was a crash, so close that the trailer shook violently.

“We gotta get our pets, Mommy!” Americus yelled as she began to walk out the door.

“You stay close darling!” Novalee yelled.

“Come on, Mommy.”

“No, you stay close, we’re about to leave.”

“Novalee, you go on with Americus. I made Dixie some potato soup. I’ll take it by on my way to the cellar,” I said. Once again, the thunder crashed shaking the trailer home making Novalee flinch. “That was God telling you to take that baby and get on to the cellar.” I warned.

As they left, I had a great feeling knowing they would be just fine, especially since Novalee had grown into such a good mother. I couldn’t be happier that she had come into my life.

I watched from the window to verify that Novalee and her daughter, Americus, climbed into the cellar. They left the door open for me so I could come in when I come back from Dixie’s. I’m uncertain that Dixie will actually be there, but I made her a promise that I intend to keep.

As if broken from a trance, I suddenly turned around to notice the soup was boiling fiercely going over the top. I turned down the heat, but in the process, it boiled right onto my arm making me roll on the floor in pain. Keeping in the tears, I inched towards the refrigerator in need of an ice pack when the soup boiled over onto my bare foot. I yelped, but didn’t want Novalee to hear so she wouldn’t be hurt in the storm.

Clenching my burned foot, I began to cry knowing I was letting people down. I failed. I failed to keep a promise about bringing potato soup to Dixie, I failed to get to the cellar before the tornado struck, and I failed to say goodbye to the people I love.

The cyclone roamed around destroying everything in its path I witnessed as it began to head straight for my trailer. Suddenly, the trailer tipped onto its side sending the refrigerator on top of me. I felt a sense of weightlessness as the twister picked up the trailer, smashing it into the ground. The walls crunched inwards toward me and ripped off piece by piece.

Through the nonexistent wall to my right, I peered out to see the cellar door was closed and I knew Novalee was safe inside. To my left was my Bible which I grasped in my hands and I prayed out loud for Novalee; I knew I would die with the lord and go to Heaven. That’s when the trailer toppled down, completely destroyed with the ceiling, or what used to be the ceiling, on the ground and I fell unconscious.

Later, I began to open my eyes and felt so much pain throughout my body. The blurs allowed me to figure out an idea as to where I was. I was in an ambulance. Forney sat next to me and I could see an avalanche of tears rolling down his cheeks. I couldn’t bear to see it, but looked down and saw the Bible still in my hands; an intense, burning pain rushed though my chest, and I shut my eyes never to be opened again.

Friendship

Real friends will always say,
"I'd do anything for you."
When a friendship is strong.
A friendship isn't strong
If it can't withstand rough patches.

Friends are there for each other
Through the times of good and bad
For the support and love they need.
They stand up for each other
Because they sincerely care.

We love true friendship
It's the magic we dream of
All day and all night.
It wouldn't be magical
If it was truly perfect.
The reality is,
friendship isn't perfection.

All a Blur

I wish I could remember
The way things were
And the great times I had
But It’s all a blur.

My friends played so rough.
We always screamed, "Grrr!"
Which game did we play?
That's still all a blur.
Did my friends love me?
Was it really pure?
I wish I remembered.
It’s all just a blur.

A fire started.
That day I lost her.
My sister was young
So it’s all a blur.
I think we got along.
I think I loved her.
It’s been so long
That it’s all a blur.

I had a kitten
With beautiful fur.
I don’t know its name.
It’s all just a blur.

My parents lived at home
They didn’t concur
My daddy left me.
He’s all just a blur.

I want to remember
Events as they were.
But I can’t remember.
It is all a blur.

Animals That Live Outside of the Zoo are Still Safe Creatures

In the novel Life of Pi, the author Yann Martel shows how animals like to have boundaries. A pool has its boundaries like a taboo, something safe, something with security. Our conventions as humans is that we want to believe that animals are safer in the zoo than animals in the wild; we also think wild animals are dangerous, but , like humans inside a home all their life and others that live on the streets, we are still one of the same. “[E]scaped zoo animals are not dangerous absconding criminals but simply wild creatures seeking to fit in.” (42) In Plato’s Allegory Cave, one man escapes the cave in search of what true life is like rather than trapped in a cave. This man and these animals are the same in that they want to fit in with the normal style of life for their species. We have the convention that unsheltered things are unsafe, therefore, escaped zoo animals are unsafe, however. The man in the cave was completely harmless, he just had the curiosity of what the rest of life was like, so these animals that have escaped from the zoo strive to discover what their species is like outside of the zoo walls and want to unify with the rest of their kind.

The Effect Television Has on Us - Relation to Fahrenheit 451

A 28 newspaper writer named Leah is on her way to work when she sees a girl through her window trying to have a conversation with the people on the TV screen.

The Effect Television Has On Us

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The relation of this article to Farenheit 451 is that TV can control one person, and when they step away from the screen like Guy Montag did, they strive to fix the world's problems.

Fahranheit 451: Beatty's Explanation of History

In Guy Montag’s world, history is an unknown subject. The spread of TVs the size of a wall was extremely rapid, so slow moving books gave people a sense of boredom instead of pleasure. The government completely took control of what people thought by using the TVs as an instrument to have total control of thought, to brainwash the citizens of their country. Political situations were proposed with complete propaganda showing either one-sided information—therefore the only information—or nothing at all. When Montag is unsure of the life before him, Beatty explains that they started the condensation of everything: books, newspapers, classes, the need for discipline, and one unmentioned condensed thing was free, creative thought. Although Beatty has been informed of the past, he still passionately believes that their present life is the correct lifestyle and that it’s better for the community to be unaware of any real things that happen or have happened. “Why learn anything…” (p. 55) Beatty accepts what the government tells him and believes it must be true, agreeing that with the society unaware, nothing can go wrong; the ironic thing is that “perfect” life has reached complete insanity.

Infinity Chamber

Life will continue until eternity ends,
Until infinity is discontinued.
Does infinity ever stop?
How large is infinity?
How far can infinity go?

You see the stars go into the distance
But they stand still.
They reach such a far distance
That the star we see may no longer exist.
The past remains in the past
Oh, so far away.
The past was once full of life
Now just a faint memory.
As time goes on,
The memories multiply,
Extending in all directions.
And as the memories sit in our head,
They grow weaker,
Seeming smaller and farther away.
The present is here for a split second,
Then dies away
Untouchable.

The Infinity Chamber represents life.
When you are locked in the small chamber
You experience the present
The precious time you live
Watching life go by.
Behind you lay your memories,
Your times of remembrance.
The glass in this chamber simply restricts
As life confines you to the present
Unable to relive the past again,
Yet the glass was made to be clear and see through
To represent availability to see memories in your mind.
The past has passed leaving only future ahead.
When one finishes reading this,
It too can be seen behind the glass
Of the mysterious infinite chamber.