Eleven years

I was barely on time with waking up that morning eleven years ago. I was always bad at waking up at a realistic time for the things I had to do in the day, hell, I still am. By the time I got myself downstairs, the shit had already hit the fan. The T.V. was on, the house was dead quiet aside from the newscasters. I had never even heard of the World Trade Center, I had heard of New York, the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, but a center for global commerce was far out of my freshly middle-school mind.

It's hard to see something for the first time when it's in a state of destruction. As far as I knew, it could have always been on fire (A silly idea to think, but the first experience of something sticks with me far more than it should). My sister was probably in the same boat as me, I can't be certain because I'd be lying if I said I remembered everything about that morning. It's all a painted blur to me with a few clear strokes stuck in sporadically. The most profound recollection I have from that day was sitting in homeroom, hell, I think it must have been every class that we just sat in silence, watching the television. Some of the kids were crying, they were scared, but they had every right to be.

What I remember most is the aftermath, the slough of finger pointing, the rage, the hate, the misconceptions. This isn't me trying to tell you who's right, who's wrong, or that the towers fell faster than explainable by gravity. This is me trying to understand what this event means to me, how the aftermath has molded me and how the ordeal in its entirety will affect me as I live out my life.

Old No. 7

One glass, alone on the shelf.
A shaking hand reaches up,
Bringing it down to the
ragged, chipped counter.
Three ice cubes drop, one by one.
Plink, plink, plink.
A Cabinet door creaks open.
Old number seven, resting uneasily,
gripped in a sweaty palm.
The ice, drowned by a generous pour.
The glass brought to quivering lips
in one slow, fluid movement.
The ice, takes in the fresh air.
A steady hand drops the glass.

?!?!?!!?

I guess I just have managed to forget about this for some time. Not that I hate blogging or anything, I just haven't had the motivation lately to sit down and write three pages about how I feel about all the shit going on in the world. Don't ask me why tonight is different, I just apparently deemed it necessary to express myself.

So what's new you ask? Well I moved into a house just off campus with three of the most amusing people I've ever met. Kate, Kristin and Sarah. Things are going good, the house is still standing, so any parties that we've had have all been successful. As for school, I'm starting that bag of fun up on the 21st of this month and I'm hardly excited. I just recently got started with my new job as a peer campus minister and the United Methodist church here in Cheney and I'm pretty happy with it so far.

It's been a rough couple months out here, living off of ramen and whatever my roommate brings me to eat because I watch her dogs while she's at work (I'd have probably starved to death if it weren't for that) I'm not so sure how I feel about getting ready to go back into classes this upcoming quarter. I'm retaking a math course that didn't go so well due to the instructor being....well... a bad instructor, otherwise known as a grad student. I am, however excited to get back into the programming aspect of things and hopefully I can keep myself on track there.

I guess my drive to write creatively has been dwindling. Every now and then I get  a poem idea in my head, but I just don't sit down and put pen to paper... Oh well, I guess that's just another thing to work on, along with my giant list of other things that I'm just not putting the required effort to.

Well, that's hopefully enough of an update for now and perhaps I'll be a bit more active on my blog, consider how therapeutic it can be sometimes.

Bye for now :P

Math: The bane of my existence

I've always been aware of my hate for math. Now, I think I just hate it more. Or maybe I'm just annoyed at the fact that it's at 8am with a scatterbrained grad student that always says "There's and easier way to do this, but you won't learn it til calculus". I've been out of elementary school for 10 years now and you know what I've finally managed to master? LONG DIVISION. I guess my brain just didn't function on basic little numbers being divided since I could easily multiply them in my head and get the answer 300 times faster and then get penalized for not showing my work. I guess all I needed was polynomials....

Programming is still pretty easy as of late. On Friday I had to take a test. Sat down with it at around 12.50pm and finished just shy of 1pm. Professor gives me a look of "wtf" and I just frolic off into the weekend, well, not really, but you get the picture.

This quarter is just zooming by and I'm pretty much ready for summer, my birthday, 4th of July and all around just being able to go home. I thought about summer classes, but I think my time would be best spent getting a hold of a full time job that I can carry over into the next school year. Not to mention I need to figure out what the hell I'm going to do about my living situation.

I've thought a lot about getting back into the habit of writing more often. Lately it's just an idea that's been unable to stick and I find it a bit frustrating. Maybe I've just been lacking some motivation. I know I have things to say, feelings to express, but for the time being they're just wanting to stay right where they are.

Spring quarter: week numero uno.

One week in, life is going as I had expected it to. Having an 8am class sucks incredibly way too much, but it’s for the greater good of things. I’ve managed to adjust rather well to this abrupt change in sleeping patterns from last quarter and I’m making the best out of it. I’m beginning to despise the class break that I’m stuck with, but I’m slowly finding ways to kill the hours. It should get easier once we start having programming projects, gives me something to work on other than the drone of endless math problems.

The programming course is VERY basic. Doesn’t look like we’ll even start coding until the week after next. So far we’ve learned the difference between a computer and a calculator and what a computer exactly is. I know what RAM is, thanks. I also happen to know the difference between memory and storage, but I’ll be okay with the complete reassurance of how much I know. Making my way to an easy A, right? The instructor gave us a disclaimer that he swears entirely too much, awesome. One minute into class and he’s already blurting things like “I will throw shit!”. The entertainment value is far too high.

Math… I don’t even know where to begin with this. It’s been years since I’ve taken a math class and I’m starting to remember why that’s the case. Eight in the morning with by far one of the geekiest grad students I have ever seen in my life. She resembles a 14 year old boy with long hair. She also relayed her passion for Dungeons & Dragons Online, except she called it “DDO” and explained what it was when everyone looked at her awkwardly.  This will be an interesting 10 weeks.

Technology in the World. Awesome instructor. Short little southern guy that kind of looks like senior citizen Mario, mustache and all! Totally laid back too. We tend to just bullshit for an hour about random technologies and their impacts. He handed out our first “project” on Thursday. All it is, is a two page paper about a medical/wellness/agriculture technology and I have over two weeks to do it. I’m pretty sure I could write that before I even type the introduction paragraph.

Here I am laughing at the relative ease of things, when I’m back taking freshman/sophomore level classes. Hooray for switching majors. I know this stuff is going to get harder, but I think I’m going to revel in the fact that it isn’t this quarter, giving me a nice breather after the bullshit I endeared in the winter quarter.

There’s my update for the quarter so far. I’ll try my best to keep things updated… Hell I might even write some poetry at some point in the future.

My Creative Writing Rant

So perhaps my focal point should no longer be creative writing. Being bogged down in all this literature turned a passion straight into a pipe dream. I guess I should have expected to be reading more than I was writing. That makes sense, right? Oh well I've moved on. Found my new direction, computer science

Everyone seems to find this to be a huge jump for me. I guess it's not normal to be able to excel in any field of academia as long as I feel the need to. I'm not trying to boast, in fact I wish I was just good in one area. It would make my life so much easier. Never second guessing myself, feeling like I belonged somewhere. 

Hopefully I'm making the right choice. Not like I need an education to be a writer anyways.

One really awesome side to all this, is no more night classes. I'll bet that night classes are awesome for anyone trying to work and go to school, but as a full time student, for a lack of better words, it sucks ass. Sitting in one room, listening to one man drone on endlessly about some book I'd have no problem using for toilet paper, is an excruciating experience. Maybe if he cracked more jokes, for quite frankly he's hilarious, when he's not lecturing, He can go from hilarity to desert dry faster than you can say sandpaper.

The only thing worse than a droning 5 hour lecture? Workshopping. For anyone new to that idea, picture this: Twenty people in a room all reading a poem they wrote, out loud. Then everyone either brown noses it or bashes the author, depending on their own personal view. Leave it to egocentric outcasts to ruin any meaning in a piece of poetry. They wouldn't know a metaphor if it won American Idol.

Did I mention that the two creative writing core classes I took turned into literature classes? So those, plus the English core literature classes equals nothing but reading book after book and maybe some creative writing if you instructor left their copy of the weekly book at home.

My adviser was rather understanding at all of this. I guess she had a notion this would happen the instant I told her how much I loathed reading for pleasure. I half expected to have to stand tall on a podium to explain my reasoning, but it was unnecessary. I was, however, applauded for recognizing I needed to get out instead of forcing myself to stick through it.

It didn't take much thought to realize what path I should take. The only other thing I do more than write, is dick around on computers. Hell, compared to my computer usage, I write about as much as I listen to country music. Which for anyone not aware of it, I'd wipe country music off the earth if I could, but then again, who wouldn't?

Don't get me wrong, I love writing. Especially when I get entranced in what I'm writing. I can't think of a greater feeling than when that spark inside me goes off and my pen hits paper. I just don't think I need to read and talk about three hundred books to feel confident about it. Congratulations, only idiots believe a piece of paper can make you better than someone, especially writing. There's a reason the Pulitzer prize is a medallion, not some cheesy certificate of creative merit.

With books and letters behind me, I move down the path of numbers and keyboards. Thank god I only have to deal with two math classes. I enjoy math about as much as I enjoy literature, but at least with math there is a definite right and wrong answer. No more catering to a teachers agenda when writing a paper. It's hard enough when you leave a bad impression on them by never joining in on discussions.

I guess I can handle this set back from switching majors. Probably would've ended up taking just as long to finish all the English classes anyways. Gives me more time to avoid becoming a real adult. I guess I'm taking after my dad in the realm of taking my time in college. As long as I can find my passion, I'll be content.

Also, I'd like to point out an interesting contrast I found. I turned in two piece to the same teacher. Both were written in about the same time frame, the only difference being that I actually cared about writing one of them. The one I didn't care about, was marked with the words “You should look into taking a grammar course”. The other one, the one I cared about, was marked with “You do some good tight work here.” Obviously if I gave a damn about all my papers, I'd be valedictorian.

Perhaps I'll just continue suing poetry to lessen my emotional burdens and use prose to rant about things I have trouble saying out loud. If I'm going to be annoyed, at least I can do it creatively. Nothing says “fuck you” like a 30 page packet of the thoughts behind the two simple words. Hopefully I can avoid making someone cry because it doesn't have to be directed at anyone in particular.

I hope I won't end up repeating this process with the computer science program. My hand has just about fallen off writing this as quickly as I did. Time can only tell for me, I just hope it tells me what I want to hear this time.

An Old Dutch Letter

The premise of this poem was to write something that you would assume I'm translating from a foreign language, and have it appear to be at least 100 years old...

An Old Dutch Letter

Eleanor,

My head belongs to your Eleanor.

It has been time and time again since

I have held you close to my lonely ego.

I pray your parents are feeling themselves

better than they did when I lived downstairs.

They could hardly walk, If I recommend.

Work has been something but a chore

for me and I prolong to be back in home.

Remember, crime never gives a refund.

In two perennials time, I will stop off

the final steeple of the boat and leap

from your arms into your eyes.

Just remember, that I regret taking

this pony from the bathroom stall

and my pants have become itchy.

Seriously,

George