New Creative Blog Post Inspired by APE: 3:30 A.M.

(This was inspired by the APE book as a whole, as well as the essay Death by Lu Hsun.)

3:30 A.M.

            I sit at my desk on a finals week Tuesday night, and it is 3:30 in the morning. I open a book of essays, and flip to one on the topic of death. Perfect, I thought. This is totally representative of how I feel this week. Finals are hitting me hard, and no matter how much coffee, Red Bull, and Mountain Dew that I consumed I could barely stay awake. I have been awake since, since, oh crap, when was the last time I went to bed? Sometime Sunday. perhaps? I honestly have no idea. My caffeine supply is running low, and my roommate has already gone to bed. I cannot turn on a light, so I aim the light of my laptop on the pages of the book. Why did I choose to read this essay of all essays? It is so depressing, talking about ghosts and funeral protocol. Maybe I chose it because it was short, and I the sooner I finish it the sooner I can go to sleep. No. Sleep is for the weak. Woman up Alicia, this is college, the real deal. You aren’t paying thousands of dollars a year to fall asleep on your homework, and the world’s most famous novelists didn’t get famous by sleeping, they got famous by reading and writing. I don’t feel any potential to be famous right now. I feel failure, sadness, caffeine withdrawal, and the DEATH of my hopes and dreams sitting right in front of me. Oh the irony…

One page, down. Two pages, complete. Three pages, accomplished. But that fourth page. Oh, that fourth page. Every essay that I have read in “The Art of the Personal Essay” I have ended up falling asleep during reading, even when I wasn’t this tired, and that is why I chose to sit at my desk instead of in bed. That fourth page however, really made it tempting for me to just fall asleep with my head down on the desk. No, Alicia, you must press on. Finish strong, you can do it. And, I did it. I finished the first APE essay that I have read completely all the way through and not ended up with the book on my face the next morning. My biggest failure in my nonfiction writing class has finally turned to success! My dreams have been brought back to life, and now, because I read that essay without going to sleep, I can do anything! I felt this grand rush of energy and satisfaction, a rush that let me move two feet over to crawl into my little dorm bed. It was my own personal fluffy, soft cushiony marshmallow pool of comfort. It was pure sleepytime bliss.

Short Takes in Relation to Classmate's Essays.

When reading my classmate's essays along with the pieces from Short Takes, I related them in some way. When I read "Men at Night " I found similarities to it in Danielle's essay "Innocence to Womanhood." The similarity that stuck out to me the most between the two was that they both were pieces with a reflective subject, and described in detail an experience with an event or person, with Danielle describing her mom and David Huddle his experience in the military. When I read "Slipping Into Reality" By Emily, and "The Trains" in Short Takes, I compared the two in the way that they both had the same sort of tone and style, using short, yet descriptive sentences to show the emotions that they were feeling.

Post on "Relatable"

When reading this, my first thought was how much I disagreed with this teacher's statements on the subject of the word "relatable". I love the word relatable, and I really love using it because it is a much better way to describe something that you can relate to than just saying "I can relate to that". I think that there is a point to how relatable a piece of writing can be before you feel like you are just reading about your own life, and that is definitely a problem if it is. However a piece, whether fiction or nonfiction, needs to grab the reader's understanding on some level, and writing about things that relate to the readers lives as well does a great job of doing that. Our culture does overuse the word in everyday life and on social media, I will agree with that, but if used correctly in a mature academic setting I don't see any problem with writing something that the reader can relate to or using the word to describe and discuss.

Post About Solnit.

When I read "The Faraway Nearby", I thought that the metaphor behind the apricots is a good example of our inconsistency. According to the apricots in the book, we change over time, even when we cannot see ourselves that anything has changed. We age, we learn, and we sometimes become entirely different people over time, often when least expected. Like Solnit's mother's Alzheimer's, which could not  be anticipated at first, the disease changed her mother as a person entirely. Day by day nothing had really changed, but back over weeks or months, it is apparent that everything has changed, much like the apricots. First, they are picked fresh off of the tree, then they could follow a few different paths, like us with our paths in life. The fruit could get set on a kitchen counter, being forgotten and rotting within a week or two. Or, they could be canned and stored in mason jars, lasting for a year or more before they begin to expire and eventually turn into a pungent liquor. This is how our lives go, different choices leading us down different paths, determining our fate in a way that we can often not predict.

Short description of who I plan to write about.

This is in a way, the beginnings of my essay. For my essay, I plan to interview Vicki Butcher, who was the advisor of Kappa Phi last year and lives in Athens. This is a description of her from my point of view, before I interview her.

Vicki is a person who reminds me a lot of my grandmother. She is patient, kind, and loving toward all of her Kappa Phi girls. Maybe that's why we call her "mom", because she cares about us as if she were the mother of our whole group. Vicki is somewhat short, wears glasses, and dyes her short hair a shade of brown. She lives in Athens, but I don't think that she has always lived here her whole life. I know that she has kids. I forget their names, but she talks about them all the time. I remember every week at chapter meetings she would sit quietly in the corner of the room in what we all called "Vicki's chair", which was an old rocking chair that was painted black with gold detail. She would just watch the meetings, just smiling and keeping to herself as us students discuss details of our service projects ad socials. I really only knew her for one semester before Michelle, our new advisor, took over. However, even though I only knew her for a short time, I was sad just like the other girls when she announced to us that she was retiring. She comes back every now and again to see how we are doing, and Michelle is a wonderful advisor too, but all of us miss "mom". 

It is very obvious that I need to gather more information and perfect this... a lot.

Review of Gary Smith piece.

This one was much better than the last, no crazy ranting review here! I must say I actually kinda liked the bitter-sweetness of this essay, with Takes Enemy's basketball fame to hitting rock bottom to rising up again was certainly more uplifting than the piece about cannibalism. I also enjoyed how the author makes a contrast between the past and the modern age of the Crow tribe, as well as his explanations of the expectations that are present for those in that community. I do think though, that while basketball is certainly a central theme here, I think that Smith relied a little too much on this one aspect to tell a story that was much bigger.

Response to the Piers Paul Read Piece

Okay, okay, okay. This piece I am just not okay with. Just visualizing this cannibalism stuff in my head in all of that detail was flat out disgusting. To be quite honest, I couldn't even finish reading it. I tried, I really did, but I just got too queasy at the thought about 4 pages in and I just couldn't do it! I do have to appreciate the author's very detailed descriptions that paint a very vivid picture, so he did his job well in that department because believe me, the picture in my head was VERY vivid. It is really gritty non sugar-coated facts, and honestly I think that is what bothered me the most, knowing that it actually happened and knowing all of the details of it. I also must give the writer props for being able to write about it without being too disturbed, that would take some talent. Overall, Alicia's review here says that out of all of the survival stories that I have read, this one was not the best, I mean, I couldn't even finish it and the whole thing was about cannibalism. Maybe I just couldn't see the deeper meaning because I was so grossed out, I don't know.  1 out of 5 stars.