Drawing somethings.

I'm still doggedly playing draw something, even though I've given up on games with most of the people I'd been playing with before. I think it's better this way? Before, it was work. Now, it is art. Let me 'splain.

No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

I will draw a smiley face on anything.

I mean, anything.

Unless it needs a sad face. I shared a class with this guy in University.

Sometimes my English teacherness gets to be too much for me.

So much depends on a red wheelbarrow...

  

Tilting at windmills. 

I wanted to make a Gnomeo and Juliet reference, but I doubt the other person had seen the movie. I haven't seen the movie, either, to be quite honest.

Folded and unfolded and unfolding.

A poem to pass the time.

This is like
a song to tip the scales
But it's not.

Dispensing starlight.

We were discussing the Great Gatsby in class today.
My affair with Gatsby has been tumultuous, to say the least. In fact, when I first got this book, I hated it. I started reading it on a plane to Korea and halfway over the pacific ocean, I just stopped. I closed the book, I put it in my bag and didn't open it again for two years. This is not wholly uncommon. I did the same thing for Anna Karenina. Time passes, I remember that I started this book or that and out my mind towards finishing them. I usually dislike the books once I finish reading, but by golly, I finish reading them.

But then there's Gatsby. I've probably read this book five times in the past three years, each time not of my own volition. I read it it for class, usually, to get a reminder of what I'm going to be teaching the kids. And every time I read it, I'm struck by how much more I like the story this time compared to the last. It's growing on me. It's taking over my life. Well, maybe not that extreme, but close.

Today I had to defend the merits of the novel. A student, wholly unsolicited, blurted out that they really hate the book and it wasn't any good. Now, I let my students have their own opinion of the novel once they've finished it. But we had just finished chapter five. And to have a student finish the book and tell their classmates that it was horrible wasn't exactly going to encourage them to continue reading. So I explained that a more mature approach was needed to appreciate a book like Gatsby versus one like The Hunger Games.

Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed The Hunger Games. But if you're a student that likes story lines with lots of adventure, which this student admitted that they did, Gatsby may not be for you. For one thing, it takes place in such a short amount of time and everyone is so civil. Granted, they do act like animals, too, but in a genteel sort of way. And the language. This is not simple, easily accessible and quick to skim through. You can't read Gatsby cursorily. The poetic language, the foreshadowing, the imagery, the dialogue, all this contributes to a story that constantly surprises you so each successive reading. I continually find new things that Fitzgerald put in to make the story more than it appears. In fact, a different student points out a connection that I hadn't even thought of and it was fantastic. This story... Well, it's like an onion. It's got layers.

Plus, this is a love story, pure and simple. So many people dislike the novel on that account because, ugh, it's so unrealistic, Gatsby should have just moved on, Daisy wasn't that great anyway, she and Tom deserved each other, blah blah. Blah.

But this story resonates with anyone who's ever loved foolishly, without reason and past the boundaries of common sense. Someone who's loved someone who may have been undeserving, careless or selfish. But someone who cares so much that even when something terrible happens, their only thought is for that other person. Because who hasn't loved and come to some sort of grief because of it? 

This story is for anyone who's ever wanted to be loved as much as Daisy was, by a man who will "dispense starlight to casual moths--so that he [can] "come over" some afternoon to a stranger's garden" in order to meet again the woman he loves. Or by a man who will look at her "in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at sometime".

This is a story for us romantics, and yes, I count myself among them.

The Saga of the Mouse, Part 3: Revenge

That's not necessarily true. I haven't seen a sign of a mouse since the tragic demise of the last one. Tragic on my part, I was pretty much scarred for life.

I really like how my life has become one giant blog entry about a mouse. I mean, it's not, it just looks that way.

The Philosopher

And what are you that, wanting you,
I should be kept awake
as many nights as there are days
with weeping for your sake?

And what are you that, missing you,
as many days as crawl
I should be listening to the wind
and looking at the wall?

I know a man that's a braver man
and twenty men as kind,
and what are you, that you should be
the one man in my mind?

Yet women's ways are witless ways,
as any sage will tell,—
and what am I, that I should love
so wisely and so well?

Edna St. Vincent Millay 

This song is for the painter  who lost both of her hands,
and this song is for the wanderer who never came home again.

For all those with broken hearts, I know what you're going through.
I had a true love once  but now they've gone and left me blue.

So now I'd like to swim to the bottom of the ocean,
Then I'll  s c r e a m  as loud as I can where there's no one I can frighten.

So I'd do anything to cry. I'd do anything to cry.
Let this pain fall from my eyes and let time heal my insides.

I shout out to my grandparents, "Hope you find each other in heaven".

And to all of my friends, Sorry I left you behind.
And if I ever come back home, will you pour me a glass of wine?

And I'd do anything to cry. I'd do anything to cry.

Let this pain fall from my eyes and let time heal my insides.

This song is for the painter who lost both of her hands,
and if I ever find my heart, darling, I promise to come home again.