Personal Edition Numero...I Have No Idea.

Personal Edition Numero...Something Spanish...

Reading Reflection #8

Book: Perfect Chemistry

Author: Simone Elkeles

Pages Read: 1-20

Dear Fellow Readers, yep, another book has been started. I never read books like these, teen love stories, so I'm finding it kind of hard to read. It seems like the characters and very stereotypical. A rich cheerleader with blond hair, blue eyes, is very rich, as a convertible, and has the perfect boy friend. Then the next main character is a Latino Blood, kind of poor, is the tough guy at school, rides a motorcycle, with a bad attitude. Oh, but I can't forget, they both feel like they're putting on a mask to the outside world, hiding who they truly are. How unheard of. When I read this book, its almost as if I know what the characters are going to say and do before they do it, its the predictable...but my friend told me that it gets really good, so I'm just curious to read what happens which is why I want to keep reading this book. She also read it in Grade 7...so there is quite the age difference going along with her recommendation...so I guess I'll just have to see what all the talk is about. So, my first prediction I have for this book is that these two characters are going to get together. Surprised? They are from opposite worlds, different sides of town, and there will be a lot of controversy and problems when they get together. They will fall madly in love and maybe one of the characters will die. Since one of the main characters, Alex, is Latino, they use a lot of Spanish words in the book in replace of English words. I know very little Spanish so its kind of difficult to follow at times and I just sort of get the idea of what the word meant from the context that its in. I find the use of these Spanish words interesting because since this book takes place in the U.S.A, a lot of people are accustomed to basic Spanish words, meanwhile in Canada we know french as our second language. It just goes to show the cultural difference between our countries. One aspect of the main characters life that I related to was Brittany's relationship to her mom. For a lot of the time she'd rather be out of the house so she doesn't have to deal with her...and I kind of find myself in the same situation. The moms not abusive at all or really mean for all that matter, just very judgmental and you never know if they're going to be in a good mood or a really bad mood that day...its better to be out of the house. One reference in this book that I found interesting was the in Alex's family, his siblings are mentioned in context as soldiers, such as soldier number one and soldier number two. I really liked this because it is most likely that these kids will become gang members, so I liked the contrast between the two different fighters and the groups they would belong too. Overall, I don't know if I like this book a lot...but I don't think I dislike it either. Since I last read part of this book for this reflection, I am on page 110 and still haven't really made up my mind about it...but we'll see how it goes!

Personal Edition Numero Dieciséis

http://goo.gl/ztIgn

We've all watched as someone starts our day 
off with annoyance as they screw up our cereal. 

Personal Edition Numero Quince

http://truebluemeandyou.tumblr.com/page/8

It's ideas like these that get me excited to try...but I probably never will. 

Writing Reflection #...Black Out Poetry?

          Well, I must say, I'm a big fan of black out poetry...but I also found it surprisingly difficult. First of all, I love incorporating words, messages, and writing into the artwork I do. So thats why I've enjoyed a lot of the assignments we've had to do so far this year, such as the six word memoirs and now the black out poetry. Also, I do a lot of work with newspaper in my artwork so when I found out we were doing black out poetry I was like....yessss. Interestingly enough, I learned this style of writing a long time ago from Ms. Fernie, but she called it "Found Poetry." We also did another technique where we just blacked out most of the article and kept words that particularly stood out to us or have meaning relating to our piece. I find this writing style really unique because...well...there is so much you can do with the general concept of it and everyones final piece is different in their own way. When our class was looking at other kids examples in the hallway, they all looked so interesting and unique. For example, some words came from the main title of an article, so this word was stressed...or they would make connection to join all their words. Some poems were simple, yet powerful and others were long and meaningful. I liked how a lot sounded kind of cryptic and mysterious. With my poems I wrote generally long ones relating to human rights and freedom. This was a topic that I felt very strongly about so it was easy to think of messages I wanted to get out. However, it was not easy AT ALL to actually make the messages make sense and make a poem out of it with the newspaper. There would be one good word like "freedom" or  "imprisonment" that I knew I had to use...so I actually found it really hard to search for words to make a message with. Its almost as if the words find you while you're searching for them...I think that the first poem I made was a bit hard to follow...but my second one got better...and then my last one was the best, in my opinion at least. After the first one, it became harder to make the poems though because I had to consider the theme found in my first poem and make two more poems relating to that. It was as if on the first poem I started with a blank canvas, then the other poems were adding to it, which is always harder. Through this type of writing, I learned that I like the messages, or poems, that I write about to have meaning. I don't want a sappy love story (although I'm not saying those aren't meaningful in their own way)...I mean that I want it to be powerful and have some kind of impact to our lives and gets people thinking about aspects of their own life. Another thing I learnt about myself as a writer is that I am very...perfectionistic (made up the word, I'm just gonna go with it). Around the class, I saw people writing poems like they were texts. Quick and easy to the. I honestly got one poem done in class. It took my so long to find an article with the right words and then to make my message PERFECT. Each poem took a good 3 hours to do...but I really ended up liking the final outcome! Overall, I really like this writing style and I'll probably end up doing it on my own for art or just for fun. 

Personal Edition Numero Catorce

"The Sharp Knife of a Short Life"

Sometimes life is over before it begins. 

One of my cousin's best friends just died tonight in a car accident. Two others are in critical condition in the hospital...they go to Kelvin and are my age. 17...senior year...they said she was a woman. She was a kid. 

It doesn't seem real when a kid dies. It's not supposed to happen. 

Why don't people wear seat belts? Why do we speed when we know its dangerous? Why don't we think?

So, a girl dies. How do we react? We put it in the social media, make Facebook pages in ...respect?

We go to a funeral thats not real. We dress in black, sit in a pew and listen to a preacher who we know isn't telling the truth.

She didn't die. Its impossible. 

I won't die. 

But we do. 

We all do.

Death takes control of our thoughts and makes a mess.