A Cumulation of Words

One: My Best Pieces

• 9/11, A Day I Can't Remember
• This piece was written after interviewing my parents about what they experienced on September 11th, 2001 when the World Trade Center in New York was attacked. I was just a baby, so I don't remember it at all.
• Rendition of Archie Smith, Boy Wonder
• When Harris Burdick disappeared, he left many unfinished pieces behind. I finished this one for him, or at least... added to it.
• Heads Spinning
• These are poems I wrote under the influence of impressionistic art by Rene Margritte.
• Madness
• My obsession with post-apocalyptic and dystopia fiction came out in this piece when I wrote about the end of the world. 
• Breaker of Chains
• This is a poem about trying to grow up under the oppression of overbearing parents who want you to stay a little girl forever.
• Nightmare
• If I didn't make it clear how much I love my sister before, perhaps I did with this piece.
• Cessna Moments
• Writing this piece was like doing twenty loopty-loops in a 2-seater Cessna airplane.

Two: Other's Writing

• Connor Rothschild's Blog
• I recently discovered a classmate's political blog and read through a lot of his opinion pieces.
• Audacious Adventures of MBE
• I read a lot of M'Kenna's pieces as she posted them, such as: Picture and Poems, Flee Market Stories, and Driving In The Country. She is a very talented writer and always speaks from the heart.
• DawgWithABlog
• Many of us laughed at Ben Lemon's comedic stories of Rico Sanchez, a talking Giraffe who has had many adventure at the end of Ben's pencil. Tears On My Spots was probably my favorite.

Three: Setting Up My Blog

• I loved the experience of setting up my blog. It was great that I was allowed to personalize it the way I wanted to and I have a lot of creative freedom. I choose "Sampling Feelings" because I liked the idea of combining a verb and a noun that don't typically go together. I was inspired by Mrs. Fraser's personal blog name, "Nesting Notions." I wish to continue writing on the blog. Although, my pieces will be less academic and more on topics that I feel like writing about.

Four: The Journey of Journaling

• The things I wrote in my journal were unpolished, unedited and not something I wish to share with others. I wrote down my thought and opinions and often when off on tangents with no direction. Journaling helped me get my thought together and was a way of planning out what I really wanted to say. I like the idea of having rough drafts, so I will continue writing down my thoughts that way even if it's not in a journal.

Five: Journal Piece, Uncovered

• In the summer of 1897, my brother Tom and I left our farms and families behind to seek Gold in the Klondike Valley. Men far and wide were dropping everything to seek their fortune in the dangerous Alaskan country. The journey was difficult, but actually finding gold was the really hard part. We had invested our life's savings in a gold-finder machine, but after three months of looking, but we still have nothing. Tom was beginning to lose hope, but I knew out luck was about to turn around to turn around. We ventured deeper and deeper into the uncharted Yukon territory, where no man had yet to venture. This brought more challenges, and many literal road blocks. We ended up leaving the machine behind as it was to difficult to transport. A few more days past, and even I was growing weary of our trek. We were about to forget the whole thing and turn around, when I saw it. The yellow nugget, our saving grace.

Six: Cessna Moments

When my mother was a little girl, she would skip church with her grandfather every Sunday and go flying in his blue and white, 2-seater Cessna airplane. The empty field behind her house doubled as a landing strip, so he would just cruise up to the house and pick her up. They would fly for hours at a time, and talk, and tell stories, and laugh. They would fly through the clouds, even though they weren’t supposed to. He would sometimes pass off the controls to her and let her fly the plane, placing a tremendous amount of trust in a little girl with no pilot’s license.

My mom was the first-born grandchild and the only granddaughter for many years, and therefore reserved the right as Granddaddy’s favorite, the Golden child.  In his eyes, she could do nothing wrong. When something bad happened, it was always everyone else’s fault, never hers. He almost never took any of his other four grandchildren up in the plane, instilling a sense of pride and superiority in my mom.

 My Granddaddy was the type of man that enjoyed hearing himself speak, but my mother liked the sound her own voice more. They made a good pair. When flying, they would discuss religion, politics, her future, and his past. He probably told her about the time he got shot in order to win her grandmother back, after she had broken up with him; or the time he entered a boxing competition and beat one of the future winners of the golden gloves; or how he had the highest IQ of anyone in Harrison, AR. I imagine my mom, a girl of seven or eight, learning how to voice her own thoughts and opinions with him for the first time, and he telling her why she was wrong and what she should think instead. She was very inquisitive, and asked him a lot of questions that he didn’t know the answer to, which was probably a rarity for him. As a child, she wanted to be exactly like Granddaddy. Strong, successful, powerful, and kind without others knowing he was kind.

Granddaddy purchased the Cessna when he retired, at the age of 50, after making his fortune and passing his business off to his eldest son, Mike. He firmly believed that anything worth doing, was worth doing to perfection. He was also a bragger. So when he aced his pilot’s license test, he told everyone how he'd received the highest score on the state of Arkansas, a 100%. Flying was one of the few things he really enjoyed in his life. But after his second heart attack, he was forced to give up his license; a bird without his wings.

Despite the sadness of never flying that Cessna again, Granddaddy helped shape my mother into the assertive, but caring, adventurous spirit that she is today.  Despite not having the ability to take our own flight, my mother and I have had plenty of our own “Cessna moments.”

Seven: Creative Writing and it's Place in My Life

• This class has challenged me to get out of my comfort zone and write things that I a) normally wouldn't write, and b) had never thought of writing. I learned a lot about myself as we worked through the various areas of study. I wrote some pieces that didn't really seem like me and I got a feel for what i actually do like writing about. This is different from other classes because of it's informality, full creative freedom, and broad topics. I will incorporate the lessons I've learned from this into all my writing in the future.

Eight: To My Fellow Writers

• If this class has taught me anything, it's that we have to constantly soak up the world around us. We have to live outside of our comfort zones and explore those parts of ourselves and others that we're afraid to see. If I could go back and change something, it would be to get to know more of you. Look around today, on our last day, I realized that I hadn't gotten to know all of you the way I would've like to. Each and every one of you offered new and unique perspective on life, love, loss, and so much more. Even if I didn't get to know all of you in person, I got to know you through your writing. Thank you for sharing.