i.maginary

Ha, wow. My first blog really says it all.

“Hello.
I'm Mackenzie.

If your reading this, your probably following my blog. At this point I thank you for talking time out of your day to read what I have written. Most likely you will read about half of this, "Introductory to English," get bored and write a comment for a grade, or you may have planned on not reading it at all. Either way, I will not be offended, for how will I know the difference? and that is most likely my plan as well.
Forgetting what I just mentioned, i am traditionally a good English student. I get good grades, communicate with others easily, i like to write, i am able to read, etc. etc. Although, i have trouble believing that these qualities make a good student. These qualities are great at faking a good student but not making one. Oh, i am also a good poet. For me, a good student is someone with the willingness to learn, the need to understand and the drive to be the best they can be at everything., all qualities i have... or do i just have the qualities of a fake able student and this is all an illusion? I guess that’s for me to know and you to find out.

If your still reading, I applaud you. Bravo. You have gotten to know me as a student. I’m sure that’s what you all wanted. I hope to enlighten the on-line world, or the 10 plus people who will even look at what i have written rather, with my honest opinion of the books and literature studies we will be doing this year. You, the reader, will find yourself engulfed in a wave of knowledge and understanding when you read my blog. be prepared for straight fact without any unnecessary embellishments.

Thank you.

Good bye.”

Have you decided the answer to the paradox I posed? Am I truly a good English student? Or have I faked it all? The answers obvious at this point. Or at least I would hope it to be so.

It all has to make you wonder though. I mean, it certainly makes me wonder. I begin to question my self, “Is the answer really all that palpable?”

Palpable, that a pretty good word huh? I could have been redundant and said obvious again, but instead, I said palpable. I think it has a nice ring to it. Maybe I should have used palpable in my ‘Alphabox Poem,’ but I kinda just like it how it was.

When I start writing like this, in a low diction I mean, I feel like Ponyboy (there’s an allusion for ya :) I don’t know, I just thought I would give you a little insight to what goes on in my mind as I write. Sometimes you just gotta wonder what people think as they write. I feel like some people just think, “What’s the best word I could use to make it sound like I know what I’m talking about so I can get a good grade?” Then there are those kids that really care about their writing. Then, of course, there are kids like me…

I really don’t know where I was planning on taking that. It sounded good though huh? I guess I could have taken that somewhere magnificent but that would have defeated the purpose of why I’m writing.

“Purpose?” you ask?

Why yes! Purpose! Such a cool word. I’m really into ‘P’ words today I guess. But see, this one’s different. The other ‘P’ word was fun because if its, wait for it…, denotation! But this ‘P’ word is on a-whole-nother level of awesome. This one deals with the all-mighty connotation.

-I apologize if I’m coming off sarcastic, that is truly not my point-

Anyway, connotation a playful topic. Connotation creates and destroys. It is in the curvature of the letters of a word that make up it’s deeper meaning.

When reading we connect shapes to sounds and sounds to ideas. So really we can skip the middle step and connect shapes to ideas.

I’m sorry, I’m getting sidetracked.

What was I getting at?

Oh right! “Reflect on the meaning and significance of it all.” What does that even mean? We are expected to find a ‘greater meaning’ out of blogs? Kinda a little ridiculous. I mean really… first we over analyze and find a deeper meaning in everything that we have read this year. Including The Importance of Being Ernest, a nice little play meant to be funny, cynical on marriage sure (saying the poor guy was convicted of being gay) but that’s all that play is getting on deeper meaning. But now we have to analyze our own blogs for a total message? But that’s what we do in English class right?

I did say in one of my earlier blogs that my goal for this year was to be able to analyze literature for deeper meanings effectively. Wow! We sure covered that base good and well.

Maybe the message in all or this is that, “everything is not what it seems.” Ha! That was so cheesy. I don’t know if your kids are too young, but that was a line from the theme song of “Wizards of Waverly Place.” Maybe everything we read or write or see or feel can be made and manipulated into something more.

For example, the progression of our writing skills that can be tracked over the course of this year can be interpreted as being a symbol for our progression through life. Each word choice can be sought as a decision in life, leading us and our story in a different direction. Each completion of a project can be viewed as a furthering in our knowledge in life.

I find myself apologizing again. This was pretty long, and all I feel I’ve done is made you sit and read through a criticism of your subject. That was not my original plan. I actually love English and I really enjoy digging through literature for imaginary messages and everything else we’ve done this year. I love looking back and watching my progression and reading old works. Maybe that’s what this is all about…

Again I’m not sure where that was going but I think I finally get it. English is a class of imagination. It’s a class where a leaf is not a photosynthesizing, energy storing, body but a metaphor for days passing by. A class where putting an ‘i’ in front of something doesn’t necessarily make it real, unless of course the ‘something’ is that shape of the word ‘maginary.’

A Reminiscence for Only So an Hour

I have countless good memories that involve poetry. Truthfully, I can’t pick just one so I guess my memory is of my childhood and poetries impact. I have a sort of collage of bits and pieces of memories and stories from when I was little moving up through life, so here it goes…

Music it’s own distinct form of poetry: a combination of multiple art forms; rhyme, rhythm, beat, tune, and vocals- all adding up to a masterpiece. Ever since I was very very young I enjoyed listening to music. My mom has told me that it was one of the 3 ways she could get me to fall asleep, the other two being holding me while vacuuming and going for a car ride. I remember listening to the little kid sing-song music in the car and having every word of every song on multiple tapes memorized. I’m still that way, only now I have every word of every song of 2, almost 3, generations of music memorized. I’m not kidding. Maybe it comes in the genes, my aunt is the same way in remembering music and my grandfather was a Shakespearian actor among other acting careers.

Also starting at a young age (3 or so years old) I began memorizing And Writing poetry. When I was about 4 my mom taught me the poem, “The Owl and the Pussy Cat,” a poem she had learned from her father and the poem that I did for Poetry Out Loud this year.

I continued to memorize and write poetry and then one day I discovered a magical thing called poetry books! It was a whole new world. At the time I really got interested in reading poetry I was reading very complex sophisticated poems from an adult poetry book at home then having to settle for Shell Silverstein at school. At the time his whimsically writing was sufficient for me.

One thing I must confess is that I hate reading, always have. So in 3^rd grade, when we would have SSR (silent sustained reading) I would pull out my teachers, Where the Sidewalk Ends. For some reason, still unknown to me, my teacher strongly discouraged this. In fact, he banned me from reading poetry in his classroom, even on free read days. I began staying in during recess to read my rhyme but soon enough (after the second day) my teacher too didn’t allow me to do this. So, at that point, I couldn’t pick up poetry during SSR, I wasn’t allowed to read what I wanted on the free read days while everyone else could, and I was forced to play either a mindless game of tag or hop scotch or Jenga instead of absorbing myself in the world of poetry.

Good thing I was a stubborn little kid and was only driven to read more poetry and subsequently write my teacher an essay on the benefits of poetry on a developing mind. He decided to change his mindJ

I love poetry, its deep and freeing, it’s a way to escape from my world and travel into someone elses. It’s a way to feel pain and excitement, happiness and sorrow. A way experience things that will overpower your thoughts, but only so an hour.

The Battle to Know the Unknowable

Romeo and Juliet

Us, as human beings and creatures of this universe, all must deal with fortunes hand. For me I find that I don’t so much have an issue with where consequence has lead me, but more with the task of trying to understand and finding a way to cope with not knowing. Fate is but a theory. Perhaps we are all just part of a story that another has had the pleasure or punishment to write. Maybe all of our actions are set in universal ink stained on theoretical paper. Or we may be puppets, being controlled by a greater power but in fact ever changing. But perhaps the most fearful prospect of all is the idea of free will. The thought that we are in control and every action, every choice will change the course of time forever. Every one of these fascinations comes with a set of anxiety but for me, the worst of all, is the unsolvable terror of ignorance.

is entirely based on conflict. The play gathers up all forms of conflict one could face. Shakespeare has scattered these battles throughout, but the overwhelming conflict that was always lingering in the background just waiting to take hold was that of Person vs. Fate. Starting in the prologue, “A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life” all the way through to the end when Romeo has had enough of these grave circumstances and declares that he will change the path of destiny, “Is it e’en so? Then I defy you stars!” (5.1.24) This conflict develops the whole message in the play. It creates the theme that fate is inevitable.

It's Everywhere!

Ok, so I have become hopelessly addicted to Drew Carey’s new show Improvaganza. I was watching it, just tonight actually, and they were doing a sketch where two of them start a scene and at anytime a third person says “freeze” then shouts out to the audience for a specific type of literature, film, time period, etc. and the two actors have to continue the scene in that style. So, Ryan Styles and Chip Esten start this scene where they are supposed to be two hired cooks, when Drew Carey calls, “Freeze!” and shouts out to the audience for a type of literature. Someone in the drunken Vegas audience requests Shakespeare. Ryan and Chip proceed, being the amazing comedians they are, in a shockingly good, fluid, middle English, iambic-pentameter. The first words spoken are from Chip saying, “Do you swing your spoon at me, maam?” and Ryan, immediately picking it up follows, “I do swing my spoon, maam.” This tiff follows to the word then skips to Chip drinking some laundry detergent only to be followed by the grief-stricken Mr. Styles stabbing ‘her’self with a knife and ending the sketch.

I would’ve liked to include a video of this portion of the show, but I couldn’t find one. I assure you though, it was a fantastic representation of Romeo and Juliet and probably a bajillion times funnier than I could aver explain it to be.

Exactly the Same but Totally Different

I think that all teenagers can connect to some aspects of the characters of Romeo and Juliet. Probably some more than others. I know that can connect to Romeo at least through shared experience of liking someone who doesn’t like you back. Pretty much the story of a teenagers life, love triangles and what not. I can connect to Juliet in the way that at the age of 13 or 14 I have not given marriage or sex for that matter much thought. In stark contrast though, I do not have a mother pushing me to do either.

While I am reading at home I get the basic idea of what happened in the scene. I get the main idea of what each character has said and how the story has progressed. Reading in class helps SO much though. In class I am able to pick up the puns, word play and figurative language that Shakespeare so strategically planted. I’m also able to follow the humor which makes the play that much more enjoyable.

Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.

It was only after I finished the book tht I realised what it was really about. I found that the characters in Great Expectations who dream the most, hope the most, and plan the most are ultimately wounded by their dreams, hopes, and plans. This is taken a step farther when the characters realize their dreams, they do not find the happiness that they had orriginally expected. The overwhelming theme here is that when you only focus on the future, our past and present will deterierate, basically, it is better to live life for today rather than for tomorrow.

Throughout life you begin to realise this message. If you act on it then you may find yourself in a beeter place. I notice that this rings true with both the large and the small things in life.

In gymnastics, I am ultimately looking down the road to being the champion of the highest level. It's great to have dreams, but you cannot let them override you. If all I focussed on when I was six years old in level four was  being better than the best, I would have gotten caught up in this desire and never been able to push forward. Instead I take every season at a time, every week, ever practice, every event, every turn, every skill at a time. Every time I do this it's bringing me closer to my ultimate goal. In Great Expectations, Pip gets tethered by his want for wealth leading to high social stature then to Estella and, in the end, what he thought would be, happiness. In his case, if he were to not get tangled within his want for Estella, class, and money, he would have been happy all along. He would have never been wanting what, in the end, he could never have. His unltimate goal was not Estella, but happiness. If he had worked everyday on happiness, not what he thought would lead him there, he would have continuously lead a joyous life.

Survey

I finally got it to work :)