Talk Like A Pirate Day

Well, I suppose that's it then. I'm nineteen. No more prevaricating or procrastinating - you cannot slow the pass of time. The last teen year. Everyone seems to think I should be so super excited. I don't know. I haven't been dealing with change very well this year, so even though I had a good birth day, I'm not so sure about this birthdays-without-families thing. It seems like just another form of upheaval to me, one which I'd prefer to avoid. Actually, I'd prefer to avoid all upheaval and stress and just sleep all the time, for at least the next week. I don't even feel like doing the things I like doing. I just want to do nothing.

This attitude could have to do with the fact that I got less sleep last night than I normally do, which always makes me maudlin, and also that I'm having a rather big fight with God right now. Which is also why I got less sleep. I say that as if he yells and hits back, but he really doesn't. It's like shadow boxing, but even dumber than that, because I can't see a shadow. It's completely dumb to try to pick a fight with the omnipotent omniscient all-wise and all-good ruler of the universe, but hey, I've never been known for intelligence. I also seem to think that God values honesty. Of course, he generally makes you feel dumber than dirt after your honesty, because he obviously knows best. Grr.

I don't mean to make this a forum for all my spiritual grumblings. I really did have a good day today. I had dinner at the union with my piratical friends, who have amazingly great piratitude. I got a package from home and a package from my grandparents in Indiana, and a package from my grandparents in Alabama - Apples to Apples, if anyone's interested in playing. I turned in my Color & Design project, which, at a guess, was definitely in the top ten best of the class.... One girl at least thought in the top four. So maybe I'll get an A- and redeem my previous project. I had to do a self-critique of that project in my sketchbook, which I titled "Little Squares Class - The Story of One Student's Spontaneous Head Explosion." It was particularly effective because I wrote it on the page that had kiwi guts on it, which I labeled as pieces of my head. Either it'll make the prof laugh or he'll think I'm incurably childish. I'm hoping for the former, although I believe I do display signs of being incurably childish.

In English 108, we talked about Williams' Little Red Wheelbarrow poem. One person actually suggested that the red wheelbarrow stood for the earth and food and everything we need that way, and the rain stood for water which we need to live, and the white chickens stood for companionship and fellowship which we also need in order to live. And then somehow managed to equate that with world hunger, and how Williams was preaching against it. Is anyone else completely flabbergasted by this? I swear. I was so angry, I raised my hand and said "All I really get from the poem is a sense of loss. Maybe he just found an image that completely embodied and captured that loss and is using to communicate it to us - just the loss. Maybe that's all it is." The prof wasn't particularly impressed with either of us, except that she said I was right about the loss. I just feel like sometimes you have to let it be what it is - just let it be. No poet in his right mind is going to be consciously trying to communicate everything we analyze out of their poems, or consciously using so many literary devices. Let them be and stop hounding them. Take it as something beautiful without having to pick it apart all the time. Williams' wheelbarrow poem is, I swear, the most easily and often maligned in the english language.

That is my english rant.

Now for another rant:

No, just kidding. I ran out of rants.

So much depends upon
a red wheelbarrow

glazed with rain water

beside the
white chickens.

Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all night.

Or I might just be sleeping.