She slept with the guy who killed her Granny.

Who is the wolf, hunting the red coated girl? The beast who prowls the forest in search of innocence, hunting down the scent of virginity is man. The rosy cheeked girl wondering around in the woods with her basket containing the single defensive tool she had, is woman. The world that we live in is ran by wolves, and we must navigate it to our best abilities to come out on top.

All that all we have over the wolves, is our innocence. If we allow them to take our identities passive-aggressively, we will never be able to break through Granny’s front door alive. The innocence is not the sole objection of men. He seeks to put you in a bind, tying down any limb that may want to break away and seed into a new human being. Taking away your virtue, ability to change whenever you choose, and your overall sense of independence limits a woman when trying to reach her fullest potential.

Although I’m a married woman, who loves everything about her husband, my spouse is not a wolf, not all men are. But the only wolves that actually get the chance to feed their unquenchable thirsts are deceiving, charming, and smart. Of course, they’re only as smart as YOU think they are. The red wearing girl in Angela Lansbury’s story “In the Company of Wolves”, was taught exactly what to do when the wolf has tricked you.

Although she made the fatal mistake of allowing the wolf’s personality to influence her, and gave him the only thing that she could have used to defend herself. But when it came down to eat or be eaten, she trick the wolf at his own game. Red realized that when she became calm, and used her sexuality to rule over the wolf, she could continue to live.

It begs the question of how far is too far concerning the use of our feminine sexuality on wolves? We can either harness our powers, or exploit them. By strategically using our powers over the wolves we can control them, bending them just enough that they don’t know that we actually have the upper hand.

Before the girl in the story willingly gave her basket to the wolf, she was not afraid or anything. Without her knife to keep her safe, she had no defenses against the wolf. When we keep our innocence, we keep our knives and are able to defend ourselves against the wolf’s advances. Without a defense, we become much to compliant to the wolves in the woods. Although it may seem that without a defense life is over, but if we can contain our fear and not let the wolf believe that he has power over us, we can use his own game to survive and succeed.  

Creative Science

The ideas that inspire artists to place paint to canvas, writers to bind their thoughts into books, and composers to tirelessly link music notes together, are the same ideas that inspire scientists to connect observations and facts to make a theory.

Facts alone do not make science. Science also takes a deliberate mashing of observation, experience, and even imagination. To connect all of those aspects takes a different set of mind. A scientist must be able to see through the natural disorder in the world and make an idea of unity. If you could possibly learn every fact that there was and never made the effort to connect them, you wouldn’t really know anything. It is not without being able to make sense of how two seemingly unrelated facts could fuse together that you truly have knowledge and the ability to form a theory. (The SATs contain a great deal of reasoning!)

In class we did a quick write on what we felt the definition of inspiration was. I did not define it because I simply couldn’t. Inspiration is a fleeting, mysterious thing. It comes in an unexpected way, and goes if it is left unattended to. If I sat down waiting to be inspired, I would be sitting down for a long time. When out in the world noticing the little quirks of life around you; that is the discovery. You make connections to memories of the past and predict how things might be in the future, and that is when inspiration sweeps in.   

 Today we mostly think of creativity and inspiration in terms of the arts. But beginning with the earliest scientists we see that science involves the special amount of creativity. Their mediums are physics, medicine, biology, psychology, chemical etc., and their vision is break through and history altering.                  

Jacob Bronowski’s essay ”The Nature of Scientific Reasoning”, lends light to the process that scientists go through to form theories. He hints that’s scientist are no more different than artists, writers, composers or any other creative being. I believe that creativity and science are eternally linked. Facts are not stand alone means to a theory in science, it takes being able to place yourself in an impressionable state of mind. Bronowksi tells the story of Newton in this essay, and how when he saw an apple fall from a tree his theory of gravity was born.

Newton took the fact of general gravity that drew the apple to the tree and through his creativity and experience to connect that apple falling from the tree to the moon and earth falling together in a gravitational pull. It was that process which has shaped scientific theories in the years to come.

Research Plan

              For our group’s research project, we are exploring native Alaskan religion, more specifically the effects of Christianity on the native Alaskan culture. We had a difficult time even creating the words that will ultimately be our heading on Wikipedia. A very difficult time. Actually we might even change it after this is finally posted on my blog. But the main idea that we are trying to express in our page is the effects that western religion had on the native Alaskan people.

                The effects of Christianity on the native Alaskans could be positive or negative. Our research will bring to into light the argument of both possibilities. The video shown in Thursdays class, “The Land Is Ours,” (I think that was the title… :S) showed Christianity as having a negative impact. The missionaries that came to Alaska told the natives that their religion was evil and that even speaking their own language was “wicked”. I connected those facts with that Lance said to us about the native languages dwindling, and in some cases dying out completely. So it poses the question as to what else died out with the introduction of western religions.

                I believe this topic to be important to the investigation of the wests impact on native Alaskans. This correlates directly to the diminishing native culture. By taking on the religion of another culture, they lost their own. I hope our audience to be Alaskans, native or adopted, who are hoping to get a better sense of the people of Alaska and their rich history.

                The work that I will be contributing to the Wiki page is focusing on the Christian missionaries and their impact on native Alaskans. In doing so, I plan on interviewing an Alaskan native woman who is a pastor in her own church. I will ask her what her earliest memories of religion were as well as if Christianity had changed the stories that had been passed down through her people. And other questions that I am frankly too tired to think of right now. Haha….

                I plan on meeting with Ida this week, and our group has been meeting on Sundays. Following the deadlines on the syllabus we will plan and work together to insure our Wiki page is the best it can be by its due date April, 24th.    

For the Reader

                A blank screen, absent of words or thoughts. A blank mind is never truly blank but definitely void of words. But how does one put thoughts as feelings or emotions in to words? A blank screen. When I write, mostly poetry, I cannot do so without strong emotion. With strong emotion I find my fingers, my hands motionless. Numb hands. I stare into the blank screen tired long, until I give up. This over-whelming feeling to empty my head, swimming in desire to share with this blank screen.

                 I cannot think in words in regards to my work, only in emotion and feelings. I wish I could draw or paint, colors and shapes are more what occupies my mind. The dark blues of sadness and regret, the vivid reds of anger and hurt, can more than fuel a blank screen. Alas writing is my medium, and I forge ahead.

                I want to be a good writer. My wish is not to be a wealthy, well recognized public figure. I want to be able to share my mind, my soul, in hopes that my writing can reach even one other person on a deep level. I value the human connection and only seek to strengthen that connection by making myself vulnerable allowing myself to been seen on an equal y deep level as that one person who will read and connect to my piece.

                Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay “Where Do You Get Your Ideas From?” is about more than the idea of ideas. It is about the elements that make up the writing process. Poetry seems to be simply the most complicated form of writing. The base of writing is to share a story with the reader. Immerse the audiences mind in imagination, inviting them to link their own to the authors. In order to do so, writers must use more than the fanciful world of words. Writers must create images from their jumbled minds, Le Guin writes, “the power and authenticity of the images may surpass that of most actual experiences, since in the imagination we can share a capacity for experience and an understanding of truth far greater than our own. The great writers share their souls with us- “literally.””   

                The writer has many motivations for writing, mine began as an outlet to feelings I could not give voice to. I can see my work develop as I thumb through the pages from beginning to end, and can tell exactly when I really, truly began to write. When I decided that I wanted an audience, some souls to touch, is when my writing took on a new mission. I began to pen my emotions in ways that could be interpreted by someone in means of stirring their own emotions. Great writing is written for the reader, involving the reader, moving and inspiring the reader.

With the act of creating something so personal for others to read and critique comes a level of risk. Perhaps the reason I carry my leather journal in my purse and have a great difficulty sharing the contents. Some have remained only my emotions lying there naked and exposed on the pages for my own critique. It is not until I can share with others my work, can it truly take life and live up to the purpose it was laid to rest for from the tip of a pen onto a blank page.  As Ursula K. Le Guin put it, “the reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.”

The Cove

       

                When I was around the age of 12 or 13, I went on a Taekwon Do trip to a tournament in Anchorage with a group of fellow martial artists. The fellow travelers were all young, but still 5-6 years older than I was. After the tournament one night we went out to a local pizza joint (where I got a nasty case of food poisoning!) and was being teased by two of the older boys. While we drove around and checked out a shopping center, I was feeling very upset and hurt by the things the boys said to me. The one other girl that was traveling with us broke off from the group for a while and returned with a gift for me. It was a silver necklace with two dolphins as a charm. I still have that necklace and it brings the fond memory of the friendship that I had with the girl.     

The cove was an eye opening and very emotionally moving documentary. When we first started watching the film, I had very little knowledge of what was happening to the dolphins in Taiji other than that fact that it was awarded the Academy Award for Best Documentary. I did not even know much about dolphins in general. The combination of the personification of dolphins and the brutality of the imagery provided in this film made it very convincing and eye-opening.

At times the anticipation and anxiety that the movie evoked made it feel as if I was watching an action movie. It created a good-guy/ bad-guy bearing between those who were attempting to expose the slaughtering that dolphins and those committing the slaughtering. The evidence of the objections and investigations by the Japanese solidifies the fact that they obviously had something to hide. The footage from the streets of the larger cities in Japan showed that the dolphin killing was not a cultural aspect, furthering the argument that what they were doing was cruel and unfair (not to mention illegal on some level).

The use of the Japanese people’s aesthetics of all the happy and anime-ish whales and dolphins frustrated me. I also think this is what the New York Times reviewer meant when he described this film as a “Trojan Horse”. It is a metaphor for the films use of the Japanese contradictions involving the “love” and care for dolphins and ultimately ocean life.

                I found my reaction to the film shocking. I am by nature an emotional person, but I pride myself on being able to distance myself enough from the one-sidedness of arguments like those presented in this film. But I could not help the anger and frustration that it made me feel. I had to keep telling myself that what was going on in Taiji was unknown to the general population, that it was not all Japanese people who had a part in the killing of 23,000 dolphins a year. I told everyone that would listen after seeing this film about what I had learned, and felt an emence powerless that I couldn’t just fly to Japan and single handily end it. And I know that I am not alone in the idea. The Japanese people should feel an objection to this film due to the emotions and anger that it can cause viewers to feel towards the Japanese people and culture. Instead of objecting and critisizing this film of some kind of slander, they should do something about the dolphin industry in Japan.

Parts 1-3

Time to ditch the almost,

confirm the constant.

You’re alone and your life becomes

an act in three parts.

First the curtain drops

killing the lead. How the play continues

is nothing short of a miracle.

Props are the key, and wires and string.

They string you up and out

make your stage death something to write about.

   

Part two wasn’t too horrific,

it was mostly a war.

Them against you,

in a kind of trench warfare.

You had no gun, no armor.

Instead you started to write

a peace treaty.

The receiver yourself.

You continue to write

a sort of agreement.

To end the fighting, to seize the moment,

You sign it sincerely,

best of luck.

Because the war isn’t truly over

if one side just gives up.

Act three ties up any loose ends,

smoothing jagged metal, making it bend.

The setting is dark, except for a dim light,

it crawls along the floor, it smolders on your face.

The cast, she takes her place.

Alone but not afraid, radiating

the peace she has made.

The light appearing to come from within,

content in her chair, with purpose again.

Alone never more, as the curtain drops to the floor.  

Broken Wing

From an old battered leather bound journal...

When a bird breaks its wing,

It sings.

A song of rescue, a song of regret

never second guessing the distance

between its self and the ground.

Upon its broken wing an answer is found.

As thick as these pages are

these words are going to bleed through.

Staining the pages it proceeds,

you flip back from the end the see

exactly when it broke.

Reliving it all again and again.

You never thought in all your years

you would still be scared, have all these fears.

Never seeing the sun through the clouds.

Paralyzed in your crippled state,

you begin to decide that you’re too tired

to stay awake.

Then you hear the song

of a fallen bird.

Imagine That

                I walked in to Alaska Coffee Roasters and to my dismay, the café was nearly empty. Of course, the one time that I need it to be filled with different kinds of conversation by a full room of people it would be empty. The usually bustling coffee watering hole was barren even though it was nearly lunch, and the only occupants were a small group of older people mostly women and one man. There were 5 women, 4 of whom sat around a larger round table. The 5^th woman sat with the man who I presumed was her husband or lover if I had chosen their barely audible conversation and put my own spin on the star crossed lovers.

                I almost decided that I would simply have to add to my work load at the gym I work at and try to find someone I didn’t know to eavesdrop on. Then the clouds of the coffee god’s opened and two gruffy men walked in Carheart clad and by fate, they chose the table right in front of me. I chose to finish my salad before I dug into my bag for my note book, allowing the men to get settled into a conversation worth spying in on.

                The man with his back towards me had a very clear voice that boomed, which I appreciated after my failed attempt with first group (I’m sure they must have been informed of my undercover status and took extra precaution).  I could smell the cologne of the working man over my mango Italian soda, and made the assumption that these men were hard working and probably members of the Republican Party. I take out my writing pad, clicked my pen and pretended to be writing another of my award winning screen plays and secretly listened. The big voice was telling a story, “…oh! But it gets better, they were actually complaining about the price of oil, when there they sat clutching their $49 a gallon coffee. Imagine that.” The man drinking the smaller cup barely said a word as his collogue consumed the conversation. Perhaps he was the informant…

                After listening to the conversation for a few minutes after I had put down my salad fork, I began to piece together what the dark side of the table was talking about. – “When hippies take over the world, we won’t need fossil fuels anymore. They’ll be cars that run on pure coffee. And the only thing that oil will be useful for is shaping and forming dread-locks. So they’ll make bumper stickers and t-shirts with tie-die that say “save the dreads” on the front, and big pot leaves on the back. So they’ll complain about the price of oil again because without it hippie hair would just be dirty hair. When there they sit clutching their $49 a gallon coffee, then they could just ride bikes and have all the dreaded happiness in the world. Imagine that.”

                The original sound clip I had heard from the two men made sense to me because I had them to observe, to study. I could tell by their jackets that they worked for a company that handled some kind of machinery. They also smelt like gas, and were a little dirty down the front of their clothes. They were middle aged blue collar working men, who typically tend to be republican. The conversation (though it really takes at least TWO people talking to consider it a conversation..) was about people complaining about the prices of oil. The speaker seemed well informed because who really knows the price of coffee in gallons. The conversation, like all political banter, could have been misconstrued as uninformed complaining.  Context is important because each person has a different imagination, context is as important as the word choice in writing because in order to convey the message the writer intends the reader to take away from the piece.

Listen to People

    

                As human beings we constantly search for our identities as individuals. Some of us do so by finding groups to belong to, while some of us prefer to privately seek out ourselves. I have never had the need to belong to a group and often played by myself when I was a child. Because I knew no one could really live into the make believe stories and adventures I could. As I grew older I had opportunities to travel because of Taekwon do, and no matter where the tournament took me, I fell in love. A trip I took at the age of 15 to Connecticut for a Taekwon do tournament was a trip of many firsts for me. It was the first plane ride I could remember, it was the first time I met my cousins in New Jersey, and it was the first time that I knew I did not belong in Fairbanks, Alaska. I knew that in order to fully come into my own identity I could never belong in just one place.

                That trip was the first of many that I took for the soul purpose of coming home with a medal and a black eye. But with each trip, I became more and more attached to the feeling of being able to jump on a plane and leave a world behind, entering a completely new and romantic one. In the essay “Going Native” by Francine Prose, the subject of adopting another culture as a means of self-discovery is explored. Prose gave examples of how different people with many different backgrounds could seek out another culture to belong to because the one they were born into never felt right.

                I made up pretend mountains to climb over fences with rope as a child, pretending I was climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. I used to line up my stuffed animals on my bed while I performed to them from Madison Square Garden. Since I was young, I dreamed of more than a small town life with a 9-5 job. I wanted to meet people who I had to struggle to communicate with as I had to find a route to a small village in a foreign country. I craved adventure and weaved in that great adventure I wanted to meet interesting and different people. I wanted to have experiences that I knew I could not have living in one place for too long.

                My greatest travel experience to date has been a trip to the World Championship in Benidorm, Spain. It was my first trip outside of the U.S. and is still my most fond. We spent most of the time training, warming up, and competing. I found time to introduce myself to the athletes from different countries, even practicing what little German I knew with team from Germany. We didn’t get any time to do the touristy things like sight-seeing or laying on the beach all day, but I was never interested in any of those activities. What most interested me were the different kinds of people and their culture. Once we took a taxi to down town to get some mid-tournament lunch, the taxi driver told us the difference between Americans and Spaniards, “you run around with your watches, get tan lines from your watches.” The taxi driver had never worn a watch his entire life.

                I’m going to travel the world to my heart’s content one day. I will not be wearing a watch as I sit at a small café on the side of a small cobble stone road as I watch people walk by and have their conversation and laughs. I won’t spend my mornings planning my sight-seeing, exhausting day ahead of me. I am going to wake up, have some coffee and live the day as a native of the land.        

MadLove

I wrote this poem for a friend who commited suicide. She was not a direct friend, but a friend of a few of my own friends. I saw the pain that her passing caused my friends. We will never really understand why she left us so early. But we can celebrate her life by remembering her as a brilliant artist and a beautiful soul.

No one knows when the tree falls in the woods,

silence breaks it down, tearing and ripping out the roots.

The birds fly towards the sky seeking solace

In this house of wreckage, this temple poorly cared for,

secrets inside could fill the biggest city.

Water can overflow its glass and not immediately break,

sticking together, it holds a daring shape.

Soon enough this tragedy will unfold

and shake this city to its very soul.

To the streets with the poor and the wasted.

Burn all the houses on the hills,

flee all the free to the sky.

Don’t drag your feet on this ground so unstable.

Be selfish this time, it’s all anyone will be able.

I heard today that you choose not to go,

you’re missing a love, the star of the show.

It’s a late night here on the set again

and we’re all missing dinner and drinks.

So now drown your soul and down your thoughts.

It’s more than likely you haven’t forgot

how this world remains cold despite this warm day.

It’s every molecule for its self as we cling to the rim of this glass,

the pressure of the others, just wishing it would pass.

You feel the overwhelming falling feeling

and close your eyes as your life’s moments flash

So bright and happy it’s as if they’re stealing

the most beautiful mess you’ll ever make.

This will never be done justice in word or paint,

you’ve created the greatest piece in the history

of these wrecked up friends.

The biggest books could never contain

the broken hearts, the destruction, sweet pain.

Soak this up with the thickest skin you’ve got.

Take this like a dagger to the heart.

You can’t ever undue what has already done.

Don’t let this glass over flow ever again,

one more time and the words will run.

Love What You Love

                When a human comes to accept the world as it is, is when it begins to change. As a race we are constantly reminded that change is a part of life. It is necessary to our survival that we adapt to the changes or get lost in the forward, over, out, and up motions. Judy Ruiz’s Essay “Oranges and Sweet Sister Boy”, explores the seeming impossible task of learning to embrace change. She plays with the real and surreal environments that shape her thoughts on change, and in this essay, the change of her brother’s gender.

                The story of her brother’s decision to have a sex change is almost over shadowed by her intervening recollections of dreams and past experiences. She struggles to make sense of her brother’s choice by peeling back (if you will) the layers of herself. There are many ways to peel an orange, in one brave rind, or in many tiny, painful pieces. Some are fortunate enough to have the patients and skill to spare the orange the unnecessary pain. But there are also people who themselves have been broken into tiny fragments along the way of life, and do not know any other way.

                Initially, Ruiz attempts to convince her brother that due to their childhood it’s natural to have sexual identity problems, although she cannot seem to convince herself of that. She talks of always hating her womanly shape, and never feeling at peace with who she was to the world. It was not until she brought a sack of oranges into a class of special needs students, that she believed the metaphor that had escaped her whole life. Upon giving the oranges to the children, expecting them to begin peeling as she explained that the orange was not unlike to world, she noticed that they refused to peel them. They were delighted at the orange gifts she had given them. “And I knew I was at home, that these children and I shared something that makes the leap of mind the metaphor attempts. And something in me healed.”  

                The orange is like the world in that it has a tough, bitter layer. That layer encases a sweet and rewarding inner. It takes time to be able to have the patients and skill to reach the sweet. There are many way to peel, but no matter how time consuming the method the rewards are delicious. The children, who were given the oranges, saw the orange for what it was. They did not see it as just another piece of fruit in a bowl, waiting it’d death sentence, to them it was a gift. They accepted it for all it was and for what it was not. An orange, is orange, round, and patient. An orange is not a banana and it has no rhyming partner.

                This essay was written in pieces that all fit together in the end differently for different people. The message that is inescapable is that of acceptance. The last two sentences of the essay are two of acceptance, not only of her brother but of herself as the sister, “Sister, you are the best craziness of the family. Brother, love what you love.”  It is not easy to be open to change constantly, to have what you know be contradicted and challenged. But upon accepting the inevitable shifting, we can begin to accept ourselves.  

Remembering Janka

       

The second floor of the Museum of the North is home to a very special woman. Her name is Janka Glueck Gruenberger and she has been made immortal through the work of artist Robby Mohatt. “I Remember Janka” is an oil and alkyd based painting done on a canvas approximately 6 feet tall and 4 feet wide. Despite it being one of the larger paintings in the museum, its size is not what shocks you. It was the vibrant red stain in the center of the canvas. At first, you cannot seem to pull your eyes away from this focal point. After some time you begin to notice lines of yellow, grey, and black attempting to hold a shape that could be deciphered as some kind of written language. It is not until after a few minutes of frustration burning through your eyes, much as the red paint seems to burn a hole through the dark stained canvas around it, when you rejoice at the sighting of a recognizable word about one-third of the way down from top of the massive painting.

It is not loudly written, nor does it seem to demand any attention as it speaks the name “Janka” without any expectations. Etched into a stroke of grey paint are the numbers “6174319”, reviling the focal red beneath it, to once again steal your attention. The edges of the painting, extending beyond the red blur in the figure-ground, is a dark grey layer stained with brown and darker grays. The piece makes you feel sad, almost disturbed, but it also demands your attention. The brush strokes are heavy and deliberate.  The angry small paint lumps strewn about give it a careless feeling. The yellow scrolling of non-existent words catches your eye and attempt to distract you. These brush strokes appear light and effortless.

While I was observing this piece, a fellow class mate walked up to the description and immediately I told her not to read it before simply looking at the piece first. While there is much going on to the eye, even more is going on in the mind. Before diving in immediately into the why’s and who’s of the work, we should first let the painting ask us those questions. We look at it with no idea what it is about, allowing the red to ignite your mind into understanding that although it is at first large brush strokes on a dull background, there is truly a story and purpose inside.

This painting was done as a memorial to Janka Glueck Gruenberger. The artist visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C, and walked around with the Auschwitz victim’s biography. He was moved by the experience that he decided to honor the silent life, one of too many whose lives were written on cards. This painting is painful to look at, even before you notice the description, it also demands to be noticed. The tragedy of the Holocaust is similar, being that the loss of lives were many, so significant that we want to look away from the sadness it brings in us. But it is not something that can go unnoticed, it too demands our attention. Every individual life lost in the Holocaust deserves to be remembered in our memory, just as Robby Mohatt remembers Janka.

This Moment, as a Gift

       Standing at this first place of exploration, seeming to stand above the entire city. I feel empathy to the people in those buildings, unknowing of the sun's arrival. Snow clothes the branches of the sad, cold trees; hot breath suffocates in the brisk 8 degrees. Noses turn red, and cheeks get rosy, bodies get restless as we impossibly try to take in all that we see. This place is a place of memory for me. I've been here before, multiple times. My friend and I used to cut class in high school and come here with our coffee and conversation. This place at this moment is still unique, despite the amount of class participation points I lost to this outlook. My friend and I have taken pictures on the hood of his car, leaning over the railing, capturing a moment that has come and gone. This place is the same as another, in which it plays host to memories held on to for a lifetime, or forgotten as soon as they are made. I will always remember this as a brilliant place to waste away time.

        Defrosting, we find our own areas around the open Wood Center. I would usually seek out the most secluded space to observe my surroundings. Instead I take one more step on the deep green carpet that surprisingly had very few stains, and sit there on the open stairs. I too often get distracted by conversations of others, so much so that I do not come to the wood center to do anything but grab a drink, or some food. In the moment, I allow myself to become distracted. I honestly forgot my purpose for being in that place. I observed students gathered around lunches and coffee, talking about anything other than their class loads. I see this is a place unwind from the mornings of lectures and drafts. I see this place as a serene place to come and listen to your IPod while doing homework. For me, this place is full of potential. I came here while in elementary school with my band class. Coming into this building, with its abstract windows and tired students clutching their coffees, made me curious. A feeling that I never forgot all throughout grade school, and I still had sitting there on that shallow stair. I believe this place will always hold that familiar, mysterious lure for me. Knowing that in the Wood Center, there are people who are in many ways similar to you in their hopes and curiosity for the world.

         I come home to my cabin at the end of every day. I could easily say that this fact makes it my place for just being my "home". It is not only a place in which I start and end my days. It is the place that my husband and I first called "ours". It is the first place I live in independently when my husband leaves for training for months. Living in a cabin outside of the city I used to rush around in, has made me grow as an individual. I went from being a daughter and living with my father, to being a wife and living with my husband. In my husband’s absence, I see it not as a time of being alone. It is a time that I appreciate, a time that I can use to become more secure in the person that I want to be. I learn to enjoy the sound of silence that surrounds my little log safe house. I find myself wishing I could spend weeks here at a time, just walking around the forest that waits so patiently outside my door. Just as when my husband leaves, being away from my place just makes me miss it more. Perhaps my attachment to this small cabin, located in what they lovingly call "the Ester ditch", is because not only does it recall memories of past hunting trips with my father, but it also brings thoughts of what could be.

           Home is where fond memories are created and where the possibilities seem endless.

S.O.S

   I wrote this poem in the winter of 2009 in Durango, Colorado. I was sitting on a friends couch, while conversations carried on around me.  

Erase that love song you wrote for me dear

I’ll just make you regret every line.

When I get wind of what I’ve been doing,

I'll board of every inch of this empty apartment.

You might lose your deposit,

 and I’ve lost the first and last months rent.

I’ve been gambling and I started drinking again, though

I’m blind to see that it’s only you that I’ve spent.

As I drink and chain smoke I regret to admit,

that it isn’t you that is crossing my mind.

It’s this poor girl beneath the fedora,

with a glance that is deceptively kind.

You had your hands full from the start,

you worked so hard to stitch my collapsing heart.

I never thought it was fair, that you fell in love

with the beauty in despair.

Just hold my head against your chest tightly

please, block out all the noise.

Cover my eyes with those hands so healing.

whisper those words of romance worth stealing.

Never again write a song about this mess of a girl.

Don’t let another drop of ink hit a page so blank by hands so equipped.

Save your words of compassion darling.

Read these words, sent in a bottle from this sinking ship.

Writer as Alaskan; Writer as Existent- Response

         As the world enters its fast progression in expanse and technology, what suffers is the possibility of quality literature. The world begins to lose its imagination, its appreciation for the naturally beautiful and awe inspiring qualities. Qualities that are overlooked by over scheduled days, motivations such as money and status replace the simple motivations that once were an appreciation of the land around, and the endless possibilities of self-discovery.  Inhabitants of even the most magnificent places on the planet become to jaded by their day to day lives that they fail to ever really live in the land that they have occupied for decades.

         John Haines’ essay “Writer as Alaskan: Beginnings and Reflections” focuses on the literary world's quickly dwindling opportunities to illustrate the world around as not merely what we encounter on a daily basis, but our ability to truly live. A person can live anywhere in the world, but it is not until one begins to recognize, yet more to feel, the complexity of the world without its recent distractions, that the individual exists and really begins to occupy the world in which he lives. Though his essay seems to be intended for writers, I feel that anyone can relate to the message it conveys. Haines writes “The way we live nowadays seems intended to prevent closeness to anything outside this incubator world we have built around us.” The journey to original literature, Haines describes as having everything we have come to know as being against it. It is not human nature to fight what we have become comfortable in, the monotomy of our daily lives and being submerged in a culture built around entertainment and social status.

        Writer as Alaskan is about not only putting yourself in an otherwise uncomfortable place, both physically and mentally, but to allow a place to be more than the common sense of the word. Allow the place to alter your mind, open your imagination and expand your consciousness to see beyond the modern world’s distractions and let yourself be an active participant to what you see. “To see what is here right in front of us: nothing would seem easier or more obvious, yet few things are more obvious.” Haines says literature “enhances the place, the conditions under which we live, and we are more alive thereby.”  The struggle in this case is the shrinking opportunities that we have as writers today to be fortunate enough to still be able to live in an “other” world than we do. We must not only recall the things we see visually, but also the emotions that come with realizing that we are connected to those things we see. Haines thoughts on writing in terms of being a relief from what the world is becoming is a strong reoccurrence in this essay, “genuine literature shows, as only great writings and art do show, the significant shapes that lie behind appearances.”

        As we develop as individuals and writers, we must put in a conscious effort to resist becoming comfortable in our world. Realizing that there is more to what we think we know and see will prevent us from just being momentary participants in our own lives. In order to truly exist in our lives we must push what we feel is life as we know it. Experience a place as more than a shell that we occupy. Establishing imagination and emotions in a place connects you with the world at large, as well as providing an immense sense of self.

Hello Friends

      Hey! I am Bria Sommer a Freshman enrolled in the Paralegal Studies Program at Tannana Valley Community College. I have been a life long resident of Fairbanks, but I have always seen myself living in another part of the North-West United States. I am married to a soldier in the United States Army, and I am also a manager of the Physical Fitness Center on Ft.Wainwright. I believe that we all should support our troops and their familys, as life in the armed forces is hard on all of them. I like to work out, running, yoga and crossfit are a few of the ways I keep myself stess free. I'm also a third degree black belt in Taekwon Do. I've been practicing since I was 9 years old and have been given the chance to travel the world as a competitor for team U.S.A. My favorite place that Taekwon Do has brought me is Benidorm, Spain. I enjoy the physical as well as mental challenge that Taekwon Do demands. Currently I reside in a dry cabin (out-house and all!) I love the quiet and beauty that living out of town provides and making a smaller impact on the Earth and being able to pick blueberries right out my front door. I read as much as I can working full-time and being a part-time student.
       I recently read the Twilight books, just to see what the rage was about, and I am now a "Twi-hard", I finished all 4 books over Winter break. My favorite book that I have ever read is Sophies World by Jostein Gaarder. It's "a novel about the history or Philosophy", and I have read it so many times that it is falling apart at the bindings! I read it for the first time Freshman year in high-school and have read it at least every year after. It is a wonderfully written book and a lovely adventure, you also learn a few things ;). I look forward to learning more about writing so that one day I too can be the author of a piece of work that people will read for the rest of their lives and still take something away from it.