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Essay on self discovery is the best discovery
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Steps Forward Gently swaying back and forth in an old wooden rocker, I take a break from my journaling. While listening to the creaky hum of the tired oak thumping out a blue song, I think about the art of writing, painting with my words, and wonder what hampers my creative practice. A foreboding sense of unworthiness floats into my consciousness and I ask myself why do I feel this way. Rifling through my thoughts a fog wraps around me like a blanket not for comfort but instead to shield the feelings of inadequacy. I take a deep breath and inhale the reassuring sage scent of our family room. I press on in this process of self-discovery; an old black and white photo sitting on a shelf captures my eye. I see an image of myself as a smiling, confident child, which stirs uneasiness within. Following the muddled whisperings in my mind, I return to the day in the snapshot and consider what comes to pass. In the picture, a little straw hat sits on top of my curly light hair. I spot marching boots on my tiny feet scuffed from days of romping through childhood. In one hand I hold a c...
Sharon Olds’s poem, “I Go Back to May 1937,” is an emotional piece that takes the reader back to the early days as the speaker’s existence was first thought about. The speaker is a female who describes the scene when her parents first met; she does this to show her wrestling thoughts as she wishes she could prevent this first encounter. She speaks about this topic because of the horrendous future of regret and sorrow that her family would experience, and also to contemplate her own existence if her parents had never met in May of 1937. Olds uses forms of contrasting figurative language, an ironic plot, and a regretful tone to convey the conflict between the speaker and her parents while she fully comes to understanding of past actions, and how these serve as a way for her to release her feelings on the emotional subject.
“Still Memory” by Mary Karr is a poem that depicts the distant, childhood memory that the author fondly recalls. Karr’s nostalgic diction and word choice is evident when she says, “…till it found my old notch in the house I grew up in…” In this section, Karr is dreaming, hoping to find a happier time in her life, her childhood. Throughout the poem, Karr is recalling a time when she was only ten years old, and shows how each of her family members’ mannerisms influenced her and her future in writing. What may only appear to be the family performing their daily routine, is much more beneath the surface. According to the lines, “My ten-year-old hand reaches for a pen to record it all as would become long habit,” these actions are what influenced her writing. For writers, inspiration can come from the simplest of elements, and for Karr, this happened to be her family.
Human beings stand alone in the ability to meditate; to think about one’s own thinking. While humans view this as a positive aspect or even a dominant trait of their own species, this same ability can lead the thinker down a dark and depressing path. Found in the Exeter Book of Old English poetry, “The Wanderer” displays how this same ability that allows humans to grasp meaning and reason, feel a purpose and use their imaginations can also resurface memories of sadness as well as remind one of better times.
I sat silently on a rock with my grandpa in the palm of my hand, i was remembering the events of my life with him. From the first time I met him, to the last time I saw him. His remains were clutched tightly in my left hand. My grandpa 's old poems went through my head. One stood out in particular.
"When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy." [P.1], says eleven-year-old Ellen. Thus the young narrator begins her life-story, in the process painting an extraordinary self-portrait. “Ellen Foster” is a powerful story of a young girl growing up in a burdensome world. As one reads this work presented by Kaye Gibbons, a chill runs down their back. Ellen, the main character is faced with a hard life dealing with endless losses, with the deaths of both her parents and her grandmother being included. Why would one get a chill you wonder? This individual has thoughts and feelings that many have never experienced and cannot express. Ellen is merely a child no older then the age of ten but if not knowing this fact, readers would think she was an aged woman who has lived their life sufficiently.
Early on, poetry was often used with rhyme to remember things more accurately, this still rings true today, even though its use is more often to entertain. However, although it appeals to both the young, in children's books, and the old, in a more sophisticated and complex form, people are bound to have different preferences towards the different styles of poetry. Dobson’s poetry covers a variation of styles that captivate different individuals. “Her Story” is a lengthy poem with shorter stanzas. It’s free verse structure and simplistic language and face value ideas might appeal better to a younger audience. This poem includes quotes with informal language that children or teens would better understand. It’s narrative-based style is easy to follow, and although the poem covers very basic concepts, it’s message is still communicated subliminally. This particular poem is interesting because it focusses on the universal experience of pain and it’s relation to time. Similar to this is “The Householder”, written in a cyclical style, opening with a “house” and ending with a “home”. With only three stanzas, it is
I thoroughly enjoyed reading David Berman’s poem “Self-Portrait at 28”. Reading this poem made me feel sad, pensive and nostalgic for the events in my life that I miss. I’m not twenty eight, but I feel like the events that the persona talked about in this poem were very universal. I also sympathize with the persona’s depression and feeling with loneliness. I can relate to feel like I am bothering someone while I am talking to them. I often get scared reaching out to people because I am always afraid I am bothering them. The voice is this poem were very strong. The uses of imagery, tone and symbolism help make this poem strong.
...anticipation. There was an envelope beneath me, I noticed as I moved away from the spot I had been laying. One addressed with my name and my heart raced for the unexpected, for the hope that maybe my dreams would come true. I wanted it to be from him, I wanted to see his writing, I wanted to be able to imagine him, hunched over a small piece of paper, contrasting its ivory with the ink in his pen, finding and trying the words that world phrase his own desires perfectly. That calligraphy that decorated the front screamed at me to open, to know. To go out into the world today and be able to say whatever was enclosed in this beautifully handwritten letter. But I didn’t. I let it stay closed as I slipped it into my purse, finished my packing and left this city for the next, not remembering why I came in the first place, but knowing that something good came out of it.
Today was Tory’s funeral. It was the first time walking in her room for about a month. I have tried to stay away from it as long as I could, yet today I felt like I needed to go in there. The pale purple walls made me gasp as my eyes started to tear up. My fingertips slid across the walls and a little dust gathers since know one has been in there. The wooden floors creaked as I walk over to her twin bed. I sat on her bed and stared at the pictures on the walls that were of Tory and I then lay flat back on her bed to see the dangling butterflies hanging from the ceiling fan. I reach over to the left at me and grab Tory’s build a
It was a beautiful fall evening. The sun was just beginning to give way to incoming twilight. I could smell winter in the air, even through my closed window. Soon there'd be snow on the ground. Matchbox Twenty was playing on my clock radio." I want to push you around...” The mood was set for a soft autumn night. However the mood inside my room was quite different. I was running around trying to do a million things a one time. My makeup was all wrong for my outfit. My hair was too big, no, now too flat. My stomach was rolling inside itself. My poor tummy was on tumble dry and I couldn't quite get it to stop. I couldn't find my shoes; my shirt had foundation on the side. What I really wanted to do was to sit on my bed and cry.
You hear the old grandfather clock strike one in the morning in the eerily quiet household, the only other sound was that of keys on an old typewriter rapidly keying letters and the ding as a new line was started. You could have used a computer, or even hand written the article, but there was something about your father’s typewriter that was comforting, inspiring. Looking up from your article, almost complete for the Sydney Morning Herald, you started to notice how much of a mess you had made, focusing so badly on your project. To your left was a half-eaten sandwich from yesterday’s lunch, sitting behind it was your tea from breakfast the previous morning; the milk has started to curdle. To your right were piles and piles of paper, mostly all the drafts that you kept starting over.
The first thing that comes to mind upon reading this poem is a sense of calmness and relaxation. Described well is an attempt at reminiscing at one's past, and how it may have affected life at present. It is a poem of truth, and the joy that comes with the realization of one's self, the inner being. In the poem is a character who has injured himself during work, and has taken a recess to tend to the wound. During this time th...
Memories consist of brief moments in a person’s life, which is stored away in the mind as a picture, movie, smell or even just a sound. If it was visibly to others, it would mean nothing, but to the exact person that experienced the memory, it is a hidden treasure. A treasure chest in the back of one’s head that can be opened, and reveal one’s entire life of beautiful and untouched memories. The question is just, if it is always such a good idea, to dwell at the memories. The short story; “In the National Gallery” by Doris Lessing, is processing the three ages in ones live; past, future and presence, through the eyes of an first person narrator. Through the narrators experience we discover, that living in the past can have great consequences. As one once said, “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin. ”
I was never brilliant with words, in any context of my being, yet I can now see them all so vividly in their unlimited arrangement. Creativity seems an insurmountable idea when every thought enters your mind at once, all strung together and inseparably bound. They become so numerous that their individuality becomes incoherent and their uniqueness shines only to reveal their flaws. As I write this, I feel that for myself they hold no meaning. In fact, they seem arbitrary for the purposes of what I wish to share. And with this thought, I realize that I must carry some sense of self after all. I realize what I want you to know of me, if be known to you at all. I realize now that I want you to know that I desire to live.
I began writing when I was young, around the time when my writing was still forming, the letters were slanting off the line, and my syntax worse than it is now. I wrote a “poetry” piece about something that currently escapes my mind. Yet, I remember it was the result of my sadness and