Favorite Poem Project

I'm not exactly the religious type of person, but when I looked up Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Psalm of Life, I was enchanted by its talk about life's struggles, and how far we've come. Then, I listened to the video by Rev. Michael Haynes, and I felt like, in the context of the Reverend's life, the psalm made all the more sense, and all the more connected to my life. I, myself, constantly think about life, and the stories that Rev. Haynes told, and Longfellow's psalm, just made me feel that I wasn't alone when it came to a pedantic philosophizing of life and its purpose.

A PSALM OF LIFE

WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN
SAID TO THE PSALMIST

TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream ! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real ! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal ;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way ;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle !
Be a hero in the strife !

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant !
Let the dead Past bury its dead !
Act,— act in the living Present !
Heart within, and God o'erhead !

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time ;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate ;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

~Roland

A freewrite on nicknames

You want to know nicknames I've been called? Do you really seek so much of my past history, as to desire what I have been called?
Well, so much for redundancy.

Well, I suppose I'll start out strong, then get increasingly worse and worse.

I'm called Ro by my sister, and my (dare I say only?) friend throughout high school. Um...I suppose that's just because their too lazy to explicate the full two syllables of my name. But, my sister and Kelcy were my two favorite people when I was younger, so Ro has become a nickname of endearment to me...sort of.

Rolly happened when i was in elementary school, by my friends Dionis and Marcielle, who were in my karate class. We enjoyed doing somersaults on the mats together, and so I acquired the name Rolly. However, when I left in third grade, people stopped calling me that.

Rolly Polly Ollie I was called by the guys in my gym class. Since I was about half the weight of the rest of the guys in high school, often in gym class during hockey, soccer, I found myself flying across the rubber floor, which, sadly, does leave carpet burn. And plus, they liked making fun of me, and such equated me to the child show's robot. Lovely. Obviously, I didn't enjoy the nickname much. Boris Taratutin is the only one allowed to call me Rolly Polly Ollie.

Lulu was a branch off of my Chinese name. I'd rather not talk about how that makes me feel.

And, there are other nicknames that I'd...rather not mention. Ro-shizzle? Honestly?

In interior speech...um...I call myself I. and me. and sometimes he. I don't think I have a special name for myself, however.

What is in a name? Endearment, sometimes, teasing, sometimes, and sometimes just a reflection of a physical description of me that happens to work with my name.

Peace,
~Roland

hehe...

I'm scared.

Workshop

I had a workshop for my manuscript on Tuesday, and, well, basically, my classmates said that my story didn't make much sense. They also said that my description was very good, but that made it really easy to pinpoint the places where the description was not very good.
The workshop overall, however, was very helpful. Just sitting there, unable to argue, allowed me to take in what everyone said, without having my own prejudices getting in the way.

Sick again

YAYYYYY......
credits to Mike Murphy.

Halloween

Well, this is a filler post, 'cuz I feel bad for not writing in a week plus change and need something to talk about.
So, Happy belated...very belated...Halloween!
So I'd originally planned to go trick-o-treating with my friends, but then they decided to go out for dinner instead. So my parents were going to pick me up from college to go trick-o-treating in thirty minutes, and I didn't want to go alone. So I go around:
"Hey, Gray, want to come with me?" "Sorry I'm busy"
"Hey, Noura, want to come?" "Sure, i'll be there in an hour." "Oh, we're leaving in half an hour." "sorry, then I can't make it." "oh well."
Then...
"Hey Chris, want to come?" "OMG I haven't gone trick since I was like seven!!!...but Pacman hasn't dried yet."
He gestured to a giant, yellow cardboard pacman lying in the grass.
"Oh well, you'll be a ninja then."
I spent the next ten minutes muzzling Chris with black shirts, creating a ninja mask.
"Wow, I look badass."
"Now, you have to put on your aviators."
When we reached our home, I realized that a ninja, jester, and plumber (my sister) would be a strange sight. So, I decided that all of us should be ninjas. Ergo, I spent the next ten minutes teaching my sister to muzzle herself with black shirts, creating a ninja mask.
However, unlike Chris and Rachel, I didn't have any long-sleeved, black shirt to go with my ninja costume. I didn't have any dark jeans, either.
So, I went in navy sweatpants and a too-small blazer. My sister was in her black karate gear. Chris was in a windbreaker and aviators. It was pretty epic. We set off to go trick-o-treating.
Some highlights:
"Who's this?"
"Rachel and Roland, with an exchange student."
"I kom from ZHAPAN" (chris with an extremely convicing japanese accent)
"Oh! Well, welcome to the US!"
Then our neighbor, an old white lady, starts talking in Japanese with chris. go figure.
Later...
"um....are you ninjas?"
"yes..."
"ok, good, I thought you were like Muslim or something"
afterwards, chris is like "I wanted to punch her, I mean, you wouldn't go around dressing like a Jew, for halloween right?"
Later...
"It's Rachel and Roland and Henry!"
"Wow, Henry, you grew so tall!"
Henry's our eight-year-old brother. We managed to convince our next-door-neighbor, without trying, that an eight-year-old was five foot ten.
Later...
"This is an exchange student from japan"
Chris waves a Japanese flag that he just happens to have in his coat pocket.

So, that was pretty much my trick-o-treating experience for the year. Full of epicness and stuff, and convincing japanese accents.
~Roland

Koyaanisqatsi

So, this is the fifth time I've watched Koyaanisqatsi (I watched it four times in a row my sophomore year in high school, as I had to sculpt a minute-by-minute analysis), and honestly, it didn't get much better.
The music sucked. There is a joke about the composer:
Knock knock!
Who's there?
Phillip Glass!
Knock knock!
Who's there?
Phillip Glass!
etc. etc, which is a pretty good representation of his music. It's supposed to be mesmerizing; I only got extremely bored and annoyed.
The scenery was adequate; there were several powerful shots, such as the garbage, and the beach next to the factory (apparently, if I remember correctly from 10th grade, the buildings represented round tombs/gravestones, symbolizing the death of nature.) I suppose the atomic bomb would be compelling too, if I didn't know from research that the shot was Photoshopped.
I think that the movie could have made the contrast clearer. I could tell that the cinematographer was trying to contrast nature with urbanity, yet it had quite beautiful, peaceful shots of the city, which confused me.
The meatpacking part was my personal favorite. The hurried frenzy of the sausages and hot dogs interposed with the busy freeways was quite comical, and was kind of disturbing, comparing cars to hunks of meat (but a good kind of disturbing).
I also liked the Hopi cultural aspect of the film. It brought a sort of ancient, mystical feel into the movie, which did contrast nicely with the urbanization of our society.
However, other than that, I found the movie dry, and not at powerful as advertised. And long. The shots were too long, and slow. I felt that if I watched the movie at 2x, I would be a lot more supportive of the movie. However, spending 10 minutes on the same shot, with the same arpeggio playing over and over again gets extremely irritating.
So, overall, there are several good parts of Koyaanisqatsi, but it is overal slow, dry, and boring.