Christmas is coming!

Well, it is Dec. 8, and I have yet to start even thinking about Christmas. I just finished all of my assignments for school. These past few months have left very little time for anything other than schoolwork. Now that I am done for awhile all I want to do is sleep, but unfortunately I have lots to do.  Family members have been waiting patiently for my Christmas wish list. I have a mountain of laundry that is up to my knees. I need to start packing up my apartment in preparation for the move back home, I never thought that at almost 30 I would be moving back in with the parents. Somewhere in the middle of all of that I have to start my Christmas shopping. Some break this is going to be.

The thought of all the stuff I have to do may make me a little crazy but the thought of getting to spend the holidays with my family makes it all worth it. I have not seen much of them since school started at the end of August. I felt terrible every time I had to decline a dinner invitation, I could not make it to search for a wedding gown with my sister, and I haven't visited my grandmother in over a month. Those things help keep me sane, without spending quality time with my family I start to get a little gloomy.

So while I may not get as much rest as I want and need this holiday I will give my soul one heck of a recharge. I look forward to trimming the tree, joking with my sisters, and enjoying my parents delicious cooking. I can sleep when I am dead.

How CreComm turned me into a crazy person

I am a first-year Creative Communications student at Red River College. To say that this course is "fast-paced" and "a lot of work" is a gross understatement. I was shocked at the amount of work we were given in the first couple of months. I thought it was insane. Now, in the last two weeks of the semester, I would kill for the relative ease of those first months. Back in the good ol' days when sleep was an actual prospect. When food was put together nicely in meals instead of something you threw down your throat whenever you had a spare moment.

For the last two weeks of school, before the much anticipated Christmas break, we have been on schoolwork lockdown. We don't have time to see our families. Friends are starting to get annoyed and wonder if we don't care about them anymore. Pets sit at home, alone, and hungry. Boyfriends/girlfriends start to wonder what 'really' goes on when we are at school until 10 p.m.

And we are:

• In desperate need of a solid week of sleep.
• Starting to smell from lack of time for showers and excessive stress sweat
• Wearing the same outfits to school for days in a row, because we have no time to do our laundry
• Losing weight from all of the running around for last minute prints, and lack of time for eating.
• Starting to question the sanity of anyone that would put themselves through this much stress
• So terrified of 'Auto-fails' that we lose our minds going over every single word of an assignment.
• Wondering if we should just start paying Red River rent since we are pretty much living here now

Just to give you an idea of how crazy things have been. For the last two weeks of school we have:

• About nine hand-in assignments.
• Ten 'extra practice' assignments, and by extra practice they mean, you don't HAVE to do them, but if you don't you forfeit ten marks.
• An on-air radio performance.
• Several short stories to read.
• A live-hit derby (30 second on-air news story.)
• A live production of a basketball game.
• And last but not least, the last two blog posts of the semester.

While it is crazy right now. I may feel like I can feel my sanity slowly slipping away. It is also pretty amazing. The bond the classmates are developing under all the preasure will likely last a lifetime. The feeling you get when you complete an assignment you thought you hadn't a chance in hell of getting done. The praise and encouraging words you get from your teachers (well, most of them). And the sense of accomplishment you feel once you get it all done. Make it all worth it.

Give a glosa a try!

My last blog post mentioned a form of poetry known the glosa. Below is my first attempt at one. Trying to write a poem around four lines of someone else's work is pretty difficult, but fun at the same time. I chose four lines from a poem by Warren Cariou: Satan Rouses his Legions on the Shores of Syncrude Tailings Pond #4. If you are interested in poetry, I suggest giving a glosa a try!

Inhale, my friends: breathe deep

The bitumen air. I give you

A waveless lake,

Stacks blowing brimstone,

1) Malefecient, the Queen, furrowed and bleak
2)  Her gaze smolders, eyes fixed
3) Heart pounding inside your tight chest
4) She calls towards the heavens
5) A deafening shriek
6) Quiet now, don’t make a peep
7) Has she caught your scent?
8) She skulks along, no prey for her tonight
9) Exhale, let the moment steep
10)  Inhale, my friends: breath deep

11)  Safe from her, for now

12)  Vines winding, scratching, pulling

13)  They tear at you, hungry as her for your flesh

14)  An owl shrieks in the distance

15)  The moon is full

16)  Its light pours over the land, is it on her side too?

17)  Move from this spot, run, go

18)  This land is hostile, smells thick as tar

19)  Her essence has corrupted it, heart of blackness grew

20)  The bitumen air. I give you

21)  Quiet as a mouse you creep

22)  Tip toe, tip toe

23)  SNAP!

24)  A branch breaks under your step

25)  Heart racing, eyes searching, ears listening

26)  How much more can this frail body take

27)  Moments pass, the mad queen is unseen

28)  Sigh, relief, you are almost safe

29)  Out of the woods, you take a break

30)  A waveless lake,

31)  Silence, everything is still

32)  You feel uneasy

33)  Someone is watching you

34)  A sharpness fills your chest

35)  Your head is light, you turn to see

36)  Malefecient, twisted and cruel, the origin of her hate unknown

37)  She pulls her blade slowly from your chest

38)  You fall to your knees

39)  Never again will you bemoan

40)  Stacks blowing brimstone

The Glosa

I have been on a bit of a poetry kick lately, so when I heard that our third assignment for Creative Writing was going to be to write poetry I was excited. When I read over the instructions for the assignment my excitement faded. When I write poetry I just write it. I don't follow and rules, I just write what comes to mind. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night with the starting of a poem in my head and I have to put it on paper. So I will stumble around my apartment, in the dark, looking for pen and paper. It seems silly but if I didn't write it down it would disappear just as fast as it appeared.

Some of these mid-night scrawlings have been pretty good. Well at least I think so. But my point is, when writing these gems down I didn't leave something out or put something in so that it fit the rules. I just let it flow. I just felt that that is what poetry was about, letting it flow, naturally. 

Well after I made my selection from the list of choices, I started my assignment.

I chose a 'glosa'

The glosa is an early Renaissance form of poetry that was developed by poets of the Spanish court in the 14th and 15th centuries. A glosa can be a tribute to another author. The opening quatrain, called a cabeza, is by another poet, typically one that is well known. You chose any four consecutive lines from one of their poems. 

The quatrain opens the poem, followed by four stanzas, each of which is generally ten lines long, that elaborate or "glosses" on the cabeza chosen. The tenth line of each stanza is a line from the cabeza. So the tenth line of the stanza is the first line of the cabeza, line twenty is the second line of the cabeza and so on.

The usual rhyme scheme of a glosa is, the last word in lines 6, 9, and 10 must rhyme. 

I have to admit, I enjoyed writing my gloss. It was challenging. Like trying to put together a complicated jigsaw puzzle. In the end I gained a new appreciation for traditional forms of poetry. I also ended up with a poem I am truly proud of. It may not be Shakespeare  It may not be your cup of tea. Heck, my teacher might even rip it apart, tell me it's crap. But I don't care. 

I tried something new, something I really did not even want to attempt... but I did, and I love it.  

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 Your gaze met mine and held
1,2...
I look away, I can't breath
So many tiny moments amounting to a feeling frozen in my soul
Your hand almost grazes mine, my stomach flutters
You are the king and I but merely a servant
Your Queen is a beauty unmatched
My envy twists me ,coils and pulls me deeper into madness
I am now the creature lurking in the shadows, watching and wanting what is
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Modern Kings

The King stood with his head held high
Dressed in his finest wears, very sure to cause stares
His gaze pierced my very soul
My heart fluttered, hoping he would never let it go
I kneel in his presence, forever surrendering my will
Hail to the chief, who's high head and nostalgic sense has made him a thief
Fluttering hearts are his bounty

The family that scares together, stays together.

The other night was Halloween and as usual, my family went all out. Every year we spend the day of the October 31, decorating the yard of my parents three-storey Fort Rouge home. The house lends itself well to Halloween as it looks like it's haunted. The yard is full of large trees and the stairs leading up to the front door are old stone.
My sisters and I dragged out the boxes of decorations from the basement and got to work. We raked piles of leaves into makeshift gavel at the foot of spooky headstones. Lined the trees with hanging bats, and switched the lightbulbs to eerie red and purple lights. Decorating is a great time to hang out with your family We laughed at each others lame grade school decorations and tried on the costumes our mother since we were kids.
AS the sun started to set, we put on the CD of scary sounds and took our places. I sat in a rocking chair at the top of the stairs while my younger sister, dressed in a mechanics jumpsuit and gravedigger mask, slumped over the bottom steps. As kids made there way through the yard, she would jump out and scare them.
We had 65 kids come to our door, a new record for our house. Many of the children's parents thanked us for being in the spirit of Halloween. This is a tradition I hope that we continue for years to come.