Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Essay 3

Ben’jamin
Mr. H Salsich
English 9
28/09/10

When you are in the cold, surrounded by ice and snow, simply sitting and waiting, unable to go inside because you small nylon shelter has been berried by the drift, the zipper frozen shut, your Whisper Light stove empty of white gas, your hot chocolate turned solid, your nose clogged with ice, the only thing you want to do is split the logs in front of you to find the unfrozen center so you might start the fire that will keep you warm without melting your nylon cloths. When it comes down to it, the only thing that keeps you sane, and halts the flow of tears that would undoubtedly freeze on your cheeks is the thought of the fire that you would like to have, but don’t. The thought of a spark, keeps you going. When anywhere north or south of the equator during the spring, fall, summer, or winter, fire is your greatest friend.

I have always found that fire has an exotic way of entertaining me. The fires dance is so complex and orderly, but at the same time, so random. No one can name the colors that make up the flames decorations, the blue and white bottom surrounded by the blackened charcoal, braking up above into crimson fuel, the heart of the fire, then as your eyes continue to move up the roaring fire, the red melts into the yellow tips of the swords that fire swings about in beautiful anguish, throwing up a shower of orange sparks that twist and twirl in the air until they quickly go out all before you can blink an eye (long sentence (87 words). The colors are so different than everything else, especially against white snow. The movement of the inferno is also very intriguing. The fire wraps around itself in an endless loop. The sparks are constantly boogieing above us all. The heat of the fire draws us in. The artificial heat heats the body to unnatural temperate, but you feel cool because the side away from the fire remains cool so your core temperature remains balanced. However, the heat can heat us, dry us, give you light, and give you comfort. Conflagration has ways of drawing you in, and making you its friend.

A fire, just like any other friend, needs a home. The spark needs a place to stay warm against the cold; it needs walls of stone to keep out the wind and rain. The spark needs these walls of stone to wrap around it, shielding it from the wind. The wall of stone holds the umbrella to keep out the rain. The spark of the blaze needs to stay warm inside the fire’s heart, so the fire builds a shelter of wood to hold in the heat. The shelter of wood stops the warmth from leaving its safe home, and it keeps out the cold’s sharp knives from cutting in to the ropes leading to calescence. The shelter of wood also gives the blaze a constant stockpile of fuel to consume; feeding it, as if it were a child. The home is deep within the ground, low in the Earth, and concealed within the foliage. The fire sometimes gets bored of its home in the ground, and it tries to run away; The pit reaches up a hand of stone and catches the little spark before it gets past the birch of silver. The pit of stone, and Earth, and wood, keeps in the warmth and the blaze itself, and never lets go, just as an over protective parent squeezes its child before their first day of school, but the fire never leaves, and the home never lets go, but I guess that is ok in a family of fire. The home of fire is a peculiar home, a home very different, but not so far, from the home lived in by you and I.

Fire can be one of the greatest tools for a person. Fire can keep you warm and entertain you at the same time. Fire is a close friend, so you must take care of it, and take care of its home. No matter what, the orange blaze will always be there to take care of you.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Essay 2

Ben’jamin Dameron
Mr. H Salsich
English 9
27/09/10

Secret and Mystery
An Essay on Similes with People:

Human minds might be some of the most complex theory induced possessions that humans have. Everybody has theories and simile to attempt on making the brain a little clearer. Some people talk about themselves and some people talk about others. Dickens uses similes a lot in his books and there are many theories, but I also have some of my own.

I have found evidence to support a theory about Dickens possibly writing about himself on page 15. It is possible that when Dickens says, “I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged.” (Dickens, 15) That he is talking about his dreams. If this holds true, the “book [that] shut with a spring” is life telling him no. People can not always get want they want; this is what Dickens might be saying, though from his view, and his loss. He goes on to say, “It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost…and I stood in ignorance on the shore.” And he might be trying to say that he is ignorantly continuing to try to reach lost hopes, and lost dreams, and lost love ones. When he expands on this statement, he says, “[that] in any burial-places of this city (his mind) through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?” he could have been trying to say his mind, a city where all sleep, has seen so much pain and loss, that he is simply asking, “Could there be anything else that could go wrong.” There are many explanations of this paragraph in A Tale of Two Cities, and I hope I have given ample evidence to one of them.

Just as Dickens might compare his dreams to a book or water, I compare people secrets and mysteries to a fire atop the snow. To make a fire on top of snow requires the correct tools, just as it takes time to get to know somebody. It takes a long time to get all the dry wood and kindling that you need to make a fire on the cold wet floor. It also takes a long time to really get to know someone very well. Once you have your wood, and your friends personality, you to know what to do from there. You can not just light a fire from anywhere, you need to know all the tricks otherwise you will just have a lot of wet smoke in your face. The same theory applies with people, for you can not just walk up to someone and say, “Would you please tell me those things that you have never told anybody else ever in your whole life?” because if you did that, you would just end up with some cold smoke in your face. If you learn somebody’s secrets and hopes, you need to know where to go from there, just like how you must know what to do with a fire once you have a cold wet flame, because the fire could keep you warm and well, or it could burn you and spoil your good mood that you have received do to the wonderful accomplishment of starting a fire in the snow which is nasty stuff that is generally difficult to light fires on (long sentence-82). If you know someone’s secrets, you could help them keep it a secret or, you could spoil there good mood by telling everybody, loosing their trust, and being thought poorly of, and being left with few friends (tricolon). On a very similar note, if you get too close to the fire, taunting it and poking fun at the brilliant cold wet flames, you will really just be putting your hand on a barbecue, yet if you respect the flames, they will keep you warm. I do believe that you can get inside a person and start a fire in their cold wet heart, but it takes time and once you have, you must respect that privilege.

Everybody from children to accomplished writers have theories about minds of people. Dickens has elaborate and difficult similes that are near impossible to fully understand. However, people everyday come up with simpler similes about brains of people. I believe that no simile will really explain the mind, and I believe that Charles Dickens thought the same way.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Essay 1

Ben'jamin Dameron
Mr. H Salsich
English
9/14/10

Back to School Entertainment
An Essay on Relating Songs to Going Back to School:

Déjà vu is a French saying that means that you feel like you have experienced something before and that something is reoccurring. This saying is used by people all over the world. Its variety of uses can change from being used to describe the reoccurrence of flies in soup to the reoccurrence of school starting at the end of every summer. However many people use the French phrase: Déjà vu to describe coming back to school, I will always find other ways to relate to the end of summer.

A song that really can relate to leaving summer and coming to school is The Beatles' "Hello Goodbye". I hate saying goodbye, so I am not going to say goodbye, but I will say hello. In my experiences, people are sad when they must say goodbye to summer, so I just put on a brave face and say hello to school and 9th grade, working constantly, and enjoying every minute of it. (Participle phrase) In the song "Hello Goodbye", The Beatles repeat this line very often; "I don't know why you say goodbye; I say hello!" The Beatles also talk a lot about being enthusiastic in their song. They use the line, "You say start, and I say go go go!" I feel that this line comes into school a lot because there is a huge difference between just doing work and doing it well and really caring about it. I feel that the smooth lyrics used by The Beatles can easily be compared to school.

I do not think that only songs can relate to school, for instance, I believe that the movie Gladiator has many connections to coming back to school. When Maximus goes to the slave camp, he has great skill as a fighter and a general, but this is not enough for him to survive. He has to learn from his owner, Proximo, about how to win the crowd to win the fight. When students go back to school, they have many skills (parallelism), but we still must learn from our teachers to get good grades and eventually succeed in life. Secondly, in the slaves’ first fight in the coliseum, the odds are stacked against them. Maximus rises above the crowd and shouts, "You can help me. No matter what comes out of those gates, we have a better chance of survival if we work together. Do you understand? If we work together, we survive...Come together! Come together!" In all group activities at school, you will do better if you work together; from sports to projects to proposals to painting to anything, it works better if you work together. It may not make sense at first, but the movie Gladiator can have a lot to do with school.

From French phrases, to movies, to books, to songs, to cars, to games, and really anything, there are many ways one can relate to one’s return to school. I find that the song “Hello Goodbye” by the Beatles and the movie Gladiator can really relate to coming back to school. There are many other things that I can think of that me remind me of the end of summer, Master and Commander, Help, Teach Your Children, Colors of the Rainbow, Sound of Silence, but nothing can compare to being at school. School is here for the benefit of us all, so we must just stand together and say HELLO!




Self Assessment:

1. One writing issue I am continuing to work on?
One issue I am continuing to work on in my writing is making sure that I am following all the rules. Sometimes I forget one of the rules and my punctuation has gotten a little rusty over the summer
2. One strong point I see in this writing?
One strong point I see in this essay is my two topics. I feel like I picked very strong topics because I had a very easy time writing.
3. One possible weak spot I see in this writing?
I feel like one weak spot I have is my opening and closing paragraphs because I had a harder time working with those two paragraphs. I had trouble putting a beginning and an end to the story I had created
4. Grade
I feel like I did a very good job on this essay and I would have to give myself and A.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Freestyle Writing 1 - Philmont

I want to go back
To where the mountains rise high,
Up into the purple sky,
And the eagles soar and fly

I want to go back,
To the boiled meals
All the Oreo deals
And blister covered heals

I want to go back,
To where the days are so long
And you have to be strong
Simply trudging along

I want to go back,
Where you fall in a heap
Because you have gotten no sleep,
No energy to make a peep.

I want to go back
Where a song makes your day
When the day is wet and grey
Walking atop the clay

I want to go back
To were you are covered in dirt
White turns black on your shirt
And you no longer hurt

I want to go back
To where the bears roam free
With the lions in the tree
And you feel you could drink the sea

Oh I want to go back to Philmont.