Sorry for not being around for a few weeks. First was being at home with family so I didn’t want to really write while spending time with family. Then I was on a trip to visit a friend for new years and then I was traveling back to college. Now I’m back and had my first week of school. It’s very interesting. I have a few classes that I really enjoy so far which is great to know. I did rather well last semester so now to do as well if not better this semester. I’m very excited and refreshed after my few weeks off.
All posts by pip.colman@comcast.net
Holidays!
Well just spent my first week back at home for the holidays. It’s been pretty fun. I got to play with puppies and my bedroom is being taken over, nooo! Haha, Still it’s nice to be home for the break. Also nice to not have to worry about school as much. Though I do have some things preparing for the next semester, but at least it’s a lot more relaxed than actual school work. Plus the other day we got the tree up as well so we’re looking rather festive around our house. I hope everyone has a nice holiday.
Last Day of Poetry Class
Now sure, it was the last day of every class, but this was special. I’ve taken several creative writing classes ove the years and none were really like this. It’s not really anything to do with my vision, and honestly there are things I want to say that have no relevance to my ability to see (or lack thereof), but I want to share with people. The class had an effect that’s hard to make. A place were everyone can share without anything being held against them. We all were trying hard, and the change in our writing is great. The fact we had a community and no one felt like they couldn’t share everything. Going to school from 6-9 PM two times as week isn’t easy, but when I went I forgot why I doubted myself in the first place. It’s a beautiful place. The power and energy of the class is something I think I will always remember. I think the night that I had the idea for my favourite poem of the class is one I’ll remember. I’m glad I had the moment at the end of the class so I could near run home and write. To give some context I was presenting my poem ( a sonnet) and I’d been doing forms for half the semester which was fun to play with. So my teacher asked me what form I was going to use next and I admitted I didn’t know and one of the students suggested a sestina and challenge accepted. Still I had a memory of a poem I wrote before where I had two voices in the poem. So I wanted to write a sestina with different voices. At first I thought I should write two sestina’s that related to each other, but then… I came up with an idea. I an’t really explain it so I’ll just show you: Moon and Sun
I was going to copy and paste it, but well… it’s hard to make it show up the way it’s supposed to so I just pasted it. For those of you who don’t want to a sestina is it’s a poetic form where the last word of each line is repeated in a certain pattern:
1. ABCDEF
2. FAEBDC
3. CFDABE
4. ECBFAD
5. DEACFB
6. BDFECA
7. (envoi) ECA or ACE
That’s basically how the lines are laid out (which yes takes writing it down to remember. I won’t say more than that about it, but you may be able to see the pattern (though some people didn’t realize it was a sestina in class) since we have to do half the poems were we comment in class and half were we take them home ( I wish I’d done this one where we could read it in class). Still this was just something I wanted to talk about.
Final’s week
Poem!
During my Creative Writing Poetry class we had to look up poets and read some of their poems and make a presentation on them. I finally decided to look up a poet that my teacher has been recommended that I look up. That being May Swenson. She’s a really good poet, but my reason for mentioning this is because one of the poems I found (after I took out the books of poetry the library had to offer) I found a poem that spoke to me. A lot of them did, but this one spoke to me on a certain level, yu’ll see what I mean.
The Blindman
The blindman placed
a tulip on his tongue for purple’s taste.
Cheek to grass, his green
Was rough excitement’s sheen
of little whips.
In water to his lips
he named the sea blue and white,
the basin of his tears and fallen beads of sight.
He said: This scarf is red;
I feel the vectors to its thread
that dance down from the sun. I know
the seven fragrances of the rainbow.
I have caressed
the orange hair of flames. Pressed
to my ear,
a pomegranate lets me hear
crimson’s flute.
Trumpets tell me yellow. Only ebony is mute.
See what I mean? One time when I was writing something some said I needed more detail in my writing and I asked them how I would do that being visually impaired and they told me that I could just use my other senses as well. I find it interesting to use colour a sounds and feelings instead of what you see.
Golf Handle?
At school there is an area to get Subway and sometimes I go there and get a sandwich. So one time I was there. When I was paying for my food I leaned my cane against the counter in order to get my stuff. For those of you who don’t know the handle of a cane is very similar to the handle of a golf club. Because of that the cashier for a moment forgot that I had a cane and wondered why I randomly had a golf club with me, then remembered. It was rather amusing when she told me.
Listening too fast?
I’ve already talked about how I love listening to books rather than reading them because it’s just easier for me. When I listen to books I usually have it on a faster speed just because I’m so used to listening to books that I can listen to them at a higher speed. I don’t reallynotice that I’m listening to them really fast, but others have asked me how I can understand what the book is saying when it’s going so fast. I guess it’s the same thing as people’s reading speed. Some people can read really fast and some not so much (I can’t read very fast). If I’m paying attention to what I’m listening too I can listen to things at twice the speed (which is helpful when one of my school books is 35 hours long).
Characters in Books who are Blind
One thing I like doing in my writing is adding people with disabilities. Especially people who can’t see and showing that they can do a lot of things that other people can in a different way. I don’t feel like it’s expressed very well in media and a lot of people don’t know much about it. I like it when people try to add things like that into their story because it feels nice to know that people are thinking about things and trying them out though sometimes it can get a bit frustrating with hose some people pertray people with disabilities. Or even just badly characterize someone. In a story I read once which was a fanfiction story based on a show I watched someone got on my nerves bout that. There is a character in the show who has white hair (though since this is anime and the main character has hair that’s three colours I wouldn’t really say anything about a white haired character).. His eye colour is different, but that’s besides the point. The person said he was albino which would be fine if they knew anything about albino people. At the time I had a few friends who were albino so I wouldn’t have called myself an expert, but I knew a little bit about them. Given the character had dark brown eyes and no issue going out in the sun or seeing it was just an animation choice to give him white hair. I brought it up with the author who said that they just used it as a way to describe the character which got me more upset than I already was. I decided not to push the issue any further, but it was frustrating. It was only one time and there are plenty of times where I’ve seen characters with disabilities done really well and it always makes me happy to see people take the time to look up or ask someone about how to do a character with a disability instead of just doing it. I don’t want to sound negative about things, but that’s just something that stuck with me. I’ve seen one story where a character (ironically and albino) was in the story and it turned out really well and I loved the story as a whole. In my own writing though I like to have visually impaired or blind characters to show that we can be as strong as anyone else. In my novel I’m working on one of my main characters is blind and I love her to death!
The “perks” of vision loss.
One thing I heard this week while waiting for class was a few girls talking about things such as their vision (due to one of them not having their contacts). Though I didn’t listen to their conversation fully one thing that struck me was that one of them was saying that they wouldn’t mind being visually impaired because then they could get a guide dog. I didn’t mention to them that it takes more than being visually impaired to get a guide dog, but I wasn’t going to. I mentioned before about how sometimes things that other people have because of disability are somehow “cool”. I suppose people don’t think of the downside to it. My girlfriend has a similar probably with her diabetes when she was in high school. Normally food wasn’t allowed in classrooms, but given her situation she was allowed and everyone wasn’t too happy about it because they wanted to be able to eat. I suppose that’s similar with people who see people who are visually impaired or blind walking around with a guide dog and being able to take it everywhere. There are some benefits to not being able to see well I suppose, but personally I’d much rather b able to see normally, be able to get around and drive where I wish. Be able to not have to worry about all the downsides than whatever “perks” I may gain from having this disability, but that’s just me.
Discovering the Area
Over the past few weeks I’ve been meeting with my mobility specialist at the CNIB once i a while in order to find new places that I may want to go. Places like the super market and mall, but also interesting places that are along the way or around. I had her help first year to learn my way around campus and also to learn where the bank was and other such things, but after that I kind of fell out of doing it. Now I’m learning about all sorts of fun places. It started with me needing to find my way to the CNIB building for something, and just went from there It’s always good to have someone help you find places and find the place you’re thinking about. Sometimes the hardest thing about Google Maps is that if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for or what it might be called it’s harder to find, and if you don’t know it’s there (like she told me about a really neat cafe that I would never have known about had I not been told) there is no reason to find out. It’s pretty fun and I have to do it more especially since I plan on living here.