Truth Realy is Stranger than Fiction

Only in fiction will you find a girl living in a foreign country falling in love and moving to another country to be with her soul mate. For those of you looking for the real-life example of this, look no further than my mother. She grew up in West Germany in a tiny village (yes, a real village) named Roigheim with her family. She never even dreamed of leaving Germany and had wanted to work at the post office after she graduated school. Not long after finishing school, she and her best friend went to an outdoor concert. There, she met this American stationed in Germany. She was instantly smitten. After some time of what could be deemed courtship, she fell in love, and at the age of eighteen, she left her family and life behind and moved to a foreign country and got married. A few years later, she and her husband had a daughter. Even a few years later, they had another daughter, then a final daughter two years later. Although this is the time when fiction would say they lived happily ever after as a family, the couple divorced and the mom and daughters lived together for close to seven years. Then, one day, the mother met a man that she would marry a few short years later. The happily ever after is still in the process, but it looks like the mother is finally getting her happily ever after from her stranger than fiction life.

A Blessing in Disguise

Two years ago, I started feeling twinges in my shoulder when I was at swim practice. I just wrote it off as normal wear and tear that a swimmer has after thirteen years in the pool, especially one that specializes in swimming butterfly. I would stretch my shoulder, and then get back in the pool to finish out the practice, stretching as the practice wore on. That winter, I let my shoulder rest by not swimming any. The next summer, after less than one week in the pool, I started feeling the twinges again, only this time they were accompanied by pain. Not willing to permanently injure myself, I went to the doctor to find a solution to the problem. I was diagnosed with tendonitis and told to rest my shoulder. That worked, for a few months. When tennis season rolled around, I started having pain and soreness all the time. I went back to the doctor and was sent to a specialist. The specialist told me I was out of tennis for the season. I was so upset because this had been the year that I was really looking forward to and excited about. I would have more experience and hopefully win more than one match. I still went to practices and to support the team at matches. Even though I could not play, something good did come out of it. By being able to listen to our coach’s instructions for all of the players, I think I have grown to appreciate playing. And I’ve also finally learned how to play doubles really well.

Do I Really Appreciate You?

There are always those people in your life that you take for granted. No one is exempt from not really appreciating those around you. Having said that, I can’t help but remember how I used to take my mother for granted. I was ten years old when it happened. A close friend of my oldest sister lost his mother. She had been the only person in his life; he did not know his father, so he and his mother were very close. One morning, he woke up to her having died in the night. When my sister told me this, I was unable to comprehend what that meant. I could not fathom losing my mother the way he did or how he could cope seeing as he was an only child. Even though I was very young, I tried to understand what he was going through with his loss. I tried, but I was unable to. It made me realize that I would not be able to even put on a front like he did if I lost my mom. My mom has always been there for me and I would be lost if she was gone. After that time, I finally appreciated my mom for everything she has done for me and my sisters.

A Sacrifice

It’s always hard to sacrifice something, even for someone you genuinely care for. It was no exception for me when I made a sacrifice for my family. A few years ago, I had a huge swim meet that I desperately wanted to attend because it was the last chance I had to qualify for divisionals in our area of the state. The only problem with it was that it fell on one of the few times of the year that the entire family gathers together. My parents told me that they really wanted all of us to be able to go since we do not see most of our family very often, even though they both knew the meet was extremely important to me. They never directly told me to miss the meet, but the implications were all over the place. For awhile, I had my mind set on skipping the family get-together and go to the meet. I knew subconsciously that it would disappoint my parents is we missed the family time, but I never really thought about it. In the week before the meet, it finally clicked that I should not go to the meet, even if it meant I would not qualify for divisionals that year. I knew my parents were glad that I sacrificed my goal of going to divisionals because they wanted me to spend time with my family.

The Sound of the Trees (Robert Frost)

I wonder about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
We suffer them by the day
Till we lose all measure of pace,
And fixity in our joys,
And acquire a listening air.
They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it means to stay.
My feet tug at the floor
And my head sways to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
From the window or the door.
I shall set forth for somewhere,
I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone.

In this poem, Frost is describing the permanece of trees, but in reality, he is really meaning the permanece of a loved one that is always there. When talking of bearing the noise of these trees, he refers to the advice form a wise person that we take for granted in our lives. As we grow older, we begin listening to them with interest. As time passes, we begin to wish to leave and make our own way and make our own mistakes. As we leave home to enter the real world, the trees are still there, talking and making comments, even though we are not there any longer to hear or listen to it.

A Dream Within A Dream (Edgar Allan Poe)

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

This poem is a reflection of Poe's thoughts/delusions that life was nothing more than a dream. The beginning has the feel of a dream and he even says that his days have been a dream. Throughout, he is questioning the reality of life, not knowing what is real and what isn't. Towards the end, he is dreaming of looking forward to the horizon, giving up hope that anything has been real, be it life, love, or anything one could imagine. He wants to keep hold of his dreams, but in the end, he sees that his dreams mean nothing, as they are only within another dream.

Lady Lazarus (Sylvia Plath)

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it--

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?--

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot--
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart--
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash--
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

This poem is almost like a confession by the author. She shows an insight into herself and why she thinks the way she does. Her constant mentioning of Nazi germany and the Jews shows that she has some type of problem with her german and Austrian heritage. For some reason, she does not like it, going as far as comparing herself to a Nazi lampshade, which have been known to be made of the skin of murdered Jews. This shows she for some reason feels insignificant due to an unknown reason. In addition, she is constantly mentioning death and chances, which indicates that she expects to come back from the suicide attempts, which is how she died shortly after writing this poem.

Music: A Way of Expression

To many people, music expresses who they are in a way they simply cannot do simply through words. For the many music listeners out there, the music conveys what they are unable to say themselves. The type of music I listen to ranges from country to rock to rap, depending on my mood and the message sent out from the musicians. This music is the way for me to express my exact mood, be it happy, sad, or angry, without having to say a single word. Only the upbeat songs will played on my iPod when I’m in the best of moods and I’ll sing and dance along to it. When a bad mood comes along, I will only play the slow, sad songs that will do nothing but keep me in that mood. Of all of these things, a person must remember that not only the lyrics, but also the actual music that is the largest part is what can put a person into the best or worst of moods. That is what sets the scene for the lyrics; if the music is slow, the lyrics will also be slow and, most likely, sad. The upbeat tempos make way for faster lyrics and any one of a variety of moods.

The Reality of Reality Television

Reality television has become a part of American, and world, culture. People around the globe are fascinated by the prospect of watching “real” people face challenges and hardships. I believe that reality television needs to be taken out of programming. This needs to be done because what we deem as reality is not such. The stars of these programs do not act the same way on television that they do in everyday life. The select few that do are indeed a rare breed. Reality television does nothing but glamorize a non-existent lifestyle. In addition, it also ruins lives of the people it concerns. One such example is the former series Jon and Kate Plus 8. It followed the daily running of a family that has eight children, one set of twins and one set of sextuplets. The series glamorized the life of the parents. It lead to the family breaking apart when the father was proven to be unfaithful. The lives of each person was destroyed as the parents bitterly divorced, putting the children in an unacceptable limelight. The children were put in the middle as the world watched the parents leave each other, with the children in the middle. This is simply one example of how reality television destroys lives and families.

Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound

Amazing Grace—the movie that follows the struggle for one English man to end the slave trade in England. The movie begins with William Wilberforce travelling out of London to a home in the country to recover from an illness. Along the way, he has his coach stopped to reprimand two farmers beating their exhausted horse because it is unable to move and is lying on the ground; Wilberforce tells the men to let the animal rest before trying to get it to perform any more tasks. This is only a slight glimpse at his character and sets the scene for the rest of the story, which is told partially in flashbacks. Wilberforce is a man set against the idea of slavery, partially due to his friendship with a former slave-trader turned priest, who happens to be the author of Amazing Grace. Wilberforce works tirelessly in appeal after appeal to Parliament to once and for all end slavery in the country. With the help of many considered to be social outcasts, Wilberforce starts wearing down the traditional Parliament. However, he becomes extremely ill and has to leave London to convalesce. After years of leaving the issue alone, Wilberforce returns to London with many from his original group supporting him. He succeeds in getting slavery abolished, but not without many trials and hardships along the way. The movie shows that with determination and persistence one man can change the life of a nation. It is inspirational and really puts everything into perspective.

The Ideal Vacation

The word vacation automatically takes one to a warm climate without a care in the world. However, I would think of my ideal vacation as a tad bit different. On a vacation, I would love to get the opportunity to see the world. I would relish the chance to get to travel around Europe for an undetermined amount of time and not worry about the exact date that I had to come home. I would take the occasion and see the historical sites, the museums, the culture of the countries, and the experience of being there. Getting the opportunity to take my time while at any number of sites on the continent would be absolutely amazing, as opposed to having only a set amount of time to observe and study the certain places. Not having to use a set schedule would also be ideal. I would not follow a schedule set out by someone else, I would determine it myself. I would not worry about having to catch the next train or bus. I would simply follow my whims in going wherever I so pleased. Despite not knowing each and every language spoken, I could get by on the limited knowledge.

A Family Gathering

A family is a group of people to which you are related. Many times, a person spends time with his/her family, but that is not the case with my mother’s side of the family and my sisters and me. I barely know my mother’s family, seeing as they live across the Atlantic Ocean in Germany. Whenever I do see them, there is always some kind of celebration at either the beginning or end of the trip. One instance that sticks out in my mind is when my mother, sisters, and I went to Germany in 2007. On our last full day there, my uncle hosted a huge cookout for us as a going away party. The entire family was there, except for my mom’s sister that lives in Italy. It was so much fun to just get the opportunity to spend time with my family, especially my cousins that were close to my age. All afternoon we played cards and random games, not letting the slight language barrier get between us. To many people, this may not seem like much of a day, but I never see my family, so the opportunity to just spend time with them and not worry about anything else.

Welcome to Linton

Linton, Indiana, population less than 6,000. The city of Linton is tiny; the polar opposite of a big city. To anyone under the age of eighteen, it is also an extremely boring place to live. There are few activities that spark the interest of the youth of the area. On nearly every night of the weekend, and throughout the week in the summer, one can find teenagers simply driving around town on the same loop. Although that is popular with many teenagers, there are a few activities most people can participate in. People can either go bowling at Parkview Lanes or watch a movie at the Linton Cinema. However, many people travel out of town to either Terre Haute or Bloomington when they wish to see a movie, even though both are an hour away. A resident of Linton also must travel to those cities for the opportunity to shop, considering that the only stores in the area are a Wal-Mart and a few tiny clothing stores that cater primarily to the older generations. Linton can be described as nothing more than a small town, but many people see the charm of living here. There is nothing uncommon about knowing most people you come into contact with. If someone does not like a small town, that person would not like Linton, as the sign outside of town would suggest.

LIAR!

I was terrified. What if he found out? Well, it was too late anyway, because I had already hit the send button. I was so angry; I didn’t know how to get those feelings out without making such a close friend angry. He had lied to me, so I was going to give him a piece of my mind. Instead of being brave, I took the coward’s way and used another friend’s phone. I sent the text message saying that he was a jerk for messing around with someone’s feelings the way he did. After that, he texted me to see if I was mad at him; I said no. Soon after, we stopped talking altogether. I figure it was that text message that did the trick. I suspect he knew all along, but who knows. Two months later, I finally came forward with the truth that it was me that sent the message. That was the last time I ever spoke to a person who was perhaps my closest friend. It was hard, but I knew it was for the best that our friendship ended, but was still hard not having someone to vent to when I was mad about something. It was perhaps the worst thing that could have happened from one tiny text message.

The First Day

As I walked through the door of the pool, I couldn’t help but think that I did not belong. It was my first day of officially swimming for the Terre Haute Torpedoes, and I was beyond intimidated. There were so many swimmers there that were actually taking the practice seriously, and that was simply the younger swimmers that were just learning basic technique. It was a different world from what I was used to while swimming for the Linton Swim Team. As these thoughts were running through my head, my new coach saw me and came over to introduce himself. As Raz was getting paperwork together, I was shaking from nerves and excitement. I was actually standing in the presence of a real, trained coach that was going to help me better my swimming. As soon as the younger swimmers got out of the pool, he had me swim one lap of each stroke. I dove into the water and began my I.M., a combination of all four strokes. It felt amazing to be swimming again after not being in a pool for six months. As I got out of the water, he told me I would be entering the mid-level group. I was ecstatic! He introduced me to my new teammates, and my first practice as a Terre Haute Torpedo officially began.

Travel

Travel—the mere word makes me cringe. There is nothing in the world that can make sitting in a train for a three hour ride enjoyable, except when you have seven others in your party. The day began in Jagsthausen, Germany, where my uncle lives. The first step of our trip was to catch the bus to Mockmuehl, the town that houses the train station. After we descended the mother of all hills outside my uncle’s house, we waited at the bus stop, and nearly lost Shane (Bland) to the bus as he avoided a bee. The sight of him running away was unforgettable. After the brief ride on the cleanest public transportation in the world, we made it to the train station. My mother was frantically looking and waiting for the train that would take us to the historical city of Heidelberg. We had arrived early, and therefore waited for a long time, primarily taking pictures of ourselves and every part of the train station to show other s how unlike home it is. We then boarded the punctual train and headed to Heidelberg. It was a beautiful place, where every one enjoyed the day. Two cuckoo clocks were purchased to be mailed home later. The most entertaining part of the day, however was yet to come. My uncle thought we were going to miss our train, so he and my mother started power walking back, one on either side of me, since I was the youngest there. The race was on, until we made it to the train station, and we were twenty minutes early. It was so much fun to be able to laugh about it, and enjoy a treat known as a Berliner with everyone else. The day is one I will never forget.

My Influence, My Guidance, My Mom

As time goes by, I think upon all the times my mother has guided me, whether it be about school, relationships, or life, and how much that has influenced the way I act. The way she acts also pushes these teachings, because my mother practices what she preaches. She is the hardest worker; she always gets what she needs to be done accomplished. She never leaves a project unfinished, whether that project be at work or home. Every day, her character shines through; she never raises her voice, she has the nicest disposition, and she always has a smile on her face. Even more impressive, her job sometimes invovles dealing with the nastiest of all people at Ridge Medical Center, which can be especially stressful at times.
My mother is always there to guide me and give me advice. I cannot possibly count, or fathom, how often I have gone to her for advice, just wondering what to do. Although the advice she gives me is primarily how to deal with a situation, I know I can go to her for anything, and she always has time for me, no matter what is going on or what she is doing. I aspire to one day be as selfless as my mother; she is my hero.