Absent and a Little Late

The Hand
Mary Ruefle
The teacher asks a question.
You know the answer,
you suspect you are the only one in the classroom who knows the answer,
because the person in question is yourself,
and on that you are the greatest living authority,
but you don’t raise your hand.
You raise the top of your desk and take out an apple.
You look out the window.
You don’t raise your hand and there is some essential beauty in your fingers,
which aren’t even drumming,
but lie flat and peaceful.
The teacher repeats the question.
Outside the window,
on an over hanging branch,
a robin is ruffling its feathers and spring is in the air.

I chose this poem, because I thought it was interesting how the author describes the student, debating on whether or not to raise their hand. Sometimes I think the same way.

The title of "The Hand" is fitting, because it is the subject of the poem, yet it is not a living person, it is a controlled appendage.

One of my favorite lines of this poem is:
"You don’t raise your hand and there is some essential beauty in your fingers,
which aren’t even drumming,
but lie flat and peaceful."
It gives the hand a sort of personification, but not completely, which is why I find it intriguing. At the end of the poem the author identifies the robin on the branch, focusing your attention on that one small detail. It's description is so vivid, you can picture it clearly.

The tone of this piece seems calm, and laid back. It is slow and easy, it has a legato feel to the rhythm of the words and phrases.

What IS on my mind?

I am very excited to be done with high school. I have been eagerly awaiting my graduation since my sophomore year, which was the same year my older sister, Emily, first started college. She goes to Winona State, majoring in nursing, and she absolutely loves it there. I will be attending North Dakota State University in the fall, hopefully majoring in architecture, and I really hope that I will have just as good of an experience as she has had. I am very excited but also extremely nervous to leave home. I am very close with my family, and it's going to be really weird not to see them every day. In high school Emily was always on the A honor roll, and now she is on the Dean's List. She is very responsible, and sets the bar very high. I'm afraid that my work ethic is going to hurt me next year, especially if I don't have anyone to remind me to do things, because I forget things very easily.

...I am leaving to go give blood in ten minutes, and it is really all I can think about. I'm super nervous, because I really don't like needles. I'm afraid they're not even going to be able to take mine though, because I'm not sure how high my iron levels are in my blood. Hopefully they are high enough. I'm feeling a little nauseous right now. I have five minutes now, the countdown begins. I should probably wrap this up, and spellcheck and all that good junk, so I bid you ado.

Ado.

Blog got erased, and I had to rewrite...

One of my questions from my Writing Territories was "When death is inevitable, why do we spend so much time doing things that we don't want to do?" I don't understand why humans believe that just because we have a more developed brain and an extremely large capacity for knowledge that we have to learn, that we have to do everything the right way. It couldn't have always been this way. We didn't always have a democratic government and a competitive carreer track.



What is the purpose of learning? I realize that a simple answer to that would be "learning," but why? I admit that there are things that I find extremely intruiging, and that I love learning about. But there are other things, history for example, that I just don't care about whatsoever. Society cannot force education on individuals if they refuse to learn, and it cannot make people care about things that they don't. Why do schools require students to take classes they don't want to take? They should instead take the time to teach them about things they are interested in, and want to learn about. I would rather have one amazing talent than a bunch of mediocre ones.



I realize now that this most likely doesn't make sense to anyone but me, and I'm not sure if this is even what I am supposed to be writing about. It was just one of my Writing Territories. So...yepp.

Reading & Writing

I like reading novels. My favorite author is Jodi Picoult, I read 5 of her books this summer/fall. She has a very unique style of writing that I love. I love writing songs, and writing about what is going on in my life. If I am frustrated about something or upset it is easiest for me to get it out with writing. If all is well, I usually don't write as much. I like to write about serious topics that I feel strongly about, because I like to write about things that matter, and it makes it easier when you care about it.