Confession Tuesday

Fairy Tales to Me, Just Lies

              I don’t know what to write about, really, but I won’t go on boring you with the same old stories of princes and princesses and all that fairy tale jazz. It is nice to read and all, but who can relate to it? It's always princess this and princess that, she meets a prince, next true love’s kiss, and I can bet you know what comes later, of course they live happily ever after!

                 Well, No! Life just isn’t that way. It's sometimes full of sorrow, misery, and greed. It will stay that way if you don’t choose anything to do, or if you don’t want to help anybody out. There’s a solution though, you’ll only live happily if you think positively. Well, of course there are some mean people out there, but life doesn’t have to be perfect to be enjoyable. Heck, if everything was perfect the bad wouldn’t help us better appreciate the good things. So, if we were all robots walking around every day in a perfect world it would just always be same old, same old.

                 What I’m trying to say is, I realize, I like the world the way it is even though there is bad and it sometimes disgusts me. I am recently really trying hard to focus on the positive. I’ll even confess it's hard to do this, but if you think about it, the good really outweighs the bad.

These people like: Santa, The Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy are to hide children's young and innocent minds from the horrors in the world. They should just teach us to look on the positive side instead. (It's hard, though, because on the news all the time it's only so and so just died, or a tsunami hit here etc.) These things do exist they are the spirit of giving to those who are in need the most. The people forced to during times like Christmas brace them selves for the cold put on some ratty old blanket and sit on the curb begging all Holiday long. 

I confess, even I find the world is a hard place. It's just always throwing challenges, but I try looking on the positive side of things, really I do.         

A Positive Twist

Fruit on my papaya tree eaten by the birds

A Positive Twist 

Looking at the good small moments that are simply special and important. These moments come up all the time. Thinking of a warm cup of tea or a breakfast outside or just a joke that makes you laugh. 

I remember waking up early, my friend Christopher in the blow up bed, and me in my own bed which is an oasis for dreams as I sleep. I open my eyes slowly sit up and stretch. It is early morning about 7:00 am and I am just awakening.

I slowly pull the blind back to look at the trees for birds. I see out through the window two Social Flycatchers land. 

“Hey Christopher come see these birds.” 

“Do you know what these birds are?” I question 

“Great Kiskadees” 

“You’re close” I say, 

“But those are Social Flycatchers.”

“Oh” he said 

I went on to show him the difference between the two birds in their color and their calls.

I then got down off my bed and opened the other curtain on my right just a little bit to let in some light. I walk to the bathroom and brush my hair then walk over to my dresser to get my clothes I quickly get dressed and so does Christopher and we both head down for breakfast.

As we open the door of my room my mom is walking by to go downstairs.

“Good morning boys.” she says 

“Good morning mom.” I reply 

We walk down the stairs and into the kitchen were my dad is cooking breakfast and heating up pancakes.

When everything is ready we go to the sliding door to eat in the backyard and as we go I see that two hibiscuses have bloomed on the plant. 

“Wow look there are two.” I say

We eat the pancakes with delicious maple syrup drizzled all over them and help ourselves to fruit from a plate laid out in front of us by my mom. 

As we ate the great food I looked to my right 

“Christopher look at the hummingbird” I say pointing to the little bird with its ever moving wings.

“Oh yeah!” he replied enthusiastically. 

We just watched as the little bird drank from the hibiscus flew up a bit hovered and zoomed away quickly in search of another nectar rich flower.

I appreciated everything around me the nature the shade casted upon us from the papaya tree, birds chirping loudly, the crystalline drops of due drizzled on the grass, the fresh morning air. 

I looked around and saw everything clearly just as it was simple, yet complex at the same time. 

“Are you happy to have maple syrup Christopher?” 

“Yes I sure am!” 

One more simple, positive thing to add to the list I say to myself.    

Book Review The Color of Water

Eric Gauthier

Mrs. Meadows

English E-F

December 5, 2011

The Color of Water -Thoughts and Review

 

The Color of Water by James McBride is his Tribute as a black man to his white mother. This memoir is an emotional journey of what it is like growing up in New York in a time of racial segregation and injustice. This book is organized by going back and forth between James’s childhood and his mother's In my opinion this is a very profound book that is about a family of thirteen kids barely making it through life. They lived in the Red Hook housing projects in Brooklyn.  Due to his surroundings as a youth, James gets pulled into things like gangs and drugs, but later on turns away from violence and fights and starts music and writing. 

  Having a white mother as a child he thinks nothing of it, but soon begins to, as he gets older, wonder who he is, but first to know this he must know who his mother is. Every time he asks about her past she tells him to mind his own business. The reason she hides her past is because it is her only way to keep going because her past is to painful to bring back into her mind. Her childhood was harsh and bitter and she was watched over by her strict and careless father Tateh. He does not care at all for her crippled mother and does not help her. All he cares about is money he makes in his store which he forces Ruth and Dee-Dee to work in for him. Ruth is the name that James’ mother used, but she used to be known as Rachel. It shows how cruel a culture the world has evolved into not accepting anything different or unique.

   I think that James has learned about himself that no matter what background you are from you can still be a success, but not without a little help from his mother.  Ruth is the person, even in her own sorrow, who helped him become a journalist, a writer, a composer, and saxophonist. 

Ruth is Jewish in her childhood and turns to, and accepts Jesus as her savior with her first husband Dennis McBride. She uses prayer to help her continue. She went to church every day with Dennis to hear Rev. Brown preach the messages of the Lord. When Rev. Brown dies Dennis and Ruth founded the New Brown Memorial Church. James has understood that humor can be a cure to a large family with many siblings and that even though sometimes there are fights, arguments, and disagreements that you still have to stick together. His mother always told him never to share anything about himself with others. 

  It was as if she was trying to create the perfect world within the house that she never had as a child. She ruled over all. She was the queen of the house and she always valued education. She would say “Educate yourself or you’ll be a nobody.”    

I really liked this line because it shows how much education is important and it is so concise an is straight to the point because if you don’t educate yourself nobody will recognize as a significant contributor to the world’s ideas. Basically I’m trying to say if you don’t educate yourself nobody will take you seriously either. 

He shows how she needs to stay active to stay alive and to keep moving through the challenges of life. James eventually drops out of school.  Education was one of the most important things for her children, for them to become someone and to find their way into the world. They luckily do not let this get in their way, the children all successfully go to college and university. The book shows a struggle against authority poverty the fight against segregation and of a mother single-handily taking care of a whole family. They don’t understand, while being children, why color or race matters or why they should not be integrated. James realizes that his mother had real strength, power and courage to have made it through a tragic childhood and motherhood, but was soon healed by her family as they grew older and made her proud.

Poetry Among The Mitt

Eric Gauthier

Mrs. Meadows

English E-F

Oct. 5, 2011

Poetry Among the Mitt

   I thought I could hear his voice saying the poems under his breath.

I felt that when I read along the green words just as he used to during his games I could

feel him reading them with me.The glove was worn and old. He loved that glove he got it cheap just like I got my hunting hat , but still he adored that glove. It brought me comfort when it lay on my chest. As I breathed in and out it rose then dropped. I held it close to me. I clutched on to it as if it were a trace of him left behind. It was only a trace of leukemia that they had found in Christopher. All that killed such a strong person was a trace, a minute fraction, almost nothing. The night he died I locked myself in the garage and smashed all the windows in there. My hand began to bleed when I looked down at his glove and thought that Christopher would not do such a thing in anger. My heart sank in guilt I just couldn’t help it breaking the windows and all, but I knew Christopher would not want me to be all messed up like this over him.

I still respected him, he was so intelligent and so young.

He was so kind I can still remember his dark brown eyes glowing whenever he was writing a new poem onto his glove. He was left handed. I remember his left hand moving back and forth in rhythmic motions with his fingers wrapped around that green pen. That is all I think of when I see a baseball mitt green pen and Robert Frost poems.

The leather was worn and smooth to the touch with green ink wrapping all around it like ribbons. He would always have it with him reading the poems over and over. They never tired him. He could read them for ages, but still Christopher would find the poems magical. They brought him joy and he could make his own. He was a born writer.

I hated the thought that none of my brother’s poems would ever be written again.

The blood from the cuts along my arm seeped down staining my clothes.

I took a piece of sharp glass and bravely pulled it out of one of my

bigger wounds. It stung pretty bad, but I thought of what Christopher had to go through before he died. The whole situation made my wounds seem like nothing but grief alone.

My parents had to take me to this psychoanalysis. I don’t blame them after I busted those windows out, but they should have known how I felt. They lost a son just as I lost my brother. We should have all been grieving over the same person, Christopher.

I think they brought up all this psychoanalysis stuff to get their minds off of Christopher being gone.

I remember him so clearly he was quite tall with reddish hair that always glinted in the bright summer sun as he played baseball with his friends. You could say that his mitt in away reflected who he was and what he liked. He was a very magnetic person I always felt drawn to him, like his friends that he would play baseball with. It was hard for me to finally realize that he was really gone. That he was cold, lifeless, and dead. This horrible truth finally really hit me when we had to go to his funeral. The hearse pulled up with him.

He was in a sandy colored coffin with his head laid on a small felt pillow. He smiled in that casket of his the faint outline of a smile was present on his face. When all the darkly dressed people and family and friends began coming in to the chapel to pay him their respects. I went up to the coffin and laid old poems he had written on his chest. I figured He would still want to read them. More people then I thought came in to say goodbye to him. His teachers, friends, neighbors. They all were there. I just looked at him sadly and I just wanted to tell him how much he was loved. I know he knew that, but I wanted to speak with him again face to face. Sometimes late at night we would just talk not about anything very specific or significant, but we just talked into the night.

His sickness was not reversible. It was in his blood It would quickly spread throughout his body his innocent body. What had he ever done to anyone I always asked myself he never got angry at anyone he was so kind. There was just no way to stop his sickness.

I will never forget how focused he was when he wrote and how his happy spirit would always spread towards everyone and making there day. Never shall I forget how he smiled when he played baseball.

He was just eleven when he died he was just too young. I was not ready to bid him goodbye, I never would have been. After all life does not slow down for you in just keeps on going.

    

Plymouth Letter

Eric Gauthier                                                                                                                                                                      Gauthier1 

Mrs. Meadows/ Mrs. Reese

English E/F

September 17, 2011

                                                                                                                                                                    Wednesday October 12, 1624

   My Dearest Anne,

     How are you my dear daughter? I hope all is well. We were all blessed by the Lord to arrive on dry land. My daughter you have grown into a beautiful young lady. I am hoping you will come by sea to our wonderful village soon.

We all agreed on the faithful name of Plymouth as the name of our new growing town.

We can practice our religion freely her without the persecution of the imperative  king James.

We have already made laws to prevent the guile of evil-doers upon the colony

Weather here has been fairly nice and puts you in a good disposition. Your mother likes the bright sunlight very much. I’ ve heard of all the rain back in England.

I have come up with great ideas to make progress here. One day as I looked out into my cultivated field it must have triggered something. The ideas just spontaneously came into my head

Hope all is well. Come soon, I’ll be waiting. When the time comes I hope your voyage goes well.

Yours Truly, Pa

The Chilled Night

The Chilled Night

My mind is blank of thoughts, but one.  I am walking to my house, the air is heavy, the lights only dimly light the street.  The thought that remained in my mind was that piercing eye.  It was horrible.  I saw it on the face of an old man in the market.  His eye was a glimpse into hell, a fiery window into the bowels of the earth.

The man’s expression was empty and concise.  He had nothing to hide in the rest of his mind, but that eye pointed in the other direction.  He was hiding a secret is all anyone would say, once they made eye contact.    You could not take your gaze off the hideous organism lodged in his head.  It was a torturous gaze for your mind.  The ache of my head was excruciating after that gaze that lasted seconds, but what felt like a lifetime. 

My thoughts began to scramble together, my pace quickened , fresh beads of cold sweat formed on my brow.  I felt as if that despicable eye, the devil’s tool, was watching me from behind.

The day had been long at work.   I was clad in a dark cloak.  I held it close to my chest.  I felt the thought of the eye continuing to haunt me, causing abrasion to my mind.  I was electrified with fear  as strange noises filled the night.  My endeavours to stay calm and sane began to fail.  I broke into a run towards my house, going quickly up the street.  My heart was beating loudly behind my ribs as if it wanted to burst out of its bony cage.  I began to run out  of breath.  I felt dehydration coming to me.

In a cursory manner, I thrust my hand towards the door quickly turning the key in the lock and entered my house slamming the door.  This brought some relief to me.  I went to my chamber and put on my night shirt.  I went into my bed and tried to convince myself this was a mere nightmare, a simulation from my head.  Alas, it was no dream.  I sat not moving, just gingerly listening to the chilled whistling of the wind outside and the tapping of the branches against the window.  

Over the noise from outside, I heard it, a gruesome spine chilling scream.  I think the awful noise had  derived from the building next to mine.  I grimaced at the sound; it was truly one of horror.  I just pulled my sheets up and continued to listen.  I surmised bad, dark things could be happening in the other dwelling, maybe even murder!

I felt the evil eye of the man was open, to make sure everything was there.  With a glance, his eye saw nothing on the inventory in his hand,  was gone from his house.  He kept this next to his bed.  Now I remembered the old man lived next door.  Carefully I  thought and then I decided to warn the police.  I ran outside the door in my night clothing and told the police what had happened and what I said had helped them to corroborate what was going on.  They said someone had come before to warn them.  

Then, I ran back to my house without stopping for breath.  I went back to my chamber.  I climbed into bed as the floors creaked and noises of muffled thuds came through the wall and to my ears.   I felt like I was going to succumb in fear.  Then I thought, if it was murder, the eye, horrible and evil, would be dead.

Eric

Memoir Monday

The Butterflies Roam Free

I heard his weakened voice responding to me saying I loved him. I heard from his lips "me too."
Hot tears fell from my eyes the phone went blank, all I heard was the pulse of the phone after I had said goodbye. I did not know this was the last goodbye I would say to my grand-papa during my life on earth.
I hated to know he was in pain that he was suffering deeply. Then I knew these were the last few days in his war against Multiple Sclerosis. I realized he was soon going to die. I realize now not to take people for granted I miss him so much. I was afraid for him. My dad was there with him. I still had to go to school during this time I hoped he wouldn't die. As school finished I walked to my to my car. My mom seemed sad I asked her why, she looked at me and said "He died, he died last night in his sleep." I began to feel the tears of memories with him come down my face. She did tell me until now, she thought it was best to keep it  from me till this moment because she wanted me to get through the day at school. I got home and the atmosphere was sad and heavy. I went to see how my dad was doing I called him, his voice sounded dull and empty like something was missing. I could not blame him for bare losing my dad as had just happened to him. He talked with me, I tried comforting him as he tried to comfort me. That night I dreamt of the milestones of my life that my grand-papa would not attend in my future, with his empty spot in my mind, staying empty till my life ends.

Eric

Photo by Eric Gauthier

In my backyard the things I see, Things like maybe a kiskadee.
A papaya tree in my backyard some toucans come and eat it up.
The fruit so sweet it is so good all the creatures that I soon shall meet.
Snakes I hope I do not see for if they bite bad luck for me.
Plants and flowers, Hibiscus, rain showers.
So much for you to sight even in the dusk near night.

Eric

Track Try Outs

I ran my fastest, everything around is blurred.
The wind blows through my hair and howls into my ears.
I am trying the 800m race. I breathe in then out in deep slow breaths.
My first lap around the track is coming to an end.
I see, out of the corner of my eye, the metal poles and the park gate rush by.
Onto the second lap my lungs heave the air laboriously in and out.
I feel as free as a bird flying through the sky.
I move my legs faster on this second lap for I know it is the last.
The last corner rounded, now my pace quickens I go faster.
I push myself to the end and tie for three minutes.
I smile in final satisfaction.

Eric

The Child With No Voice

He tried to speak, but was left unheard.
The adults did not hear or did not want to hear a childish point of
view. The child was not mute, but they still did not listen.
His opinion was no opinion to them, but the problem is children are not understood.
Adults don't understand. They are the people of today still their voices are left unheard,
even though every child has a voice. So you have a voice too let it out, let it be heard speak for yourself and don't be left unheard.

Eric