Homelessness

When I was really young I lived in Minneapolis, and I remember passing under bridges and seeing the raggedy blankets and worn, raggedy people who lived there. They scared me a little, but I was fascinated and pitied them. I always wanted to help them, and I assumed they had the same capacity for growth, learning and improvement that I did. If they just got a job, they could get their lives together,  and would be okay, I thought.

I moved to the suburbs and became, like the majority of suburbanites, sheltered from most worldly hardship. I never saw those weary people except for the occasional person begging on the side of the street when we drove downtown. The city installed spikes under bridges to deter the homeless, like pigeons deterred from the top of a shiny red Target sign.

One day I was in driving near uptown with my friend and her mom. They had traveled to India and have been exposed to unimaginable poverty that I have only witnessed in Slum Dog Millionaire. They go to a meditation center regularly, and could be classified as contemporary hippies. We were waiting in the long traffic line on Hennepin near the Walker and we saw a  man with the signature cardboard sign. They were both sympathetic, pondering if they should give him only their doggy bag from the restaurant or include some money too. "Don't give him any money, he'll probably just buy drugs with it" I said ignorantly. To be fair, I heard that quote directly from what I learned in school.
They both looked at me like I was some daft and exotic caged specimen, and quietly handed him the bag out of a cracked window.

More time passed by, and when I saw homeless people I developed a slight twinge of disgust and annoyance. Why can't they just go get a job at McDonalds? I thought. What I didn't realize, and what I have come to understand now is that the homeless are usually mentally ill, unable to work, and do not have the same potential that I do, due to circumstance and genetics.

The tragicness of the homeless problem and the sad people that live in it makes me question the order of the universe If there is some higher power, what kind of sick joke is it to create people who are unable to help themselves?  I am in a complete state of confusion about the subject and I have no idea what a solution could be, the problem seems to overwhelming and unsolvable. To target the chronically homeless the power-law based model seems like a logical place to start.

I think on an individual level all we can do is be compassionate and sympathetic like my hippie friends. If there is an opportunity to give, then do it, and keep the heart open and loving.

Frustration.

1. I unwillingly sit in an uncomfortable, overly-squeaky computer chair and flick open my mom’s laptop grudgingly. The internet taunts me like a forlorn lover. The light blue loading bar gets bigger by fractions of millimeters and stalls. Over. And Over. Thirty minutes pass as I try coaxing it into cooperation. I think about the eight supersite activities, three newspaper articles, ten bookwork problems, and sheet of verb conjugations that I still have to do, all for stupid Spanish 4, and I want to cry. My heartbeat quickens angrily and my blood turns to liquid steel. I want to hurt something. My skin crawls with invisible irritation and I itch savagely everywhere leaving angry steaks of pink across my pale flesh. 

2. Frustration is the state of being infuriated, thwarted, and or disappointed. It often is derived from an extrinsic factor, but must be mentally succumbed to. It can build up slowly over a stretch of time, at which point a person may find themselves mentally shaken by something small, not realizing the derivation of his or her feeling has been caused by a string of events. Frustration is often the the feeling that occurs right before anger, but not quite anger itself. 

3. Frustration can be caused either by an event outside oneself, or a internal, mental problem. Externally frustration is caused often by inaction, neutrality, irksome stimuli, anything that feels out of the person’s own control. Similarly, if one feels they have failed, if one is ashamed, or feels incompetent, again this is out of the persons control, and causes frustration. After this, to become frustrated, one succumbs to his or her negative feeling, and looses the ability to problem solve creatively, tolerate pain, or control his or her mental state. The effect of frustration can be upper tier negative feelings like anger or depression. The ability to overcome momentary feelings of frustration rationally will save the pain if one succumbs to it. 

4. In The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka a prime example of frustration is illuminated. When Gregor, an average working man, wakes up to find he is a beetle, after the initial few months he is hidden by his family and left to his own devices, trapped inside his mind, he lives in a constant state of mental and physical inaction. He cannot communicate to his family, he cannot work, so he gives up hope, becomes sullen and depressed, and eventually dies. The cycle of an external stimuli (turning in to a beetle), followed by a feeling that one’s life is out of his control (inaction, inability to communicate), and the onset of worse negative feelings (depression) characterizes the cycle of frustration, but the feeling of inaction is the frustration itself. 

5. Though close in the emotional scale, anger and frustration are not one feeling. Anger is rage, when all mental inhibition is dissolved, and a person’s actions flow from them in a moment of blind fury. Frustration is the place a few steps before anger is reached, it is when some kind of internal or external stimuli is irritating the person, who feels that stimuli is out of her control. The person has not quite given up their will to remain in control of their own mind. 

Rhetorical modes.... REVEALED 
1. description
2. definition 
3. cause/ effect
4. example
5. compare/ contrast 

The Body is a Canvas?

• Meade speaks in the second person, and talks to "you." This makes the listener feel connected, and involved in the speech, and is able to put themselves into the perspective Meade is creating.
• The varied cadence and musically blunt voice infliction seems to confirm the audience's surprise about her shocking subject, as if to say, YES this is what I am doing. 
• The juxtaposition of imagery is used when Meade talks about shadows, when she paints on top of them, then the real one disappears her own shadow is "brought to light." This dark and light imagery easily allows the audience to visualize her process.
• The whimsical diction lures the audience to agree that Meade's paintings are "magic".
• Meade's sarcastic humor about her plans for after college where she would "work at a desk" makes her path to art seem much more exciting and almost inevitable. 
• "I made the tough decision of not going up to capital hill, but going down to my parent's basement." This phrase uses parallelism between the directions her life could have gone to show their stereotypical relevance to society, up is associated with success and heaven, down is associated with hell and failure. 
• Repetition of the near impossibility of "getting paint to stick to ___" emphasizes the early difficulties Meade had with her project. 
• Her comparison to her own hiding of body parts where paint was washed away to a little kid hiding hands in the pockets provides a sense of legitimacy to her art form. 

Moving Day

"HEAVE!" 

My sweaty hands frantically grip the corner of the seemingly innocent armoire as I push it out of the garage. It's my seventh moving day. Whenever I tell people I am moving, they gasp and start apologizing. I hate their pity because I actually don't mind moving. It is cleansing, and puts life in perspective a bit. Life is all change and transition, and moving is simply when the illusion of regularity is broken. I feel like I am shedding layers of unwanted skin. We are leaving behind my mom's horrible boyfriend and the memories of him that have accumulated like a layer of grime on the bathroom floor. 

Here's my mom's ex... The fedora basically sums things up.

Here is a delightful picture I took of the North
Shore of Oahu to rid yourself of the scarring image above.
If you are still as disturbed as I am, distract yourself with
this video: 

The stark yellow Penske truck lumbers slowly into our driveway. (If you need one, cause every one needs to rent a truck once and a while, here is a link: http://www.pensketruckrental.com/?CID=13735670-VQ16-c) I fling my mattress, the bed frame, my beloved bookshelf, and my worn desk into the truck. My friends and I haphazardly shove the armoire in last. Our baby cat wanders around our legs as we work, sensing the transition, hesitantly sniffing. My red Carola is stuffed with pillows and clothes from my old room and I am ready to set off. 

my roomies, yes my brother is that
annoying. 

Feeling like a part of a funeral procession, my friends pull out behind me, their cars also stuffed with our random possession, and I follow the truck as it oozes down 101. We turn in to our new townhouse and quickly unload the truck. My room is an explosion of vibrant shirts, art supplies and old pieces of homework. I push my bed into a       corner and toss my stuff in to the walk-in closet. 

Our loyal friends and family slowly trickle out and the sun drops away leaving a grandiose picture of fluffy peach and periwinkle brushstrokes. My muscles ache dully as invisible knives chink away at my spine. Stupid armoire. The AC is off and I am a hot mess. I fling myself around in bed trying to get comfortable, drenched in sweat. Mosquitoes, let in by the open doors earlier, buzz around my face triumphantly, cockily. I start thinking about Harry Potter to try to settle my mind... Wingardium Leviosa! Expecto Patronum! Finally I feel myself in that half conscious state where sleep is on the verge of  claiming me when my mom bursts into my room to grab my car keys. I give up. Around three I finally nod off.

In the morning the sky is a murky mirage of grey. I open our shiny new stainless steel fridge and pull out the leftover Thai food for breakfast. I hungrily gulp bites of pho and fried rice as I ponder what other adventures my new home has in store.