Above and Beyond Activities

Ask someone older than you to describe what the world was like before you were born.

 

   I asked my boyfriend’s mother, which is 73 years old but doesn’t look it, what it was like before I was born. She thought for a minute and said that people seemed to be conscience and taught more strictly about manners. You would never call someone by their first name unless asked to by that person. An example she gave is that she rarely gets thank you notes when she sends someone a gift. There was also a lot of intangible lines or barriers that people either avoided or fought against or fought to keep among them and other peoples. She spoke that when she lived in New York they would go to “black town” and although she soon saw the wrongness of it as a child that is just the way it was, a division of area where mostly white people lived and another where mostly blacks did. Of course, I did not grow up where things were entirely that way, I could still see remnants of that even as I was a child and this surprises me how long this has been and will likely still continue past now. She also said that as she was growing up was when a lot of movements were building momentum against such discriminatory lines with the Black Panthers and women’s rights and others even ones that spoke out against the government which before was not as prevalent or at least in her opinion as impactful. I wish we hadn’t become as disrespectful and thoughtless as she feels the persons of this time have steered but I am also glad that we have improved in our openness to except people for who they are instead of labeling them as something other than ourselves.

 

Go somewhere familiar by means of an unfamiliar route.

 

           I went to an area of the park across the street from where I live via a path I have never taken. It takes you to the back side of the disk golf area where the grass always seems to be dead, presumably because they don’t have sprinklers installed in that area. I was walking the dogs and thought this would be a good opportunity to knock out this “thing to do.” Although not as grand an adventure as I am guessing this was intended to be, it was all the adventuring I had time to do this weekend. Despite the short detour I did discover a few things about the park I didn’t before. First that there is house nuzzled a bit in the trees along one edge a lot closer than I had first thought when taking the path on the houses side. From the angle I normally view it is quite a way from the cement past a ditch nearly hidden from the woods. But on this side it seemed really in contrast with mostly green lawn and trees but then the abrupt death where the park grass I guess starts. Maybe it’s just where I come from but I don’t think I would like to live that close to a well-traveled public park path for security reasons. My boyfriend however said he wouldn’t mind due to the conveniences of how close it is where as he now has to cross a main road in order to utilize the park. The second thing I noticed was how many other disc golf goals were in this corner of the park which seemed odd to me since for most of this year this area is in desperate need of bush hogging as may again be an east coast/farming term but means that is usually overgrown and needs a tracker to get through the tangle of overgrowth. The reason why this surprised me is that so many people use this park for the purpose of disc golf that to be missing this many goals for so much of the year seemed like poor designing when they set up the 18 or whatever holes.

 

Look up the words to a song you half-remember.

 

The hills are alive with the sound of music
With songs they have sung for a thousand years
The hills fill my heart with the sound of music
My heart wants to sing every song it hears
My heart wants to beat like the wings of the birds
that rise from the lake to the trees
My heart wants to sigh like a chime that flies
from a church on a breeze
To laugh like a brook when it trips and falls over
stones on its way
To sing through the night like a lark who is learning to pray
I go to the hills when my heart is lonely
I know I will hear what I've heard before
My heart will be blessed with the sound of music
And I'll sing once more

 

 

 

I gotta say I thought this song was a lot longer…I may have thought this since the scene changes so much at the opening of the movie as well as the musical phrasing in the piece. It’s a very uplifting song and after reading this many came to mind but this is the one that made the cut. This whole movie was wonderfully done from the music to the historical meaning it touched me both as a child when my stepmother first showed us on VHS along with My Fair Lady, Oklahoma and I want to say The King and I and as an adult who learned the meaning of the scenes in the musical. Edelweiss that the father begins to sing in front of the crowd hits me extra hard now after learning of truth behind what would have happened after such a bold move during that time period. Albeit it references a flower that can tolerate harsh colds in the mountains and likely has more of an American back ground during when the movie was actually made than any Austrian which surprised me it was still very symbolic.

 

Invent a new word or expression.

 

By the fiery embrets the pair sat.

 

As the baldet man told his farots of rhyme.

 

To the waylet eyed boy on the hearthat.

 

He told of Jurgels outlander and tanterdine.

 

 

 

I wrote this stanza once for my previous poetry class and this “thing to do” reminded me of it. If I could come up with a word I think this would be a good one “tanterdine” it would mean to remanence about better times. I also like the word “waylet” or “waylets” which if I had to decide would mean wide eyed child or children in awe. It could also mean people that wonder. I think that could be fitting too. I think it would be totally awesome if one of these or any other word I came up with caught on and was added to the dictionary. Because of this assignment I may just make that a goal; to write something that is so good with one new word in it that people start using and it gets placed there! Now that’s an interesting goal! I like it!

 

Listen to an album that was once important to you—but that you haven’t heard in years.

 

I choose to listen to Moulin Rouge which a long time ago meant a great deal to me since one of my more serious relationships kind of used it as a staple of the emotion we felt for each other. It didn’t end well. Where the boy moves away to go to school and the two grow apart and each find someone new, without really telling the other but still have feelings for one another. Yeah that sort of not well. I would still consider him my second love with only one almost two to current day to go. I’m not sure If I should count myself lucky to have “loved” so many or cursed that I am not with any of them. Despite this I do enjoy the music of this movie soundtrack and it surprised me how a lot of the songs still tempt me to dance. And I don’t dance…The actors actually sang in this film too which is quite amazing how wonderful it sounds. Some of the lines really bring back those emotions and memories, for good or ill, I suppose it was good to have had them. “Come What May!”

 

Write a review of something you like.

 

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury is one of my favorite books I was asked to read in school at some young age and I never forgot it and have read it many times since. I would say the book should be cherished for its depth but also for its variety. Reading the Martian Chronicles was like seeing fragments of people’s souls, places you will never see, and things you never thought about. When turning the pages, it’s like hearing the voices that whisper softly or shout out and startle you. Your skin crawls as if someone’s watching while reading or tingles as if you’re excited. Time loops around backwards and then moves out of order but feels like the timeline of events were meant to happen that way. Every sense triggered and ideas you didn’t think you would encounter addressed in ways that spark a reader to go on to the next segment. You can’t really call them segues when you feel drawn to explore them as if rounding the next corner not because you know it’s there and that means another space to discover but because each keeps getting better than the last and is new, but blends seamlessly with a place you have already been. He implores a method of “my view” isn’t always “your view” but “our view” we can understand.

 

Practice writing with your other hand.

 

Typing this won’t have the same effect as what I wrote when using my other hand but here goes…

 

            Trying to write with my left hand is both hard and slow. Although my normal handwriting isn’t much better. It’s like being really drunk mins the dizziness unless you look at this long enough, then you many just lose a bit of balance or just become memorized. It probably looks like a kid learning to write and I will tell you I am surprised the variety of ways my hand is finding to form these letters, words and thoughts. I hope I never lose the ability to use my right hand. It sits on that side twitching, straining to keep from assisting my left, like an older sister or mother. My left hand is beginning to ache without the calluses the other has, nor the grip, the muscles aren’t use to being tested this way and is cramping in protest. My hand writing becoming darker and more illegible. Ok I got to stop.

 

Though not a half page typed it was more than a half page written and took a LONG time.