4/8

Today we went over the second half of the book and discussed a few sections from there.  We looked at Live wire, which was about a down power line that scared everyone, although no one got her everyone in the neighborhood stared at it.  It was compared to the death of his brother and how no one saw this coming, although the knew the day would come, they were not ready for it.  But, who could be ready for the death of a family member?

We looked at the house of the future which talked about the author's trip to Disney World with his family in his boyhood.  He thoroughly described the House of the Future attraction that they had back then.  And how the house had all these gadgets and did all these cool things.  Like how the house had mobile lighting that bathe the rooms in a glow and warmth like that of the sun's light.  He also, talked about how the house had ten times as many windows as a normal home.  He talked about the large pool the house had and compared to a kiddie pool and how much more amazing it looked with it's amoeba shape.

In the same work, he spoke of his brother's death and how it affected the family.  That day in November, how it was cloudy before the days leading up to his brother's death and how it rained non-stop on that day.  He also, talked about how his parents were out of it.  How blank they were.  with his mother just holding an unlit cigarette and his father just driving almost directionless.  I pictured such a sad sight.

My 1st grade classroom

            My 1^st day in 1^st grade.  Unlike, kindergarten there weren’t many crying faces and the classroom was not as colorful as the predecessor.  Since it was a Catholic school, everyone seemed to blend together since we all wore the same thing, with the only exception being that the female half of the school wore skirts and their male counterparts wore pants, naturally.  The board hung on the wall in front of the room.  Above, was stabled the number line which was all colorful and the numbers were personified with cartoonish eyes, arms and legs, this nonsensical thing attracted much of my attention.  The doorway to the hall stood beside the blackboard which was, for some apparent reason, greenish in color.  When you come into the classroom on your right would sit everyone’s desk.  Which were individual desk all facing the board, aligned perfectly with its row and column.  On the left were the coat racks which pretended to be lockers or where made into lockers unknowingly.  Everyone had their own coat rack, which was always over stuffed and spilled out onto the floor.  They were quite messy when the classroom was active and full, papers were always everywhere.  In mine, hid my bad progress reports. 

            Toward the back of the room sat the teacher’s desk, which also face forward.  And behind that were the big window or perhaps at the time they were bigger that mine which probably made them seem bigger than they were.  Even though they were big the only thing you can see outside them was the adjacent building, which was the Cathedral.  The Cathedral was huge on the inside and I always found it beautiful.  We went there often for prayer and sometimes communion, I remember doing a confessional once, too. But, I don’t remember what I confessed.  But back to our classroom.  The ceiling had lights that hung down but, not too far from the ceiling.  Those lights, I remember whenever the classroom was real quiet you could hear them silently hum a bored buzzing sound.  The classroom smelled like old library, which gave off a dusty somewhat ancient book smell.  On the wall to the far right of the classroom beyond the desk, were all types of posters.  There were posters of animals, sesame street characters, tele-tubbies, power rangers, Jesus, Santa, etc.  The wall even had the alphabet poster, which was used when we covered the letters, spelling, and sounds of letters.  Although it was dull compared to the colorful kindergarten class, it had a comfortable feeling.

4/1

My birthday.. yay...

Today in class we started reading the Maps To Anywhere by Bernard Cooper.  We looked over the first half of the book and talked about a few of the sections.  I looked at Capiche?, the title caught my attention.  I read it think about a mobster movie.  But it turned out it wasn't that kind of story.  It was a tale about an adventure in Italy.  although in the end the whole story turned out to be a lie, which I found kind of funny because why the lie, although it was a good one.

Someone mentioned Atlantis, which asked an interesting question about where did barber poles originate from.  And, talked of the relationship of the author and his barber and how he and this man were closer than him and his father.  We also look at How To Draw, about how his art teacher said his art wasn't art because it didn't meet her standards of what art should be.  I also found this one funny because isn't beauty in the eye of the beholder, how can one person defame someones art or compare someone's art to another.  That hardly seems fair.

Then we read sleeping with my father, which talked about the author's father.  This talked about his father's marriage to his mother and his job during the author's boyhood.  How his father, a lawyer, would cheat on his mother with the secretary.  Then after the divorce, his religious second wife and his third wife who seemed to always be in heat.  Then the author talks about how sad his father seemed to be later in life and how they began to form a real father son relationship because his father was distant and busy at work during his childhood.