State Of The Planet

Well, let me start off saying that this was the most difficult reading I've had to do this semester. I've never been a fan of poetry and anything to do with the environment. Yet after reading this poem I must admit that it did intrigue me. What I really enjoyed about the poem was how effortless the author was able to illustrate everything he was attempting to get across. Even though four pages of poetry was very tough to stay focused on, my mind kept coming back to one sentence in the first stanza, "Inside the backpack, dog-eared, illustrations, A book with the title Getting to Know Your Planet."  And it is this sentence that I want to touch upon.

The Backpack- we use backpacks to store things and to transport things. It can be perhaps a representation of our minds, how we can keep vast amounts of information and be able to recall that information in an instant.

Illustrations- what the author is talking about here is our interactions with the world around us.

The book Getting to Know Your Planet- this one struck me the most. We all know about the basics of the planet, like 70% of the Earth is water and the other 30% is land mass. but what I'm talking about is going deeper, about the stuff that truly means something to our planet, like water purification, greenhouse emissions, and climate change (or global warming).

Can Sonny's Blues Be Your Blues?

This story is probably the hardest story that I had to read for Lit. For a short story there was a lot of things in motion before the story began so it was a little tough in the beginning of the read. But the story is about the narrator who picked up the morning paper and saw that his brother was arrested and put in jail. After corresponding several times via mail, the narrators brother Sonny comes to Harlem to visit. The whole interaction between the brothers is very uncomfortable begins to turn awkward. Eventually Sonny hints to his brother that he was addicted to drugs and that was the reason that he went to jail. the narrator attempts to be understanding, but doesn't really succeed at it. This is due in part because throughout the story the narrator feels this sense of discord and and hatred for his surroundings and what Sonny represents. This theme was mentioned so many times that I am going to write about this theme. The narrator left for the army and returned, and in a way never seemed to escape where he came from. Have you known somebody from your childhood that you were so close too and then all of a sudden lost touch, then years later you reconnected with them and you turned out better than they did and when you tried to help them you couldn't relate to them? The theme behind this theme of the narrators feeling of hatred for his surroundings and of his brother is that no matter where you go, no matter what do or will do, no matter how hard you tried, you will never escape the surroundings that you grew up in. It will still catch up to you, just like it did to Sonny.

The Zombieland Ese

This is not what he was looking for. A desolate land across the Rio Grande. Alejandro had been looking forward to seeing his family, the family that he paid so much money to send over from Mexico to the states waiting for him at the river bank. Before him was a wasteland, cars everywhere, car parts, building material and other stuff. The sight put him into despair, seeing that his ticket to freedom had been his wife Marisol holding his phony green card. His two companions came up behind him, Pepe and Machete taking in the scenery as well.  Alejandro didn’t trust these two since all they wanted was to eat taco bell and eat fajitas for the rest of their lives.  They descended the hill and approached the highway they looked for a vehicle that was in working order, hoping that they would be able to begin their journey in U.S. Alejandro began cursing out loud about the current situation and how they would get out of it. While he was mumbling to himself Pepe spoke up “thius is not what I was expecting ese, all this destruction man I did not sign up for” Machete nodded his head in agreement and just grunted “I’m hungry”. “Do you guys only think of yourselves all the time?” Alejandro retorted. Before they could answer He took off moving faster, looking for the stupid car. After a while they came upon a Cadillac that had full tank. At first they admired the car and moved around it. Finally Machete was able to pop the door open and allowed Pepe to hot wire the car and get it started. All of this was taking too long and Alejandro was started to get irritated. All he wanted was to see his wife and kids to start his new life with them. All of this was not going to happen if he continued to hang with these eggheads of companions. Finally Pepe got the car started and Alejandro jumped in the driver seat and waited for the other two. As they got in Machete gave him a “where are we going” look, to which he responded “Houston, to find my family.” Machete nodded and promptly fell asleep. As he was driving, Alejandro couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that they were about to run into something bad. Something really bad.