freshwater pearls

it feels so good just to sit down.

just got back from work. it wasn't a bad day and i finally sold the shoe books to someone. i usually like to recommend more mainstream books for people unless they are exceptional readers and want to delve deeper. i like the shoe books a lot but i've never recommended it before because the age group for these books aren't interested in it anymore, or at least it seems that way: they want Junie B. Jones or Captain Underpants. but i finally got to sell it today to a mother whose daughter loves theater but doesn't like to read. when i showed her the books, her daughter seemed enthusiastic about it. i was happy.

thursday night, i was working on a paper due the next day when my sister comes home at around 10:00 from her fiance's house (no, they don't live together, because we don't believe in that sort of thing--despise me if you dare--but she'll move in with him after the wedding so she stops by his place to cook him dinner sometimes and help furnish the place). she went straight to my mother, who was watching TV in the livingroom, the sound of which was distracting me. they got into this heated discussion about the wedding and D and his girlfriend and her fiance's mother who has been giving them a hard time. what with the TV and their voices, all concentration was lost to me. so, i went to bed and resolved to wake up early morning on Friday to finish my paper. the class it was due for started at 11 so i figured i could get up at 5 and finish it with time to spare.

the alarm infiltrated my sense of hearing at around 6am. i shut if off and tried numerous times to will myself to get up. when i finally did slip off the covers, i was in a bad mood.

the birds made their questioning chirrup sound from underneath their covers as i went down to the kitchen, sat at the office niche there and turned on the computer. my papers and books were still strewn, open, all over the desk. i ended up finishing the paper well within the three hours i had alloted myself. but as i was writing it, i kept remembering things. it amazed me how many things came back to me so early in the morning.

one such memory was from freshman year of highschool, honors english I with Sr. Marie (bless her Irish soul). in that class, we had to write a paper every week to be due on Tuesdays. Tuesdays at my highschool were days with 90 minute classes so that day was perfect for paper criticquing. every week someone also had to read their paper aloud to the class and have their peers comment on it. this tuesday, the one i remember so clearly, was my day to read my paper. the genre was biography. i had interviewed the guy who sat next to me the week before and had written a paper about him to test my comprehension of the biography genre. so, i read it aloud.

i don't recall what others said about my paper and i don't think there were a lot of comments. but she, Sr. Marie, asked me to read a couple of sentences to her again. once i had done so she said, "there is nothing in that sentence. there is no content, no phrase supporting the claim you made earlier on in the paper. its a beautifully written sentence, but there isn't any meat in it." i was glad she put a little bit of a compliment in there, but i was also embarassed. and she was right. i could write nicely, but none of my sentences had a purpose, none of them were geared to support any claims or give any information. this was one of the things i remembered as i wrote my paper friday morning, four years after that incident. i made sure that each an every sentence had a purpose: claim, evidence, warrant, transition.

as i re-read the passage i was quoting, i remembered something else.

senior year of highschool, AP English IV, Mrs. Eagan. a timed-writing exercise based on Thomas Hardy's poem "The Convergence of the Twain". i analyzed it stanza by stanza and the paper that came out of such methodical analysis had motion to it. i think it was the best paper i had ever written for that class, even if i only had 20 minutes to write it. and yesterday as i was analyzing the passage sentence by sentence, i remembered that motion, that likeness of a camera moving through a sunken ship.

*yawns*

wow, i bore even myself. its best if i start reading.