Bravery is the reason for fear. Bravery is who we are, is the basis of humanity. Fear comes from the lapse of bravery. Fear is easy. Fear fills up what we miss in our perpetual bravery. Bravery is what endures, but fear is what replaces.
I am never there. And in my never being there, I am always the same emptiness. I cannot tell if time moves. I am not there. An hour is a minute is a year.
Happiness has no definition. No word can be defined. Pages and pages are dedicated to bringing order to the way our letters are arranged. They are a waste. Try to define emotion in letters. It is futile.
They need to change. They need to know. But they do not know that they need to know and so I do not change. Only I know the reason and they can never understand. Only I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker. They do not know I am afraid. I know they are better. But this I can never tell. I already know to pretend. I am the in-between, the space, the emptiness. I have no side.
A whisper in the dark is a promise you don’t forget. Silence builds the deepest communication. I believe only those that see my flaws. I trust only those that believe I am perfect.
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okkkk so I talked to you already but here's some comments.
ReplyDeleteI understand you're use of being vague and indefinite, but you're going too far with it, I think. I'm left wondering what in the world I'm trying to conclude or understand from this because it's so abstract yet so packed with what appears to be disparate philosophical assertions.
On the line of assertions, I think you sound too preachy in this piece. Yeah, I understand what you're getting at, but it just sounds like you are imposing meaning to the world without fully discussing anything. Read the bravery/fear parts. There are no explanations. You are just pushing these facts on us, and I guess while that could be effective if that's the intent of it all, the piece as a whole is more like an exploration/soul search so it kinda bugs me.
The part with "they" are good though. I like those. I still think "they" is "I" in part because the fact that "they" don't know makes "I" fail to change. So it's like a splitting of the narrator as an observer of him/herself, which is a cool and interesting dynamic. I think you should pursue that in more detail.
Throughout the piece, you get predictable since the pattern is essentially a list of asserted hypotheses and then the subsequent apparent contradictions that come after that. I start losing some interest reading thru.
The narrator's apparent lack of confidence (through all that fear and emptiness shenaniganry and the stuff about belief and distrust at the end) comes out. Cool.
I'm not really catching the whisper in the dark part though. Whispers are not really silent, and so they aren't the deepest communication, so it's a promise that I can't forget, but apparently not a very deep one... and is this darkness a metaphorical "I'm so sad" kind of darkness or a true "lights out" darkness... I don't know, I just don't know how to tackle that. I think it's a little too open ended, which ties back into my comment at the start that a lot of this is excessively vague.
I just think you're trying too hard. :)
I agree quite a bit with omar.
ReplyDeleteI really like the meaning that I take out of the story, which for me was just the general idea that everything is a contradiction, and different people then percieve things differently, beleive, based off what they want to believe and need to believe and things like that. However, I think that you spend a lot of time throwing around loosly connected ideas that if I try, I can put together in my own way, but lack enough of a structure to give the reader any idea what point you personally are trying to get across, and also to keep the reader's interest, as omar said. The idea changes slightly, but the general idea of each part in the first half and then in the second half is pretty similar, and I personally do not think that you push far enough from your original idea to a deeper one. That may have not been your intent, but it seems like it is with the last line, but the ending seems rather abrubt and as omar suggested, hard to understand. So I think the basis for the writing is actually really neat, but that if you yourself had a better idea of where it was going, and gave a little bit more direction to your piece, leading to the last line, it would be a lot stronger.
I think you are trying too hard to be too vague because you like being vague and think making people think is what will make you a better writer, but I think when you have this complex an idea, making it super vague at the same time makes it pretty hard to follow. So while I like the short sentences that suggest a point which is often contradicted later, I think a little more connection would go a long way. But that is just. But I think this could be a great start for something if you want to pursue it.
Construction - Unlike Omar, I really like that the paragraphs in both halves match up. I found myself going back to reread your origin point (which is good - I did this b.c. I was interested, not b.c. I was confused)
ReplyDeleteI found that the beginning paragraph is not as strong as the rest of the piece. There are too many short they sentences and does not draw the reader in as well as it could. Two ideas for the introduction - you could start the paragrap with "They pretend and I pretend" and cut out the first few senteces or it could work to start with a sentence similar to the lines "you wanted the truth" "didn't you" (some little sentece about peo. making assumptions or always wanting the truth or something similar)
In para 3 - you use the word "character" but the word has multiple meanings (it could be letters, peo. in a book, your personal character, a person in general etc.) It would be stronger and easier to understand if the reader could tell exactly what you were talking about. I was lost throughout that paragraph b.c. I couldn't tell what you were talking about
For the paragraphs about happiness and defintions - in the 2nd part you say "happiness has no definition" and I think it could add a lot to the piece if you put in a dictionary definition of happiness or your definition of happiness - i love when you make a point and then disprove it and this could make that notion stronger
For what Gerson and Omar were saying about specific details - I love the points where you give little descriptions of your idea like describing trust as "a parent's smile" and "eyes closing and the brow unfurrowing". These small two word images give the reader an image to hold onto and I think it would be stronger if you added more of these. For example, I think you should add some of these in para 7 of parts 1 & 2.
There are a few points in the main paragraphs where you used the word "you" or kept things very general by using the word "the" - in the lines "you wanted the truth" "didn't you" you ask the reader to own and admit their emotions - the piece would be much stronger if you did the same thing in your paragraphs. Just changing it to the word "I" would add a lot to your writing.
Finally, I love the ending and (unlike Omar) really like the pieces about bravery and trust
Halloo, just intruding.
ReplyDeleteI think I really like this piece but there's no way for me to be sure. When I take your essay at face value, I really enjoy it. Your wordsmithing is exquisite and a joy to read. Each paragraph taken individually is a little piece of wisdom wrapped in phrasing that approaches poetry. However, I find that when I try to bring all these puzzle pieces together into one, they don't fit together. I don't see much of a connection here, and what I think of it now is that it might be some kind of stream-of-consciousness kind of thing. What I think I see is that you're trying to show the "you" in "you wanted the truth" that THEY CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH! But like I said, I can't be sure, because when I try to take this piece as a whole I go cross-eyed and I don't think I could figure it out without a travel guide and a decoder ring.
As I said earlier, I think your rhetorical style and your word choice nears perfection. The only section in which this majorly falters is the first one about bravery, the one that starts, "every act of bravery is..." It confuses me. How can bravery fill something or replace something if bravery is not? Anyway.
I find myself re-reading and re-re-reading to figure something out and the net keeps coming up empty. To sum things up, I guess I'm hoping for something that combines the success of your style with more overall continuity. And I definitely understand that that's quite the tall order. Just be careful with trying too hard, like Omar said. "Out there" is refreshing, but there's a limit.