Hello, and welcome to my sixth blog post! For this assignment we were asked to write a counterfactual to our blog five post, which was the memoir. We were told to read a few texts that shared stories and explained what counterfactual means and how to write it. A counterfactual is imagining how an event could’ve come to a different outcome, or picturing an alternate ending. We were asked to read a few passages that I have listed below, to get a better understanding of what counterfactual means. In my story I put a twist on it and pictured how things could’ve been different if certain aspects of the situation were changed.
It was a beautiful Saturday morning, and my high school football team was getting ready for practice. I thought to myself this day couldn’t get any better. We had our weekly workouts on Saturdays in the Spring to get us ready for the regular season. After an hour into our workout one of our hardest working linebackers went down to the ground. He stayed down for a little while, and coaches were trying to assist him and get him some water during that time. Eventually, the ambulance showed up and the rest of the team went back to our high school to wait and hear how our teammate was doing. I was sitting at a table with one of the assistant coaches and I asked, “Coach is he gonna be okay?” “We haven’t heard anything yet, but just pray that our brother will be alright”, he said. That really started to hit me. Time slowly went by and we still haven’t received an answer. Anxiety started to build up and I thought to myself, what if he never came to practice today? These off-season workouts were optional and I was just thinking, if he didn’t come today, then this wouldn’t have happened. He was such a hardworking kid, that it wouldn’t be realistic if he didn’t show up, but I could only think that. After a couple hours of waiting we heard the devastating news that our teammate passed away. We were all so shocked and heartbroken because he had so many goals that he wasn’t going to be able to meet now, and he was such a special kid. But something that came out later on was that he had a pre-existing heart condition that nobody ever knew about. Now my thinking has gone to, “What if he was actually aware of having a heart condition?” “What if he knew that he has limits and can’t go full force in practice, to the point of passing out?” This all could’ve played out way differently if that was the case. After days of grieving, the viewing was held at our school's church, which every member of the team attended. As we were walking out we heard a scream that said, “My baby! Noo, my baby’s gone!” This came from his mom and after that we all broke down crying. My brother, who was also on the team and was a year older than me, came up to me and gave me the biggest hug. I thought thank god I have my brother here with me because this was a really shitty time. I couldn’t imagine how that could’ve been different, if my brother wasn’t on the team. I needed that hug from my brother and have him tell me, “I got you dude, we gotta be there for each other, I love you.” This was the hardest time, especially since I was fifteen years old, it was difficult to process all of this. I knew that having my brother there helped me a lot, and if he wasn’t there, I’m not sure if I would’ve had the courage to be strong in that situation.
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Hello and welcome to my fifth blog post. For this assignment we had to read a couple short stories called My Name is Margaret by Maya Angelou, and Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway. Two very respected authors, they bring some great themes to these short stories. I notice a theme of frustration in the two stories and they both do an excellent job of showing the events that happened, rather than telling. In my story, I connected a theme from the two short stories to an event that happened in my life. This story is an interaction I shared with my brother when we experienced a terrible moment on our high school football team.
My Name is Margaret (Maya Angelou) Hills Like White Elephants It was a beautiful, warm, Saturday morning in the Spring and my teammates and I started getting prepared for practice. Offseason workouts were always very tough, if you weren’t dripping sweat and completely out of breath, then you didn’t work hard enough. Everyone was in the best mood for practice, it was almost like this Saturday morning was too perfect to be ruined by anything. Then, towards the end of our workout, one of our solid linebackers went down to the ground. After minutes went by of trying to get him back up and awake, they rushed him to the hospital. “He’s in the hospital still getting looked at now, we will update you guys as soon as we hear of anything”, my coach said. Everyone panicking, “Is he gonna be alright coach??” “Just everyone, please say prayers that he’ll get through this.” After a couple hours went by and we still weren’t updated, we started feeling very uneasy. Then a post comes out saying “RIP Ryan, I love you brother”, and that is when my heart dropped. I just got out of the shower to read that and I immediately bursted out into tears. I talked to my parents for awhile and they were able to cheer me up, but the thought of one of my first friends at my high school passing away just didn’t sit with me. I questioned it a lot and I kept thinking, why him? He was such a hardworking, determined young kid who was striving for success on the field and in the classroom, and then he randomly gets taken away from us one day. After a couple days of grieving and sadness we had his viewing held at our high school church. With his whole family there too, it made everything so much worse. As were exiting the church behind the casket a loud scream cried out from Ryan's mom, “My baby! My baby boy is gone! Why God! Why!” That immediately brought everyone to tears and then my brother, who is one year older than me, walked up and gave me the biggest hug. His voice, shaky, “Come here, Brandon. We gotta be there for each other. This shit hurts bad right now, but we have to be there for each other, I love you man.” “His mom screaming just tore me apart and made it feel so much more real.” “This goes to show it can happen to anyone at anytime”, he said “He was such an awesome kid. He had so much going for him, this isn’t what’s supposed to happen to a fifteen year old kid. It’s fucked up.” “Everything we do will be for Ryan. If it was anyone else and he was still here with us, you know damn well he would be working hard and grinding. So let’s do that for him, it’s what he would’ve wanted.” “You’re right. We can’t take anything for granted.” “That’s right. I love you dude, I got you forever.” “Love you too man, always gonna be here for you.” After this conversation with my brother during that very hard time, it really picked me up. It was hard to stay positive in a situation like that, but knowing that my brother was there with me and knowing how strong we are together, made the situation much better. I forgot how to be positive at that time and even though my brother was soaked in tears, he managed to help me feel better and feel happier. Through a hard time like this, it truly opened my eyes to see just how important your family can be.
Hi everyone! And welcome back to my fourth blog post. In this post we’re doing something a little differently. We are setting a scene for a writers’ roundtable discussion and are told to read three pieces of writing, all from different authors. The first story is called “Teach Writing as a Process Not a Product”, by Don Murray. The second story is called “Against Vanity: In Praise of Revision, by Mary Karr. The final story we had to read is called “Bird by Bird: Some instructions on Writing and Life”, by Anne Lamott. We then played out a discussion that they might’ve had at a roundtable with quotes used from their writing. It was officially the weekend and I heard about my three favorite writers Don Murray, Mary Karr, and Anne Lamott, being in town to have discussions about their writings and to give advice to avid readers and writers. Without hesitation I decided to go and it was only ten minutes away so I figured it was the perfect opportunity. When I first got there I noticed somebody was finishing up talking to Don Murray, so I jumped up there next. I first asked him about this idea of language in writing and how it’s used and what it’s used for. He responded to me “It is the process of discovery through language. It is the process of exploration of what we should know and what we feel about what we know through language. It is the process of using language to learn about our world, to evaluate what we learn about our world, to communicate what we learn about our world. I found this really eye catching and it made me understand language much more after he explained it. I then went on to ask him how I can come up with a topic to write about and he said “The writer, as he writes, is making ethical decisions. He doesn’t test his words by a rule book, but by life.” This made a lot more sense because it is true that you are making different decisions while in the process of writing. Since I am in this English Composition I class I went on to ask him if this writing course will truly help me and what it is that I can get out of it in the end. He said “The suspense in the beginning of a writing course is agonizing for the teacher, but if we break first, if we do the prewriting for our students they will not learn the largest part of the writing process.” Which I understand because it is us that have to do the work and be the ones trying to learn, if we wanna succeed then it starts with us. I wanted to get some ideas on how to properly right about something that might not have been from this time so I moved on to talk to Mary Karr. After asking her about the time periods with my writing she responded “Getting a sense of the person’s time in history often helped me to understand their styles in that context—what literary pressures and fashions and values of the day were forging their pages.” This makes sense because if you act like you’re present in the time period, it helps you to live in the moment and be more precise with your writing. I then wanted to ask her what I can do to better my writing and she responded “Reading through history cultivates in a writer a standard of quality higher than the marketplace.” I like her saying this because all it takes is a little bit of reading and curiosity and you can find success with writing. I finally asked her what is so important about writing and what it means to be a writer and she said to me “Just picking up a pen makes you part of a tradition of writers that dates thousands of years back and includes Homer and Toni Morrison and cave artists sketching buffalo.” Which makes a lot of sense because writing and reading goes back so long ago and we aren’t new to any of it. After I talked to Mary I went on to talk with Anne Lamott, who was very intelligent. I started talking to her and asking her a few questions and the first thing I asked was how to get yourself to sit down and start working on your writing and she said “Say to yourself in the kindest possible way, Look, honey, all we’re going to do for now is to write a description of the river at sunrise, or the young child swimming in the pool at the club, or the first time the man sees the woman he will marry.” Which made it seem so much easier for me to grasp. I told her I was nervous about exploring different topics and paths in writing and she said “Very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it.” So, I really won’t know if I’m good at something until I try it out. I wanted to get into talking about how I find it difficult finding a starting spot in my writing and she had a very good response for me that helped a lot, “For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.” Which I can say makes perfect sense. It makes most sense to me to just start writing and to clean everything up later. Having these conversations with these great authors was truly amazing and inspiring. I learned so much information and I feel like I’m already a better writer as soon as I left there. I have a few takeaways and quotes that I like for myself and that’s “You never know how it will go unless you try it out”, “Take big risks and wait to clean anything up at the end”, and my last quote is “Don’t be afraid to explore and search different paths in your writing because that’s the only way you can grow. |
Brandon Foy
I will use this blog to explore the messy processes of writing and to make meaning. ArchivesCategories
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