LAUREN E. C.

Reading Response There have been many times in my life when I have felt insignificant. At a younger age, and sometimes even in recent years, it could bring me to tears to think about how little I will likely impact the world. I want to make a difference, or at least be remembered, and the thought of never living up to either of those things scares me. Perhaps it is less fear of not going down in history, and more fear of never amounting to anything worthwhile. When I was very young, maybe 4 or 5, sometimes my mom or dad would wake me and my siblings up in the middle of the night and we'd drive a little way down the road until we got to a clearing. We'd get out of the van in the cold, wet night, and mom would lay a blanket down on the ground and we'd watch the stars. I believe she only did this if there was a meteor shower, and we'd lay there and watch stars fly by. Afterward, we'd all pile back into the van and drive home, and mom would make everyone hot chocol...

Reading Response I thought I would write a poem this week, but the words were not coming to me. I wanted to write something pretty about nature, but poems about the beauty of nature have been done to death, and I think in my cynicism, I had a hard time writing anything worthwhile to read. It was either far too sappy sweet or completely incoherent.  So instead I'll talk about a place back home that is beautiful and in nature. My sister and I used to call it The Place. We gave it a vague name because we didn't want our brothers to figure out where we meant. In the woods surrounding the house we grew up in, my siblings and I would name certain places, I suppose to keep things orderly. There was Clay Falls, which was a dip in the creek where the water cascaded into a deep ditch of white clay. There was the Airplane Tree, which was a fallen tree that, although looked nothing like an airplane, would be used as an airplane in make believe. And there was Fern Valley, the Civil War...

Reading Response   There was a man who sat in a wheelchair in the corner of a mental home staring out a window. He didn't have a name, or if he did, he never knew it. Despite his functioning muscles, he had great difficulty walking, and was usually confined to his wheelchair where he was much more comfortable. He could not speak, and, although he could hear, he could not understand language.    He was not a stupid man, nor an incompetent one. The man experienced the world close to one-fiftieth the speed of a normal person, making typical everyday function impossible. He could not interact with anyone, because everything happened so slowly in his world. So he would sit in his chair, and stare out his window, and watch the hummingbirds come to a small red feeder that hanged from a wrought iron post nearby.   He loved to watch the hummingbirds, because they moved faster than anything he had ever seen. If he knew how to count, he could have counted each individual...

Reading Response I have often wondered what it would be like to lose a sense. Having had all of them for as long as I've been alive, I imagine losing one is much harder than having started without one in the first place. There is a certain understanding and sensation which comes with each sense that can only be truly described through experience. It's something like a brief moment of scent which suddenly reminds you of a feeling you had when you were little, which is gone just as quickly as it arrived, leaving you wondering how to possibly describe that scent or feeling. Senses are personal experiences that the user is exclusively privy to. Taste is unique, that we know for sure. No one has the exact same palate as another (although they all tend to generalize out as we grow older). Who's to say all other experiences of senses are universally shared? Who's to say the experience I call "redness" is even the same as yours? What if my experience of the world i...