L O S T
Writing is an Art in itself.
So recently I refound my journal full of old poems, a few short stories, etc, and I thought I'd share them with you. More so than this I'm encouraging you all to share a piece of work you wrote that made you proud, made you happy to reread, that has a profound meaning to you, etc. Anything!
I'm going to begin with a coursework piece I wrote last year, titled Out on a Limb, which was part of my first year Literature Course. This piece, alongside the commentary - which I'll spoiler at the bottom - meant a lot to me at the time I wrote it, and still does. I must have done something right, as it's the first time I've ever gotten full marks across the board on a piece of written work, and I was encouraged to enter it into a college-wide competition which I won :huh:
Words touch us all in different ways, whether it's a good book, individual piece of writing, poem or the lyrics to your favourite song. They often reach a level and realm within us which nothing else can quite achieve. Anyway, here's Out on a Limb and the commentary for those who want to read it ^-^;' I may even throw in some poems if this thread picks up.
--------------
Is life a dream wherein I’m living, or is it real and am I dreaming? Life’s not long enough to find the answer, and I doubt I’d like it either way. Besides, if we’re not given enough time to seek answers then we weren't meant to know them in the first place. Or at least, that’s how I see it.They wouldn’t agree and perhaps you shouldn’t either. After all, I am standing perched on the edge of the world, contemplating, thoughtful, so small and insignificant in comparison to it all. Hardly someone you’d choose to entrust the answer with anyway. Yet here I stand regardless, out on a limb.
The wind billows through the treetops, causing stray leaves to settle at my side and the bough beneath my feet to tremble. I look down and fight the rising uneasiness, ruffle my feathers to show false confidence to an audience of none, for what kind of bird fears flight?
None I know.
I tap my feet impatiently against the branch, talons clenching and unclenching to grasp the bark. It is futile. The freedom of flight only comes when you are ready and only you know when that is.
I, however do not know.
I think back to their words. If they could only see me now, I’d prove them wrong, I’d make them proud. Every good bird longs for flight, for freedom. Every good bird wants to make their flock proud. Alive and dreaming or asleep and living, it does not matter. I will find my answer soon enough.
From the oaks and the birches other birds take flight, fighting off the chill of the air against the beat of their wings, leaving me alone amongst the ashes. They drop, like one of the leaves that are also falling, carelessly swooping to the ground. In the last moment their wings catch the wind to take them soaring into the distance, the occasional downstroke keeping them airborne.
I stand there and I watch, watch them take their flight, watch them claim their freedom. Because they are good birds and they make their flock proud. As usual I am left to wait alone. I hardly mind, in fact I take the time to settle down and rest upon the branch I’m perched upon.
“You can’t rush this kind of thing, there’s always a time, you can’t rush it...”
Not even when your flock has gone on without you.
I watch the sky, feel the air, and wait for the perfect breeze. Why settle for second best, when perfection is just around the corner? You shouldn’t, that’s why there’s perfection.
I rise again to lightly scurry along the branch, the air is icy and if you don’t move you risk freezing. Or at least that’s what they say. They always have something new to say. I’m just supposed to nod my head and agree - to conform like all the good birds.
“Only then will you be free” they said “only then will you fly”.
But you cannot fly in chains.
I unfurl my wings and test them slowly, allowing the imperfect wind to snag at my feathers, to mimic flight, but I quickly stop. The breeze is too much; it threatens to pull me from the branch before my time, it reminds me of how things were.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to burn them.”
“You can’t fly if they’re burnt.”
“Of course you can, all you need is hope.”
I shake my head against the memory and lift my chin to feel the beat of the air across my face, to brace myself for what is to come. I can feel it now, taste it even. My time is just around the corner, waiting for me to claim its perfect breeze.
A rush of cool and crisp air, winter’s air, brushes my cheek and I stop, holding my breath. And then I step – onto nothing. My stomach drops, body spiralling, plummeting down.
I spread my wings, soaring through the air.
In my body’s flight I open my eyes to the heavens. I see the sun glistening through the trees, the ground rising to meet me, and I glide on the breeze. But now I see my mistake, for a bird I am not. No feathered wings or talons. No flock to make proud.
No hope.
Now, in my final second, I realise that this is it, the answer to my question.
The answer which will remain unspoken.
I studied a range of stimulus texts in preparation for this task, and decided to focus specifically on ideas taken from The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe, So much Water, So Close to Home by Raymond Carver and The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin. I was interested in the first person present tense style shown within Carvers story, as it enables the reader to go on the story alongside the narrator. I particularly enjoyed it because it allowed the narrative to be unreliable and purposely ambiguous. Poe’s story was also first person, like Carvers’, but the part which enticed me most from Poe’s was how it used the narrators internal thoughts and feelings to connect with the reader on an emotional level, and to have them sympathise. Likewise I wanted to use this within my own writing. I wanted to mix this with Chopin’s text, where there is an unpredictable turn of events at the end, only where in Chopin’s the husband is revealed to be alive, “He had been far from the scene of the accident”, and my own revelation was that the bird was not as it seemed, in fact it was not a bird at all.
A continuing theme shown throughout The Black Cat is the ‘Spirit of Perverseness’, a sudden moment of perverseness which seems to take over the narrator and cause him to do things that go against his true nature, and in Poe’s writing the spirit of perverseness seems to be created through the narrators inebriation. I wanted to encapsulate this theme within my own, only I did not want it to be as obvious as Poe intended it to be; as such it is a hidden undertone throughout my writing, shown through use of sardonic humour which is likewise arguably within the Black Cat, “buried the axe in her brain”, the bluntness of Poe’s narration reflecting this. It only really comes to surface within my text during a brief flashback wherein the narrator is attempting to burn his wings “I’m going to burn them” which, like in The Black Cat is written very bluntly whilst also suggesting it to be an innocent act due to how casually it is stated, which downplays the grave connotations of the word “burn.”
Instead of the narrator’s drunken ways causing the spirit of perverseness it is their unrealistic trust in hope, the narrator even stating “all you need is hope”. I took this idea from a poem written by Emily Dickenson, called Hope is a Thing with Feathers. I liked the idea that the poem brought forth, and through it considered the connotations of feathers and flight. Even in Chopin’s story birds are represented in such a manner “countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves” to reflect her hope and freedom, Mrs Mallard even repeating "free” several times over. I came to the conclusion that through flight comes freedom, and then considered why it was that my bird could not fly. My conclusion was society.
The text itself is a metaphor for society and the chains it creates, the idea that “you cannot fly in chains” coming from the philosophy of Rousseau, who claims that ‘mankind is born free, but is everywhere in chains’. Thus, my bird could not fly, because he was not a bird at all but a man, and he was tied down by society’s chains. The text reflects the unattainable, with constant reference to freedom, “only then will you be free”, and perfection, “wait for the perfect breeze”, yet regardless of how unattainable they are mankind seeks out both. The bird cannot fly because he has become dependent on society and thus his hope has left him, represented in the burning of his wings. This is reflected in the ending with the line “No hope”; it gives a direct yet unphysical reason for why he cannot fly, which suggests that this is the reason the narrator gives and not the true reason.
In the Black Cat the idea of foreshadowing is used when the house burns down and only one wall remains standing. It is described as having “the figure of a gigantic cat” embedded upon it, and due to the fact that it is upon a wall it foreshadows the ending where the cat is found within a wall where the narrators wife’s corpse has been placed. I wanted to reflect this in my text, using the phrase “leaving me alone in the ashes” near the beginning, which is both sardonic and foreshadowing, the “ashes” represent both the tree, ash, and the ruin and destruction, a representation of the burning wings shown in the retrospective flashback. This foreshadows the ending of the story, where the bird finds itself unable to fly, and the idea of an inability to fly is shown throughout, with constant use of the words “can’t fly”, and through the frequent use of the foreboding a circular narrative is created.
A continuing theme shown throughout The Black Cat is the ‘Spirit of Perverseness’, a sudden moment of perverseness which seems to take over the narrator and cause him to do things that go against his true nature, and in Poe’s writing the spirit of perverseness seems to be created through the narrators inebriation. I wanted to encapsulate this theme within my own, only I did not want it to be as obvious as Poe intended it to be; as such it is a hidden undertone throughout my writing, shown through use of sardonic humour which is likewise arguably within the Black Cat, “buried the axe in her brain”, the bluntness of Poe’s narration reflecting this. It only really comes to surface within my text during a brief flashback wherein the narrator is attempting to burn his wings “I’m going to burn them” which, like in The Black Cat is written very bluntly whilst also suggesting it to be an innocent act due to how casually it is stated, which downplays the grave connotations of the word “burn.”
Instead of the narrator’s drunken ways causing the spirit of perverseness it is their unrealistic trust in hope, the narrator even stating “all you need is hope”. I took this idea from a poem written by Emily Dickenson, called Hope is a Thing with Feathers. I liked the idea that the poem brought forth, and through it considered the connotations of feathers and flight. Even in Chopin’s story birds are represented in such a manner “countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves” to reflect her hope and freedom, Mrs Mallard even repeating "free” several times over. I came to the conclusion that through flight comes freedom, and then considered why it was that my bird could not fly. My conclusion was society.
The text itself is a metaphor for society and the chains it creates, the idea that “you cannot fly in chains” coming from the philosophy of Rousseau, who claims that ‘mankind is born free, but is everywhere in chains’. Thus, my bird could not fly, because he was not a bird at all but a man, and he was tied down by society’s chains. The text reflects the unattainable, with constant reference to freedom, “only then will you be free”, and perfection, “wait for the perfect breeze”, yet regardless of how unattainable they are mankind seeks out both. The bird cannot fly because he has become dependent on society and thus his hope has left him, represented in the burning of his wings. This is reflected in the ending with the line “No hope”; it gives a direct yet unphysical reason for why he cannot fly, which suggests that this is the reason the narrator gives and not the true reason.
In the Black Cat the idea of foreshadowing is used when the house burns down and only one wall remains standing. It is described as having “the figure of a gigantic cat” embedded upon it, and due to the fact that it is upon a wall it foreshadows the ending where the cat is found within a wall where the narrators wife’s corpse has been placed. I wanted to reflect this in my text, using the phrase “leaving me alone in the ashes” near the beginning, which is both sardonic and foreshadowing, the “ashes” represent both the tree, ash, and the ruin and destruction, a representation of the burning wings shown in the retrospective flashback. This foreshadows the ending of the story, where the bird finds itself unable to fly, and the idea of an inability to fly is shown throughout, with constant use of the words “can’t fly”, and through the frequent use of the foreboding a circular narrative is created.