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A Shout into the Void

On this page, I'll post my ramblings and struggles as a writer. This page is for fellow writers and my creative writing students as we fumble through the trials and tribulations of writing. Check out the students' awesome blogs on our class page!
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Missing Mom on Mother's Day

5/12/2013

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    It's Mother's Day and though I planned to post on Socratic discussions today, I find that all things considered, I'm still a human being with a full range of emotions and the simple inability to accomplish certain tasks from time to time.

    And so instead of posting on discussions and student involvement, I'm going to post two simple poems, one I wrote for my mother last May, who died on October 9, 2004, and one for my grandmother, Dido, who passed away a year ago on May 9th.

The first is for my mom, Delissa Irene:

This is just to say

I have renovated
the kitchen
and hung the pictures
and decorated the home

that you have never known.

Forgive me
for still mourning
your absence.

You'd like it here--

so quiet
and so calm.
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And another poem, for my grandma, Ida O'Dell:

The Message

He called me just to say
that she had passed away.
I knew the moment I saw the message.
He never calls.
He never leaves messages.

His voice was kind.
His words were tender.
He didn't seem raw around the edges
in the way that I perpetually live these days.
He was steady and sure--
and said with assurance that we all
including grandma
had done the best we could.

And now I sit here in the dark
listening to the nighttime summer sounds,
hearing the crickets and the occasional bark,
listening to the dark on this Sunday evening,
thinking of how I am no no one's
Little One--
how I'm now supposed to be big.
Secure and sure and as steady as
the giant rising of the full moon
as it makes its way closer to earth than
ever before.

I wonder if Dido caught a ride on it,
if she's getting to see the world from afar,
if she's finally back with her loved one
whom she never really left
while she was trapped here waiting.

I imagine him holding her at last,
his strong arms around her fragile, frail frame.

I wonder if she dreamed of him
in those final moments
as she made her journey alone.
I wonder if she can see her Little One now
examining the man in the moon
to find traces of her shadow.

Good night, Moon.
Good night, Mama.

Good night, WA-- I can't call you Grandpa.
We missed the chance to know each other
like that. Maybe we'll know each other one day.

Good night, Grandma.
May you find peace and get the chance to rest.
The rest of us will miss you down here.
It's a strange feeling to be a woman on Mother's Day, and to have neither any living motherly relatives nor any children of one's own. And yet it's still a chance to celebrate. And to remember. Here's to all of the mothers everywhere, and to the lasting impact that they leave on the world.
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Comments 4 Kids: Authentic Blogging

5/9/2013

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It’s a big week for our creative writing class. We submitted our literary magazine to the printing press; check out the cover image to the left. Additionally, our class blog is being featured on Comments4Kids.com this Friday, May 10th. #Comments4Kids, organized by William Chamberlain (@wmchamberlain), is an awesome site that features class sites and blogs from all over the world, encouraging authentic blogging with real, engaged audiences.

As I write this post, my creative writing students are ooohing and ahhing over the blog posts they are discovering on Comments4Kids.com. They’re reading posts from second graders, from fourth graders, from middle school students. They’re reading posts from the States, from England, from New Zealand. They’re sharing in collective amazement and camaraderie.

This is what creative writing class is like: take your worst day, one full of black clouds (both literal and figurative) and watch it transform into sunshine and rainbows (again, today that is literal as well as figurative). 

Most often, I’d be saying that kind of statement with the drippings of sarcasm, but on a day like today, I couldn’t be more genuine. On days like today, that class does nothing short of save me from despair.

That’s what it’s like to walk into our class… Everyone is doing what they love, supporting each other, and creating new worlds with words. The collective hum of creativity bounces off of the walls as we write and type our way into new understandings of ourselves and each other.

Today, the students read and commented on blog posts they found on Comments4Kids.com. This is what they shared about what they’d read:

One student who practices karate and has a black belt was thrilled to read about a younger child who just got her yellow belt. Another student was touched by a little boy’s account of the fear he felt about his first day at school.

A third student was touched by a young environmentalist who wrote about the horrible way that people were treating the earth and all of the things that students could do to help.  The students were amazed by the range of content and by reading about the lives of students all over the world.

At the end of class today, a student talked about all of us all doing something together and I said, “We’re not a cult.”

One of the students said, “Are you sure?”

Before I could respond, two other students answered, their voices in perfect synchronization as they said, “It seems like it to me.” Everyone standing around laughed.

I laughed, too. There are much worse things in the world. If only I’m always so lucky to be surrounded by such inspiring, brilliant people, I will count myself one of the most fortunate people in the world.

Check out our work on BroadwayAurorealis.weebly.com—there are links to each student’s individual blog posts as well as featured posts on the class blog.

We’re also selling literary magazines for $8 (including postage); if you’d like a copy, email me on the contact page or email our class and I can get your address to send you one. The awesome cover image above hints at what an amazing product the students have put together this year.



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    I Know...

    "that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have..."
    ~John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
    And I know that writing is still worth it.

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© K. Ashley Dickson and Teaching the Apocalypse 2019. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without written permission from this blog’s author is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to K. Ashley Dickson and Teaching the Apocalypse with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All thoughts and ideas are the author's and do not represent any employer.
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