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Zoë Siegel - Environmentalism, mental/physical health, vegan recipes, art/writing
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kayla cullari week 6 analysis

I added to my response 1,2,3 JUMP, because the same feeling that I get while running is the same feeling I got when I went skydiving. My heart in my stomach, the same nervousness before the gun goes off is the same feeling right before you jump. They're two completely different things but they both have given me the same feeling. I was so nervous to go skydiving but I ended up loving it the same way I was nervous to join track but now it's my favorite thing to do competitively and on my spare time when I need to wusa.

kayla cullari week 6 response

1. Breathe in

2. Joints and ligaments, pounding against the track

3. Muscles tense and constrain, hands curl inward, green medal slaps vacant skin. Faint cries ring in dissonant thoughts

4. Eyelids widen, pulses race, as frantic strides cover lengths that baffle logic

5. Struggling to keep steps within streaks as she approaches me

6. Footsteps reach marks, a blast from anxious limbs

7. My heart doesn't feel like it is in my body anymore

8. Driving trained mechanisms, I don't feel anything, I can't feel a thing

9. Frantic screams as hands snap up, green smacking palm, as legs take away

10. Breathe out

11. 1, 2, 3 JUMP

PerezNashely_week6response

1. My body is like the world, a heartbeat, the waves on a cloudy day, the time on your watch. Better yet my body is like the blood that runs through your vein, THEY NEVER STOP MOVING.
2. See at first glance, coming into high school I expected everything to go just as fine as it did in elementary and middle school. Good grades, new friends, playing on a team, ouuuu and boys, can’t forget about the boys. But no school came first. What about that sport that both your older sisters play? Volleyball was a must. I assumed that because both of my sisters were good at it, it must have ran through the family.
3. FYI I sucked freshman year.

   How About that orange that I was so eager to eat that caused me to lose my balance and lose my teeth around the age of 6.
4. Volleyball became my escape. It was my reminder that you can do anything you set your mind to it was my reminder that no one can stop me it was my reminder that I should never limit myself.
   just like the orange. It taught me to get back up every time I fall and try again.
5. Volleyball took over my heart. It molded me into what i would consider a strong women and to continue to push myself after my first encounter with the “unknown”. Maybe I was dehydrated or maybe it was my diet or maybe it was genetics or maybe maybe no one knows.
   Maybe it was the orange, who knows.
6. 4 years later. I am now 10.
7. Finally maybe some answers to the unknown. The unknown of what these needle stabbing, paralyzing feelings were about. Maybe finally I can learn to control the pain control the stiffness control my ability to walk control the soreness that came afterwards. But no, no answers. I just continued to play Volleyball. I was going through pain because I wanted to beat the other schools. It was my last year and as Captain I needed to be there for my team.

   I wanted to beat them just as bad as i wanted to beat the orange for having me walking around with a chipped tooth.
8. Pain is temporary. “You got this, just do as much as you can” that’s all I would tell myself throughout the game.
9. Charley Horse? Impossible, worse than that.
   another orange? maybe, i mean why not?
10. Spreading
    spreading was the blood after that horrible fall. I was only three steps away from the ground.
11. Practicing became my insecurity. “You ladies go ahead I’ll catch up to you”. The unknown was finally taking over. Running became like a car running on really low gas. How much further can I go? Should I stop or should I push it? Practice was the only way to get me into shape so I couldn't let the unknown win this battle. Finally, my last year on the volleyball team we received new uniforms. Not only did this mean we’ll get more attention with the spandex but it meant that people will be able to see what I like to describe as the war within my legs. The war that began because of my love for chasing a ball and never letting it touch the floor even if it meant that i will hit the floor and have difficulties getting back up. The war that proved to me that being able to play two rounds of a game was not impossible.
12. Whenever I think of volleyball I think of stairs, heat, zumba, determination, the color pink, power, strength. I think about the cheers the music the spiking, jamming fingers, wrapped ankles, angry coaches, happy coaches, mistakes, and teamwork. Because of the unknown I became more attached to volleyball. I was attached to the idea that i can still walk and run. I was attached like a newborn baby to its mother and never wanting to be put down.
    I didn't want to eat oranges anymore. they always remind me about that day and how I couldn't go to the corner store to get candy but i had to clean up.
13. I had a dream not to long ago that I was no longer at my best at playing Volleyball and that scared me. The serves that took me about half a semester were now gone. I was no longer strong, I became weak but for some reason I still kept serving the ball until it made it over the net just as it did during my games.
14. Why are you still known as the unknown that has now taken over my entire body. Serving the ball was now complicated because returning to my spot felt as if i had my feet stuck in cement.
15. I graduated. The unknown remains as the unknown but volleyball continues to stay in my life.
16. The still eat oranges but they are not my favorite

PerezNashely_week6analysis

I decided to add the story of when I lost my front tooth because I was eating an orange. I have a vivid memory of this day because my grandmother and I were heading out to the corner store for snacks but we couldn't after my fall because I had to clean myself up. She went without me but even after that I had to go to school with a missing tooth which was embarrassing. My grandmother was definitely more important than volleyball but I decided to add the two together because both had a huge impact on my life. The day I fell my grandmother literally just picked me up and said "you're okay". She never babied me and i feel like this is also one of the reasons as to why i didn't quit volleyball. She

Ellen Lee Week 6 Response

Pink and Black.

Black and Pink.

Blackpink. PinkBlack.

I repeat.

Blackpink. PinkBlack.

My strong affinity for the color pink and my strange attraction for the color black makes me wonder about who I am. Why those two colors? Why is my favorite color no longer sky blue?

Initially, I thought I liked pink because people said it suits me. They said black looks good too. But it wasn't people's opinions I was concerned about--I was already loving black and pink so much people started to notice a pattern in me.

I went through a change in my life, a die hard blue lover to a pink and black maniac?
In many ways, I found that blue eventually did not suit me, and who I am as a person.

1. When I'm black, I guard my emotions, my face turns stiff. I keep away those who hurt me, but I find myself to be in such despair that it is hard to come out of the darkness. I wallow in the shadows, tears streaming from my eyes because I know no one can see me.
2. When I'm pink, I like to show that I'm pink. Hi, I'm Ellen. I'm bright, bubbly, and approachable. I promise that I am. You might feel uncomfortable with black at first, but black is nice once you get to meet her.
3. I lost half of my identity when I lost my pink lipstick. My bright pink lips is who I am. I feel naked without it. I don't feel like talking anymore.
4. I'm feeling sadder. Black is taking over me. Orange does not suit me. Red does not suit me. Brown does not suit me as well. My lips miss pink. Melancholy moments...
5. Pink, Pink, Pink. My pink jacket rests on the chair in front of me. I admire the pinkness, and I wear it almost everyday.
5 (1/2) Strawberry is black. The night sky is pink. Flower petals are black. The wet soil is pink.
6. But then I notice, that the amount of pink clothes that I own are getting smaller. I see more black. I specifically told black to stay away. But black doesn't stay away. Black keeps coming, in her chicness.
7. Black is lonely, so I try to cheer her up. It's hard to take care of black. I prefer pink, but black bothers me.
8. Pink finally came back. I have the best day ever. I love pink. Pink makes me feel graceful, beautiful, and happy. Black is nowhere to be seen.
9. I forget about black for a few days. No longer quiet, lonely, or chic. Pink makes me feel warm, and honestly I can live without black.
10. I'm crying. The worst day. The day when your best friend turns your back on you, your grade for the latest exam is horrible, and your favorite grandpa who always loves you the most passes away. Pink couldn't find a way to comfort me. I see black pitifully staring at me in the corner.

Pinkblack. Blackpink.

I repeat.

Pink and Black. Black and Pink.

Pink. Pink. Black. Black. Black.

Ellen Lee Week 6 Analysis

What I added to my writing was a different perspective. I personified the colors, but I go on and off, depending on what number it is. I made it more personal, and how these colors affect my life and my personality. Of course, I feel like I'm made up of more than those two colors, but I wanted to emphasize the main part about me, what I feel, and those colors physically and metaphorically change my life. I go into a bit of a story, which is also what I added, because in my previous one, I listed everything that I felt was pink and black. (Basically, I added depth, story, and a slightly different perspective in my list).

Joyce Van Drost Week 6 Analysis

I chose to add the color yellow to my poem from last week because it is the opposite of purple in regards to the color wheel. I feel this gave me a different perspective on purple because I could contrast the colors and show their distinct qualities as colors. I actually found it easier to describe yellow with adjectives because yellow is a happy color and I consider myself a happy person. I liked describing purple more though because I liked seeing how my favorite color was described by many people, including myself.

Joyce Van Drost Week 6 Response

Purple

Wealth

Royalty

Luxury

Regal

Powerful

Noble

Imperial

Prestigious

Purple

The Color Of Kings And Mystical Lands

The Color Of The Sky

The Rich Color Of Eggplant

Yellow

Bright

Cheerful

Happy

Beaming

Glowing

Luminous

Yellow

The Color Of Lemon

The Color Of Laughter

The Color Of Morning

The Color of A Condiment

Purple

Spiritualism

Creativity

Mystery

Magical

Deep

Midnight

Purple

Enveloped In Darkness, Yet Warmth

Burning Wood That’s Floating On The Top Of The Ocean

Between The Heat Of Fire And Coldness Of Ice

Yellow

The Sun

The Daisies

The Bees

The Honey

The Banana

The Cheese

The Light

Yellow

The Stereotype Of Asians

The Highlights Of My Notes

The Middle Of An Egg

The Beginning Of A Sunset

A Lion’s Mane

Purple

Warm

Inviting

Vibrant

Electric

Purple

A Mix of Red And Blue

A Movie With Whoopi Goldberg And Oprah

Prince And Rain

A Dinosaur Called Barney

Yellow

Uplifting

Hopeful

Optimism

Shining

Yellow

Streaming Through A Window, Warming Up A Patch On The Carpet

The Feeling After Sitting Near A Fire On A Cold Day

Purple

Beautiful

Yellow

Joyful

Zoë Siegel - Week 6 Analysis

For me, writing this piece has been cyclical and fluid in the same way that glass melting is, or that digesting fruit is. As I mentioned in my Week 5 Analysis, I identify with Maggie Nelson’s struggle with letting go of a past lover. Heartbreak and bouncing back from it has been a painful yet rewarding cycle for me, with admittedly a lot of growth but never much stability from any partner besides myself. In continuing my piece, I wanted to address how terrifying it is to let someone in again after you have worked so hard to be comfortable on your own. More than anything, I have second-guessed myself. I have never been part of a healthy relationship, mainly because I struggled with substance abuse for so many years. My longest time being single began with my last breakup and my sobriety. When I got clean I was able reassess my previously poor character judgments. The kinds of partners (and friends) I had been choosing ranged from incompatible with me, to truly terrible people. This would’ve been obvious to most people with any amount of intuition. In my piece I wanted to touch on what it feels like to try to trust your intuition again, and to let someone in. I found it to be a confusing but interesting journey.

Zoë Siegel - Week 6 Response

1.

I was eating plums when she called me to her room. She couldn’t stop stealing the vodka from the freezer in the dead of night. I held her as she cried little blueberries onto me, staining my shirt. I made fruit salad for us. In went the smooth cubed mangos, the slippery peaches, the nectarines, and the velvet plums. Out came a bruised sunset of her pain and it washed over me. We stayed up all night talking, and consumed the fruit amalgam on her threadbare couch like children, lying on our tummies, heads curiously resting on hands. We stared with child-like innocence, watching the sun come up in the slow glory splash of fruit salad colors. First we had fruit, and then we had ourselves. It was time to grow up.

2.

“What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations! What peaches and what penumbra! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?”  (Allen Ginsberg)

3.

Walking to the green-awninged Latino Farmer’s Market on French Street, I have many thoughts of you, Allen Ginsberg, I collect forty pounds of fruit; four bunches of bananas, eight golden delicious apples, three pomegranates, two mangos, two grapefruit, four oranges, a pineapple, a quarter of a watermelon, eight red plums, eight kiwis, three persimmons and five vine-ripened tomatoes. Slithering exhaustedly onto the bench on my porch, I catch my breath from the walk and feel rich. Lighter than gold, easier to hold, let the taste unfold! Upstairs, I arrange, I refrigerate, I contemplate my fate and create a fruit plate. I will have two golden delicious.

4.

But the persimmon?! “Diospyros kaki, the Asian persimmon, in the family Ebenaceae. In many cultivars, known as the astringent varieties, the fruit has a high proanthocyanidin-type tannin content which makes the immature fruit astringent and bitter. The tannin levels are reduced as the fruit matures. It is not edible in its crisp, firm state but has its best flavor when allowed to rest and soften after harvest. It has a soft jelly-like consistency and is best eaten with a spoon.” Spoon! It is orange, gelatinous and of a mango-ish consistency and it is mine. I get juice and pulp all over my face, and it drips from my mouth like blood would from a wolf’s jaw, hunched over his kill after a long hunt. I imagine myself as a hunter-gatherer. I yearn for the simplicity of tending the earth, of harvest and of fullness, rainbow gems of fruit to gather. First having fruit, and then having myself.

5.

No one ever called me fruity, but as a child, I lifted the brightly stained petticoats of strawberries, peered into their pink, trying to grasp their seeds. I lusted after my friends’ straw-colored ponytails and I unzipped my rubber peach in exploration of confusing juices. Who were these girls with their ripeness who I grew up with? We burst together, from nubbed and firm to pink and fleshy. We dropped our monthly seed for the first time, like so much strawberry jam and the boys cried when their bright emerald bananas hardened so fast, they turned yellow, burst at the seams and blasted little fibers everywhere before softening once again. Before anyone knew what was happening, we were all exchanging pollen in the same parks and playgrounds we had once traversed while young and unripe. 

6.

Hippocrates once said “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” That is what fruit, women, men, genitalia, poetry, all are to me. I take it all in, I breathe, swallow, I roll my eyes back in pleasure and I bask in the healing power of what is Natural. I hear the sticky fructose pounding at the back of my throat, that spoonful of fruit sugar to help the medicine go down, the seductress Strawberry is beckoning to me and I will drown. So give me over to the slow glory splash of fruit salad colors. First I had fruit, and then I had myself.

7.

After I have myself, I stumble into glass man. I watch him melt glass, hot under two blowtorches. Propane and oxygen swirling cobalt, crimson, pale fire. The blowtorches make a swooshing sound as this transparent man bends over them with mirrored glasses. He protects his eyes the way I protect my heart. He holds a thin rod of jade in his right hand and plunges it softly into the bulb sprouting at the end of the rod that he turns in his left hand. The bulb is clear and perfectly spherical, like a gigantic droplet of water. He pricks the glass on itself again and again, enormous hands doing impossibly small things. He smooshes the pinpricks of jade against a block of graphite until they have pushed themselves up inside of the clear bulb. I am watching a flower bloom in reverse. It is seeds wriggling into ovules, sexual as hell. I am watching the pollination of a fruit-bearing plant.

8.

Glass man buys the colored rods of glass by the pound. He tells me some of their names: bippityboppityblue, blue stardust, raindrop, mantis green, honeybadger, andromeda, halfblood, peacock, chameleon, oil slick, dwarf white, blue aventurine, pink cadillac, steel wool.

9.

Then he gets to the good stuff: wisteria purple, passion pink, sangria red, lemondrop, tangie, exotic grapefruit, dense kiwi, penumbra. What peaches and what penumbra! The glass looks like fruit. I giggle into his plaid shirt. He tells me there are solid kinds and transparent kinds of glass. I slide my cold fingers under his shirt, he feels solid and warm. He tells me he believes in transparency. But people always talk about cold glass and glass breaking. So I protect my heart the way he protects his eyes.

9.

Glass man explains the coefficient of expansion, the rate at which glass expands for each degree of temperature increase. He tells me this coefficient is different for every color –for instance, it is 33 for clear glass and 28 for jade glass, which is close enough that they can fuse easily. He says to think of two kinds of glass with vastly different densities as if they are ice and Jell-O –they will both melt at different rates so they cannot fuse together easily, they'll slip and break. This makes me think of how different types of food require different enzymes to be digested by the stomach. For optimal digestion, fruit should be eaten alone. This is not a lonely thought. No, it is all about compatibility. Solitude is loneliness with a problem. So what does togetherness look like when two people value solitude? What color is it? What density is it? People always talk about cold glass and the sound of glass breaking. But now I want to know what it sounds like when hot glass fuses. I want to eat fruit off a glass plate made of that sound, those colors. I want to eat the glass plate too. I want a lot of things, but I can’t tell fruit apart from glass. Would it really hurt if I just took a fistful of dense kiwi and swallowed it?