Words

Once my mom told me that when I was little and learning to speak my dad and her refused to speak down to me. She said this with a little bit of a tone of self mocking. As if the desicion was made with their nosed turned up to baby talk, when in reality I am sure they did it my best interests in mind. And indeed, I did benefit from their decision. Of all the aspects of my life that I have problems, having words doesn't seem to be one of them.

When I was in about 6th grade I won 3rd place in a creative writing contest. It was an Indian Jones type story, that was 4 or 5 pages long. I have it somewhere but I haven't read it in years. Maybe I will post it. A few years later I wrote a speach about my time in J.R.O.T.C. that I was asked to read twice, once for a cerimony that J.R.O.T.C. held annually and once in front of the School Board.

During my sophmore year in college I finally started reading and interacting with the ideas that I was being taught and since then all my words have been used to get decent grade on papers. I have increasingly become better at grammar issues, spelling, and the like and my papers have gotten increasingly better. But my words have ceased to be my own. Sometimes it feels like all I do it "regurgitate what I read" (to put it in the words of Nate Goshe). Sometimes it feels like my papers ammount to is citing such-and-such a guy and this-or-that paper, make is sound decent and turn it in. All this only serving to keep my GPA.

I was watching a slam poet a few days ago named Rives. His words are nothing short of inspiring. While I was watching him I thought about what I have been writing, about how I spend my time and I wondered if I could ever create something half as beautiful as his words. Its not about comparision, it about using what I have and using it well. Its about using my words for me as well as my GPA, something I don't do well or often. I hope this at least a start.