American Writing blog #3

Dear Mr Baldwin

I write to you on this spring day, with thoughts of clarity and the need to appreciate certain aspects of beauty in the world. The reason for my cheerful spirit today is you. To be more specific, it is your words, the words:

“Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death…ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One responsible for life: It is a small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.” (James Baldwin)

I have decided. I have decided to rejoice death, to live with passion and dump all of my expectation. You marry words together so effortlessly, they glide along with the page and travel through my eyes, and into my mind. You write and speak without fear, you are able to throw away that fear and pour your heart out to the world, hoping you will make it a better place, shine a light on issues that are kept in the dark and be the voice for those who can not speak for themselves, or even the voice for a world that is too afraid to stand up to oppressors and abusers.

Warm Regards

Aylin

American Writing blog #2

I cannot live with you

So hoard your possessions

But leave a few

Take it and flee!

Before the winds in my mind shift again!

do not make me scream when I wish to glee.

I can let you stay, but you must listen.

do take my hand and follow me here,

let us sit in the sun whilst on our skin it may glisten.

you let go and turn to the paper

I should have known, you are a man for a second

and a boy just a few moments later

now you must go because you see,

I cannot live with you.

This poem reflects how love can be blind. While we may know that someone or something is bad for us, we still allow them to come back into our lives, knowing that they will repeat history and continue to disappoint and let us down. We give in to temptations because it allows us to feel a temporary high. Most sincere humans hate to disappoint, eventuating in self-sacrifice just so we can make others happy whilst destroying ourselves. This poem ought to teach us a lesson, of how to be selfish for all the right reasons.