"Write to be understood, speak to be heard,read to grow."
-Lawrence Clark Powell.
It's a clear motto isn't it. Write to be understood,speak to be heard, read to grow. It almost seems as though anyone could do it right. I mean how hard could it really be? It couldn't be that hard, or at least I use to think like that. Until I reached my senior year of English class, and those words took on new meaning to me.
Like Ralph from the book lord of the flies. I found that what was once a fairly easy English class environment .Became a rough island of rushing waves that carried the breeze of a new environment called Fiction. Like Ralph I shuttered at the thought of making a new life on this island. Where nothing seemed to make sense. Which to add to that. Was heightened by a dilemma called change. Change was the Jack Merridew of this semester for me. It challenged me on everything ranging from literary elements to running free from the comfort zone I had enjoyed as a writer. It took a lot to not write about the same topics. I had been so use to writing about in High school. I wanted to write about cars and the fun stuff adults do. I didn't want to write about teenage relationships or romantic love stories. However I knew that like the quote mentioned above it was only if I learned to write and read that I would grow. So I grabbed my shell and spear and set out on a new goal. My goal would be to write about topics . Which in the past I wouldn't have written about. I was determined with a fire in my eyes. To beat the Jack Merridew of my mind, and to my satisfaction I did. This month I wrote two piece which I am most proud of.
The first piece I did was a piece on a memory. I had which I than fictionalized. The second piece was a piece on how a story which mocked facebook. Both pieces revolved around teenage relationships. Both pieces were written in fiction and both pieces were a challenge. If you figured that I never before had taken English. Nor did I think of myself as being a fictitious writer. Anymore than Ralph did of himself becoming a leader. However I needed to grow and thanks to such a risk I grew. Which isn't to say that there weren't obstacles along the way. There was obstacles. But I guess you could say that the obstacles I faced was more along a social aspect.
You see like Ralph I had to contend with my own mental health condition which for me has been having a disease called Asperger Syndrome. Asperger syndrome like most autistic spectrum diseases is a social disorder. Meaning that it isn't always easy to see. I watch the word you can say through the eyes of a lens. Where I am an anthologist examining the details of a culture. Where peoples reactions are as intriguing and unique. As the details of complexity which makes up such interactions. Words took on new meaning as I observed these interactions in people, and it was through my writing in my English class where I was able to connect the observations I had seen.That I was able to grow as a writer and person. I created fictitious worlds in my writing and along the way found learned that sometimes the best times in English. We're the time when I just went along with it. I can still remember the time me and Hector volunteered to go outside the room and than come back in to assume who was the idea everyone had. It took us a while to figure things out and I can only imagine. That we must have resembled two chimps. Who just got out of there cage. We really were clueless over what was happening. However I learned so much from doing a game like that. I learned about how important attention to detail was. I learned how to laugh at mistakes and keep laughing. I also learned lastly that if I eased up in English class I would get more out of it. English class helped provide me with a perspective. That allowed me not to just to grow, but also to plot my steps in where I wanted to grow as a writer.
Growing as a writer is never easy. Like the baby steps of an infant. It takes effort and at times that certain push at times to keep walking. Even when it feels as though the weight of gravity is agianst us. Or has in the case of Ralph, when the world feels like everything is agianst you to keep standing. It takes real effort to have goals. But goals like the steps of the infant. Is what moves mountains and people to push limits that they never thought they could accomplish. It pushed Ralph in lord of the flies to keep living and I know for me its pushed me to keep thinking of where I see myself as a writer. As I look forward past what will be my last year of High school English. I know that in heart no matter what the years. I will continue to be an avid reader and writer. Or at least that is until my neighbor and I stop fighting over who can get the Sunday Book review of the New York times first. Which beyond fighting over the book review. I like to think that I see myself in the next 5-10 years as a lawyer or at least involved in some form of criminal justice. I don't see myself as getting married. Though I do see myself with a dog and maybe even a notepad for my Marley and Me story. I'll most likely be out of college in 5-10 years but than again to quote the words of Ralph. “That's to far off for me, a boy of 12.” So in light of those words. I'll say my goals for this year and next year will remain to continue to grow and enhance myself as writer and reader. I want to continue to develop my strengths as a persuasive and realist writer. I plan to accomplish this by using the skills I learned this year in English class to keep pushing my writing further by exploring and looking into aspects of both myself as a reader and a writer. My growth as person though and writer. I feel though doesn't end beyond my senior year of English class. It continues on and there's a story. I like to tell folks which I feel illustrates this point.
About three to four years ago. A new neighbor moved into my building. When he first moved into my building. I was a freshmen in high school. With a new schedule that I soon found coincided with another schedule my neighbor had. You see my neighbor had a schedule. Which ran like this like. Every morning at around six in the morning the paper boy would drop off his newspaper, The New York Times to his front step. Every morning he would get up at around 7, and pick up his paper, and every morning. A teenage boy by the name of Chris Franqui. Would wake up at just the same time and take his newspaper. Now at first my neighbor didn't seem to mind much and neither did I. I enjoyed every moment getting my hands on the newspaper. Which in the past was only mine if I could afford the cut to my allowance which it was known for. One day though while getting the newspaper. I heard my naighbor open his door. I dropped the newspaper and ran and so started my war with my neighbor over the morning newspaper. He figured it was me stealing the newspaper and since I tended to be up before he was. He figured that by waking up even earlier than me he would get the newspaper and he did. For about the first few years we would fight an almost comical war. As at times I would run over to where his apartment stood in the complex only to see a white large hand quickly open the door, grab the newspaper and in equal time close the door. My favorite most comical experience though of this all was how we would letters to each when we got the newspaper. Like hey neighbor got it today maybe tomorrow you'll win. It was a comical war for knowledge or maybe I should say more for the Book review section of the times. Yet this experience is what to me describes my portfolio as a person.
As a student and writer. I might not always understand the world around me. But I will always be a reader, writer and speaker and that what I feel my porfolio is about. Its about me taking chances no matter what they are. In order to grow as a reader and writer. Where failure might mean not always getting that newspaper. Is for me the symbolic struggle that even if I don't get the symbolic newspaper of life. I will continue to press to understand it, and like the neighbor who at times didn't win.Will continue to work hard to improve in what ever I do. Whethere that be as a writing critiquing my writing or a reader saying. Wow that is a great story. Like the quote from above by Lawrence Clark Powell.
Nothing can stop a person like me from growing as long as they continue to write to be understood, speak to be heard,read to grow.
