Day 15 & 16: Sideways Step and Test III

Happy Easter everybody! I hope you all found warm tables to sit around with good family and friends, chowing down on a good ham and all the fixen's that go with it! Haha!

Today's topics are Sideways Step and Test III

In Sideways Step, Natalie Goldberg wants to ingrain in us that when writing your memoir that you don't want to tackle head on, but rather to come up along side it. One way to do this is to pick one thing that you like; gardening, painting, working on cars... You name it. As you write about these experiences, you start digging in a little deeper: How old were you? When was this? What season was it? Where were you at? What was it like? Were your folks sick? Who were you dating at the time?...

These questions help to give a depth in your writing, but more importantly it gives you practice!

If you want to do anything you need practice, hard work. You need to be constantly looking, constantly writing about the happenstance's around you; tripping over a rake in the grass, something you notice while teaching algebra.

As Goldberg puts it, "you need to stay in touch with notebook and pen, to be connected with your search. If you don't know you're looking, you won't find anything."

What does this practically look like? A fellow by the name of Rob Wilder, he taught workshops with Goldberg for four years, had been writing short stories for nearly twenty years... but wasn't really well known or published from what we can tell.

Anyways, Goldberg tells the story that in writing, you can work hard for years, but it won't do you any good unless you are willing to jump off the ledge, get out of your 'comfort zone' (for all conservative christians out there) and become vulnerable in your writing.

So Goldberg would have Wilder get up and tell stories to the students, with each story that he told, they got more detailed, more involved. The students would sit enthralled to hear him and some would come to tears about what he was saying.

He would talk about how he got started writing, about his two boys, about his trips to England and other countries, all things that he regarded as old boring stuff. But after every story Goldberg would tell him to write it down, and he would merely have this perplexed look on his face.

Eventually, Wilder did write a story down, it was almost immediately published in an online journal, an writing agent sought him out and made deals, now he has a book out about parenting his two kids called, Daddy Needs a Drink.

What did I take from all this? 1) Write all the time about anything that you like writing about and about anything that happens to you. Because you don't know what stories will trigger something inside that will unleash the thing that you want to share. 2) Hard work will only take you so far. You need to know your voice and you need to be able to be who you are in your writing... no matter how that may look or how vulnerable that may be :)

Now that I've said all that!

Test III is simply a couple of 'I remember...' exercises that you do in a short amount of time. There were supposed to be 2 minutes but I went ahead and made them 3, just because I like the extra time to set the memory. The four exercises are:

• A memory of cabbage
• Some instance of war
• A cup you loved
• A peace march you didn't attend

Test III

A memory of cabbage:

I have a memory of sauerkraut, which I count the same since all it is, is fermented cabbage.

I was in Germany, the summer of 2001. I was probably in week 2 or 3 of our three month long missions trip around the world.

We were walking along the streets of his old city full of cobble stone roads.

There was a food stand we came up upon that had tables set out in the plaza, each one with a bowl, full of sauerkraut.

I had never had sauerkraut before, and instinctively put a bit of it into my mouth...

Time.

Some instance of war:

I was young, about 13 or so I want to say. The news was all a buzz with what was going on in Kosovo at the time and my interests in war had been peaked by a fascination with World War II that had been peaked not too long before.

I sat eagerly on our couch in the basement, listening to commentators talk about possibilities that the U.N. was going to send troops.

Still shots of the United Nations building filled the screen as we waited eagerly for the decision to pass.

Suddenly, word came across the air that America was sending troops!

In my little mind, America was going to war...

Time.

A cup you loved:

I actually still have the cup that I love!

It's a hand crafted mug that has a textured, salt glaze on it that was received probably from a six day wood fire.

I was helping my former instructor/mentor/good friend/master potter Fergus, set-up and run a booth that had his pots at the concert hall in downtown Columbia, MO.

My eye had been on this sleek, oval bottle that had a hole right through the middle of it...

My plan was that I was going to buy that bottle after the show had closed down...

Time.

A peace march I didn't attend:

When I was going to Moberly Area Community College about 3 year ago. I had this old philosophy teacher that reminded me of Santa Clause (now as I remember it, it seems that every philosophy teacher that I have had has reminded me of Santa Clause).

Sometimes, he would lean back in his chair in the basement of the college and start telling us stories of the peace matches and demonstrations that he used to take part in.

One such march, he was with a group of thousands that were demonstrating in front of the Pentagon in Washington D.C...

And... Time!

Well, thank you all for reading!

Let me know how you guys are liking the blog (i.e. what do I write that you really like? that I do well to illustrate?) and also any pointers to help me become a better writer (i.e. What are some things that I can improve on? punctuation? word usage? vocabulary? mental pictures that are created in your mind? Jazz like that).

Tomorrow's topics are: Monkey Mind and Wild at Heart

See everyone Tomorrow!

-Eric Alan

Day 13 & 14: No Mush and Scratch

Hello fellow blogrimagers, family and friends!

Today I got more than 6 hours of sleep! Which is fantastic since the past couple of days I haven't been getting that much from staying up late playing 'Nertz' with friends (if you don't know this card game you need to know), updating the blog, or catching up on some tv shows that I have missed (namely House, Stargate Universe and The Office).

Getting to bed at midnight and waking up at 5:40 am doesn't lead to a healthy sleep lifestyle...

Anyways, today's topics are a little more straight forward then yesterdays. We have No Mush and Scratch.

In No Mush, our dear friend Natalie Goldberg brings up a interesting point. That, "in order to write we must have an awareness of who we are- and who we aren't."

She goes on to say that writing is usually the pursuit of two opposites trying to make peace with each other, to become unified, but not to the point of, "mush."

What is mush? Mush is what happens when we compromise. An example that Goldberg gives is you have a girl that loves to live in the country, but is married to a guy that is an 'urban boy." Now, instead of either one submitting themselves to the other and embracing the challenges of a whole new culture, lifestyle and atmosphere... they decide to buy a house in the suburbs. Thereby "squashing" any desire and energy you may have gotten from either of the other extremes.

What is the challenge for today then? Write about bold, restless extremes that you carry inside. Go. Ten minutes.

No Mush

Bold restless extremes...

The biggest thing within me right now (or, on second thought, two of them) is traveling the nations of our world, and creating work through visual methods; i.e. drawing, sketching, painting, sculpting, printing, making pots, designing buildings and houses...

How do these come to a bold, restless extreme? Because at present I am not doing any of them.

Like the couple in this chapter that could live in the country or could decided the embrace of living in the city... each decision one person becomes deprived of a desire within them, but are faced with a livid opportunity to expand their experiences to a place that they have never known before.

The restlessness with can be attributed to the fact that I love to travel; I love seeing new places, experiencing how people live in different parts of the world and coming to regard strangers from a distant land as my friends (and let's not forget about the food!).

But I haven't been able to travel anywhere in about a year.

Creating, when I was at school, every semester I had an art class; painting, charcoal drawing, pottery, photography, screen printing, you name it... if it was an art class I took it and usually at least twice.

I remember the first day I had charcoal drawing, we used our hands to smear the charcoal across the paper and then used out erasers to create an image.

I remember coming home and feeling so alive, so excited, that my hands were covered in a thick cake of charcoal dust.

There was almost a glee to how I felt.

But it has been sometime since then...

Times Up.

Out next chapter:

Scratch

Write about a time you itched. It could be physical or metaphorical.

I remember being about 12, it was summer time because mosquito's don't come around when it's cold.

I had just spent the day playing outside.

The folks had us all come in for dinner.

All through dinner though, my legs itched like no tomorrow. I looked down and saw about 5 or 6 bites on my leg but I didn't think anything about it and decided that I would ease the itch by scratching it.

After we had finished eating I started heading to my room to get ready for bed. The itch on my legs would not go away and I was walking down the hallway I was scratching my legs like crazy (note: wearing shorts outside without bug-spray during a Missouri summer is usually a bad idea most of the time).

As I was going about my room getting ready for the night, I kept stopping what I was doing to scratch this itch... it was starting to get late out, the cicada's were being to strum their bed time song and it was getting darker and darker in my room.

My legs were so itchy, like someone taking pinpricks across my leg.

I remember going into my closet to put something away and turning on the light. As I looked down at my leg to see why it was itching so much, I had discovered that the 5 or 6 bug bites that I had from outside, now had become one, giant bug bite that seemed to have swallowed all the the little ones together.

A huge lump of itchy flesh.

I was horrified! I knew my folks had always told us not to itch bug bites, but I had no idea that they would grow so much... and the itch was even worse!

The night, as I laid in bed, my legs were restless. I prayed and prayed and prayed that I would fall asleep, so that this torture of an itch would leave em alone.

But that night I determined to myself that no matter how bad the itch got, that I wouldn't scratch it anymore. No matter how much I wanted to relieve what my legs were telling me to do, what my mind was screaming at me to somehow find a way to make it stop.

I held firm, I told myself over and over again that if I didn't scratch this terrible itch for the rest of the night, that the itch would eventually go away, the seemingly massive, mother-of-all bug bites would slowly fade away into my skin and that my leg would be back to normal by morning...

Times Up.

Well, it's always fun to chat with all of you ;)

Tomorrow's topics: Sideways Step and Test III

Hope to hear how you all are doing with your blogrimage's! I still need to just sit down one day and catch up with all that you guys are sharing.

Take Care!

-Eric Alan

Day 11 & 12: Nuts and Grade

Hey people, today's topics are Nuts and Grade.

In Nuts, Natalie Goldberg starts in a very interesting (and different) direction, she asks you to think about the history of nuts in you life.

Not so much about how you feel about nuts or, "I ate a lot of nuts when I watched tv." As Goldberg puts it, "History demands dates, place, a more distant reflection."

The chapter goes on to give more examples of ways to bring small things that we encounter every day into a new realm of thinking. What are these examples you may ask?

I shall tell you:

• A Romance with Chocolate
• An incident with vanilla
• A journal page of your experiences with tapioca (or rice pudding)
• Donut Confessions
• The Public Record of your pie eating
• Chronicle of Croissants
• Pudding Diary
• My Sugar Archives
• Coffee Ice Cream Accounts
• The Narrative of My Sweet Life
• A Roster of Caramel Tarts I've Eaten

The end goal of all these things is to take a creative, "fresh" way of how we view things. How we record them in our everyday experiences and relate them into ways that are not just engaging to read, but also could change our perspective of, "the everyday things that are there to save our lives." ('Stranger than Fiction' anybody?)

How else can this look like?

• Report of my Bad Teeth
• Lousy Day Recital
• Episodes with Mice
• My Legendary Dog
• The Saga of my Ill Will

(Personally I think these would make great blog titles!)

And last but not least:

• My Belief in Paperclips (Personal Favorite)

Needless to say, this chapter has a large, red sharpie circle around it, as I try to come up with creative ways of seeing the objects that I encounter and use everyday (i.e. Oh, the Places my keys will go!)

This chapter I will have to come back too...

In Grade, Goldberg asks something that we very seldom think about, Kindergarten (at least I don't think about it that much).

I kind of came off the beaten path a little bit here. Since I could remember nothing about my kindergarten experiences or what memories, go where, in my early schooling (1st-6th grade is a bit muddled up in my memory). I decided that I would focus on the earliest memory that I could... the house we lived in, in Oklahoma.

Grade

Tell me everything you remember about Kindergarten. Go. Ten minutes.

What I remember about kindergarten?

I remember the church/school that I always went too... But that wasn't till about 3rd grade, I want to say...

My oldest memories, the one that I think is close to kindergarten (how old are you in kindergarten anyways?).

I was young, we lived in a small house in a busy town... there was a room in the back of the house that led to the backyard, but this room also contained the washer and dryer.

On stepping out to the back, it was a warm day, bright, sun-shining strongly down on the hard packed earth.

The most notable feature of this yard, besides the old, warn fence, that ran around it (and possibly a shed?) was a metal pole sticking up out of the yard.

From it branched several other poles that were hexagonally arranged and had a small rope running along the perimeter of these 'branches'.

There were several layers of rope too, about three if I remember right.

Now, jump forward a bit of time, I was still young, my Father & Mother were attending church at a place called 'Grace Family Fellowship.'

It was a summer night, still warm but the night giving it's edges a bit of coolness to it.

The church softball league was meeting.

My father playing with his friends, all of them sitting in the dug-out.

The lights giving, what seemed like day to the field. They were being swarmed by hundreds and hundreds of flying bugs.

A dizzying array of lighted specks dancing against a dark sky.

Times Up.

Now before you stop reading this chapter, Goldberg tells a short story about a time when she taught a workshop and has everyone write about 'third grade.'

At the end of the writing session, she had several people stand up and tell their stories. At one point, a gentleman raised his hand to share. He stood up and began his memory of third grade like this, "I did not go to third grade. At that age I was in Bergen-Belsen..."

This gentlemen went on to list everything that he had missed from not going to third grade because he was in a concentration camp.

Things like multiplication, conjunctions, apostrophes. These things that most of us take for granted he never learned.

Goldberg relates that after he got done sharing his memory, the entire audience was still. Not one person lifted their hand to share after he spoke. She states how they all felt the pain in a new way. Not in conditions of the camp, but "of how the horror of these camps... distill[ed] it down to a loss of third grade grammar and history had a startling effect."

So, there is another challenge to this chapter...

Grade II

What did not happen in your sixth grade? Be specific. You can also step out of the ordinary confines of the curriculum. You were eleven or twelve years old. What was missing?

Go. Ten minutes.

What was missing? A structured school curriculum.

This was the first year that my parents had decided to homeschool us.

Not knowing what steps to take, they bought these big workbooks from Sam's Club that were filled with different subjects; reading, writing, math, science...

They simply told us to do six pages out of this workbook and we were done for the day. This took all of a half hour to do and it was awesome!

For a boy that was used to three to four hours of homework each night from the private christian school that we attended, this was a dream come true.

What was I missing? My first kiss.

When I was about twelve years old, my interest in girls began to rise to the surface of my conscience. But ever since I was a young boy, my parents (namely my mother) had drilled in our heads, "You don't kiss girls till your married."

The fear of my mother would rise up within me and would overtake me, so much so, that I was wary of even holding another girls hand for several years down the road.

What was I missing? Athletic sports, middle and jr. high school socials, friends that I had made back at that christian private school, playing with army mirco-machines in the dirt during recess, recess, school lunches (not something that I missed terribly), learning how to broach a non-awkward conversation with my peers, learning how to talk to girls that I liked.

What did I miss in these years?

Some things that have proven inconsequential, but other things that took me several years to adjust too.

Well, that was actually, refreshing. You never know what you will come to mind until you face the questions that you would have never thought about on your own.

Tomorrow's topics: No Mush and Scratch

See you guys tomorrow!

-Eric Alan

Day 9 & 10: Third and Steve Almond

Hey everybody! The two chapters that I am covering today (to get caught up from my lil vacation to southern Missouri) are called Third and Steve Almond.

Third, talks about how we gaze at something along with our writing. As Natalie Goldberg says, "There is you and there is writing. But you can't write about writing... You and writing must gaze out at a third thing."

She goes on to give an example about how this works in relationships with couples; you can't always be starring at each other face to face. There has to be something else that you are gazing at that draws you together, "Not face to face, but side to side." Ms. Goldberg points to a memoir called The Best Day and Worst Day by Donald Hall about his marriage to Jane Kenyon and all the things that they had together; poetry, ping pong, church, friends, friends children, traveling, gardening and the shared pleasure of the New England country side...

In Steve Almond, Goldberg writes how we don't start memoirs usually from the day that we are born right up to the present moment. We are usually telling about something in ourselves at a certain time, at a certain place, going through certain events. You don't write a book saying, "I'll tell you everything about myself and you will love it."

Goldberg states that you have to find the thing, the "rough elbow of our mind" that can be revealed.

Example? Steve Almond.

Steve Almond is a "serious author" with several short stories underneath his belt and two books out about his experiences, My Life in Heavy Metal and The Evil B.B. Chow and other stories. He has also written in several publications and teaches at Boston College on a creative writing course.

But it wasn't until he wrote about a passion in his life, in, Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America that people started to perk their ears up about him.

And what did he write about you may ask? Candy. He wrote about his relationship with candy and how it made him feel and the stories that he has to share that give a significant emotional attachment to candy. So much so, that when he left Poland to go back to America, his ex-lover left a few of his favorite chocolate bars to remind him of, "the taste of our doomed enterprise."

As Goldberg summerizes for us, "Candy illuminated his pain that he'd been trying to share all along."

What does this all come out too? That no matter what subject we write about, "anything a writer is drawn too and looks into deeply, reveals himself."

So without further ado...

Third

What is you third thing? Yes it can be your memories. Go, for ten minutes.

What is my third thing? What is the thing that I look out unto along with my writing? What is the thing that I gaze at?

It would have to be God.

How many times I have cried tears and He has come to consul my spirit, how many times I have filled page after page with words of love that I have for Him.

How many times has He come through for me, how He has directed my steps, watched my path, put me in good places where the boundaries of my life have fallen in pleasant places.

How man times has He come in the middle of the night how many times He has waited for me to be with Him.

How long has He waited to tell me who I am...

There are many things that I could look @, there are many things that could capture my heart and my eye.

There are many times I have gazed and pondered and noticed the beauty of seemingly mundane things: looking at the reflections of light on a white, bare wall, looking at the depth of blue on a Colorado sky, being so captured by stars in the night that I had to pull off the side of a highway just to gaze at these lights.

But what are these things without eyes to see? And what is beauty if not a purpose behind it... rather than a random creation of atom, thought and burning gas miles and miles away.

I am caught up in my creator's eye, and my gaze can find no greater form than the purpose behind the beauty that my, Father of lights, is.

Steve Almond

What do you think your passions are? Don't think. Make a list.

Now write for ten minutes, keep the hand going, what are your obsessions? Go.

Tell me this: what's the difference between passion and obsession? Would you rather have an obsession or a passion?

Passions:

• Travel,
• Writing,
• Drawing,
• Thinking,
• Eating,
• Drinking,
• Fellowshiping,
• Tasting,
• Seeing,
• Listening,
• Creating,
• Dreaming,
• Riding,
• Flying,
• Reading,
• Imagining,
• Daring,
• Dueling.

Obsessions:

Video Games; being lost in an imaginary place hour upon hour.

Hulu; mindless entertainment that causes one to kick back and do nothing... but also think and produce nothing.

Self-Identifying; the arduous process of continually trying to identify who you are countless: through what you do, through what other's say, through who you are around, through other methods, but, each one seeming to throw you farther off the scent of where you began.

People; always having to be around someone, although all well and good, but @ what cost of our privacy do we give up to be included and 'completed', supported and cared for by others around us.

Silence; when I'm upset, when I'm unsure, when I don't seem to know wheat the answer is or where it lies. Silence comes upon me, and the inner thoughts spin and spin and spin till all my head is filled with conversations and events that have not taken place, but in the confines of my mind.

There is a place for silence, but if what you are known for if your silence, your robbing the world of the gift that is your thoughts, words and voice.

Journeys; always wanting to be somewhere, always wanting to go somewhere.

Again, not all bad, but when a passion becomes an obsession, it comes out of balance and pulls you down rather then lifting you up, lifting not just you spirit, soul and body but the other that you take along with you.

I choose passion.

Well, that's it for today folks. Tomorrows topics? Nuts and Grade

See you guys there!

-Eric Alan

Note: New moleskin journal! Love the look and potential of an empty journal... it's just filled with so many promises :)

Day 7 and 8: Funny and Storage

Hey ya'll! I just got back from southern Missouri helping a friend of mine prepare his ranch for a summer event that is supposed to be attended by over 100,000 people! You can check out what is going on out there by checking out this website: http://www.wildernessoutcry.com/

Anyways, I haven't been able to keep the blog updated while I was down there because of poor internet connection. So, the next couple of days I'm going to do two entries at a time until I am able to catch back up with most of you all :)

This weeks topics: Funny and Storage

Funny

Tell me about a funny or odd thing that has happened in or around your car. Go. Ten minutes.

A funny thing that has happened around or in my car?

There was this one time, a funny/odd thing happened. I had just moved to Colorado Springs and was attending a local church in town called "Freedom". I was out with a few of my friends that I had made one night.

We were driving around downtown in the middle of this night; myself driving, one of my friends to the right of me, the other two seated behind me.

As we drove one of the guys from the back spoke up, "Hey, let's play a game!"

The one sitting to my right turned around and said, "I'm game, what are we playing?"

The one behind me responded, "Well, you can't really play, but you can participate. Eric, are you up for playing?"

At this question, I immediately became nervous. For the two in the back were whispering to themselves back and forth. One, had the reputation of being a bit of a prankster and creator of other imaginative games.

I had a little ground from the stories I had heard about what was going on, but it turned out that I had no idea...

"I'll play," I said with some reluctance, " will I like this game?"

The two behind me looked at each other, "Yea, you'll like it."

Shortly after, I turned onto a side street that was devoid of other moving vehicles that night.

Presently, the two behind me looked at each other, gave a nod of confirmation, and as I caught glimpses in my review mirror, one began to stand up in his seat and leaned towards me.

I felt one hand overcome my eyes turning the street lights and all other things into black... another hand grabbed my steering wheel...

Times up!

Storage

Tell me about a storage unit or someplace you stored things. Write for ten minutes.

My parents had just recently bought a restaurant that had closed down, they went on a bit of a shopping spree looking for things to equip this place: Booths from a pizza hut, stove hoods and air ventilation pipes from a local shop. They also bought these large, square metal box frames for something that was to be installed in the kitchen, but the edges of this thing were sharp and when you moved it you made sure your hands were never grasping it too hard.

All these things began to accumulating in storage sheds; mounds of carpet for the floor, spare pieces of wood to help with the renovation or to simply build a form for the cement trucks, piles of tables and chairs, sometimes stacked so delicately that the simplest touch would send it over, other times they would be thrown together so thick and randomly that it was like a unmovable steel forest that refused to give entrance to the back of the shed.

Having given life to four boys, my parents had a ready made moving force by the time this venture came around.

I remember several a hot, summer afternoon spent, crawling between and into these storage sheds, looking for pieces that were needed.

Each stop carefully placed, each footing tested for wobble and the possibility of collapse.

When you got towards the back, it was often mired in shadow and darkness, the only light source shinning from the open garage door, being scattered through the backs of chairs and the isolation of depth.

Often, back into the recess of these sheds, my quests would often be accompanied by the cobwebs picked up from along the nook and crannies of furniture forgotten...

Times Up!

Tomorrow's topics are: Third and Steve Almond

See you guys then!

Note: I have just used up another moleskin journal... tomorrow I must get myself a new one, as my roommate Daniel says, "Many a great thing has come from the minds of those who write in a Moleskin."

-Eric Alan

Day 6: Test II

Today's post is going to be several several shorter stories surrounded by the question of, "I remember..." With each new story beginning with the phrase, " Tell me..."

Natalie Goldberg points out that using that small nudge of, "tell me..." versus "tell about a time...," gives us the sense that we have someone to talk too. In a every good quote she states,

"In the act of writing is the unspoken need of having another to listen."

Something that I find all together true when I sit to write, even in my personal journals.

For to me, writing in my personal journal is not so much in helping me discuss and process events in my life (inherently listening to myself) but the greater motivation is the thought that one day, my children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren, will be able to pick up these books and to listen to the thoughts and stories that 'Ole Grandad' had to share with us.

Today's writing assignments:

"Tell me about a time you were in trouble in class."

"Tell me how you first learned to read."

"Teach me something."

"Tell me how you felt about math."

"Tell me some details about an uncle or grandfather. Be sure to include their name."

Three minutes each.

"Tell me about a time you were in trouble in class."

I remember almost never being in trouble in class. I say "almost never" because surely through 20 years of schooling, at point or another I must have been in some trouble for something.

Wether it be for recess, not doing homework or simply day dreaming in class...

I was always the quiet one in the classroom, the obedient one. I didn't always get things as quickly as others around me, but I tried my darndest to understand and comprehend all that I could.

Mostly out of fear of my parents really, they were (and still are) as loving as a small child cant want, but they had high expectations for us to meet. Not so much in what we learned, but how we acted while we were at school.

"Tell me how you first learned to read."

I remember many a day, of reading exercises, of writing, of language comprehension. My great-grandma Haverson (God bless her) had been a school teacher for many years.

When my parents told her that I having trouble reading and writing at school, she would come over to my grandparents house, when my family would come up to visit, and she would sit with me for hours doing work pages; reading, writing and arithmetic for good measure.

Here was this woman of years earned, sitting with one of her blond hair, blue eyed great-grandchildren. And it is one of my most precious memories of her.

"Teach me something."

How to 'center' a ball of clay:

First, you will need to plop your ball of clay onto the wheel, this will cause it to stick to the wheel head. Then, you will ned to start the wheel spinning.

Get your hands wet and get the ball of clay nice and wet as well.

This first action you will take is called "centering," from looking at the clay you can probably see that as it spins it's center of mass is off center... hence the word, "centering."

Your going to take your left hand and place it on top of the ball of clay, with most of your pressure going to be on the 'ball' of your palm, the second hand (right) is gong to come alongside the ball of clay.

With your thumbs touching so that they can communicate with each other.

"Tell me how you felt about math."

I was driving home from Oklahoma one night (I was living in Kansas city at the time).

The moon was out and shining with all it's fullness and I had one star out of the right corner of my driver side window that I felt was either following me all the way up to Kansas City or simply trying to play a game of 'hide and seek.'

At one point along the drive, I was coming up to a turn in the highway. One of those slight bends that you usually don't think about. But the way the way the moonlight was hitting it, I noticed the angle at which the road was raised and the thought came to me, "Someone used math to figure out at what degree the turn should be and at what angle the highway needs to be raised in order to compensate for the velocity (= speed + direction) of a car going 70 miles an hour, so that the vehicle doesn't simply fly off the road!"

"Tell me some details about an uncle or grandfather."

I remember so many memories of my uncles and grandfathers.

So many pleasent memories.

I remember my grandpa Ron, we would always go to his farm in northern Iowa for holidays. He owned and ran a thousand acres of land, as well as a barn full of hogs.

He was not a man of great height, but he was strong. I remember him grabbing our arms and us trying to get away from his grip and never being able too.

His head was one of the shiniest things that I had ever seen. He would often cover it up with his wig when we went out for dinner, but sitting at the kitchen table for breakfast, I would often try to sneak a rub to feel how smooth it was.

Done!

Most of these guys are actually about 4 minutes long. About that's one of the points of this assignment, to start remembering things and that whenever one of them perks your interests, you make a list of them in the back of your notebook to visit again.

Tomorrow's chapter, "Funny."

May miss a couple of days starting Monday depending on how much internet access we have down in southern Missouri. But will continue to be faithful to this challenge in my notebook.

See you all soon!

-Eric Alan

Day 5: "End"

Today, I woke up at 5:40 am and it was snowing outside...

Just when I started wearing shorts and my birkenstocks again, Colorado weather decides that it needs to snow about 3 inches on the ground. Don't get me wrong, I love snow and christmas and watching old movies around good family in a warm house... but spring is just being a tease right now and I don't know if I'm loving it or hating because of it. Lol.

Work was good, the boys that I work with had school off today because of the snow. So they all slept in and spent several hours trying to figure out what to do with themselves with an extra free day! Thankfully, us staff members have plenty of things for them to do: clean your rooms, eat breakfast, write in your journals, stop banging each other over the head with pillows. Good grown up things like that :)

Anyways, today's chapter is, "End."

Description: Tell me about how a relationship ended. Go. Ten minutes.

"End"

How a relationship ended?! That is one of those things that I would choose not to remember...

But here we go. I was a young boy, about 16 I believe, I had been driving for about 8-10 months now. Enough time to were I could borrow the car and the parents wouldn't stay up worrying anymore. My Mother and my Father had taken an old chinese restaurant (we found dead cats hanging in the fridge) and converted it into a christian music venue/ pizza buffet.

There was this girl that I knew that had liked me for a long time, all through children's church and into youth group, and I liked her a little too.

One day, we were all hanging out at my parents venue and I decided that I didn't want to be single anymore, that I wanted to be in a relationship with a girl. So, I asked my Dad who was there if I could ask (let's call her name Jane) Jane to be my girlfriend. He shrugged his shoulders and said, "yes."

I went over to the booth that she was sitting at and asked her out... she said yes!

The first couple of days everything was awesome; we got to call each other boyfriend and girlfriend, hold hands whenever we hung out, long talks face to face and over the telephone, which was a stretch for me because I never did like talking on phones :/

I started praying a lot too, thinking that now that I'm in a relationship, that I needed to hear from God about where and how you go on from here (this was my first, 'official' relationship).

Well, I heard from God alright, and it wasn't something that I was pleased to hear.

He told me that I was in this for the wrong reasons, that I didn't return her feelings the way that she felt about me... and He told me that I needed to break it off.

I swallowed it all very hard, being 16 and being told by God that you are basically, 'using' a girl so that you can have a sense of being in a relationship doesn't make you feel much taller than an ant lying down.

So, a few days later, we were hanging out and I sat down next to her and told her that I had to break up with her...

Times up!

I think that some of these stories I may have to bend the time limits so that they can be told in fullness. Let me know what you guys think about that. Blessing and I'll see ya all tomorrow!

-Eric Alan