Humanities
A night of Revalations
Sucker
In and out of my lungs; leaving a little bit behind,
So that
I can’t breathe
Getting high up, up, into the sun-kissed clouds,
Feeling heroin happy; expecting the come down:
to come down on me like the smoke is the other shoe and I am a bug
Living the semi-charmed kinda life well the attention goes up my nose and gets me up again
Holding in smoke as I walk across the broken glass from a crack pipe of a conversation
I sit in a group of painkillers and uplifters keeping a happy face stapled to my forehead Swallowing comments in the recommended dosage
Walking through the pharmacy halls picking pill bottles off the shelf reading the labels
Pacerone
Pediazole
Pacnex
Palynziq
Pepcid
Constantly changing my symptoms, just to feel the side effects of my lack of commitment
I’m starting to realize I’m taking them for me but they're taking all of me for them
It’s taking all of me not to overdose on the compliments I don’t believe
It takes me days to deal with the aftermath of a week of self-medicating’ overthinking the week of tripping out over tripping over every word that comes out of my mouth
I start into the week with a purple drink walking straw in hand,
Stumbling around showing tracks in my conversational skills
Happy hellos exiting my mouth like a fun night forcing its way out of my stomach leaving the same sour smell on my tongue
I am the junkie and this should be my heaven
But I could really use some water
Artist Statment
This poems point of view is of a junkie surrounded by the thing they love, but it is slowly killing them. It has an almost claustrophobic feel covered by violence, anxiety, and a crash. The tone shift is that feeling of self-pity and butterflies in your stomach when you don't know what is going on or how to fix it. The whole poem is just a jittery anxiety attack, then suddenly you hit a wall and can't get up. It’s about how I feel in society and then realizing I shouldn’t feel like this which leads to me wanting to stay isolated.
This is the final of six drafts after constantly brainstorming different ways to explain a concept in my head and then connect it back to drugs. I started coming up with concepts and this one was my favorite. I wrote the backbone of the poem and edited in additional parts. I had my work critiqued multiple times and then rewrote it. I wrote the final draft and the left it alone for a few days and then called it done. This was a really hard poem to put together because the concept is really hard to write out on paper and then convert to the drug use concept.
My inspiration was drug-related cartoon-like images and the emotion I feel in my gut that I didn’t really know how to explain up to this point. I was brainstorming different concept to write about and I ended up picking drugs, then I wanted a deeper concept to it and finished with the hard topic of social anxiety. I had read darker poetry so I wanted something a little gross and violent. I really wanted to mess with sensory images but I ended up focusing on imagery.
The line, “Swallowing comments in the recommended dosage”, is about taking everything everyone throws at you and swallowing it all. “Stumbling around showing tracks in my conversational skills”, is a highlight on how everything piles up and takes a massive toll on me. The poem is a way for me to speak out on something going through my head that I don’t really know how to cope with anymore.
Poem Reflection
My poem started out as social angst disguised by drug use but developed into more of a personal realization that my social life was the drugs and it was affecting me. “Getting high up, up, into the clouds feeling happy; expecting the come down to come down on me like it’s my fault.” This line reads very unprofessional and somewhat boring to me. “Feeling heroin happy; expecting the come down: to come down on me like the smoke is the other shoe and I am a bug.” After editing this line I much prefer using the wording and the metaphor. This poem started out very unprofessional and I was not very connected to but after rewriting and writing several drafts I gained an emotional connection to the words.
I reworded this sentence to make it talk more about how I feel and less about how others are impacting me. “I take my days off to deal with the aftermath of a week of self-medicating’ trying to take time to choke out my guts letting the sour smell water down the liquor shelf trying to text me.” “It takes me days to deal with the aftermath of a week of self-medicating’ overthinking the week of tripping out over tripping over every word that comes out of my mouth” I rewrote the sentence to make it sound better. This makes the poem a little more dizzy, kind of showing a hurt that you don't want to think about. This makes the reader feel stirred up like they don't really know what direction to look at. This makes the poem a little harder to hear.
I took a line about a pharmacy I was critiqued to add in chemical names for a better sounding rhyme but it actually adds a sort of cold tone to that part of the poem. “Walking through the pharmacy halls picking pill bottles off the shelf reading the labels constantly changing my symptoms, just to feel the side effects of my lack of commitment.” “Walking through the pharmacy halls picking pill bottles off the shelf reading the labels/Pacerone, Pediazole, Pacnex, Palynziq, Pepcid/Constantly changing my symptoms, just to feel the side effects of my lack of commitment.” I added the chemical names after “reading the labels”. This starts to empty the comedown and makes it kinda feel like walking a tight rope. This makes the reader feel the anxiety of the pharmacy walk and the kinda junkie spaz. This adds more of an analytical edge to the poem, it really adds on to the drug use.
I decided to add a tone shift in my performance to make the mood in my poem go from anxiety and some sort of high to hit the wall. “I’m starting to realize I’m taking them for me but they're taking all of me for them.” In the earlier draft, I wrote it out not to be a spoken word but then it worked out so much better. This should make the audience feel drained. It should add more sick feeling that makes it hard to hear. This shift really adds to the emotional aspect of the poem, it takes the listener to the self-loathing of the crash.
Genocide Project
Artist Statment
The Guatemalan genocide was a blood bath of injustice done to the Mayan people. The genocide is a group of five massacres strung together after the US stepped in and elected a president for the people, leading to a civil war. The military would go into villages to find left-wing terrorist and massacre the area. When it all came to an end and the trails began only six people were convicted out of the hundreds of thousands that participated in the genocide. There was a protest from the people involving the government witch lead to the military massacring what ever they saw fit.
The Dos Erres massacre was very brutal and hard to cope with learning about it so we wanted to shed light on each individual massacre with the human boards. “The military came in and separated the villages in groups and made one group kill the other. The children, they had to witness everything. Many of the survivors we have interviewed were kids at the time, and they described the pain of seeing their families, their mothers raped or their sisters killed.” (Sandra Gruner, 8). Each board should offend, hurt, and scare anybody that this can actually happen. The massacre boards are one of the biggest parts of this project. The boards are an eerie and minimalistic representation of the tragedy it informs the audience of what happened long ago.
When I was looking into the trail and the steps following the massacres I was mortified to see the lack of it and that's why we decided to make the injustice board and the art piece. “I think soldiers took advantage of the time we men were not at home,” Says a survivor of one of the massacres(Jacinto López,5). This statement was made during one of the trails which were described as highly emotional. These pieces should be more relatable to people over some words that are together glued down on a board.
With the lack of knowledge on the topic given to the public, we put the survey at the end to understand what people pick up just from our exhibit. We wanted to see what people took away from our project and how affected they were by our work. “More than 100,000 women were raped in the 36-year Guatemalan civil war. Despite violent retributions, they are now breaking their silence”. It’s hard to understand what this quote has to do with lack of knowable, but if you think about it it took way to long for these women to suffer in silence. I want this to involve people and understand what they think about this hard topic. This is the last thing they will see well in our project, I hope it helps them retain knowledge.
I am Riley Douglas. I mostly covered the creative aspects of this project. My partner and I put together a horrifying look at the mass murder of a culture and the injustice that was poorly served after the war was over. I hope to make more people aware that everything has an effect on something and if you push too hard you can cause pain and fear in the entire culture.
I am Chris Atchison, I am a sophomore at Animas High School. I am mainly the researcher for the group and I have written most of the statements you will see on the project with the help of my friend/partner Riley Douglas. I am really excited to see how well this project will give off the creepy vibe we intended wail also informing people about what happened during the genocide.
Project Reflection
In the overall project, I think I’m most proud of the knowledge I’m taking away. In my research, I really focused on the aspects that interested me which happens to be the injustice that occurred after the genocide. I had no idea this kind of stuff ever happened and it was a total wake up call and I feel like I grew from learning about it. The information I got out of this may not have an impact on most asspects of my life it still affected me so much as a person.
If I had one more week I would not have added anything, I would have just fine tuned everything and made sure it was as amazing as the work me and my partner did. Our speakers were one of the best parts to the projects, but they didn’t function properly last second and we had no time to fix it. I was very proud of my partners and I project but there were definitely a few things we could have done to make more professional. I would have probably added another layer of paint edited the writing pieces to make sure there were no spelling mistakes and thought out the layout a little better. It was hard to get what we did and of course, there is room for improvement.
I really struggled with the research aspect of this project, I loved looking into this project but struggled to find the motivation to record my findings to use for my project. My citation paper for the research part of this project is very poorly done and I know I could do so much better. I think it was easier for me to read and remember then it was to site the sources I was using. Next time I’m going to set inermedit goals so I don’t burn out.
In this project, one of the most important things for me was the fact that there was basically no justice what so ever. In the trails of the genocide, only six men were held responsible for the entire thing. When I found out that only six people were held responsible for everything. I was so offended fonding this out it’s kind of all I could fouces on during this project.
Seminar Reflection
During the seminar, an unidentified student brought up the topic of why Jr. is a ‘part-time Indian’ and how it is about the school and the difference between him well he’s at home and at school. The idea was that he tried to act more wealthy amongst other things. I do agree that he was trying to play up certain things but in the basic narration of the book I never really saw the difference. I thought maybe he was playing along to different stereotypes to try and make it in his new school but I noticed he acted pretty much the same.
Throughout the book, Jr.’s drawings change to show a change in his self-confidence and his opinion on rez life.
Jr.’s drawings show how he has started to see himself in a more positive way throughout the book. In chapter 25, Sherman Alexie writes how “Rowdy rose into the air. And I rose with him. AND THEN I ROSE ABOVE HIM!” (192). This gives Jr. a much-needed confidence booster. This is a huge point in the plot and really has both a positive and negative impact on the main character. Jr. has clearly started to show more confidence in himself and how he draws himself in his comics.
Jr.’s art shows the change in his opinion on rez life. After Grandmother Spirit dies, Arnold thinks “Plenty of Indians have died because they were drunk. And plenty of drunken Indians have killed other drunken Indians”(158). This topic touches on some of the main issues the character has to struggle with. This makes me think about how white people saw native lives during the times of the young native boarding school. My opinion on this situation is that the character is coming to a conclusion about the place hs living and how the people around him behave. By the end of the book, Arnold has gone from talking about the rez in a normal way to come show it as a sad, drunken, repressive place people are stuck in.
The one part in the book where Jr. talks about his sister as a strong independent woman who is stuck in their parents' basement really resonates with me. I really look up to my sister even when she was stuck in the same place and pessimistic state of mind for such a long time. Eventually, Jr.’s sister made a decision to do something with her life. My sister eventually got out of her slump and ended up with a healthy happy lifestyle.