Alright, I almost never (actually never?) blog on fashion. There are about a million fashion related blogs you could frequent if that was your milieu…but if you are on this blog, clearly you are interested in words. Case in point—-I just used milieu in a sentence. And you understood me. So clearly fashion is a bit off topic. Let’s chalk this up to a characterization discussion. When you create characters you must furnish them completely, inside and out. This does include what they wear. Ok, enough justification? Good. So, there is no better place (besides perhaps the mall) to watch fashion come to life than the halls of a high school. Now, don’t get me wrong…I love my students, truly…but there are times when I just have to chuckle at their attire. This is particularly funny considering all my students wear uniforms, so in order to show individuality they seem to be getting pretty creative.
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So, this story starts out sort of alarming, but it ends with a very serious moral…at least if you are a writer (or also a human). I was headed to lunch with some teacher friends and some students a few days ago, and as we rounded the corner we saw no less than ten police cars, two fire engines, and an ambulance all parked around a section of parking lot, the perimeter of which was marked with police tape. Now, this in itself was alarming. That is a lot of emergency personnel in one spot for our relatively quiet and law abiding town. What alarmed me more, was that I discovered that it was in response to a shooting in the storefront business only a short time before…a storefront business two doors down from another that had been robbed less than a month ago…and is very close to businesses that I frequent on a daily basis (insert little panicked shriek here). But I digress... I have been thinking a lot lately about the people that pass through our lives—those that stay and make themselves comfortable for a while, certainly, but even those that are the experience of only an afternoon, or perhaps even a few moments. How is it that a conversation that I had with an old woman in a grocery store ten years ago, or a twenty-year-old guy at the table next to me at Starbucks last fall, can have such impact all these months and years later? As for the people who enter our lives and stay for a time…how can we not expect to be changed by them? How can we cope with the imprint they make in our minds and hearts when they are gone? I have had many people in my life recently who have been ripped from me. Sometimes I have been glad to see them go, and yet at the same time they have left a gaping wound. Others I have wanted to cling to, and their absence is too painful for conscious contemplation. Any student that really knows me, knows that my favorite day in class is often the day where things don't actually go the way I planned. Now, please don't misunderstand, I always want things to be organized. However, the real learning seems to happen when we deviate from my carefully constructed process, and move into the more fluid areas of intellectual discourse. Well, there is no greater deviation from 'the plan' for a teacher than to lose your voice... Picture this…AP Literature class and we are finishing up our study of Pygmalion. My plan for the class is to mediate two very interesting Socratic seminars, but since I have no voice I am unsure how this activity will work. In desperation I beg the ASL teacher to let me borrow one of her third year students to be my voice interpreter, thinking that if I sign to her and she speaks for me, perhaps the class time will not be a total waste… Writing. Life. How often are they one and the same. The more I write, the more I realize that my work absorbs my experiences and my experiences seep into my work. It is a very fluid process. Not noticeable, perhaps, most of the time, but for some reason this morning I see through it. Now. Today. This moment seems to tear back the curtain between myself and my creativity and I realize everything is a story—everyone is a character.
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Wendy Picard GorhamWendy lives and works in the midst of words everyday--English teacher by profession, and writer by passion! Archives
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