Ezra Pound and Me

I was looking up one of my very favorite poems, "In a Station of the Metro" by Ezra Pound:

"The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals, on a wet, black bough."

Then I found an incredible essay written by the poet himself! It explains so well the way I see the world! (See my last post for proof.)

Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

"Since the beginning of bad writing, writers have used images as ornaments. The point of Imagism is that it does not use images as ornaments. The image is itself the speech. The image is the word beyond formulated language."

"[Quoting a Japanese hokku:]

'The fallen blossom flies back to its branch:
A butterfly.' "

"The 'one image poem' is a form of super-position, that is to say, it is one idea set on top of another... In a poem of this sort one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective."

NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month!!!!

Goal: 50,000 words by November 31st.
Stipulations: No editing! The month of December is set aside for proofing, editing, etc. The novel must be started and finished all in November, no finishing of old drafts.

Prize: If you make the 50,000 words in Nov, you win. If you can finish editing in December, they'll print one free copy of your novel.

ANYONE can do it, ages 13+. Here's my page, or check out my widget on the right to see how far I've gotten (not very).

Give it a shot!!!

Emmons Family Update

I'm playing catch-up blog, but I'm too lazy to make separate posts. So you get it all in one big whopper. =]

In either July or August, Zach took me to the Eastern Idaho State Fair. I don't think I've posted any pictures yet, shame on me!

We had a blast!! It was my first fair ever, and I loved just soaking it all up. Zach said it was "almost as good" as the one he grew up with in CA. I guess poor Idaho has a lot to compete with.

Zach went the cultured route and had a gyro for diner, but I bought a hand-battered corn dog to feel more state-fair-ish. Right after I ate it, I saw this poster on one of the vendor's stands.

A pig dipping corn dogs in grease... made me feel super classy. =]

I think this also happened in August: to celebrate 2 years without an accident, Melaleuca threw us a party at the Rexburg Air Museum that was catered by Texas Roadhouse. Kind of a random location, but it was soooo fun. They gave us free candles and $25 (each) to Texas Roadhouse.

Zach had a blast educating me about all the planes. He knew all of their names, specs, history, etc.... As everyone was cleaning up, one of the museum volunteers noticed us looking, and had us come back where he was working. He gave Zach a tour/quiz of all the model planes and WWII plane history, etc. A night well spent!

**I would like to note that I have lost weight since that atrocious picture of me in the middle there. Hooray!**

I have been feeling super crafty. My new favorite thing to do (besides writing) is making fabric flowers! I turn them into hair clips, embellishments, headbands, etc...

The picture of my friend is her showing of the headband I made for her birthday. (Yo yo flower and buttons.) The bottom right is a card I made for some hair clips I was taking to my old roommate's baby shower.

I learned a new technique the other day (See top right photo, which demonstrates how to make most of the flowers in the top left photo) from an awesome blog... check it out HERE.

Aaaaand, as part of our mega pre-holiday excitement, we carved pumpkins with our friends John and Cassandra Beck. They were going with a Mario theme, and I was looking for a relatively simple design, so....

They made Mario, and we made one of the bad-guy-mushrooms! (I never played Mario as a kid, I think it's called a Gumba or something?) Yes, I know, theirs is a little more impressive. But we were pretty proud of ours too. =]

Last week or so, I won 2nd place in the English Department's Pre-Professional Conference (I'm still not sure exactly how to explain what that means) Fiction writing contest. AWESOME! I was so stoked and excited, and Zach was super sweet to be excited with me. He called his mom to tell her, and started the news like this, "Mom, guess what? [pause] Your precious daughter-in-law ...[increasing suspense]... won 2nd place in a writing contest!" We realized later she was probably totally expecting us to say I was pregnant. Oops! ha ha ha.

Zach has been rocking out his homework like a champ. He's been swamped with tough classes and work three nights a week, so today we got a little rebellious and ran away to the Cocoa Bean when he was supposed to be in Physics. It was super fun, and brought back a flood of memories from when we were engaged. (Speaking of which, November 7th will mark one year since Zach proposed! Hooray!)

Anyway, that's life according to us so far. Maybe I'll be better at keeping this updated so you guys don't have to sit through all that again. =]

Summer Summary

My break ends this weekend! I've been too lazy to go online much, so here's another list-blog.

This summer I read:

1. The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey
2. FableHaven: Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary
3. The Lightning Thief (#1 in a series called Percy Jackson & the Olympians- Thank you Kristen!!!)
   
4. The Sea of Monsters(#2)
5. The Titan's Curse(#3)
6. The Battle of the Labyrinth(#4)
7. The Last Olympian(#5)
8. A Day with Wilbur Robinson (The picture book Meet the Robinsons is based off of. I bought it for $3!)
   
9. 
10. Anastasia's Album. Found it for $1 at Half Price Books. It has old photographs of the Romanovs, a biography for children, etc. My best find of the summer!
    
11. Currently in the middle of Brisingr (#3 in the Eragon series) and Rules

I sewed:

1. A baby sleeper, which has an unfinished neckline because I ran out of ribbing
   
2. A toddler dress. Turns out it's extra long... my bad!
   
3. A fully lined jacket... Cute, but bigger is not always better, even with kids' clothing!
   
4. A nursing cover for my aunt Peggy, and a matching wet wipes case.
   
5. A little girl's nightgown
   
6. Another Margaret Sling Bag in super cute paisley fabric, with matching wet wipes case.
7. Tomorrow I will be making another lined jacket and another nightgown. Let's hope I can get the sizing right this time. =]

I saw:

1. Terminator #The New One. I hadn't see any of the other ones, but it was pretty good.
   
2. Imagine That-- loved it!!
3. Harry Potter #6 - liked it a lot!
   
4. Race to Witch Mountain (ended up getting a $10 fee from Redbox because I forgot about it...oops)
   
5. A Diamondbacks vs. Dodgers game! I'm the Diamondbacks' most ignorant fan! I don't know anything about baseball, I just like to yell. We each picked a random player to be our favorite. I lucked out and picked Ojeda, who happens to be one of their better ones. We also discovered that I am good luck-- the Diamondbacks won!
6. "The Magic Flute," broadcasted from the Met. Awesome.
7. Knowing, with Nicholas Cage. Prettttty creepy, but interesting
   
8. Hannah Montana the Movie. Ohhhh yeah. I'm half adult, half kid. I've got the best of both worlds.
   
9. Wizards of Waverly Place the Movie, in conjunction with a wizards party with my girlies (see photo below).

AND, best of all, I wrote:

1. The first bits of my newest story! I'm going to put up a super rough draft of the opening on my writing blog. It's historical fiction with a bit of a time travel twist.

So pretty much, I've been having a blast.

The end.

Therapy

I've noticed that sometimes when I help give someone else a little therapy session, I end up feeling the benefits too.


I've had the opportunity lately to befriend someone who... is hard to describe. Suffice it to say that I would have seemed justified in disliking this person, and that at first it was rather difficult not to. Well, with a few good prods from the Spirit I realized that I needed to be as nice and as gentle as I could to this person. I started realizing that their behavior should have nothing to do with mine. I still had an obligation to be the best I could be. Now, I am SO VERY grateful for those promptings. A window opened up and I got a glimpse at this person's heart. They really need someone to be gentle to them. It's a very humbling and awe-inspiring experience to be in this kind of position. Heavenly Father loves all his children so much.

Well, I was looking through some old stuff I wrote and realized something: I said that for my birthday this year I wanted to finish a short story! So, since I've been busy and have been putting my ideas on the "Later" shelf, I decided I want a little help in choosing. I have posted a survey just to the right of this post with a few of my story ideas. So please, vote!!! Or write-in with a comment. I just need a little bit of a kick in the pants to get me going. Thankfully, I have a deadline. Three weeks! Yowsers!

Сколько стоит моя жизнь?

Alrighty, folks!!!

Well. I'm hoping you've had a fun, laughter-filled week. Mine was... quite hilarious. Of course, I do tend to laugh a lot for no reason anyone else can discover. But seriously, life is just so funny!

So, update on life: I've turned in two new short stories to my creative writing class workshops, and received a lot of good feedback (If you care to give some of your own, check out my writer's workbench). Aside from writing, I've spent quite a bit of time studying my Russian homework. I was quite proud of myself, because I finished ALL of Wednesday's assignments by 2 hours after class. I have been getting A's on my tests/quizzes! And, thanks to my pro editor Gary, I got a 98 on my 2nd draft of my Russian essay!

I also got to go on a fun date to see the university orchestra! Beautiful music. Not exactly top performers, but it was still really enjoyable. We went to JB's for ice cream afterwards with his family- SO much fun! I think I would love to be friends with his mom even if I didn't know him at all. =] And then we read Vinni Puh, which was surprisingly difficult.

We've got some really good letters from my brother Todd, who just left the MTC for Portland, Oregon on Tuesday. He's soooo inspiring! Every letter seems like a talk. It's really good to hear from him, see how happy he seems, and how excited he is to be out there. Слава Богу за маленьких малчиков! I'm definitely learning a lot from him already.

Well, this Sunday I am going home!! Hooray for "examination days," whatever those are, because they mean we have the entire week off of school! And three huge cheers for baking with my mama in just a few days!!!

Happy holidays, folks!

Believing in Magic

Hello you happy people!

Okay, so maybe not all of you are happy, after seeing the election results. I didn't vote for Obama, but actually I'm feeling pretty okay with everything. Neither of the candidates were a great choice to begin with. And I really respect Obama as a person. But seriously-- what's the worst that can happen with the democrats in charge? Answer: The world will end, and the Second Coming is that much closer!!! ha ha. Totally kidding, folks.

No, but seriously. There are plenty of reasons to be happy.

1. It's snowing!
2. My Christmas tree is definitely up and decorated!
3. Today's devotional was amazing!
4. I finally have somewhat of an idea of what my creative writing teacher expects from me
5. I can forget all of his advice once the semester is over
6. I just have a little Russian homework tonight
7. A random friend of my roommate's just got engaged!
8. Today I got a really sweet letter from Todd in the MTC!
9. The roommates and I made an emergency trip to Coldstone
10. We think we might finally understand why we've all had this crazy sleeping sickness and random chronic headaches. Turns out our water heater is gas-powered and it's in an unsealed closet in my bedroom... and it's leaking gas. You just have to laugh at a story like that.

So yes. Those are my [strange] reasons for being happy tonight! Find some of your own. =]

Happy Tuesday, folks.

Help!

Okay peoples--

I have to turn in a short story to my creative writing teacher, and I am scared!!! He grades us based on how he thinks we compare with our peers. Last time I didn't realize that, and just brought in a draft to workshop, but he wasn't impressed and wanted me to totally redo it!! I just kind of nodded, but of course I was thinking, "You can't make me!" But then I saw my grade. I have a 76 in the class!!!!!! And I have been putting in a lot of effort! True, most of our midterm grade was determined by a VERY insignificant assignment I happened to miss and think nothing of... But apparently it was worth enough to drag the rest of my high scores to a C.

Soooo, I need to bring up my grade. And quickly. Which is why I am asking for help!!! Please check out my latest story on my writing blog (caseystarma.blogspot) and tell me what to improve, and what doesn't work for you. I would reeeeally appreciate it.