Journal #19

 He walked back toward our colony quite fast,
He had news to proclaim from out past town.
A ship they saw! New coloners at last.
Months and months had passed without such a sight.
They had almost lost hope, that people would come. 
Their colony was struggling, They had little might
No one wanted to work, just wanted a reward.
No gold or silver has been found so far
They still had hope, but ever so little
This new ship would change, set high the bar
Of work to accomplish. New crops to grow.
Now they have people to work. Life would change.
Their colony would be prosper.
England would be proud, and send reinforcements. 
The Indians have been harsh to the settlers.
Attacking at all hours of the night.
So far, their fearless leader has held them off.
But no telling how long he would last. 
As he neared town, he began to yell.
"Ships are here! Have no more fear!"
People came to town square in dozens,
Loud shouts and mummers were heard.
The settlers follwed him back to shore.
Everyone ready to meet their new friends.

Journal #18

 As I pondered the multitude of eyes beaming at me from the magnificent creature, I slowly reached my trembling hand out to touch the beast. I gasped when my fingers touched the soft fur of the creature's back. I quickly glanced over to the creature's face and his numerous eyes to make sure he was not disturbed. When I was sure he was not I took a deep breath and reached out with my other hand and quickly, but gently hoisted myself upon the creatures back. I laid my body down close to the animal's spine, and rested my face against his collarbone. I quickly patted his side two time and whispered, "Let's go." The animal complied and almost shook me off his back and he hoisted himself into a standing position. i dug my fingers into his side and grabbed handfuls of fur to steady myself. First, the animal began to walk but he quickly moves to a swift jogging pace. It was very frightening to be moving so fast, but I soon got used to the bouncing rhythm of the creature's footsteps. I lifted my head to glance at my surroundings. I saw beautiful flowers and tress as we moved through a forest. We were moving to quickly for my eyes to focus on an individual object, so I began to enjoy the blur of color to each side of the creature I was riding. I took a deep breath in my nostrils, smiling as the sent of leaves and fresh air filled my body. I could feel the wind whipping through my hair as the animal continued to pick up his pace, now almost to a sprint. I looked in front of me, as my breath left my body. We were heading straight for a river. I dug my head into the animals back, shutting my eyes tight, and braced for impact. When the jolt of the cold water did not come, I lifted up my head confused. It seemed as though the animal had jumped the length of the entire river! I smiled, it seemed like there was always something new to find out about this wonderful creature.

Journal #17

As the light blue fuzz feathered through the warm current of air purring from the heating vent, I smiled. Switching out of my daydream involving meeting a famous celebrity, I turned my attention back to one of my classmates melancholy presentations. He has been droning on for the last fifteen minutes. I could not force myself to be intrigued by his minimal effort project, so I had begone letting my mind wander and drift through the many items on my stressed mind. Through visions of colorful ideas, I sort through a list of things inside of my confused mind. With the impending doom of finals lurking just around the corner, I kicked my studies into over drive. Carefully planning around study time is all I can wrap my mind around. After a few moments of wistful calculations of my scores, my mind mind moved on to another subject. Thinking of the wonders of the Thanksgiving feast only days away made my mouth water in anticipation. The many different colors of the feast is just as appealing to my eyes as the food is to my mouth. The golden brown turkey glistening with gravy, the blood red cranberry sauce normally sitting untouched, and the bright orange of the sweet potatoes- the sweetest thing on the menu. I become happy thinking of the lively conversations I will have when my family gets together. The laughter and happiness swirling through the air, puts a smile on everyone's faces. This party con only rival the celebrations my family has come Christmas time. With even more family in town, there is never a dull moment. A loud noise, sounding like someone clearing their throat, shook me back into reality. I look up into my teachers cold eyes glaring at me. It was my turn to present my project. I slowly trudged to the front of our surprisingly chilly classroom and took a deep breath, and began to present my project.

Journal #16

I remember in 6th grade, there was this girl in my group of friends who had a very distinct personality and clothing style. She loved pink, and the environment, and horses. She always wore those shirt with cute little cartoons with sweet sayings on them. Then one day she started wearing darker eyeliner. She also started to wear skinny jeans and black. Shirts with screamo and emo bands on them. When this happened I remember thinking, "Wow, she looks exactly like another one of my friends". As soon as she was accepted into our friend group, she started acting just like this other girl. She suddenly had the same interests and style as my other friend. When I see things like this, I think of that person as fake. I lose my respect for that person's individuality. It makes me not want to be their friend at all. And that's what I did to that girl. I stopped hanging out around her, and soon so did the girl whose style she had copied. Thinking back, I know that that was kind of a mean thing to do, but I still think it was the right thing to do, looking back on it. Now this girl has different friends and her new mix of style is somewhere in between what she used to have and then the copied style. I guess she could not get rid of the style that she had adapted back in middle school.  as far as I know, this girl is happy and does not think that she ever copied someone. I guess she just really wanted to fit in and did whatever it took without really realizing it. People change all of the time, for many different reasons. Trying to fit in amongst friends is just one of them. Another would be if they wanted more attention. People dress different if they do not receive enough attention, or if they feel neglected. Dress is one of the easiest was to be noticed.

Journal #15

The majority of my family live close to me, but there is a few people that live very far away. My Aunt Monica lives in Huntington Beach, California (by Los Angeles). She has been living out there for maybe 6 or 7 years now, and I miss her a lot. She used to live with us before she moved out there and she is my godmother. It's sad that she moved so far away because I was not able to go to her wedding a few years ago because plane tickets are so expensive. When she had her fist baby, Maya two years ago, My family and some other relatives flew out to Las Vegas to meet her, her husband Erik, and the new baby. They had taken the 3 hour drive over from California. That was really awesome that we were able to do that and see them, but we are only able to see her family two or three times a year maybe. Now my Aunt just found out she is going to have a baby boy, and I'm extremely happy for her. I am also sad because I know they will not be able to travel and see us as much with a new baby and a two year old, and an 8 year old (Erik's son, my Aunts' stepson).

I have never moved out if my house, so I have never moved away from any friends. One of my friends did move out of my neighborhood, and now I do not get to see her very often, She moved out into the country, and out of our school district. She may be moving back sometime in the next year so that is really exciting! We are actually meeting up today after school to catch up because we have not seen each other in so long. I plan on going to college very far away from here, so I will be missing a lot of people when I do that.

Journal #14

I remember a time when I was about 6 or 7 years old when I was the most scared I have ever been up to that point. I was trick or treating around my neighborhood with my mom and my older sister on Halloween. I remember turning the corner of the street and hearing a loud revving engine noise. I looked to see where it was coming from and saw two probably high school aged boys all dressed in black, waving around a running chainsaw. They were yelling and running through the street scaring everyone around. In my mind, I thought that they were monsters and thought that they were going to kill me. I was so scared I hid behind my mom, and I might have even cried a little- it was that scary! To this day I still will not watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre or any other slasher movie that prominently involves a chainsaw after having that experience.

Another time when I was very scared was more of a surprised scared then an actual terrified scared.  I was with my family at the Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas at one of the hotels (It's name is currently escaping me). My sister had really wanted to go so we took an afternoon out of our vacation to go see all of it's attractions. When we were there I was looking around in the gift shop for a trinket, when I took a step back and bumped into someone. I turned around to say, "Sorry!", but before I was able to I got a good look at who I had hit. It was a 7 foot tall man dressed up as a Klingon! My heart literally dropped. My breath was taken away and I ran to hide behind my dad. It was one of the times I was most scared ever that I can remember. I mean its not everyday you run into a very tall, and intimidating looking alien!

Pit and Pendulum

"The Pit and the Pendulum" is a very well written suspense story. Personally I am not a fan of the ending, as I expected something more dramatic to happen, but I like how it is unexpected. Edgar Allan Poe's short story can definitely be classified as Dark Romanticism. The poem has supernatural happenings, which is a characteristic of Dark Romanticism writing. The narrator is imprisoned in Toledo by the Spanish Inquisition and sees angels and judges that morph from candles and sounds (Poe 263-264). The supernatural visions that the narrator (he needs a name, the reader becomes very invested in the emotions and thoughts of this man, but lack the personal connection of a name) envisions follow the Dark Romanticism model. In this short story the narrator vividly imagines how he will die in the prison. He goes through many different types of death including buried alive, falling into a deep pit, being burned alive in an autos-da-fé ceremony, or later being chopped up (Poe 263-266). The unnamed narrator builds up the suspense of the story by vividly describing the scenarios. The great detail of the scenarios is another characteristic of Dark Romanticism. The constant loom of death also is a classic Dark Romanticism trait. The narrator is consumed with different ways the Inquisition can kill him, and by the end of the story, ways that he can thwart their plans. The weirdly, very uncharacteristic, Poe short story ending is happy, unexpected, but happy. The unnamed narrator is saved by General Lasalle, the "enemy of the Inquisition", who pulls him away from the deep pit as the narrator was about to fall in (Poe 273). Hats off to General Lasalle for having amazing timing entering this particular dungeon with a man about to fall to his death, saving him in the nick of time. That takes some skill. But as this is a work of fiction, I know there is a high probability that General Lasalle did not grab a falling man over a pit of death. The happy ending is a Romanticism writing quality that is rarely used by the master of horror stories, Edgar Allan Poe.

Psychologically, the unnamed narrator is in a hallucination state where he does not know what is real and what is not (Poe 263-267). "it moves the character into a concrete dilemma that seems to "stand for" a metaphysical situation in an ambiguous way that suggests its "dreamy," "indeterminate" nature. (May). That psychological state is an unstable one, which explains why the narrator keeps having mirage like visions and is sometimes unable to distinguish what actually happening  "Days passed - it might have been that many days passed" when the pendulum was swinging above the unnamed prisoner narrator (Poe 269). He also had a "full memory of the trial, of the judges, of the sable draperies, of the sentence, of the sickness, of the swoon" after he 'saw' judges and angels in the shadow of imaginary candles (Poe 265). Then the next thought that the narrator has is "then entire forgetfulness of all that followed; ... have enabled me vaguely to recall" (Poe 265). The unnamed narrator can't differentiate between reality and the nightmare that he could possibly be having. The fear of being in the Toledo prison could have triggered some sort of subconscious response that the narrator used by creating false realities and to not be able to tell what is real. Poe did a good job portraying the narrator in a suspenseful way that has the reader guessing if what the narrator claims as true is truly what happened.

 Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Pit and the Pendulum." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 263-273. Print.

May, Charles E. "Alternate Realms of Reality." In Edgar Allan Poe: A Study of Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991, pp. 96–97. Quoted as "Dreams and Reality in the Story" in Harold Bloom, ed. Edgar Allan Poe, Bloom's Major Short Story Writers. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 1998. (Updated 2007.) Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= BMSSEP39&SingleRecord=True (accessed November 6, 2012).