Collections from Students Writing, Spring 2000
 
 

Seeds

The winter is harsh and cold.
The roots are deep and warm
and the new seeds are patiently
waiting in the snow.
They know everything and they
are ready to enter into the warm  bosom
that is waiting and inviting the  little babies.
Inviting them to enter and become a new tree.

Yes!  A big tree that will give shade to animals and people in hot summer days.

Each one of us has to endure
cold and icy days like this and
each one of us will be nourished
by the inner river of life and each
one of us will become a new tree one day.
 
 

If you want to become whole,
let yourself be partial.
If you want to become straight,
let yourself be crooked.
If you want to become full,
let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn,
let yourself die.
If you want to be given everything,
give everything up.

                  - Lao Tzu 


Hey!  I wanted to share something with you.  I have been writing my
Personal Statement because I am transferring next semester to a different
school.  I wrote this paragraph that is very meaningful:
"
I have recently determined that I have been thinking about the way I do
work in a very wrong way.  The attitude that my parents have always
presented to me is that if one does as much as in one's power to do, then a
task is successful even if it doesn't meet any goals.  I have found that
this is a horrible method of thinking.  It leads to a lack of
motivation.  An excuse is automatically crafted out of the idea of what one
is powerful enough to do.  I have reinvented this concept, and found
totally new motivation.  I feel that I have limitless power.  I look at
myself as being able to do anything.  It is not alright to dismiss the
notion of failure.  Failure itself is a guide to what is success.  A goal
can be achieved faster, more efficiently if one does not limit themselves
with excuses drawn from delusions of limits on one's power.
"

Peter O'Keefe 


I'd like to share my opinion of Peter's ideas. To start,
I'd like to state that I believe there is much more to what his
parents were saying than it appears. It all depends on how you are
interpreting the message. One can see it as a way to say that people are
all limited in what they can accomplish, as he explains it. The success
his parents speak of could be seen as the feeling of knowing you tried
though in the end, you may not always succeed. I personally believe it is
talking about how one should deal with their challenges. Many parents,
including my own, teach similar ideas about how to deal with life.
However, the point is not to say that every person is limited. That may
only be a small part of what someone can take from it. The most important
idea has nothing to do with whether or not you succeed. Instead,
is to point out that while there are many destinations that roads
lead to, it is not the destination itself that should be focused on. Why?
Because no matter what nobody is perfect. Show me someone that says
they have succeeded in everything they have ever done and
I'll show you someone that they are lying. There is nothing
wrong with failure. It is a humbling and necessary part of life.  The
failures teach you just as much, if not more, about life than the
successes. It is the journey that is the most important, not
where you wind up. Those who are focused on something far away lose their
awareness of where they are right now, at this very moment. Machines
should shoot for speed and efficiency. I cann't  recommend this for
people. When people focus both eyes on the final goal itself, often, they
have no eyes left with which to look to the side and see life passing
them by. I understand what he is saying completely. I just believe
you should try to look for the good in people's advice before
rushing to condemn them as we often do.

Ian 


These two poems were sent by a student.  They have power.

Concert in the Garden  by Octavio Paz

It rained.
The hour is an enormous eye.
Inside it, we come and go like reflections.
The river of music
Enters my blood.
If I say "body", it answers "wind".
If I say "earth", it answers "where"?

The world, a double blossom, opens:
Sadness of having come.
Joy of being here.

I walk lost in my own center.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * *

In a Dark Time by Theodore Roethke

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of hell and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstances? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
The place among the rocks-- it is a cave.
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I ?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.