Brock Kawana
Professor Harrison
English 101
30 March 2008
There is No I in Brock Kawana
I remember when Marlen first proposed this question to the class. “What was he implying exactly?” I kept thinking these questions to myself. “Does he want to know my heritage?” “Does he want to know my hobbies and what I like to do?” I never thought of the meaning of “I” being so deep and profound before this class. When I was asked, “What is I” I selfishly proclaimed it to be all about me. Stating,
“I” is not just our outer exterior but an accumulation of what makes us our own individuals. It includes our personalities, beliefs, morals, thoughts, ideas, and so on. Our outer exterior is not what makes us individuals. It is what our mind imagines and does that makes us unique.”
In my first writings of “What is I?” I never thought about my surroundings, what in doubtfully creates the essence of me as a living human being. I believe when I was asked this question I tried to be more philosophical than productive. It was my first ever college English course. I was trying to make an impression like I knew what I was talking about when really I had no idea.
“When we think of the word “I”, the general idea would be it is the ninth letter in the alphabet or a word referring to oneself. Kawai is explaining this one letter, one word in the English alphabet with so much more meaning behind it. When I ask myself, “Who am I?” I had to sit down and give it thought; it is not just an instant answer.”
As you may or not be able to tell, I had not a fucking clue as to what I was talking about. Now when I sit down and write my papers, I still go through the routine of listening to a song, cleaning my room, or tapping my head off my desk. The nervous habits will always be there but now when I go to sit and write my paper I am no longer just bullshitting, I am speaking knowledge of my own. This is showing how much of a writer I have changed.
I used to sit there and ponder about why I was learning about the five senses in an English 101 class. I would think I would learn about my senses in a health or science class of some sort. In a class that deals with the human body as a whole. Instead I am in an English class that looks at every part of life as a complete object. Each sense is important in our everyday life whether I appreciate it or not. Then if I am to lose one of these senses, the other ones get stronger. It is as though my senses are a team bonded together, when one goes down the others step up in its place.
Sight:
The first sense we learned about was sight. Sight is the sense that gets the most credit because I can visually see everything without a doubt. I cannot always hear the frisbee in the wind, but I can see it. I cannot always smell the flowers in the field below, but I know they are there. I cannot touch the super models on the Victoria Secret’s pageant, but I can imagine…I mean see them. In my blog I did, “Love At First Sound”, describes a blind boy falling in love with this girl who is polite and nice to him when he first meets her. He thinks that she will not like him because of his lack of sight. He later finds out that she herself is blind as well. I wanted to show how the loss of one sense makes the others stronger and what I take for granted everyday for having the ability to see.
“A simple task like laying in the grass to others is time consuming. For me it’s a learning act as the time will pass as I feel the flowers blooming. I can sharply hear the crickets chirping, bees a buzzing making me aware. I hear people walking past what is that boy doing laying over there? I have images of what a cloud looks like or is the sun really that bright? They say the sun sets but where does it go off into the night? In the air is a sudden sting of cold air. I can hear the clouds start to roll together and create that powerful scare. They start to rumble, I try to stand but trip over my own feet and stumble. I can feel the raindrops, plip-plop onto my eyelid and run down my face, like tears brought down from God’s own divine grace.”
“The way she smelled of vanilla scent and the light tone of her voice. It all made my heart flip-flop, and not by choice. I never heard her take any notes but she always listened and answered to the teacher right on cue. I never felt this way about a girl; I did not know what to do. How do I approach her, what do I say? How would she feel about me, being this way? The class was ending everybody started to run like bulls out of a gate. I yelled out, “Heather! Wait!” She was still behind me and with a laugh exclaimed, “I’m still behind you, what are you blind?” I thought she was just being sarcastic with a kick to my behind so I said, “Yes, didn’t you notice?” She paused and with that same giggle she said, “No, because I am too.”
In my writing I wanted to get across the point of what I take advantage for everyday I wake up and open my eyes. I expect it to happen every morning as I roll over and slap down my snooze button with the alarm blaring in my ears. I think that people who cannot see should not be looked at differently or inefficiently because their other senses bond together to get even stronger. It is a true blessing to have the sense of sight. I get to see all the wonders of the world, I could not imagine not having the ability to see because then life would be different. Which is why I no longer take any of my five senses for granted, they are all important as the next. When I wrote my essay for the sense of sight, I was asked to describe what I saw in a picture that I had brought in. My picture was that of an Obama riot here at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. What I saw was completely different from the first take to really truly thinking about it. When I first looked at my picture it just looks like a bunch of kids hopping around because, “Their President is black, their lambeau is blue, and I’ll be god damned if their rims ain’t too.”
Then I proceeded to look at the picture again and saw something different. I saw a group of students coming together as one. It did not matter if you were African American, Caucasian, Hispanic, Chinese, any race on the face of this earth. They all had come together at one perfect moment in time to do something positive for America and now were celebrating their victory with pure ecstasy and joy. When I was writing my paper about my picture I was sitting in my room thinking of what to relate this to. Then I turned my head and I have this poster of Bob Dylan in his earlier days with the famous quote of “The times they are a-chagin’.” That was it, that was what I would relate my vision of the picture to in life. The modern times I live in to this very day are forever changing; nothing can ever stay the same. I think it is in our American bloodline that we as a country are always striving for new technology, new ways, and new empowerments over the rest. It is our vision that drives us to do these things. A vision for a better world and a better life for us all. The unique thing about a vision is that nobody can tell you that it won’t work or that it is wrong.
Taste:
It took me a long time to think of what I wanted to write about for my sense of taste essay. A sense of taste is comparable to the black sheep of my senses. It is usually the last option of something that I do not know what it is. Hence I will look at the object, touch the object, hear it all the while, and will even smell it, but tasting it would just be absurd. I think when I would describe how something would taste, I thought it always helped to be as descriptive as possible. As I tried to portray in my essay, “My First Kitten”, dealing with a time a boy went to his crazy Aunt Betty’s and she cooked her own cat for dinner.
“I think my stomach was excited because it was expecting the worst and got something pretty decent. I felt something sharp hit the inside of my cheek and just completely stopped. I tried spitting it out but it went down my throat too fast. It felt like a razor blade had just cut into the back of my throat.”
