Category: Uncategorized

This is my commentary for Spencer’s first draft:

Good essay Spencer! As a reader, I can pin point the central idea for your essay. I find your central idea interesting because your central idea argues the purposes of walking and how Teju Cole incorporated the theme of “walking” into his writing too. I also noticed that you have a counter-claim and a rebuttal which is nice to see and I learned that I can also incorporate a counter-claim and rebuttal in my essay too. However I feel like the essay seems too bland. You get straight the the point, which is a positive, but you never explain or go in depth. For example, why do you think walking has increased throughout the years? And what brought the main character, Julius, to start his walks? Additionally, there are a few minor grammatical errors but those can be easily fixed. Besides those things mentioned above, I think your essay is a great topic and there can be lots more to write about with the importance of walking and many connections to other readings that we have read prior for class.

Open Hood

The definition of home, according to merriam-webster has many definitions. One definition is one’s place of residence. Another is a familiar or usual setting. And a place of origin. There were more than ten different definitions but I decided to narrow it down a little to these three definitions. Home is very broad word, proven by merriam-webster, but simultaneously can also be the only word to describe something at times. The definition of home to me, is not a still, absolute place but more of a setting that evolves and changes as I do the same. There are different homes as there are different people. Depending on that home, it can affect how people act and view certain points.

I was born in South Korea, but moved to the U.S. when I was a one year old and have been living at my current home ever since. I don’t see Korea as my home albeit it is one of the definitions according to merriam-webster, because I don’t feel connected to it. Home is something you should personally have feelings towards, something you never want to change because it a part of you. As I walk through my home, I notice how much has changed. I have seen my home evolve. I have seen the construction of new buildings that have replaced old buildings that were torn down a couple years prior. There was a home next to my apartment that was destroyed and replaced by a newer home. Every day I would come back from school and hear the noise of construction. CLUNK CLUNK CLUNK and RIZZZZ, the sounds of drills running through my head — that was a fun experience. I have seen new roads being built and new trees plants on the streets. I would call myself privileged in a sense that everything was near my neighborhood. There was the subway station, two malls which I went and spent most of my time with my friends since it was so easily accessible (Queens Center Mall and the newly constructed one in Rego Park), my elementary school is literally one block from my apartment and my middle school is 4 blocks. Since I lived near school most of my life, going into high school was a big deal where I needed to take the subway to attend school. Learning the mta map and what and where the unique trains and the stations, filled with different and inspired culture, was a pain to deal with. I was never good at looking at maps and memorizing directions. However manhattan is very plain and simple. It is similar to a grid where the streets increase/decrease vertically and avenues ascend/descend horizontally. There is Elmhurst Hospital a couple of blocks away, where I went when I broke my arm in second grade. There is the LIRR (Long Island Rail Road) that goes across broadway and can sometimes hear the distant train sound if it’s quiet enough in the apartment. There is broadway park where I spent most of my childhood playing and meeting new friends that I would forget the next day. There is my barber who I have been going to since I moved to my home –so seventeen years– who has also watched me grow from childhood. There is the supermarket two blocks away that we have been going to for years and where we get our usual food supplies. There are the street fruit sellers that sometimes we can get two avocados for $1 if we’re lucky. There is the laundromat that my family attends to weekly even though we have washers and dryers in the basement of the apartment. There is the street adjacent to the LIRR that leads to a hi ghway that you can get a perfect view of the sunset. If I’m lucky and come home around the time the sun sets (around 5:30) I can catch a glimpse of the purple sky and the dark clouds that surround an orange semi-circle on the walk home from the station.

Just like myself, my home has grown. It has shaped me to be who I am today, it has created experiences for me that a different home for someone else could not replicate. I have seen many residents move away as I stayed behind and watched over my home. There was a big korean community living in Elmhurst when we moved in, but soon moved away one by one to Flushing or Bayside. Then there were hispanic families who also eventually moved to other places like Corona. Like birds, they migrated and stayed with the flock. If I had lived in a different home, I definitely would be a changed person. I would not ever switch my home for someone else’s and hopefully neither would they. Why would you want to change the main thing that makes you, you? What other word would you use to describe all the things above besides the word home?

The start if this weekly walk was interesting. I woke up really early, around 6 a.m and could not go back to sleep for whatever reason. So I decided that I should go outside and finish the weekly walk assignment and get it over with. I step outside my apartment and I immediately want to go back in. “Why did I even think this was a good idea?” I thought to myself. But a moments later, I see the sun rising and I snap this picture. I thought it was a nice picture because it thought me a little lesson. The sun always gets up at the same time and goes down the same time. The sun has such a huge responsibility and without all creatures on earth will cease to exist — that’s a HUGE weight on the sun’s shoulders, of course the star is non-living and is not rising and setting by choice. I was too concentrated on thinking about this I forgot to “interrogate my surroundings”. I thought to myself, if the sun has this huge weight and responsibility to handle every single day, where do I have room to complain about such minuscule problems: like waking up on time, or doing homework, or studying, etc…

The poem “O Captain, My Captain!” by Walt Whitman, is about Abraham Lincoln’s death but Whitman somehow connects or correlates this to a captain of a ships death and never mentions the president explicitly. If I didn’t know that this poem was about the past president, I would’ve just thought it was a poem of a sailor’s death and what he left behind. Whitman uses a lot of comparisons with stuff related to boats and water in his writings, for example, in his other writing, “Leaves of Grass” he writes about the Brooklyn Ferry and mentions directions that compasses on boats would use such as north, south, east and west. and in “O Captain, My Captain!” he mentions the words, “ship, anchor’d, vessel, and port.”

1.  Throughout the whole reading of “Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman, he uses short sentence lengths usually consisting of around ten to twenty words each sentence. Something I noticed is he doesn’t end the line/sentence with a period many times and just goes on to the next line and leaving the reader to assume he finished his thought.
2. Throughout the reading, there is a lot of times where Whitman includes repetition. He mentions a lot of directional words such as “southward, south-east ward, and etc…” Many times, Whitman starts off his sentences with the same two or three words.
3. The effect of these two devices makes the reading short yet keeps it descriptive for the audience. Whitman uses different words to describe simple or the same stuff to try to avoid being repetitive. For example, when he was describing the seagulls in the sky flapping their wings, he described their movement as “floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies”. Or in the next sentence Whitman describes the sun creating shadows on the seagulls as “glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left the rest in strong shadow”.
4. There are definitely similarities between “Leaves of Grass” and our previous readings such as “Open City” by Teju Cole. They both describe something that they personally feel is interesting that another person would find ordinary or average. The writing doesn’t feel professional and that is one of the reasons why I don’t mind reading the texts. The two authors enjoy writing in a “flow” that makes it enjoyable for readings and takes them along for the journey.

I didn’t plan on going outside today since it was too cold but I somehow found myself at this park with my friends walking around. We walked around a small body of water that was still frozen because of the cold. There were a lot of trees surrounding us and barely saw anyone; I mean who is crazy enough to go outside right? Past the miniature lake, we followed a path that led to stairs for access up the hill and that is where I took the picture. There was a gazebo that had a nice view of a river, which name I don’t know. I can still hear the sounds of cars from a distant highway. It felt weird to me that there was a random gazebo on top of a hill but I didn’t question it. Along the path, there were trees that have been knocked down from wind and branches scattered everywhere. Then I see the car that we arrived in and go back inside the car.