(Read EVERYTHING in this post. Do not skip anything.)
♥ It’s not easy to have to stay inside your house for weeks and weeks.
♥ But when it’s for the health and safety of your family and your own health and safety, staying inside becomes a clear choice to make.
♥ Every day I open the backyard door and look out, and look up, so that my eyes can travel far into the infinite distance of the sky.
♥ At night, before I sleep, I look up into the dark ceiling, and imagine what is beyond the ceiling.
Assignment:
♥ Create something imaginative and hopeful.
♥ Look up and imagine, beyond the ceiling of your home, beyond the trees outside, beyond the electric wires above the trees, beyond the clouds, beyond the sky, beyond outer space, beyond tomorrow, and even beyond what we can guess will happen in the near future.
♥ Create something where you show your hope, beyond the limited space that you are in.
♥ Create one of the following:
- a drawing
- pencil
- colored pencil
- crayons
- etc.
- a painting
- watercolor
- acrylic
- etc.
- a digital drawing
- computer program
- phone app
- a poem
- a story
- a creative description of something you want us to imagine
- a video
- a … ?
Due:
♥ We have 3 weekdays remaining this week, and we have a week of Spring Break next week. I want you to create your next work during this time.
♥ This is not a quick sketch or a quick text, but a long term project. Take your time with it. Due April 13.
Examples:
♥ Examples below: These are only for inspiration, not for copying.
♥ Create your own artwork or writing or other creative work.
♥ You do not have to make your work related to any of these examples.
♥ Hand in in Google Classroom by April 13.
Our Nights Are Ours Again
(a poem by Mr. Bazzi)
Our nights are ours again
Our ceilings are skies again
Beautifully darkened and stormy skies
Beautifully sunny and distant eyes
Again our minds can sing
With a brush or fountain pen
Our nights are ours again
Invocation Before Senility or Cataclysm
(another poem by Mr. Bazzi)
Is this the beginning of waking up?
From the heavy purring kicks of a steeped slumber.
Mindless we rise to the night.
Out of its cramped confines.
Its blurrier measures.
Periwinkle and grey ridges and bluffs.
To the truer knowledge of our weakest nature.
Cracking the egg wall of a debilitating reliance.
We scratch away not knowing.
Why the direction of in and why the direction of out.
We seek from the rim of a worm’s hole in the grass.
We chirp at the soil and pebbles that populate our immediate perception.
We sing praises to the limitations of our meagerest appetites.
The teeth you grind, from them you could never repent.
The limb bones you grind down, you can never uncrumble.
The organ tissue you waste away, you can never unrinse.
And yet you look forward to a day when it might all be rebuilt and resurfaced for you.
And yet you still seem distant from seeing anything you’ve been given.
While your mind grows sharper with every horizon.
Your mind sharpens precariously more slender.
And you are more and less.
Misunderstood.
You rise to the night.
And the sun also rises in four ten minute increments.
Your prayer also rises.
In four or three or two one minute increments.
You seek to deserve the wages of your legislated exchange.
You rise to the night to seek a new fountain.
The emptying of your hands.
The absolving of your face and limbs.
The absolving of your earned burdens.
Look at the old men that have left you.
They spent years worrying about tomorrow.
Or maybe that is just your perception of them.
Maybe they spent years merely moving forward.
Or maybe that is just your perception of them.
Maybe they lived years laughing under the sun.
At our forthcoming labyrinth that they would never be made to suffer.
That is the perception of them you never had.
The depths call to you.
The depths of a worrisome remembrance.
Like a passing nervous tickle on your elbow.
You backpedal on your promises to the spirits of things.
Now the night fades into morning.
You will wake again at the next end of nights.