A snapchat sent to me by a friend in Denmark.
Pastel lines sprinkled on a street
Where wheels and stardust meet
Smear nebulae across asphalt galaxies:
The pathway of children’s suns.
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This is a poem written from a photograph. I got this image through the social media app “Snapchat” and saved it on my phone because I thought it was a captivating idea. 22 days until graduation! Feeling so nostalgic for the chalk driveway drawing days…
Thanks for reading,
thebookybunhead
Filed under NaPoWriMo Challenge
Mallets carve out stones of flat gritty faces,
Bricks pulled by wooden sleds to far away places,
Stacked in heavy glue until towers bend towards the sky,
Magnificent domes, pillars, and arches standing where the birds fly.
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The prompt was to write a poem that features walls, bricks, stones, arches, or the like. So here it is. I honestly think I have some kind of OCD when it comes to following plans because I could have written a poem sooner, but I HAD to write about masonry because it was the next prompt. I didn’t have a chance to write thoughts for Mother’s Day because I told myself I had to finish my poems series first. Here is a brunch we prepared though, and happy belated celebration to all mothers out there! 
Thanks for reading, thebookybunhead
Filed under NaPoWriMo Challenge
Taken on a walk in Parry Sound, Ontario.
Chilly winds under an overcast day
Chase the sprouting hopes of spring away
But the rain bearers they shall also blow by
There is another sky
As obstacle shadows into vision set
By failing light, don’t you forget
Dawn after dusk follow in line
There is another sunshine
Endless silent fields across the horizon
On walks beside the restless waves of Poseidon
The uncertainty makes the heart sorest
Yet here is a little forest
Its leaves are ever green,though frost it has seen
Within faded forests are unfading flowers
Tended by bright bee hum and a patient some
One just like you. Into the garden, come!
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This is based on Emily Dickinson’s poem “There is Another Sky,” which contains so many beautiful phrases, I was moved to write with it instead of Cesar Vallejo’s rather sombre poem in the official prompt. I stayed with the theme of optimism in this version, and have a feeling I will be reading this as food for the soul in the future. Thank you Ms Dickinson.
And thanks for reading,
thebookybunhead
Filed under NaPoWriMo Challenge
Credit and link at end of article.
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light for themselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, ‘twere all alike
As if we had them not.
This quote states a purpose of man’s life through a religious metaphor and explains the importance of sharing the ‘light’ with others instead of keeping it to oneself. Just as a torch’s purpose is to shed light on other objects, humans are called to be God’s instruments to spread goodness around the world. It is important to not limit one’s virtues to thoughts and ideas, but to show them in one’s actions in life. To continue with the theme of light, having a match in a dark cave and leaving it unlit would produce the same result of not having a potential light source at all. A person with virtues left unshared might as well be a person with no virtues at all.
Republished from English class 2012. Photo courtesy of J. Devaun.
Thanks for reading,
thebookybunhead
Filed under Academia, Poems, Essays, and Things
Crunch time! (Original content)
bound (adj) 1. Heading toward somewhere 2. Restricted or confined to a specific place
The end of the year is speeding along and I am feeling exhausted. It has been a marathon for the past few months with the dance festival, spring performance, and now final recital and academic exams. We get a free weekend without class, except there is a LOT to do: science reviews specifically, culminating assignments, procrastinated stuff, and extra credits squeezed in, hopefully. Our grade is in charge of an annual flower sale by tradition and many of us are catching summer colds due to bipolar weather of heavy rain (once pouring enough to collapse our church’s roof) and summer sun (we’re talking shorts and tank top weather here). It is also a personal tradition of mine to create handmade cards for my teachers, and I hope to continue it. Now I completely understand the phrase, “Time flies.”
So this is basically my excuse for my absence on WordPress; my “Drafts” category is growing drastically to the point that I doubt I could complete all these ideas in the summer. In the meantime, let’s get cracking on the notes fellow students (those of you unlucky enough to be on the same pace as my irregular school) , and exams here we come!
Thanks for reading,
thebookybunhead
Filed under Just another person, Life
Much bigger and sunnier than what I’ve written.
Source: http://pinterest.com/pin/481111172662500062/
In the dampened smell of barbecue leaking
out the Chinese restaurant door
The little woman sits in a booth under
four oversized umbrellas
Gathering mannequin hangers as mother asks,
“How much for this shirt?”
“Usually 20, but I’m closing now, so have it for 10.”
She speaks Mandarin.
Mom nods for the purchase as the roar of clouds echoes down the street
The lady folds the elegant beaded garment, smiles, hands us a plastic bag
We say thanks and turn around
Rain pours down.
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Life is hard, I realize that regardless of our evolution into society, it will always be a survival of the fittest. We work to live and we live to work, but we musn’t forget to be generous and kind to each other because those moments are what we remember through time.
Happy birthday to my mother who never turns a year older!
Thanks for reading,
thebookybunhead
Filed under Life, Poems, Essays, and Things, The happenings
Some of us thought a jump shot on a sunny balcony would be cool.
It’s not any day you meet and perform with over a hundred fellow dancers from 10 different countries. Actually, it was a week. So naturally, I have an urge to write about this unforgettable experience. Amazing. Inspiring. Awesome. Enlightening. Bomb-diggity. These words can only begin to describe what hosting a giant, international ballet festival at our school was like.
Nearly everyone arrived early on the first day for orientation. It was a confusing ordeal at first, as students wandered around trying to find their partners who may or may not still be in bed. Or, having found them, realized their partners had already been taken on a tour meaning they were left feeling quite useless, standing around like a lamppost. My partner was a pretty, Indian girl who will be in the corps of the San Francisco Ballet next year and who had no trouble engaging in conversation, which made it easy for me. From this first introduction, I realized how many different experiences were being brought by everyone, and was sure it would be an interesting week!
Being the second of this tetra-annual event (think Olympics, except with dancing, and a celebration instead of a competition), we had an arsenal of organizational experience that we launched into some virtually foolproof plans. Firstly, each of us was partnered with a student from a visiting school, and each school had a contact person. It was a system of relaying any concerns between student, teacher, and artistic director of the schools without multiple people trying to fix the same problem at the same time in their own way. Binders were prepared containing weekly schedules, pamphlets on public transportation and restaurants in the area, cell phone numbers of every participant, even directions on how to get to every studio. Food was also stocked up with snacks of fruit, yogourt, cheese, and crackers and tables laid out to fill “Town Square” as we call our school’s main hall, where 180 people would eat every day. It surprised a few of us when visitors exclaimed, “Do you get to eat this every day?!” pointing to the row of hot food and salad bar.
We started each day with a ballet class, each one with a different teacher and with a different set of dancers. Throughout the week I was scheduled to be taught by teachers from the School of the Hamburg Ballet, Dutch National Ballet Academy, New Zealand School of Ballet, and Houston Ballet Academy. To think that to take this week of classes otherwise I would need to travel across the globe! Although each class was set differently, with a variety of teaching style and focus (for example, upper body expression, or petit allegro which is quick beats and jumps) it was interesting to see that many corrections were the same, just told in a different way – dance truly is a a universal language.
In the first few days, “Traditionally Timeless” was rehearsed: each school would perform a piece of repertoire that reflected their culture over the course of two programs. Each was the most exhilarating three hours I have never seen on stage. It was amazing to see everyone represent themselves and their school with so much integrity, and the diversity of styles and skills opened my eyes to how much more I have to explore in my art form. Counter-balancing acts, pure classical virtuosity, abstract, theatrical, and humorous contemporary, and impressive shows of strength in pas-de-deux – the shows had it all!
In total, there were 18 schools that participated and we had the privilege with mingling with what is, literally, the next generation of the ballet world. As mentioned, our daily ballet classes had new combinations of dancers every day, so we danced with the world, did a bit of unavoidable “sizing-up”, and collected lots of names that would surely pop up again in the dance world. It was also good practice for auditions to have to jump in and learn a class with people you hardly knew.
Another set of programs was performed in the second portion of the festival; these were named “Fast Forward” (they really liked the alliteration, didn’t they!) which featured student choreographic works as well as a live streaming project. These all had international casts, with a random scramble of dancers that had learned the dance through videos from their home country. And there were approximately four days to put it all together.
“Stream” was a 20 minute fusion of classical and contemporary styles and used projections of water and the dancers from Amsterdam on two big screens on either side of the stage. White was worn so that images would be projected onto bodies when people were dancing behind the screens. It really was a cool effect. It is amazing how technology can enable dancers from across the ocean to put on a show together with a lag time of .0-something seconds. It was a big achievement on the part of the choreographers, stage crew, cameramen, technology crew, and everyone in between.
We met many modern dancers from Juilliard, Palucca Schule, and Codarts who impressed all of us with their movement quality and style. It was improvisation as we had never seen before. And of course, they were all so nice. We got to know this cast of 35 or so people quite well since we had “Stream” rehearsal nearly every day. It was fun to learn how to communicate through language barriers and shocking for many of my friends who realized many Europeans not only speak their native tongue but also speak better English than most from North America, excluding their accents. I feel a lot of the times we are too casual with speaking properly, but that’s another topic. Other than the Cubans who spoke almost no English, we exchanged many words with everyone and nevertheless gained a valuable, international network of dance connections.
Our main socializing time was lunch hour. I had always told myself I would be the person plopping myself down at a table of foreigners, but I learned it’s not as easy as it looks. For the most part, students from the same school stuck together, so it could be a little intimidating. What I also learned is that having the courage to put yourself, as an individual, out there seems friendlier than approaching others in a group. By the end of the week, we were all quite comfortable with starting spontaneous conversation with anybody and could only wish that we had more time to hang out as our days were packed with dancing and rehearsals.
Wrapping up the week was a conference that was titled “Creative Challenge” after its topic, since “conference” seems to bring up the wrong sorts of ideas to young dancers (you pictured stern faces jotting down notes in an auditorium, didn’t you?). It started off with an interview with world-renowned modern choreographer, Wayne McGregor, and our main speaker, former Principal of the Royal Ballet, Deborah Bull. It was so cool to hear him speak about the projects he had done and how he built his company, but I don’t know if it was fatigue or the extremely hot temperature of a packed theatre, many of us started nodding off after 45 minutes, which was too bad because it is such a special opportunity to be sitting with two significant advocates of the dance world.
So the break-out sessions came at a good time. We split into groups in different studios to brainstorm ideas for a dance project that: a) is performed in an unconventional venue (meaning outside proscenium theatres) and b) collaborates with young artists from various disciplines (ex. composers, costume designers, filmmakers, poets, painters). Due to the economic times and the trend that companies are hiring older and more mature dancers, developing entrepreneurial skills is valuable to create opportunities for oneself. The projects are to be broadcasted through the internet and a hub designed so we can update each other on our progress and learning experiences.
The idea is also a way to expand the reaches of the art form to the public since theatre tickets can be considered elitist, especially when it comes to price. Our group extended the discussion to how the audience can become a participant instead of observer, and to work with “non-performers” as well, perhaps construction workers, the blind, or mathematicians. Everyone had different ideas and was enthusiastic about the new endeavour, which is good, since our director was worried it might have been too far “out there” for the current ballet community.
Ms Bull said something that really resonated with a lot of us, “You may think of yourselves as students that are about to enter the dance world as professional artists in companies. But actually, you are the dance world.” I just thought, “Wow, I am a part of this family that I’ve always envisioned to strive for. And I am a part of the future.” When the conference was wrapped up, a roaring standing ovation rose and our director performed a spontaneous dance of joy to the cheers and hoots of two hundred young dancers, giving the documentary crew quietly filming in the corner the exciting footage they had been waiting for. It felt like the beginning of a revolution and I hope we always remember the indescribable solidarity of that moment.
If that didn’t wrap up the week with a bang, the closing party sure did! We danced the night away, simultaneously introduced ourselves and said farewell to people we had or hadn’t met yet, and even saw some of the top directors and teachers of these highly prestigious schools break it down on the floor! A slideshow of photos from class, rehearsal, and performances played and there were tables of food: desserts of macaroons, cupcakes, fruit salad, and tarts; a bar for the legally of age (saw a director sneak his student a drink – very funny), and savoury treats of sliders, shishkabobs, cheeses, you get the idea. It was a fun evening, bittersweet, but only slightly thanks to the wonder that is Facebook. We joke that we are set for life from our connections all across the globe now.
It is hard to sum up my thoughts for this festival. I met so many wonderful people and was inspired by every single one to always be the best artist and person I can be. We shared many memories in the seven days the world gathered together in Toronto, and I feel very lucky to have been a part of a learning experience that I will treasure all my life. It will be funny if the t-shirts we received become rare collectibles one day; maybe we will recognize each other from them, or the grey booties that we also got, when our paths meet again.
April – May 2013
Thanks for reading,
thebookybunhead
Filed under Dance, Life, The happenings
Source: photok12.org/?q=node/11
Oh glorious day!
Sunshine blazes through canopies of green, crowds filter into High Park
A blackbird calls, its red and white marks peeking through the brush
Algae foams above the pond, where breezes sweep through the gardens
Strolling a maze of hedges and wading pools
Sit with face to the sky, indulge in quenching fruit salad and gelato
Hike hidden sandy trails imagining a place without city noise
Emerge into picnics, lawn bowling games, and playground cheers
Snapping photos and laughing chats all the way
Have a mini barbecue in shady grass, with softened rays of the dying hours
Contemplating why we work so hard to seclude ourselves from nature,
When we love so much to wallow in it?
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Perfect way to end the long weekend: had an absolutely fantastic time with my family and my only regrets are that I had homework nagging the back of my mind and that I didn’t reapply sunscreen, not because of sunburn, but because it is too soon to already get this tanned. Summer feels so close but so far away, and I am feeling very unmotivated to go back to school and don’t-even-mention exams. I just have to remember to live every moment because before I know it, grade 11 will be finished.
Thanks for reading,
thebookybunhead
Filed under Just another person, Life, Poems, Essays, and Things, The happenings
“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” ― Confucius
It has been a very busy week preparing for our annual showcase. Long days leave us with hanging limbs, aching muscles, cracking ankles, and lots of homework waiting in our school bags. And I love it. Even when it means the rest of Canada is celebrating a long weekend while we have rehearsals in two out of the three days.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy being lazy. There truly is nothing like lounging around on a couch reading a book, watching nostalgic television shows, and blogging away here on WP, but being busy is satisfying. Having work and goals leads to personal growth that makes us feel like a contributing part of society. Vacation is great, but I think, as human beings, if we had all the time in the world we would still find some project to work on, because we are naturally curious that way.
In ballet, it is much the same way except we can’t decide when we dance from when we want to, but also when we need to – it’s about discipline as much as desire. Maintaining strength and stamina is especially important the days leading up to a performance because often, muscle memory isn’t enough. After getting into the routine, our bodies crave the exercise, and sometimes even the soreness, strangely enough.
Ballet is a never-ending process of discovery. Each day, we get into class practising the same movements we’ve been doing for years. But then again, it’s never the same because bodies change and we are constantly finding new ways to engage our muscles and refine our artistry. Perfectionism is a raging epidemic in dancers because everyone is in pursuit of pure, classical, virtuosity. There is an internal hunger in all of us to reach the ideal, ballerina whose picture only becomes more perfect the closer we get. It’s what keeps us on our toes.
The older I get, the more I realize you cannot have a successful career unless you are head-over-heels-flat-on-your-face in love with ballet. Work is paired with passion, and learning about the art form and yourself is just as important as the performance onstage. With the words from my teacher, I’ve realized that there is never a finished product and that we are not “finished dancers”, especially as students still in a school. There is always more to learn and more to improve on to fulfill the potential that sometimes we don’t see in ourselves. And this does not only apply to ballet.
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I would like to acknowledge Bradley for his beautiful sketches (that he drew for me a LONG time ago) and that inspired me to write this post. Please check out the original art and his blog here!
As you’ve read, I have incorporated an excuse for my inactivity in this post and am itching to complete all the ideas that I had a few weeks ago in my What Now? list. There is a lot of school work to be done this weekend, and as I’ve mentioned, rehearsals, but I am determined to write at least one little something each day.
Thanks for reading,
thebookybunhead
Filed under Dance
“Rise above it” Fine Art Print by Amanda Cass
Dedicated to that special Someone: I hope this has spread some sunshine for you and that you know there are many who are always here for you.
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All these posts are taken from Pinterest, which unfortunately does not always have the best cited sources. For those that do not recognize his style, the poem on the left is written by Shel Silverstein, one of my favourite authors in elementary school. The new genre of combining images and quotes is a great way to inspire and would be fun to create, I imagine. I love collecting so I can read through them in low times.
Life can be tough, and comfort can be found in this medium. Hope some of these resonated with you the way they did to me.
Thanks for reading,
thebookybunhead
thebookybunhead 