Cutting Strings
I’m in bed, scanning the ceiling for a light that isn’t there. There wasn’t one last night, or the night before, so I shouldn’t have expected anything different than the textured surface that my retinas now scratch across in a long diagonal. The same grey, dried-paint-sharp ceiling that they don’t show in the brochures. Always without a light. Sure, one of those fake-Southwestern lamps with a plastic lamp shade sits beside me on the coffee table, but it’ll just fall with everything else once this island of a motel room shrinks down to a pinpoint and these two beds, those dresser drawers, that mirror, Jessie, Bekah, and my own elusive existence tumble into the empty gap.
“Are they still out there?”
I don’t see her, but I imagine my 16-year-old sister Jessie gaping at the blank TV screen, hoping somebody will answer her question.
“Yep,” Bekah rattles off too quickly.
That’s right, I realize. Still outside. Probably in the car, pinned under the hard rain. It was raining when we got here. Some firefly of a town at the crossing of two faded freeways in northern Pennsylvania where it snows a lot in the wintertime for the skiers, my dad told me in a watery voice while our minivan hummed down the off-ramp. Watercolor black, I thought while I looked out the window, except for the yellow, splotchy Super-8 sign and the white motel lobby. My two sisters and I brought the luggage down and we’re still waiting for mom and dad like dead puppets, and I’m still wishing for a light fixture.
Like the bubble-shaped one that hung in my bedroom about two thousand miles away, before I turned 18 on this family road trip. Before this second act, when my parents stopped flinching their puppet master wrists from above the stage, and so I finally cut my own strings, just to fall flat on my plastic face and deflate like a balloon.
The door clicks open. What can I hang on to? The ceiling is blank.
“Mom?”
I hear my sister’s drawl and think desperately about a light fixture, this one big, with crystal chains and gold bars. I can feel the mattress slipping below my back.
Take your things.
Swinging from chandeliers? No, too much. I’d just hold on.
“Take your things and get out,” Mom says. “You’re sleeping with your dad tonight.”
My two sisters and my older brother and I never heard much, but my mother would sometimes tell us about how her parents beat her and did other things too.
A Light in the Attic as a whole was not the problem, The trouble was lying in certain poems such as “How Not to Have to Dry the Dishes” and “Little Abigail and the Beautiful Pony”. In the poem “How Not to Have to Dry the Dishes” the reader is instructed to drop a dish so that their parents will not want them to do the dishes again. Likewise, in “Litt...
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. 1851. Rpt. In Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter and Other Writings. Ed. Leland S. Person. New York: Norton, 2005. 3-166. Norton Critical Edition.
Ralph heard the night watchman call lights out. The moon gleaming in the window was the only source of light within Ralph’s room now. Even in the dim light he could make out the sink and toilet. The room was padded, and the door had a glass window that reflected fluorescent light into the room. The combination of the artificial and natural light created a faint glimmer upon the mirror that hung above the sink.
Many Tibetans are arrested and put through such treatment with little to no evidence supporting them as criminals. In a sudden “clampdown” that started in February of 1992, groups of ten Chinese raided Tibetan homes in Lhasa arresting more than 200 people. Those arrested were said to be in possession of “subversive materials, such as photographs, and tapes or books containing speeches or teachings of the Dalai Lama” (Kumar, 77).
Tung, R. J. (1980). A portrait of lost Tibet. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Another great reason they give in that article is adults have shown over the past centuries that it is possible to be moderately used without h...
The Sunni and Shiite branches of Islam have been feuding for hundreds of years dating back to the beginning of the Islamic religion. The deity or god of the Sunnis is Allah. The Sunni branch of Islam is the larger of the two branches with over 80% of the Muslim population. The Sunni are the majority in most of the countries that have Islamic followers. There are a few different translations of what Sunna stands for, one of which is “Habitual Practice.” The differences between the two branches can be traced all the back to the 7th century CE when the disagreements as to who should succeed Muhammad. Sunnis believe that the Muslim community should maintain the right to select who the successor to Muhammad is going to be. The Shiite branch maintains the belief that Muhammad has selected his son-in-law to be the successor. Even though the two branches agree on most matters, the Sunni put more power behind god and his determination of fate, and are more inclusive about their definition of being Muslim. The Sunni place heavy belief in the role of religion in some aspects of life and a lot of weight is put on the Islamic law known as Shariah as the standard for a vast range of social issues including marriage and divorce. (Patheos.com)
The Soviet Union, which was once a world superpower in the 19th century saw itself in chaos going into the 20th century. These chaoses were marked by the new ideas brought in by the new leaders who had emerged eventually into power. Almost every aspect of the Soviet Union was crumbling at this period both politically and socially, as well as the economy. There were underlying reasons for the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and eventually Eastern Europe. The economy is the most significant aspect of every government. The soviet economy was highly centralized with a “command economy” (p.1. fsmitha.com), which had been broken down due to its complexity and centrally controlled with corruption involved in it. A strong government needs a strong economy to maintain its power and influence, but in this case the economic planning of the Soviet Union was just not working, which had an influence in other communist nations in Eastern Europe as they declined to collapse.
(27) Canada Tibet Committee. “World Tibet Network News.” 1 Jan 2003. www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/2003/1/1_3.html (6 March 2003).
Islam is a monotheistic and Abrahamic religion alongside Judaism and Christianity. It is currently the second largest religion in the world today. Its beliefs come from the Qur'an which literally means "the recitation" which is believed to be a literal transcription of the word of God. Its main prophet is named Muhammad who began Islam by speaking with the angel Gabriel in a cave during his meditation and then acting as an instrument of God to help write the Qur’an. Muhammad then spread Islam to the scattered tribes of Arabia by becoming the leader of Yathrib and using his wonderful leadership abilities to then grow his influence over virtually all of Arabia. Muhammad is known by Muslims to be the seal of the profits because no profits after Muhammad should be considered legitimate. Muhammad also left behind the Hadith or “tradition” which is a collection of writings compiled of reports of Muhammad’s actions as leader of Yathrib. These reports are used as a more specific code of ethics in day to day life and from these reports the 5 Pillars of Islam are derived (Smith 160). Although Islam shares many similarities to Judaism and Christianity it is often viewed in the US with hate derived from preconceived notions following the attack on September 11th 2001. This paper seeks to provide an overview of Islam’s history as well as its two major sects and 5 main pillars to remove preconceived notions and provide a glance into the minds of the Islamic people.
A guilty feeling surged through me as I snuck out of church early, but I could not wait any longer to show my friend, Jonathan, my new Chevrolet Cavalier. As I raced out of the parking lot, I heard ambulance sirens in the distance, and I felt a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach as if butterflies were fluttering around trying to get out. I paid the feeling no mind as I merged onto the interstate at Gray and headed toward Johnson City. Little did I know those sirens would change my life forever.
In Tibet one might use the words “religion” and “culture” almost as synonyms, especially for the arts—literature, drama, painting, and sculpture. Not only were they inspired by religion, but religion was their very raison d’être (Pal 18).
The silver moon suspends in the velvet sky, glowing dimly. Moonlight travels through the yellowish leaves and sheds on the land. I see the obscure, indistinct shadows of the trees are swaying on the floor letting me have the illusion of thousands of devils dancing slyly in the night, planning some evil trick. The hazy mist surrounds the street making it more mysterious and attractive, and the bright...
Everyone seems to define family differently, however, the significance of family is the same. For you, family means everything. You can always count on your parents and siblings for help and love. Family is very valuable and important to you and should never be taken for granted. No one can deny that family is the foundation of our generation. A family is where we all start our life journey and helps us grow to be successful throughout our lives.
There are so many different types of family relationships. Whatever form a family takes; it is an important part of everyone’s life. My family has played an important role in my life. Good family relationships serve as a foundation to interactions with others. Supportive families will help children to thrive. The quality of the family relationship is more important than the size of the family. Making the relationships priority, communication, and providing support for one another is key to developing relationships. Family relationships are what make up our world today; they shape the ways that we see things and the ways that we do things.