Year Three, Almost Free 11: More Poe and School Fair

Hello, Tim!

This is the week of our school anniversary!

Trying More of some Gothic Poe Story

If you can still recall, a year or so back, I wrote an article on the American writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe, more specifically, one of his most intriguing stories, The Telltale Heart. Because of our recent reading and writing courses, I had the motive to pick up my collection of Poe story once again. This time, through reading the story again, I got new understandings as well as new questions formed.

I found out that this short story of only two-and-a-half thousand words has a profound theatrical succession. It needs reading out loud or speculation of the intonations between sentences as much as you need to shout in an enclosed and quiet space. You process the words you read and the voice inside your head increases in volume and picks up in speed when the steady and marginally narcissistic musings gradually morph into an internal monologue of panic and paranoia. You would, as the word used by the main character, hearken the heartbeat of the old man he killed ringing in your ears, and the last uproar of the man would leave a raspy echo in resonance. This kind of storytelling left me in awe.

I then continued with his other short stories, like Berenice, M.S. in the Bottle, and Ligeia. Berenice is the name of the main character whose story was narrated by her fiancé. Troubled by OCD, the man told us that he could only focus on a very intricate detail at a time. One day, Berenice fell ill, and when the narrator was supposed to mourn for the imminent death of his to-be-wife, he could only focus on her white teeth. Oh, how he wished for her teeth! His obsession grew in drastic degrees, and before he could even register his actions, he had *gross alert* plucked out, as in the original text, “thirty-two small, white and ivory substances”. In the other story featuring a dying woman, Ligeia is a story about a woman who owned a seemingly endless sagacity. The story then borderlines on witchcraft, and after a dozen minutes staring at the text with eyes of confusion, I went on the Internet and found out that this story explored the possibility of one living on solely by willpower. I do know that I am not the only one who’s bewildered by the odd and morbid stories of Edgar Allan Poe. I can’t say that I understand fully the idea the author wanted to convey through the short stories composed by his mysterious and imaginative mind, but it intrigued me and many people alike.

School Fair = Volleyball Tournament + Classroom Chilling Out

This Saturday was the school’s 55^th school fair, and we the third graders were obligated to participate the events despite the coming exams. The volleyball tournaments, for example, is a tradition in our school. For three days we had wakened up especially early to get to school by seven in the morning, one hour before school starts. We would practice as the sun rose and peeked out from between the clouds, and I would bring more than three T-shirts because I knew I would need each of them by the end of the day.

We won the first match but lost the next two. I played more horribly than when we were practicing, and I resent the fact that I performed so badly.

Then, after the tournaments, is the school fair time, where the juniors sold their goods prepared on their own, like the way we did in the previous two years. Because of the sun, the defeat in volleyball, and the lack of variety in choices, I didn’t get much to eat, and instead, stayed in the cool recluse of our classroom and awaited the time to pass.

William happened to bring his guitar with him, and he played the adaptions of several pop songs in Chinese and English and Spanish. We sang along to the flitting notes, and the hot autumn air became tamer all of a sudden.

Us.

Why End Now?

The same old problem.

I don’t have enough time to keep up with the busy schedule. I’ll have more time when the tests are over, and only then will I have time to leisurely sit at my desk with the screen on, with a cup of coffee on my left-hand side of the desk on a colorful owl coaster Mom bought for me. Only then will I be able to close my eyes and recall the events of the whole week, trying to find the right word to describe the sound of William’s guitar, the precise language to use for my ever-changing mood, and the unobtrusively inserted literal devices to furnish the sentence. Only then will I be able to proudly show the world that this is, with a smile on my lips and a glint in my eyes, indeed all for this week.

Extra: Walking the kids home.

Sincerely,

Hugo