It all started with Enya. Mom and I would listen to her in the car on long drives to my aunt's or my grandma's. or maybe it was the random Celtic music radio station we found between Coldwater and Muskegon, Michigan before it faded out to static. We'd listen to it while driving north on highway 69 to highway 96. The sun was always setting, fading into darkness as wove through the rolling hills covered in pine. It was narrated by a woman named Fiona. I loved how she said her name: "Fee-yoohh-nah." Her accent in general was lovely. Celtic music makes me feel in touch with my roots. My family has been in America since the 1600s or 1700s. Meaning We were about 5 types of European ancestry and about as American as it comes. But my last name was Irish. And I'd been to Ireland. So I felt more connected to that than any other white Europeans nations my ancestors tramped through. I liked to imagine them, living in the green hills of Ireland, tending sheep and being caught up in other romantic stories. In reality, they might have been drunks, or pious, certainly racist at one point in history or another. my ancestors certainly wouldn't like me the way Mulan's ghost-like ones did. Other than my name, my love of potatoes in all shapes and forms, and maybe my alight abundance of knowledge on Celtic history I've done through school and on my own, I'm not very Irish. Some people know second languages, or still perform customs their great grandparents did. Maybe they still carry a name from their ancestor or have family back in the country they're from. I think there's still something tying us all to our roots which had woven through history to bring us to where we are today. I also think it's important not to lose that. So I have Celtic music, two trips to Ireland, and my family crest. And that's good enough for now.
Showing posts with label roots. Show all posts
Showing posts with label roots. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
3:51 PM
By katie renee
In: ancient, floppy disk, growing, life, plans, practice, roots, technology, teenager, writing
No comments
By katie renee
In: ancient, floppy disk, growing, life, plans, practice, roots, technology, teenager, writing
No comments
Day 3: Sifting through your roots.
I've always been writing. Since 1st or 2nd grade when I wrote a little story for class about a star. I wish I still had that. What I do still have are floppy disks. I counted: there are 16 floppy disks that I used up until freshmen year of college via a USB floppy disk drive. That I just found. And am currently utilizing.
It's a funny thing, old technology. when I powered it up, it whirred like the stone age was coming back to life--or at the very least, dial-up internet. the floppy disks are red, yellow, orange, blue, and green. I numbered them and labeled them using tan masking tape and bullet points with what each contained. Some of the stories are familiar looking, some are not. Some I'm already cringing at the thought of reading it, but my curiosity will always win out--these are my roots. Some of my stories now are based off of these very scatter-brained writings of a teenager. I had no grammar sense, and no idea how to make paragraphs. But for how bad that is, there's something pretty golden about the rawness--I wasn't hemmed in by adult worries of planning a story or worrying about character development or any one thing. I just wrote. And wrote. And wrote. I have on average about 100 document currently some containing one paragraph, some over 100 pages long--only about 6 of them are actual stories I work on. These floppy disks contain about 60 stories, so I guess I've always been ambitious. Or really bad at planning story arcs. The point is I was writing and I didn't care if I was good at the time, I just couldn't not write. And I still feel that way, but I worry more about it (not a bad thing). The old stories might not be fun to look at, might be messy and incoherent and downright embarrassing, but they are sort of like my roots--and there are still some stellar lines hidden among the rabble. I'm glad I got them out and started sifting through them--I just might learn something from my teenaged-self.
It's a funny thing, old technology. when I powered it up, it whirred like the stone age was coming back to life--or at the very least, dial-up internet. the floppy disks are red, yellow, orange, blue, and green. I numbered them and labeled them using tan masking tape and bullet points with what each contained. Some of the stories are familiar looking, some are not. Some I'm already cringing at the thought of reading it, but my curiosity will always win out--these are my roots. Some of my stories now are based off of these very scatter-brained writings of a teenager. I had no grammar sense, and no idea how to make paragraphs. But for how bad that is, there's something pretty golden about the rawness--I wasn't hemmed in by adult worries of planning a story or worrying about character development or any one thing. I just wrote. And wrote. And wrote. I have on average about 100 document currently some containing one paragraph, some over 100 pages long--only about 6 of them are actual stories I work on. These floppy disks contain about 60 stories, so I guess I've always been ambitious. Or really bad at planning story arcs. The point is I was writing and I didn't care if I was good at the time, I just couldn't not write. And I still feel that way, but I worry more about it (not a bad thing). The old stories might not be fun to look at, might be messy and incoherent and downright embarrassing, but they are sort of like my roots--and there are still some stellar lines hidden among the rabble. I'm glad I got them out and started sifting through them--I just might learn something from my teenaged-self.