Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

In honor of Spring, I'll share some found items that relate to the season. First, what appears to be an elementary school exercise, probably to identify and color different objects. But I only found one, a flower, and the child had filled in: "A yellow flower blooms on the vine." Of course, by the time I found it, the colors had run and it was sort of green.

The next item is a homework assignment, which had been torn into three pieces. The front seems to be instructions. It reads:

Warm up

1) Use context clues to get meaning

2) Working with fractions

How are living things involved in the cycles of matter?

The back is where I see a connection to spring. They are answers to questions, all apparently related to the natural cycles that produce weather and lead to the growth of plants and the eventual recycling of dead matter.

It's pretty clear which of these are copied directly from the book and which are the student's own words (and spellings). It reads:

1a. Evaperation — The process by which molecules of liquid water absorb energy and change to a gas.

Condensation — The process by which a gas changes to a liquid.

Precipatation — Eventually the heavy drops fall back to Earth as rain, sleet or snow and hail.

1.b. Because without the sun you can't evaporate or no precipatation that why the sun drives force behind the sun.

2.a. The carbon and oxygen cycle

2.b. Producers take in carbon dioxide gas from the air during photosynthesis — Producers

When they eat producers they take in the carbon — containing food molecules — consumers

2.c. If all the producers die decomposers and consumers will break down their remains and returns carbon compounds to the soil.

How much of this information will stay with the student in years to come? Will he ever learn how to spell "evaporation"?

The next two items appear to be playlists. I have no way of knowing whether they're simply the titles from a particular album or whether they're rundowns for mix CDs or iTunes playlists to share with a beloved. Still, going by the names of the titles alone, they certainly both sound like they portray the turbulent emotions of young love, which blooms (like yellow flowers) every spring.

The first playlist is:

1. Don't matter
2. Cry me a river
3. O
4. Why (?)
5. Ass like that
6. My love
7. touch
8. lost without you
9. Step in the name of love
10. yo
11. happy people
12. POP
13. gone
14. Sexy back
15. Ice box
16. Senorita
17. Over and over again

The second playlist seemed to have given the creator some troubles, as several of the selections are scribbled out, so this is clearly still a work in progress. He or she clearly couldn't decide, for example, whether or not to include three poems which, I assume, could be original.

On the side, the creator began doodling, with some disturbing overtones. At the top is a dead fish, with an arrow pointing to it and the words "There's Nemo." Underneath that is a crudely drawn gun with an arrow pointing to it and the words, "There's shotgun." And underneath that appear to be two flying saucers, one with a flag atop and one with a bubble roof and a face staring out.

Hopefully, this will not become the cover art for the mix CD, or I doubt this person will get a second date.

1. Intro (1)

2. Shake Your Body

3. Shake Your Body (2)

4. Poem I

5. Talk Dirty (6)

6.

7. Poem II

8. Close Your Eyes (4)

9. Lose My Head (5)

10. I'm Sorry

11. Relax Your Mind (5)

12.

13. Poem III

14.

15. Amo

And finally, some drawings which were on the front and back of a sheet of paper. One side had lines underneath an empty box, as if designed for somone to write and illustrate a story. Nothing was written, but the drawings say it all. The people in them are deliriously happy, in an off-kilter sort of way, much the same as I feel as the weather grows warmer.

None of them has hands, and none of them seems to care. Who needs hands when it's Spring?

Copyright 2008 by Alyce Wilson

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