這是ESL閱讀寫作課程中的第一個Essay作業，原本要寫Argumentative的文章，不過因為我寫歪了（很顯然的沒有兩面論證），老師(Kevin Brown)就讓我自由發揮去了哈哈哈哈
(2016.05.03)老師幫我修改過第一次了♥ PO上修正版XD
The correct
answer of a garden
Aphids are gnawing the fragile back side of artichokes leaves, their honeydew has attracted hundreds of thousands of ants to protect them from being eaten by the ladybugs which had been released in the garden for the sake of eliminating the aphids. The artichoke babies suffer from the unwelcome six-legged guests, tortured by invisible tiny wounds. Lizards are helping the artichokes to get rid of the pests, but apparently an anteater is all that is needed. The spray bottle’s tube had been clogged by the ashes from the fireplace, although they say ash water spray is the most harmless to the plants and the most natural way to expel aphids, I have no choice but to use the dishwashing liquid water to kill the aphids and ants. The white bubbles left on the leaves are awkwardly reflecting the sunshine. Now they smell like pale and shiny dining plates but no longer fresh dirt and sun. Beside the artichokes sit the sage and the green onions. They are blooming this year, without any reason and any sign; blooming so desperately as if they are compensating for their amnesia. They forgot to flower for the last 2 years. I am like a clown in the crowds, waving weakly and doing meaningless tricks; still no one sees me. I struggle to make my garden perfect, but nature never buys it. The journey of seeking the correct answer of a garden continues.
Our culture and family started to fertilize the soil in the garden with legends and traditions. Dumped with all the other’s opinions and suggestions, the garden is far away from growing anything yet. Eventually it decomposed and converted into soil, our self-identification. This process comes so easily that we normally ignore it. In the rest of our life, we grow different sentiments and ideas from various plants, we fertilize our soil by absorbing new knowledge, digesting contrasting points of view and defending our personal values. The pain of reforming our mind, our garden, becomes so intolerable. All our precious herbs die to protest their discomfort, the soil we had cautiously kept turns into waste in a totally different climate system. We are helpless in a nowhere that used to be our secret paradise.
The massacre starts with a foreign language. The fruits of English have no clue to bear from the soil which was irrigated by an oriental culture. The power that our native language possesses is profounder than we can imagine. All our small memories fragments are in morpheme units. Each phoneme of our native language recall the tears of joy, the warmth of hugs, the scent of the numbness of a special dish. How can we abandon our own stories and embrace meaningless syllables? However, for the sake of blending in, we remove the surface of who we are, replacing it with new earth that we hastily swallowed from the new culture. Still the fruits grow slightly awkward, the leaves of the plant wrinkle and the flower blooms in totally different color. Upset by the result, we sigh, we frown, it is the millionth time we want to give up.
The alphabets which spread in the book are ants in panic. Trying to escape from pages to bite my finger, they twist and twitch, until it is to cruel to look at, I close the book. I can still hear their silent screaming in the book, it echoes in my hollow head. Unreadable alphabets! How can a language live without characters!
And we become the outsider, we think we will never fit in this new house which is to be home. The thing is never right; how can we keep wearing shoes when we enter our house? The others never take our opinion seriously because of our crippled ; they think our own culture is a simple story that can be told in a 4 minute speech. We never fit in with their expectation. We go through all the magazine shelfs, searching for gardening guides, seizing any chance to learn the correct answer. The correct answer of the fertilizer, of the garden, of our life. We want to be perfect in our new homeland. And we lose the control of our garden. The garden grows chaotic, every single effort that we made is the fume came out from chimney, vanish in the sunset of our hope. Not until we realize that we can never fit in the new environment will we stop chasing a correct answer.
So here I am, gazing at the spectacular but yet ordinary garden of my own. The refreshing breeze brought the scent of lavender planted by a neighbor. I love lavender, but I know it would not grow here, not for now. A garden should not be written on a piece of paper. We are no longer planting roses while we are allergic to; the best-selling seeds of violet is no longer attractive to us. I know that even though I plant the exact same species of lavender, they will grow very different from my neighbor’s lavender. We finally make an agreement with ourselves. No more changing, no more forcing, let it be. Embracing the dirt of our homeland, we are who we are with all the variant curve on our bones, knit in our spine. The answer of a garden is to see the beauty of seasons changing, to grieve the plant withering, to taste the sourness of fruit and to celebrate the new start of life. We are learning but not copying. We are so close to the answers; therefore we can never see them.
Our culture and family started to fertilize the soil in the garden with legends and traditions. Dumped with all the other’s opinions and suggestions, the garden is far away from growing anything yet. Eventually it decomposed and converted into soil, our self-identification. This process comes so easily that we normally ignore it. In the rest of our life, we grow different sentiments and ideas from various plants, we fertilize our soil by absorbing new knowledge, digesting contrasting points of view and defending our personal values. The pain of reforming our mind, our garden, becomes so intolerable. All our precious herbs die to protest their discomfort, the soil we had cautiously kept turns into waste in a totally different climate system. We are helpless in a nowhere that used to be our secret paradise.
The massacre starts with a foreign language. The fruits of English have no clue to bear from the soil which was irrigated by an oriental culture. The power that our native language possesses is profounder than we can imagine. All our small memories fragments are in morpheme units. Each phoneme of our native language recall the tears of joy, the warmth of hugs, the scent of the numbness of a special dish. How can we abandon our own stories and embrace meaningless syllables? However, for the sake of blending in, we remove the surface of who we are, replacing it with new earth that we hastily swallowed from the new culture. Still the fruits grow slightly awkward, the leaves of the plant wrinkle and the flower blooms in totally different color. Upset by the result, we sigh, we frown, it is the millionth time we want to give up.
The alphabets which spread in the book are ants in panic. Trying to escape from pages to bite my finger, they twist and twitch, until it is to cruel to look at, I close the book. I can still hear their silent screaming in the book, it echoes in my hollow head. Unreadable alphabets! How can a language live without characters!
And we become the outsider, we think we will never fit in this new house which is to be home. The thing is never right; how can we keep wearing shoes when we enter our house? The others never take our opinion seriously because of our crippled ; they think our own culture is a simple story that can be told in a 4 minute speech. We never fit in with their expectation. We go through all the magazine shelfs, searching for gardening guides, seizing any chance to learn the correct answer. The correct answer of the fertilizer, of the garden, of our life. We want to be perfect in our new homeland. And we lose the control of our garden. The garden grows chaotic, every single effort that we made is the fume came out from chimney, vanish in the sunset of our hope. Not until we realize that we can never fit in the new environment will we stop chasing a correct answer.
So here I am, gazing at the spectacular but yet ordinary garden of my own. The refreshing breeze brought the scent of lavender planted by a neighbor. I love lavender, but I know it would not grow here, not for now. A garden should not be written on a piece of paper. We are no longer planting roses while we are allergic to; the best-selling seeds of violet is no longer attractive to us. I know that even though I plant the exact same species of lavender, they will grow very different from my neighbor’s lavender. We finally make an agreement with ourselves. No more changing, no more forcing, let it be. Embracing the dirt of our homeland, we are who we are with all the variant curve on our bones, knit in our spine. The answer of a garden is to see the beauty of seasons changing, to grieve the plant withering, to taste the sourness of fruit and to celebrate the new start of life. We are learning but not copying. We are so close to the answers; therefore we can never see them.
Teacher's comment after first read:
Your
writing has literary quality that is near publishable at the highest level in
English…my job is to help with academic writing which is unfortunately
different from creative or literary writing.
Teacher's comment after second read:
Okay, this is publishable. It is at the level of some of the finest writers: Thoreau, Proust, Rachel Carson. I want you to make the edits in bold above and then send it to me again. I’ll revise it once more and then I’d like to show it to some other teachers and suggest you submit it to some journals. Have you thought of doing a creative writing program? A master’s degree?
只能說，被稱讚就是爽辣XD(???
