Be An Animal
Adapatation of "Be An Animal" by Goldberg Take a walk. But don't just walk. Use your senses to fully engage in your surroudings. Notice the small things around you:street signs, the color of the car that just passed by, the type of flowers in your neighbor's yard. Look up at the sky and take note of the different shapes the clouds make. Life is truly beautiful and has so much to offer, but we have to take initiative and actually notice it. Who knows? Maybe you'll find something worth writing about. Or maybe the walk you take will clear your mind and give you a chance to focus on other things besides the things you have to do. Sometimes we are so busy worrying and stressing about stuff that we forget to just be. Relaxation seems like a thing of the past, especially as a student. We constantly worry about what assignments we have to complete and what things we have to buy that we forget to notice our surroundings. So, take a walk. Pay close attention to the things around you. You might miss something beautiful.
In Goldberg's "Be An Animal", the author wants to emphasize the importance of noticing our surroundings. She says that we should be like cats:watching, listening, smelling. We should forget about money and materialistic things and reflect on more important things. She iincluded an anecdote about her friend from New York and her fear of venturing out and getting lost.
The main point, similar to Goldberg's, is to venture off. Walk around. Somwhere new or old and use your senses to take in your surroudings. I think this is a useful thing to do for anyone, especially in an English class. It can be really useful for free writing exercises. Even anaylizing literature and paying close attention to the words on the paper and looking at the individual words to uncover meaning.
Rewriting this adaptation gave a new light to Goldberg's piece and helped me further understand the author's intentions. All of these things are applicable to analyzing pieces of writing in order to fully comprehend them.
Works Cited
Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones. Boston: Shambhala, 1986. Print.
