The Secret Language of Sabrina

Title is a mouthful, huh?
In fact, you’d expect my Human Document to have a drawing of an actual monster (that might have been clever!), but instead there’s just a messy disarray. In my eyes, that’s stress, and I thought it would be appropriate to make this sketch about it, seeing as we’re at that point of the semester where it feels like we have responsibilities and problems and work coming at us from every direction. Here’s the poem:

about stress

i have found

The moment of departure itself

without frequency

causes mere charge

not relief

If there is one thing I have learned, it’s that stress management is fundamental for everyone, especially when tackling college. It’s important to know your limits and how to avoid breaking down when you pass them. The poem refers to the departure of stress; which yes, is fantastic, and may happen when finishing a big assignment or resolving an issue; however, if this departure happens infrequently, which is to say, if the person does not know how to consistently keep stress under control, then all that will happen is a brief replenishing of energy (or “charge”) before being thrown right back into the chaos. If we want to achieve “relief”, relaxation, then it’s important to have systems in place to keep us organized so to avoid stress, and strategies to get rid of stress whenever it may come.

On a more artistic point of view, I was excited to confront this challenge, seeing as I’d heard of black-out poetry before, and never attempted it. To see the Human Document, and attempt to add yet another layer of artistry to the project seemed like a big challenge, but I have to say I enjoyed it.

There was a certain lack of control in this assignment, the words I picked were not mine, and I’d often think of a perfect phrase only to find the words needed were not present on the page (or were perhaps in the wrong order). So working with what the author provided me was an interesting exercise.

It was also interesting because I scanned the page that was provided to me, and drew on top of it on Adobe Sketch (it’s been a while since I did a sketch on my iPad!). Yet the approach I took was to scribble on top of it as if with pencil, which I could have just as easily done by hand. Somehow, I like how it turned out. I had just spent quite a bit of time tracing Maus (which will be uploaded soon!), which took time and precision, so to end up with a poem about stress, and just move my pencil with no direction was a welcome contrast.