Category Archives: PuraVida: “Write & Speak” CHALLENGE 2011

Contest information and features from the 2011 PuraVida: “Write & Speak” CHALLENGE.

Pura Vida: “Write & Speak” CHALLENGE Results!

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Pura Vida: “Write & Speak” CHALLENGE Results

The time has now come to announce the official winners of the 2011-2012 Pura Vida: “Write and Speak” CHALLENGE. With hundreds of likes issued, these eight contestants pulled out with the most votes! There were a total of 30 official participants, representation from 6 US states & 3 foreign countries, and entries submitted in a total of 3 different languages. Congrats to ALL who participated and contributed to the challenge by posting, commenting, and liking! This collaboration has been both inspiring and insightful, and I hope to see the project grow to an even larger audience next year. Never cease to create. Write on!

Pura Vida, Andrea Madeleine Medina

WINNERS

Written Submissions:
1st Place-“Unknown Stories of the Young Society” by Kara Hernandez
2nd Place-“Majestic and Alone” by Mary Cook
3rd Place-“Is It Simply Music?” by Jaime Vasquez
4th Place-“It’s Been So Long” by Aubrie Hardeman
5th Place-“Dive” by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

 

Video/Audio Submissions:
1st Place-“Fight the Good Fight” by Antonio Frietze
2nd Place-“Destiny’s Fetish” by Daniel Ortiz
3rd Place-“Growing Pains” by Christelle Miller

Majestic and Alone by Mary Cook

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My crown was only ever a smoke ring
My scepter only a mop handle
My kingdom ranged from the near horizon
To the mountains of lost dreams.
My palace was built of whispered prayers
More fragile than thought
And broken by anything stronger than an idea.
I drank the bitter nectar
And ate the words of poems.
My cloak was made of gossamer webs and ash.
And I was a king.

My people were only ever the shadows of my mind.
My throne was a birch tree’s branches
Unfolded to the sky.
My treasury was empty, but I thought myself rich.
The cathedrals that I built were hollow and unlit.
My sunlight was only a lamp
With a flickering, dying bulb.
My flowers were pages torn from a book,
A book I should have written
A poem I should have read.
And I was a king.

It is hard to build bridges with rotten wood,
Hard to sing songs with broken words,
Hard to love when love has left the land.
And my kingdom is forever shrouded in rain clouds,
And my roads are rivers of churned mud,
And I must have left my heart somewhere
Somewhere between the near horizon
And the mountains of lost dreams.
I used a leaden heart for a while
Because I was a king.

My heart beat amid the tea leaves,
My foot skipped amid the mud.
No rain could wash away the tears,
But my ocean was filled with lime juice
That my scepter could never clean.
My throne was covered in moss,
Wet and thick and green.
My people gazed silently, then turned and fled
Before my sun, though the sun was dead.
And though I clung, my crown disappeared.
But I was still a king.

About the Author & Work
Mary Cook
Middlebury, VT
From San Antonio, TX
Middlebury College
October 25, 2011

How did it feel to write this piece? It felt easy. That is, the words came easily. But it made me realize that I am the speaker, as all writers are the speaker. We are kings of our worlds, building castles in the air – but castles built of moonbeams are never meant to last. Out worlds are imperfect and flawed; though we are kings, we have no wealth and very few of us actually have the love of their people. I felt like an exiled king still clinging to my crown, still trying to control the world I have created. I should have known long ago that I was no king, but I think that I shall return to that world for a little bit longer. My heart is still lost there, and I need to get it back. Yes, I will go back into the words to search for something I did not know that I had lost until this poem reflected the shattered remains of my dream.
Submission Type: Poem
Category & Place: Written, 2nd Place

Is It Simply Music? by Jaime Vasquez

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It only took a few notes bowed until the vivacious sensation bestowed itself upon me. Time had frozen, and the only feelings which lingered in my soul included those invitations of grandeur and mystery. While the music flowed naturally on my violin, my soul transported itself into a sanctuary that I had never experienced before. Questions kept resonating in my head as my soul embarked an enigmatic expedition.

Where was I?

What’s happening?

Is anyone else here?

While these questions were left unanswered, there was one thing I knew for certain, this phenomenon delivered feelings of brilliance! The phrases of music delivered my soul into another realm, another world! The violin in my hand was not just some ordinary instrument. From that moment on, music was not a hobby anymore. My violin now had the capabilities of being a spaceship; my very own spruce and maple spaceship. The music became the destination; a destination of nirvana. As I finished playing, reality started to take place again, and I wondered if I would ever go back to that mysterious world that I loved.

What is this world?

Is this a figment of my imagination?

Is my heart trying to tell me something?

The world I encountered is inexpressible; you just have to be there to realize its wonders. It’s simply not a spontaneous excursion for the soul. It has to be something more. It could be imagination, but the feelings of joy were ever so tangible. It has to be something more. Whatever this marvel happens to be, the one thing for certain is that whenever I play my violin, it feels as if all in the world is right.

As for me, I think this sensation could be love. Music contains criteria of motivations and my motivation is a simple, yet perplexing love for playing the violin. Whether anyone understands, it really does not matter. I understand and so does music.

About the Author & Work
Jaime Vasquez
Corpus Christi, TX
Mary Carroll High School
January 4, 2012

The words flowed right out of my mind while writing this. I really do love playing the violin and music if one of the few things that really can touch my soul. The gift of music itself touches the soul, and I believe getting lost in the music is a feeling everyone should encounter. It’s an enlightenment like none other. Music = Life folks!
Submission Type: Essay
Category & Place: Written, 3rd Place

Destiny’s Fetish by Daniel Ortiz

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About the Author & Work
Daniel Ortiz
Houston, TX
Cypress Ridge High School
December 10, 2011

I began writing this at midnight before talent show, but I continued the following week with less anxiety and with just as much anticipation and passion. I’m proud of what it has become. This is hopefully the first of many Slam videos to come. This is an original work that I both directed and wrote. Hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

Submission Type: Spoken Word-Video
Category & Place: Video/ Audio, 2nd Place

Unknown Stories of the Young Societ by Kara Hernandez

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Tonight a 17 –year old boy marks his bedroom floor
With drops of scarlet coming from the cut in his wrist.
“Why did He put me here, only for me to live miserably?”
Arm getting red, but he’s used to the pain by now
Even though tears slur his vision.
Now his mom works the late shift on the other side of town, unconscious of her only son
Who can no longer bear to live this way.

Tonight an 18-year old girl drives intoxicated on Pine Street
Only minutes away from the “coolest” party in town.
“ ”-no thoughts cross her mind.
Foot getting heavier on the gas pedal, her vision is like a kaleidoscope.
The “invisible” stop sign approaches, but her foot is too heavy.
Now a weary man is blinded by the car lights, unknowing of the shot glasses used tonight
And will wake up tomorrow morning to the beeping of a cardiac machine.

Tonight a 14-year old girl sits in the passenger seat
Hoping her mom doesn’t notice the tear threatening to roll down.
“Why can’t he notice me? Am I not pretty enough?”
Heart being broken, but she only wanted someone to call her “baby”.
To her, he was “the only one”, the love of her life.
Now he goes to sleep, unaware of the soul he crushed tonight
And the hands that only longed to be held by his.

Tonight a 16-year old boy lights his dim basement
With the passion of being free.
“When will these shackles be loosened?”
Hoping, Wishing, Waiting, but the day cannot get here soon enough
When he will no longer be treated “as a child”.
Now the rest of the world buzzes about
While unspoken words of the youth wait to be unveiled.

About the Author & Work
Kara Hernandez
San Antonio, TX
Incarnate Word High School
November 3, 2011

It was pretty cool to see everything I ponder and think about written down. People today never really think about putting time out of their hectic day to reflect and be creative. I wanted to write about something not too cliché, and believe me, a lot of ideas I had were. I was also reluctant to write something that so many would see. Sometimes we just gotta forget about those things and go for it.

Submission Type: Poem
Category & Place: Written, 1st Place

Growing Pains by Christelle Miller

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About the Author & Work
Christelle Miller
San Antonio, TX
Incarnate Word High School
November 6, 2011

When I wrote this poem, I wasn’t sure what would come of it. The words kind of just came out and formed this huge orb of thought that I never realized I had… Somehow it all made sense and made me think about how much is changing around me and how it’s up to me to control it. There’s a plethora of things that we all leave unsaid and when you unleash it, you feel lighter, more at ease… or at least that’s how I felt. There really can be power behind our thoughts and words but only if we share them with the world.

Submission Type: Slam Poetry-Audio
Category & Place: Video/Audio, 3rd Place

It’s Been So Long by Aubrie Hardeman

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Here we are, it’s been so long.
Opportunities passed and now you’re gone.
You were my light, but I’m in the dark.
The days roll by and the nights creep in, digging a deeper mark.
Autumn is here with an unwelcoming bitter wind.
Life is dull, and so are you- nearing my end.
The streets remain silent; the lights remain out, as I walk.
I rummage through my mind only to be in mental block.
I look back on all of things we used to do.
I have a constant craving to see you.
I search for you, but you’re not there.
I can still hear your whispers, as you silently stare.
I once thought I could feel you with me.
Who knew you were the only one who could set me free.
Some mad hope for a sign or two, but I’m still alone- without you.
I’m so scared to lose all of our memories.
I get the constant feeling of scratched emeries.
I used to know what is now not so clear.
How every day I can’t forget and I’ll always wish you’re here.
This is what it’s like to be deprived of a person you were in love with forever.
This is how it feels not getting to be by your side, never.
You started my life, and taught me so much.
How to live, love, and such.
You wouldn’t find many cracks on our walls, now all you’ll see are our barren halls.
I’m scared I’ll forget the outlines of your face, and the sound of your voice that can be so easily erased.
That was my comfort and solid ground.
I fell asleep to your yawning; now there’s absolutely no sound.
My hands shake, and the tears fall down.
I know that in them I will surely drown.
My body quaked, my heart ached.
Your smile burned in my mind slowly until I couldn’t think anymore.
Blurred vision; and I heard the approaching thunder roar.
Every day I wake, I wake only to wake again.
Those days I will take, but not heart.
The world around me is falling apart.
Or is it just me?
Brutally lonely.
I would run so far just to feel your hand in mine.
Just so I could kiss your forehead, and be in peace with a comfort that everything is fine.
The delicacy is life, and that is the truth.
The lesson we all learn over and over again through someone like you.
When I feel scared, too caught up in the darkness, I’ll open my eyes.
You’re killing me, dragging me down with your absence only to my surmise.
I’m in a circle without direction, wasted in the rum.
My mind is flat, my skin is rough, and my legs are completely numb.
This floor is mine to borrow.
I rest my head and listen to the comforting silence through sorrow.
The silence is your voice now.
I’ll lie for hours and listen.
My ear pressed, with disruption of footsteps here and there causing all the more missing.
I’m losing myself and sanity.
My newest language is profanity.
When I fall asleep I don’t want to wake up.
You were my dreams, now my nightmare poured into a hollowed cup.
I find that in my slumber, I am always shaken.
It’s true that when you left, my heart was also taken.
Sometimes when the silence is broken by my voice, I count out loud how many days it’s been.
How many hours ago it was when I last saw you, ultimately wrapped up to fin.
My everything in a state of no change.
How life can be so deranged.
I would give anything for you to be here and for me to be there.
This is not a point I am proving, it’s the way things are.
My soul is barren and I am weak dazed in a burnt out star.
The sunlight hit my vanity this morning, and I looked out the window to see life.
I felt sympathetic but only for a moment, for my widowed wife.
The leaves have changed, as well as the season.
My body is trapped in a house just as treason.
I shut my eyes, and blocked out everyone.
My friends, gone. I’m not one to be brawn.
One of our conversations from last summer is on my mind this evening.
I begged you that if I died, you’d spread my ashes out and away from this city.
It’d be nice but it’s not the same- life is not nearly as pretty.
I heard you sigh, the noise coming from the frame of my door
I walked over expecting to see you, but there’s only a closed door.
I can’t take this pain anymore.
Echoes of myself marked up and down my chest.
I took one final look around, knowing this is a much needed rest.
The shadow of my face is nowhere to be found.
One little click- one big sound.
Grief over came me, this was my latest flaw.
In a way a bullet saved me- my heart no longer raw.
And here we are in an abyss of all this wrong, yet here we are.
It’s been so long.

About the Author & Work
Aubrie Hardeman
San Antonio, TX
MacArthur High School
November 22, 2011

My uncle passed away a week before I wrote this. He committed suicide and no one knew why. He was happy and married to his wife, and had children and grandchildren. He and his wife were together since their junior year of high school. I thought about how hard it would be to lose someone that was your world, someone who was everything to you, ultimately losing yourself. Some people are strong and can look past what they lost, but some people can’t. This was written for the ones who can’t.

Submission Type: Poem
Category & Place: Written, 4th Place

Fight the Good Fight by Antonio Frietze

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About the Author & Work
Antonio Frietze
St. Anthony Catholic High School
San Antonio, TX
October 31, 2011

It was interesting writing something to be heard instead of written on a page, and I really enjoyed writing it. It wasn’t really a completely calm experience, but I think that neither poetry nor life is really meant to be. I appreciate the opportunity I had to say what I meant, which truly occurs when you just let your heart fill the rhymes and rhythm. Isn’t it funny that sometimes structure allows for the purest sense of freedom?

Submission Type: Spoken Word-Audio
Category & Place: Video/Audio, 1st Place

Dive by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

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“… and you teach your sons and daughters
there are sharks in the water
but the only way to survive
is to breathe deep
and dive”
Andrea Gibson, “Dive”

Barrel rolls in the morning sun; fast, fresh winds lapping at my cheeks; a triumphant yell into the pastures of West Texas: this was freefalling at 10,000 feet.

As I buckled in my harness and adjusted my goggles, I thought of the conversation that drove two Texans, a Chicago native, and a New Yorker to the open fields of a West Texas drop zone in the first place. A few days earlier we were discussing a topic that often crops up between idle friends in late evenings: what do you want to do before you die? Then the classic question: What about skydiving?

When people say they’d like to skydive someday, or own a business someday, or write a book someday, or do some other project someday, it sounds like there is some sort of existential fog between now and when they want to accomplish those things. Yet if we know today that we want those things, why wouldn’t we start doing them? Unlike starting a business, writing a book, or becoming a university professor, skydiving takes only a few hours to complete. In this particular case, I was able to jump out of a plane, grab lunch, and get on a flight back to New York by 1:30pm.

For something so short and so worthwhile, why don’t more people who say they want to do skydive, do? In fact, why don’t more people do the things they want to do overall? So much of human motivation stems from our own desires and needs: for satisfaction, for happiness, for satiation, for love, for fulfillment, for plenty. When so many of our actions spring from these wants, what could possibly keep us from pursuing the things we say we want? For any of the explanations springing from this question, do any provide legitimate reason that is worth the cost of not doing?

Which brought a good friend and myself peering over the edge of an airplane, legs dangling and lungs a-gasp with a biting November chill. We jumped because we could, would, and wanted to do it. I realized that the seemingly innocuous conversation a few days earlier helped me discover a sincere desire to know what it means to take a leap at 10,000 feet.

After I decided that’s what I wanted to do, whatever I had get done – reschedule my flight, stay with a friend, arrange for transport – would get accomplished. I would not leave the state of Texas without jumping out of a plane first. It meant too much to me; it symbolized committing to doing what we say we want to do and embodied real, legitimate action towards getting what we want out of life. It meant the beginning of doing. In this the simple process that brought us to dive came to light: 1. Ask, “What do I want to do before I die?” 2. Identify the first step toward doing it, and 3. Execute.

About the Author
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
New York, NY
Graduate of Boston University-2011
November 11, 2011

Submission Type: Reflection
Category & Place: Written, 5th Place

PuraVida: “Write & Speak” CHALLENGE

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PuraVida: “Write & Speak” CHALLENGE

Too many times the assumption arises that only “certain people” can write, or only “certain people” are creative. Well we are going to throw that mindset out of the window and actually create something!

THE CHALLENGE: Take about 30minutes-1hour to sit down and write something!

If you consider yourself a writer, your challenge is get out of your comfort zone and try something new: A short story, poem, stream of consciousness, essay, mini saga, SLAM PIECE, etc..

This competition is for all ages and involves composing an original piece specifically written for the PuraVida “Write & Speak” CHALLENGE to ensure that all works are freshly inspired! There will be two categories in which you can submit your entries: A Writing category and a Video/Audio category (Vido/ Audio submissions–not limited to slam poetry–all spoken original works accepted).
-You may submit ONE entry to each category.
All entries will be submitted via email, and when a confirmation has been sent back, your piece will officially be featured on the FB group and ready for the “liking” competition process (see submission requirements below).
Winners will be determined by number of FB likes, so be sure to tell your friends to join the group and “like” your submissions as well as submit their own (see list of prizes below)!

**You may submit in ANY language**

Link to official Face Book group: http://www.facebook.com/groups/268855349820445/

Having trouble getting started: Think about where you come from, what is important to you, what frustrates you, what/ who inspires you, what interests you and why?

DEADLINE: January 10th, 2012

WINNERS

Written Submissions:
1st Place will receive the ultimate Moleskine package (Total of 6 Moleskine journals of various sizes and colors) + one of a kind Pura Vida T-shirt!
2nd & 3rd Places will receive one hardcover Moleskine journal + one of a kind Pura Vida T-shirt!
1st-5th Places will have their own feature post on the PURA VIDA website and Tumblr site!

Video/ Audio Submissions:
1st Place will receive the ultimate Moleskine package (Total of 6 Moleskine journals of various sizes and colors) + one of a kind Pura Vida T-shirt!
1st-3rd Places will have their own feature post on the PURA VIDA website and tumblr site!

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS

Written Submissions:
All written entries must be emailed to andrea.medina11@yahoo.com accompanied with:
1. An attachment of your written submission
2. Your full name
3. Indication of the type of piece you are submitting (Slam Piece, Poem, Short Story, Essay, etc..)
4. Your mailing address
5. Where you are from
6. What school you attend/ your occupation
7. The date your piece was written
8. A brief reflection on what it felt like to write your piece

Video/ Audio Submissions:
All video/recording entries must be emailed to andrea.medina11@yahoo.com accompanied with:
1. A link to your videos or sound recording
2. Indication of the type of piece you are submitting (Slam Piece, Poem, Short Story, Essay, etc..)
3. Your full name
4. Your mailing address
5. Where you are from
6. What school you attend/ your occupation
7. The date your piece was written
8. A brief reflection on what it felt like to write your piece

Reflect on your experiences, think and create without limits, and most importantly…HAVE FUN.

Email andrea.medina11@yahoo.com with any questions or concerns.