Monday, October 14, 2013

Blog 8



          As I sit, weak and fatigued, I pondered to myself: how could this be?  Everything I have worked for, everything I have earned. Now, nothing more than fits within a suitcase- a droll, poor amalgamation of a life once lived- sitting beside me on a park bench (APPOSITIVE SET OFF BY DASHES).  Everyone says the same thing, too: “You should have stopped while you were ahead.” But they don’t know. How could they? They’ve never tasted desperate. Never have they felt the power of gaining everything one could want simply because there was nothing to lose.  It’s a sense of accomplishment really. Feeling the cold air brush my face as a single raindrop pattered on my hand, I knew: this was real (PARTICIPIAL PHRASE & APPOSITIVE SET OFF BY a COLON).  
        So I got greedy. I started to interfere with new grounds, new territories. Though, as I have mentioned, the power that comes with this business. No laws could have brought me down. Only the laws set by those in the business, the ones that could be enforced (if you had the manpower, the bite behind the bark), and even then I thought myself to be untouchable (APPOSITIVE SET OFF BY PARENTHESES).  I liberated myself from the mundane repetition that is life.  Sometime things are left to be untouched, though. I was a fool. I know that now.
         And as that damn first rain drop trickles its way off my chin, I look down to see it drop onto my bus ticket, how the ink smudges as downpour slowly begins to blanket the street. The ticket becomes less and less legible. And the all too familiar feeling of what a single drop of liquid can begin to skew a clear message.  That how it all began, really, a drop of liquid, red and dripping down the piece of paper titled “REASON FOR APPOINTMENT” as I coughed in an all but empty waiting room (APPOSITIVE SET OFF BY COMMAS). In that room, in that moment, I was freed. Clarity finally had its day. 
I knew what was inside me. Not the illness, I mean. But the animal, awake after years of slumber. Conscious, faint but growing, was the animal becoming (ADJECTIVES OUT OF ORDER). Everyone says it’s a dog eat dog world.  It was time to bite back.

2 comments:

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  2. BINGO!!!


    Appositives punctuated 4 ways:
    YES--1 set off by parenthesis
    YES--1 set off by dashes
    YES--1 set off by colon (2 gorgeous examples, although that "I knew:" probably wouldn't fly in a very formal academic paper)
    YES—1 set off by commas (also includes a participial phrase)

    YES--1 Participial Phrase— either past or present participle okay, but remember that this is a brush stroke added onto a main sentence, which means that if your participle is part of the main verb, it's not a brush stroke.

    YES--1 example Adjectives Out-Of-Order

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