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It crept upon a foreboding evening,
The darkness engulfed all the cloudy sky.
A black cat hisses, a witch is flying,
On a worn down broom, towards the cloudy sky.

Outside, the ghosts are floating way up high.
The moon is full, a werewolf is howling.
Inside children are eating pumpkin pie.
Around the tombstones zombies are stomping.

From coffins, vampires are ‘wakening,
To suck the blood of another victim.
Bats flutter around a cave’s opening.
By the haunted houses, all is solemn.

My doorbell rings, and I dare go answer.
For there’s yet another trick-or-treater.

I found some information from a book I ordered online called Relearning to See: Improve Your Eyesight–Naturally by Thomas R. Quackenbush. This book had good reviews (one person had 20/600 vision before reading the book and later revived his vision to 20/20) so I’d like to share some information and continue sharing information from this book with those of you with less than perfect eye sight. After I’m done reading the book (which is around 500 pages in a textbook like format) I’ll practice its techniques till I’ve mastered them. Hopefully by then, my vision will improve. Perhaps yours will to if you stick around to read the rest of the techniques.

When relearning to see, you must realize that eyes were not meant for staring at things. Staring involves not moving your eyes, head, and neck. This strains the eye muscles and neck. You should constantly be moving. Movement helps to relax the eyes, and therefore you may have clearer vision.

When turning your head towards the left, objects in the distance should appear to move to the right. If not, then you might be staring and trying not to make things move subconsciously.

An exercise you may do to help relax the eyes and experience movement is called The Sway. Stand with your arms relaxed by your sides and your feet separated about shoulder-width apart. Breathe abdominally and blink frequently. Pretend you have a feather attached to your nose. The nose-feather extends out to whatever objects are in front of you. Sway your body slowly and smoothly approximately 3-4 inches to the left while sweeping the nose-feather to the left. Keep your attention on whatever objects the nose-feather sweeps along the distance. Pretend that objects are moving to the right. Don’t tilt your body or head. The weight of your body simply shifts over to one leg then the other. Then sway to the right. Pretend that objects are moving to the left.

Another exercise you can do is called the Infinity or Figure-8 Swing. In the Infinity Swing, the nose-feather brushes the tip of the middle finger of each hand as they alternately move in the shape of an infinity sign, or the shape of a horizontal “figure-8″. Begin with the two middle fingers touching each other in front of your body, approximately sixteen inches from your nose. With the nose-feather brushing the tip of the middle finger of the left hand, begin moving the left hand upward and to the left upward and to the left in a counter clockwise direction. The movement should be graceful and easy. The head and the nose-feather follow the middle finger’s movement around this circle. The body turns to the left during the upper half of this circle, just as in the regular Long Swing, and returns to the middle at completion of the circle. Do the same thing with the right hand only this time go in a clockwise direction. When the circle is complete, the two middle fingers touch once again in front of the body as you return to the starting position.

Another important application of movement is in the near-to-far/far-to-near swing. Sit in a chair with your arms propped on a table. Close your eyelids and pretend you are sitting in a cozy chair on a nice, sunny, island beach. Pretend you are holding a rope in your hands, which extends over the sea to another island. Brush the rope at your hands in a figure-8 pattern. Feel the texture of the rope with your nose feather. Breath abdominally. Your neck is soft and mobile. Take a breath in and while exhaling, begin to sweep out along the rope: five ft., ten ft., twenty ft., feeling the rope with your nose-feather as you slide out over the sea.continue sweeping out along the rope until you finally reach the end of the rope, which is tied to a palm tree on a neighboring island. Now slide back along the rope over the sea and back to where you were.

I drew this picture in my drawing class. It took me three class days to finish. I got the pattern idea from a magazine as well as the silhouette without wings. Since I was using a fairies theme begun by another picture I drew, I chose to make the silhouette have wings. This patterned image is one of two others, one on an eye and another called Contemplate. All three are drawn with colored pencils. Although this picture isn’t an accurate representation of a silhouette that’s black with a white background, I still consider it a silhouette since it’s just an outline of a fairy.

The term silhouette was named after Étienne de Silhouette (1709-67). He was the finance minister to Louis XV; it is said that he was so noted for his stinginess that cheap articles, including portraits, were designated à la Silhouette.

Two hundred years ago, long before the camera was invented, someone wishing to have an inexpensive portrait created of their loved ones would have visited a silhouette artist. Within minutes and using only a pair of scissors and a skillful eye, he would have produced a little image with a remarkable resemblance to his subject.

In America, Silhouettes were highly popular from about 1790 to 1840. Silhouette drawings decreased in popularity after the invention of the daguerreotype (An early photographic process with the image made on a light-sensitive silver-coated metallic plate).

Sidenote: I decided to stay with this current layout after all. It is by far my favorite as it goes well with the favico which is my Chinese name. It has this Asian feel as it is predominately black and red.