......to Moni's Place.

Hello! My name is Monica, but some of my friends call me Moni. I'm 21 years old and I just moved back home to Arkansas. I spent almost all of of the last year living on the island of Maui. I was born and raised in a small town in southern Arkansas called Bearden. Yeah, I know Maui is a long way from Arkansas, but Maui gave me a lot of joy, and living in a place so rich and varied in culture and natural beauty opened my eyes to the world around me. I had never lived in a place where I wasn't a member of the majority. Less than 24% of Hawaii's residents are white, or "haole" as the locals say, and over 27% are Hawaiian or part Hawaiian. It's a strange experience being in an environment in which you don't look like everyone else. In fact, almost EVERYONE else looks different from you. Maui's population include people from many different backgrounds.. Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Hispanic, Italian.. People from all races and all walks of life live here, making the culture of Maui very diverse. It's almost like living in a whole different country... in fact, sometimes you forget that you're actually still in the United States. :-) I love Maui, and I will always consider it to be my second home...
I guess I should tell you a little bit more about myself. I love to do sooooo many different things... I love reading. Some of my favorite books are Wuthering Heights, Rubyfruit Jungle, and The Secret Garden. Shakespeare is also one of my great loves. Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth helped to make my high school experience something to be remembered. Movies, of course, are another great love of mine... Ones I especially enjoyed are Titanic, The Piano, You've Got Mail, The Grapes of Wrath, Practical Magic (didn't it make you want to be a witch? LOL), Great Expectations, and The Color Purple. My one passion in life is poetry. I myself am an aspiring poet, and someday hope to achieve the greatness of Chrystos, Whitman, Donne, and my favorite of all, Emily Dickinson. When words can inspire a life, ignite a soul, endear a heart, they are a force to be reckoned with, and to me that's just what poetry is -- a force working within us all to help make clear our secrets and our thoughts, our obsurdities and our obscurities, in order to shape us into people who can make a difference. In time I hope to add some of my original poetry to this page, but for now, I'll leave you with some of my very favorite quotes, which are themselves tiny poems born out of single moments of wisdom. :-)




You did then what you knew how to do. When you knew better, you did better. -- Maya Angelou

The best and most beautiful things cannot be seen or even heard... they must be felt with the heart. -- Helen Keller

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. --Aristotle

The human animal dances wildest on the edge of the grave.
-- Rita Mae Brown

Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can. -- Danny Kaye

Maybe if I had not picked up that one perosn dying on the street, I would not have picked up the thousands. -- Mother Teresa
There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief. --Aeschylus

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. --Albert Camus

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live. --Norman Cousins

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A lady came up to me on the street and pointed to my suede jacket. "You know a cow was murdered for that jacket?" she sneered. I replied in a psychotic tone, "I didn't know there were any witnesses. Now I'll have to kill you too." --Jake Johanson
If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. --Friedrich Nietzsche

Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian. --Robert Orben

A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. -- Chinese Proverb

Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is. -- Albert Camus