Leor's Creative Vault

When I grew up English wasn’t my native language and I admit I agonized while learning English at school.

For some bizarre reason the magical connection I have with London since before I was born didn’t come with speaking fluent English from birth. 😊

Apart from the obvious English classes at school I’ve learned English from songs.

First there was ABBA “I work all night, I work all day, to pay the bills I have to pay …” (talk about negative conditioning). Then I found out they were Swedish.

After ABBA I’ve discovered The Beatles “Oh yeah, I’ll tell you something / I think you’ll understand / When I’ll say that something / I wanna hold your hand / I wanna hold your hand / I wanna hold your hand …” and “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah  / she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah …”

Needless to say, Liverpool’s slang didn’t fly well in English class. And besides, I think my English teacher was Australian.

One of my challenges was writing book reports, for the most part I understood the beginning and the end of the book, but everything in between was a bit vague, so I winged it 😉.  It got me marks between 7 and 8 out of 10, not bad. I guess my unconscious mind knew English way better than I did.

So what is Phizzog? Until today I thought it was something my English teacher invented, something that describes who we are, something between physiology and psychology.

I found out Phizzog is a poem written by Carl Sandburg in his book Carl Sandburg (Poetry for Young People) from the following post:
http://moxyjane.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/phizzog-by-carl-sandburg/.

When my English teacher gave the assignment to write an essay about “If I can Change My Phizzog” giving my book reports’ track-record I chose to write a poem instead. (I was fifteen at the time.)

*~*~*~*

If You can Change Your Phizzog

If you can change your Phizzog
what would you become?

Would you change it all
would you stay dumb?

If you can change your face
what would you look like?

Would it change your place
would it change your luck?

If I can change my Phizzog
I’ll act like a Queen –

Wearing fancy clothes
in red, gold and green.

If I can change my Phizzog
I’ll never get mad,

I’ll never be nervous
and never be sad.

But I don’t want to change my Phizzog
or be someone else,

I like my green eyes
and I like my two left hands.

I just want to be myself

A little bit thinner
and with a little bit more confidence

And get everything by my own
me with no masks,

Get my own goals
with my own and special Phizzog.

*~*~*~*

I got full marks!!

So what about you? Will you change your Phizzog? If you could, would you? change who you are? What you look like? Are you happy with yourself? With your Phizzog? With who you are?  Do you know how amazing you are?!
Share with us.

Love Your Self – Change the world!!

~Leor