Blog 13: Clothing

She hides beneath the same golden yellow Orlando, Florida sweatshirt. Every time I see her she comes in, hair flying around as if she were just in a convertible; her gray hairs saluting me and bowing to the good deed she is about to practice. The sweatshirt has taken on a life of a lover, it coaxes her, reads to her, marinades her in her sorrow. Does it comfort her body in the night while she sleeps? Does she grab it when she returns from work and rub it on her skin like it has been calling her; offering her a new life. She lives in it like it is a home. She has not taken it off in years-- her shield. It is the size of a tent--she hides her body in it. I wonder if she were to cry if I stole it for the night? Does she have a name for it? The yellow wasp, the golden wheat, Rex Butler.

Her shoes are ragged and rough. They are like aching soldiers begging to be buried and claimed dead. What once were solid white lovers, are now decrepit antiques. They most smell when she takes them off and throws them into her closet, her garage, her car. Does she love the smell of her own foot fungus? Does it comfort it?

Her pants are black spandex. They are too big for her; just as the sweatshirt is.
You can barely see her legs move underneath the over-stretched over-sized spandex. She hides; the Golden Wheat, yellow wasp comes 3/4 down her thighs; she hides.

I watch her every week training in the same clothes. I see her aching in her loneliness like a rotting peach. Does her yellow sweatshirt touch her skin enough? I watch her move and laugh in her tent as if no one is watching, as if she is not carrying her home with her. I want to touch her and burn the sweatshirt.

Blog 12: Photograph

This is a polaroid print picture. The light in the photo is amber and gives off a retro hue. We are two girls, not women, but girls. We are standing in the corner of a room with busy wallpaper to our backs. It has blue and white vertical lines that are behind us with a flower lining that circumferences the rest of the room. On the other side of the picture is a sliding glass door.

We both have a sly smile on our faces as if we are up to no good--vixens on the lose. We are also both wearing red and standing close to one another; it seems as if we are one being. She is facing the picture and I am standing sideways. We both have only one arm showing, although my other hand peeks out and is holding an ashtray. Her arm is straight; mine is curved at a 90 degree angle. Her arm is bare; mine is full of bracelets. Her shirt is 3/4 sleeved and v-necked; mine is a tank top, sparkly, and comes above my midsection. Her neck is bare; I have a thick black-studded necklace on.

We both have blonde hair, yet hers is darker. She has hers cut short and pulled back by a thick black headband. Mine is bleached blonde, medium length, and pulled into two pigtails (although you can only see one.) Her head is cocked to the side and she looks fatigued. I am looking straight at the camera and have a devious look on my face.

This is a picture of my best friend and I from 2000. We were at her house at the time, hanging out with some friends as well as random people. We might have been drinking. We were acting very silly and were very young. This was taken at the end of the night by some one who was there and given to us as a gift for inviting them to the party.

Impermanence

This weekend was a difficult. My grandfather is losing his integrity in the hospital after having five strokes over the years. He can't walk, can't speak. Last week may have been the last one. I am losing my concentration.

I am supposed to be studying for a midterm but instead of doing the intended and important, I distract myself with some wandering.

My mother asked me to hang some laundry--which connects to the essay we read--so I am thrown to the dungeon of my house for some laundry time. I took that as an opportunity to search the bottom of the dusty realms of my parents clutter.

I was magnetically attracted to the forlorn and neglected chest that used to inhabit our family room upstairs. I missed it. It now lives in the corner of the musty basement with useless junk atop it: a blue basket full of videos not watched anymore, clothes from the 80's, and a newspaper from 1992. The poor chest; it is sorely neglected, now banished to the Island of Shame or the Outsiders Realm; it yearns affection.

It is not necessarily beautiful, nor does it have personality. It is a plain dark pine box shaped as a rectangle; almost like a child's coffin. My brother used to hide in it during hide and seek. I take all the meaningless junk on top of the chest and scatter it around me in a circle of protection. It is my ritual for I am bringing up remains of the dead.

I am so excited; the smell of decay and rotten centipedes wafts into my nostrils giving off a light-headed yet familiar scent.

The laundry has become an enigma, a nomadic force, an alternative life.

I open the case and I am a child again; slowly becoming thirteen, ten, eight, six.

My mother, my sister, my father, my brother are all folded neatly in this box like a crayola crayons.

I find my parents old records; the ones that I used to spread on the floor with me as a child and learn about music with; Michael Jackson, Santana, The Beatles. I fell in love with Michael Jackson sprawled on his animal fur while he sang Billie Jean to me. I found my brother Ghost Buster's collection and my barbie collection and remembered our fights. My sister had saved all her notebooks from high school. I found dust.

It made me think of life and our impermanence. Prior that chest was living with us in the nexus of our household and was now stuffed in the musty corner of the dirty basement.

This morning my mother told me that my grandfather handcrafted that chest himself. Now it is stuffed in the corner with collected dust and junk atop it. It made me think of life.

On the Essays

I am going to chose my my second essay to chop into because it is much more resolved in the revelations. I feel that I have come to the concept of the story more clearly in this one and I will be able to work into it better then if I were to try to hone the first one.

Secondly, while I was writing this one I was able to come to many conclusions of a very personal and very recent event in my families life. It was almost an unconscious free-flowing draft that allowed me to figure out how I truly felt about the situation yet write it literary.

The essay felt like a resolution to a ghost and that has been haunting the corners of my house. I allowed my mother to read it and she was touched and others who were effected by the situation also wanted to read it. I am hoping to make it better so that other families who go through addiction can read it and feel the understanding and pain as well.

Well...here is to making it the most incredible fantastical best written essay ever!! hahahaaaa

Guidance

I am at standing at the road diverged at two..no three..and I am frozen once again. I am stuck in a foggy frozen bog and I am in need of guidance and pushing pulling. Grrrhhh!!

I am between a couple things and I don't want to be stuck writing a couple drafts that putz out and never solidfy into a piece of brilliant writing. I am leaning towards the secret girlfriend thing yet not sure if I can write it, or what I would focus on. I could focus on my love for her and inability to be with her because of the lack of acceptance from my parents. I could focus on the inability to leave Tim to be with her because her was in the more conformed comfortable realm. I could focus on my fear to be with her.

Maybe help guide me...

Drafts

I find it extrememly hard to write my first essay as I had many blockades, mostly surfacing in my head of course. I had a plethora of topics I wanted to write about but when it came to sticking to just one I was like a kid in a a Bakery- lacking in focus and decisions.

I kept beginning a topic and then throwing it away. I was like the sterotypical writer romanticed in the Hollywood movies, throwing her half written stories in the garbage. My head was spiining from the lack follow through next my bed. I just wanted to have one topic that made me so passionate that I could not stop ranting "The truth". So, there I was putting to much pressure on myself; and there it was.

That defines the problem, the sterotypical scorned writer that I am, I put to much pressure on myself when it is for some form of publication or grading. Instead of just letting it come from flow and autonomous being I am in my head. That is when my worst writing comes out. I am a creative free flow writer and my draft sucks because of the amout of thought I put into it. I was focing on the rhetoric, the concept..blah blah blah.... I was not just being.

So, for my next piece I think I will just write to write and see what comes out and then do the polishing. No headiness, no perfection, no no no!!!

Again I have about ten ideas of what to write about. I was thinking about seriously writing about my recent breakup and how life changing it was but that is too drag for me. So I might right about a very intimate and secretive relationship I had with a women for years. It is personal and I don't want to be judged for writing it but it what has been on my mind. Yep, that's what it's gonna be.

The Silent Spaces

Mimi Schwartz's essay is written about something that is has become and is a raw boil on the head of humanity. When an author chooses to write about this subject they are delving into a dark lake in a hidden cave in Alaska. It is a deeply emotional subject. I always prepare myself before reading Jewish Lit as if it will be a night of engorging myself in a room of Vienna deserts, endlessly.

On that being said, I think the way she chose to write in segments is a brilliant way to exemplify the metamorphosis she is going through in this essay. By breaking up the sections she is showing us the stages she goes through as she learns her lessons. In life we all go through stages of maturity as we develop and move towards death, and come closer to our own "truths". She is doing just this, in conjunction with her father, throughout the story.

A theme that is concurrent with the theme of identity, yet is a potent theme all it's own, is Mimi coming to terms with her heritage. In the first section Schwartz begins as a stereotypical American teenage girl who rebels against her stern old world Jewish father. Yet, as she visits her father's hometown she goes through a process of engulfing in her father's views and families history. As the essay progresses through each section she learns more about her family and their struggles. This gives Schwartz an understanding for her father which takes her need to rebel away.

Schwartz breaks up each section to illustrate specific points of view of the essay. This effect adds layering to the story as well as giving circumference to her themes. It also makes each section separate from the other, so if read alone illustrating the various points of view of the author and story. This gives the CNF piece more power and most be read carefully to be understood in such a way.

On reason Schwartz uses the gaps in between each section in a quiet stage of pause and remembrance. An extensive amount of this essay is about those past. I feel that the gaps are almost a pause to respect and think about what has happened, like the blank monument with no names in the cemetery. Another reason is to separate each section as distinctively different, like grave markers and mementos of time demonstrating what Mimi and her family are going through. Also, as mentioned above, it shows the different themes and perspectives so that when read distinctively the reader can see the different points of view.

In respect Mimi Schwartz piece is subtle yet direct in what it portrays. She uses many literary devices and is comparable to a piece of Literary fiction. In my humble opinion this, to me, would categorize a CNF, as well as enjoyable.

Eureka!

Whilst reading Montaigne, besides finding it to be dense, I also found it to be similar to Lott because of his use of qoutes. Montaigne references history and uses this for his own reflection. For instance he specifically begins with a tale of King Croseus in order to set the stage for what he is trying to put for to his audience. Therefore he is using other writers and points of references to build storyline. This compares to to Lott's more contemporary essay in which he uses block quoatations to make his point. Neither Lott nor Montaigne use plot, storyline, etc. It is purely an essay of an opinion that the author is trying to set forth and they have used validation from other writers to back their points up. Lott's essay is different as it gives more opinion to us and is more extended. Lott does not reference any history nor does he speak in another language. He is cyclic in his essay, thus making his point more round and poignant. I found Montaigne's essay to be have emotional and passionate tones whereas Lott's was strictly educational and opinionated.

Orwell uses more of a storyline in his narrative. He incorporates a plot, theme, setting, perspective, and dramatic plot. He also introduces characters. Orwell forms this true-to-life tale in the form of a short story. This is comparable to Beard's narrative and as well as Kincaid's. Kincaid and Orwell are similar as they are both memories in which the author reflected back on years later, giving it the story-like element. They both have raw emotional undertones yet Kincaid's are more apparent then Orwell. Beard and Orwell are comparable in the narrative is written from the perspective of self acknowledgement of a lesson learned. Yet, all the stories have one thread in common, there is an Aha moment, and that is the reason why the author is writing. They want to immortalize the Eureka they have found to be true and share it with others as well.

32 flavors of Creative Nonfiction

In addition to the simple eloquence that Kincaid uses to express her memories, she also adds texture to her reading. She brings in other characters in which she compares herself to, adding a fictional component to the reflective piece. This also gives vivacity to her memory. She describes each character in depth, from the girl of the finely scented soap to the photographer who smoothed his hair too often. She also uses the senses which enriches the writing and brings me back the moment Kincaid was experiencing. When she speaks of feeling her mother's blood pulse and smelling her skin, I am Kincaid as a child. It is as if she transports me back to the moment. In comparing Kincaid's piece to Beard piece, I find a different richness in each of these woman's memories. Kincaid expresses her memories through experience and sense. She brings you back to what life was like for a child and how they learn the world, and their place. Jo Ann Beard's reflection is more in your face and punctures the mind and heart through her emotional tones and metaphors.
Lott helped bring clarity to me about what Creative Nonfiction is and also gave me some new perspectives on what I already believed. What I found especially useful was the last paragraph on page 274 leading up to the next page. When he speaks of the writing with circumference and reflecting from all angles so as not to be flat it really helped give me perspective. So, I began thinking if I were to reflect on an experience I had as a teenager, yet only with that teenage voice, only with my only preconceived notions on what the experience gave me, then it would not have the air it needed to spark the fire. Also, I really found helpful the point he made about egotism and self-righteousness. As a writer I always believed that consistently writing about the self was self-centered and added nothing to the reader. Yet, now I see differently. I love the quote he uses to back it up by Thoreau from Walden. "A modest truthful man speaks better about himself than anything else, and on that subject his speech is likely to most profitable to his hearers..." That sums it up perfectly for me and takes away my fear of writing about myself. Furthermore, I love how he ends the paragraph, "..if we are rigorous enough, fearless enough, and humble enough to attempt this responsibility..." I am hoping that I can achieve that in my career as a writer.

In Her Own Words

Creative Nonfiction, the essential essence of a person. Categorizing one's own personal experience in emotional vivid landscapes. No fear, no hesitation. Like walking around naked with your inner experiences drawn and painted onto your body. Like opening up your chest and allowing others to inspect it's contents. Like telling the truth with color, articulation, fire, passion. Like being who you really are and not giving a damn what the nay sayers in the world say. All in all it is truth in the already known, coming to terms with the self, and taking off the mask of the Ego. It is living your own life and really living it.

She pretends to breathe into the mic in soft whispers while she subtlty scrapes her teeth on the surface. Her porcelin enamel rips away the anxiety while her eyes smile at the crowd like two butterflies dancing in an Amsterdam garden. They cheer and cheer like starved howling monkies and she feeds them what they want.