the reading for 11/12...i think.

sorry it took me so long to post this - i forgot my password and spent the better half of the last few hours looking for it.

the first piece, the one about the lithuanians, was a bit dense. Not as in stupid, but as in long/intense. To get the full effect, i'm probably gonna have to read it again - i'm pretty sure i didn't take everything in. It was definately emotional, and i like the last image a lot.

the second piece i thought was fantastic, but in a sad way. I like the way she described the path of getting an abortion. She really described the entire experience fantastically, and she used the last indented paragraph with only one sentence tactic that I use often to create a strong effect.

i would write a lot more normally, but i'm super tired right now, because instead of writing i was figuring out my password.

Ashes of August

ashes of august is a great story, and i really enjoyed the way she wrote it. The things that resonated with me most were the opening scene and the part where the man shot himself because of the pressure.

The ending was also incredibly suspensful, and the way she wrote it was jsut fantatsic.

I would write more, but i'm incredibly tired!

reading for october 13th

Both of the stories we had to read were good (Fittings and My Father Always Says), and I was touched by both of them. I like My Father Always Says because the author learns about her heritage and sees a change in her father after visiting their homeland, and I thought that his new favorite saying was the best of all.

Fittings was my favorite, just because I loved the character that was the old woman. I thought she was charming, and Alzhiemers always strikes a sad key with me, because i've had two relatives I know that have Alzheimers. I thought the story was charming in general, and I liked it a lot.

They were both very good, and I enjoyed reading them.

now, off to bed!

Hostess Cake...just with meat and egg

This story, along with the Alaska story, both hit me fairly hard. However, this one made more of an impact with me. In Alaska, her heritage isn't set in stone. She basically has no power in her heritage, and is made fun of for basically being a mutt. Both spanish and indian, she is ridiculed by racist fools. She is confused by their remarks, and she doesn't know what to make of getting a shotgun placed in her face. the difference between the stories is their dedication to their heritage.

In Dumpling, Balcita has a rich history that she first ignores. She is taught about her heritage through cooking, but at the moment, suntanning and hanging out with her friends is better than just lame old cooking. However, she takes more interest as it goes along, and she starts to examine her mother more of as an angel than anything (although she calls her a witch instead. which made me laugh), and the art of cooking becomes just that: a skill she wants. After perfecting her dumpling making skill, she takes it to school, and is insulted because of it.

this is the part of the story that struck me - she turns her back on her culture because of her embarassment, something that just shows how children struggle with fitting in.

I love her last lines "They are green and sparkling. I think maybe I can stay out here and look at them forever, but then I remember that they'll be gone in a week." Which I take as how she dealt with the situation. It may seem as if the embarassment may last forever, but it will be gone in a week. I really liked this story. It was charming and sad. Truly a good piece.

blah

i feel so sick

i just got caught in the rain...

and now i feel sick


blah.

Independence Day

this piece was very good. Racism is something lots of people deal with day to day and it isn't any different in alaska. I like the ending a lot (i never wore that bandana or the jean jacket again) and I like when she tells the part about the owner ofthe bar getting shot, and how she was glad taht he was dead. It showed her humanity. It was a very good piece, and the entire manner of the piece shifted as the paper did, because from the beginning, she was a wistful 12 year old, who couldn't care less about important things, who live in a different world, who was forced into the world of maturity by a racist bar owner with a gun. its unfortunate, but worse has happened.

i really liked this story, and it was a good vignette.

Comments on the Reading for sep 23.

I think the inner story to Teacher Training is her own history of needing a teachers attention (her struggle to be the best, and how she was so dissapointed up until that day where the teacher commended her), and how she can convey her own inner story to her students now, where she has realized she must attend to all of the students needs as indivuduals, and that can be difficult at times. Her inner story is continuing through the beginning story when she was a little girl, up into her adult life as a teacher, and her goal of become a better teacher and person. She uses her own experience to impact her teaching style, and goes to talk about keeping the interests of all the individuals at heart in order to be a great teacher.

I really liked both pieces - I liked teacher training because I could really feel her humiliation when she talked about not spelling the words correct, and also when she got upset about her teacher not noticing about her work, and also her anticipation about her new teacher in the fifth grade.

In Finding The Inner Stor In Memoirs and Personal Essays by Michael Steinberg, I liked the way he talked about his story, and how he gave tips for memoirs (especially in the end where he writes about what people leave out.) which I will most definately be using in future writing!

Both were great, and I really enjoyed both pieces.



sleepy time...

The Things They Carried Reaction

Sorry this is so late! Just got back from my hometown, Lake Geneva, because I had like this family reunion, and it took a while. However - now to the assignment.

The Things They Carried, struck me as weird. You told us that it wasn't a memoir...however, I think that it is a memoir in its truest form. A memoir is about emotional truth. This book held that notion in its complete essence.

It was emotionally stirring reading about Lavender's death, the first man O'Brien killed, Kiowa (I think thats his name) being sucked into the muck, Azar joking about death, Kiley shooting himself in the foot, and O'Brien picking pieces of Lemon off of a tree. He talks about these thing that are so...emotional that it scared me. It was the way he said it, he really felt it.

The last chapter, "The Lives of the Dead" and the chapter, "The Man I Killed" are my favorite. Thats a word I don't use in the way its normally used. By favorite, I don't mean that I liked it. I in fact, hated those chapters the most. The way he talked about the dead man (how he made it seem like the person he killed had his life spread out before O'Brien like a big story book, telling him everything) was scarry. What I did like about the story is how he described the dead man. It was almost a mirror image of himself - an man with everything to gain and to lose. And the pull of a pin was the difference in their lives. They both could have been at the end of a rifle, and they both had the exact same amount of potential...but O'Brien survived,and he could contemplate why.

The story about Linda, was increasingly creepy the more he talked about her. The dead live on in our dreams - its the same thing with characters in anyone writers stories. In my stories, there are many characters, and I am able to call them up at will, seeing their details and hear them talk, just because I have an active imagination. He put this to "reanimating" the dead. Linda seemed even more real to me when she was in his dreams and dead, then when she was alive. Quiet, slight and strange, she was an odd little girl. In his dreams, she was talkative, still strange, and ...different. I love the way she describes death as being a book on a bookshelf that nobody looks at or reads. It was odd and amazing.

This book started off with a list of things soldiers carried, and ended up as a creative memoir that was incredibly stirring and was honestly one of the books that affected me. but in a bad way. I don't think i'll be reading it again.

way back when

Sitting inside the closet, I cried to myself silently. No longer wanting to hear the bickering of my parents, I escaped to the darkness, where I found an unlikely sanctuary. The unfamiliar, scary depths of the dark seemed to comfort me, although it wasn't a normal comfort. The light from outside trickled in through the openings in the closet, hurting my eyes, destroying the protection the shadows had provided. I let all of my feelings go out. I shouldn't have to feel like this. It shouldn't be this way. Why are mommy and daddy always fighting?

Hilariously enough, I actually asked my grandmother this. I was three years old at the time. Yes, I could talk at three. At four, I moved up to swear words. Ha ha. But seriously - reflecting on this time is actually kind of weird for me. I really can't recall any substatial memories under ten years old except for this moment. Sitting inside of a broom closet, in my grandmothers house in Elkhorn, crying as the day progressed. The bleeding light of the sunset hurt me. I wanted to be enveloped in the unknown, in the darkness.

Strangely enough, when I write nowadays, I like to sit in the darkness before I write. Its not some satanic ritual, but it calms me down somehow. My thoughts are pretty frantic, and are usually quite scatterbrained. My plans are pretty big too, so its a little intense thinking about it all sometimes. The shadows help me find my place, however odd that sounds. Not only the darkness, but nighttime is just a solid comfort for me. Gazing up into the stars is probably one of my favorite ways to pass time, if not my favorite.

I guess when things happen to us in our past, we hold on to them for a long time, not knowing why, not knowing what its for. Maybe we'll never find out, but I like to use these experiences in my writing.

I don't know why we remember these little bit experiences. I don't know why sitting in the darkness comforts me - its a bit eerie for me too. Ha ha. That's why memoir writing is important - its not about telling a funny story, or sharing a sad experience. Like the author of "Memory and Imagination" said, life is a journey. The memoir is just another stepping stone on the way to the finish line. (morbid much?). Some people talk, some people cry, I write - that's my emotional gateway.

Just realizing this - I lose all form of punctuation online... doesn't really matter.

Hope I'm not getting graded on that...hmmm....

bored. probably going to sleep. night.

Reading due tomorrow (Sep 10th)

So my response to the reading - we went over in this in class already, so don't expect something insightful. To be completely honest I much prefered "Memory and Imagination" just because I was much more entertained. Not to say that "The Art of Memoir" wasn't any good (her story was actually pretty heart breaking), but I thought they made the same point, but I could relate to author of the first more than the second.

The way I look at writing a memoir is simple. Imagine if you had a house. And your bushes out side were trimmed very nicely and were perfectly rectangular. That is non-fiction. Completely clean cut, all facts are true exactly. Now, the fiction side of our little pretend bushes would not be a nicely cut patch - it would be a jungle, fierce and unknown. memoir writing is different. Its not a jungle, but its certainly not a clean cut shrubs. It is a bit unruly, but it maintains its shape well. Its emotional truth, and that is sometimes the same, but it is also sometimes very different from the truth.

I love the way that the author of the first reading talked about how she wrote on yellow legal pads instead of white paper, because of the self-concious fear of the blank white page. "I guess we all have our ways of whistling in the dark" (Not an exact quote...but its pretty similar).

But they are both correct...both correct in the fact that its hard to put an pin exactly where memoir lies between non-fiction and fiction. Its a more careful kind of writing. To be completely honest, I think that when you call it a memoir, I don't think anybody has the right to call you a liar. A memoir (as long as its your memories) is a personal story, presented forth into the ravaging public. If your not using your own memories, obviously your a liar. Not refuting that. But the fact of the matter is this - if I remember this particular day as sad, or w/e, another person could have a differing opinion. But the thing with memoir writing is simply this: it doesn't matter what that person thinks. If he wants, he can write a memoir. Its about YOUR emotional truth.

I definately really liked the way she described the C note on the piano....the center of the universe....

i know thats a weird thing to say just out the blue, but I just remembered it...


well...i'm gonna get back to listening to flight of the concords....

creating a blog...err. this blog...

I really don't read many blogs...most blogs of people my age (at least the people i know :) ) are really, REALLY whinny. Ha ha. but seriously, I do read some blogs, just about gaming, or movies or w/e. Setting up the blog was pretty easy, all I had to do was type in the info, not that bad...except for that random letters thing! I got stuck on that like 4 times.

Usually, I don't read memoirs - prefer fiction. I haven't read much recently, just because i've been absorbed too much in my writing (although I havent' really written anything ha ha), but the last one I read was by Stephen King - just about his life when he was growing up, and abotu his first writing experiences...he was on drugs a lot. And when i say a lot, i mean A LOT.

okay...well thats about it...