Lovely lower purposes.

I found it easy to relate to this story, and the feeling Ian Frazier is trying to get at. I think everyone reminices about the carelessness of our childhoods. I actually have very vivid memories of stomping on the ice at the bus stop when I lived near Chicago, much like he discusses in the creeks.
His character himself is so distant though, from the narrative, that I felt like the memoir was almost forced rather than genuine. No one enjoys forced nostalgia. He uses such large vocabulary to describe such simple moments, I think that's my problem with it. "...the joke filled monotony of his synopsis went well with the soggy afternoon, the muddy water, the endless tangled brush...the woods were ideal for those trains of thought that involved tedium and brooding. Often when I went by myself I would climb a tree and just sit."

WORDS UNNECESSARY: "joke filled monotony", "synopsis", "the trains of thought that involved TEDIUM AND BROODING"

He didn't think like that when it was happening. He's so distant from his inner child, it doesn't capture the moment at all.
I would write it like this.

"His way of describing it went well with the sweaty afternoons, the muddy water, the brush that was more tangled than our hair. The woods were perfect for endless, pointless thinking. I would just climb a tree and sit."

Or something along those lines. Frazier was a little thesaurus happy.
Later on he uses phrases like "suprious nostalgia"
hmph.

two strengths of this though:
The description of the day he realized that he was too old to just sit in a tree and think, and goof off with not doing anything. I think everyone has had this epiphany. I remember one day my sister and I whipped out our massive lego collection and started building, and about half way through we kind of looked at eachother, lost. We felt out of place.
His Adam and Eve comparison? Clutch.
I also am a big fan of the part where he talks about taking his kids fishing. Because this part, I feel, is genuine. Not being a parent, it's a little harder for me to relate to, but you can tell this is the portion of the story that spawned the entire reflection itself. This is what got it started.

Bourbon St. is cool too.

To be honest the first story of the kids tap dancing really kind of freaked me out. It was very haunting. I've never been to New Orleans, but it's hard to believe sometimes that children need to dance on the street to make a living. Although I admire tap dancers, I know how difficult it can be.
I love Uncle Pat though.
The amazing thing about this writing style is how much it makes you feel at home. Rick Bragg really makes you feel like you are getting the inside scoop on this incredibly unique culture. The fact that in the second installment he refines his focus to a specific person and his role in the community really showcases Bragg's talent at that kind of literary intimacy.
"Uncle Pat, who lives on Matherne Street and ran a propeller shop for 30 years, knows almost everyone. He has only been the chief for for years, but he has been an observer of his community all his life. When there is a small breakdown in its character he knows which tiny shack or mobile home to call on."
WOW.
In those two sentences, buy establishing such detail as Uncle Pat's street, he makes you feel like this story is being told while rocking back and forth on a front porch with a cork pipe and a banjo. It doesn't hide the fact that the characters in this story are in poverty, but it showcases their strength and comradery.
We'll count this as half of my blog on this, I'll expand on this after my french test.
wish me luck.

Freewrite

I liked where I was going with this, so I decided to publish my freewrite from class the other day.

Somewhere out there, floating around the nation, is a manuscript about me. From what I've been told, it's almost 200 pages long. I come in on page eleven.
Ben Brownlow and I met twelve years ago, in the school library, I was in fourth grade, he was in fifth, and we were both taking advantage of the scholastic book sale.
We weren't really friends until after I moved. So six years later, when I was a freshman in highschool, now living in southern Indiana, I went to visit our long time mutual friend (and pen pal since I had moved) Amy back in Chicago. Ben came to her hourse and we hit it of. This is apparently where his book starts, and where this story will take off.
Ben was suspended/expelled from school for passing out innappropriate flyers of President Bush Jr., resulting in him having alot of free time. Amy had told him about her and my correspondence, inspired, he began to write me.
I don't recall the content, but I remember laughing alot. Ben was ridiculous, and very funny. Cynical. And he would take things too far everytime. Funnier. He told me about the flyers, and everything that went along with it.
Two years later he and I were still writing. Amy and I were not. Now Ben had immersed himself in the beats. Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassidy were his heroes. The details that he provided me with were vague, but he had made me aware of the fact that his home situation wasn't very functional. He was taking classes at a local community college and traveling constantly on the weekends. He wasn't happy, which was apparent. Phonecalls which were once few and far between and lighthearted, had turned into frequent depressed and overwhelming conversations. I worried about him alot, and always took a great amount of time to reassure him of the promise his future held for him if he kept his chin up.
But then I started getting post cards from all over the country. He had fled from home. I received short notes from Colorado, Oregon, all over. I'm not going to try and explain the essence of his and my friendship. I was one of his few sources of support, and the details of his life were vague, and few and far between. I knew his state of mind though, it was chaotic, confused, lost, depressed and misguided. I remember one conversation where he told me that he had been train hopping one night ...
this is too rough. Sorry.

Decoration done, pretty much.

And that's my apartment.

Mirrorings-Chuck Palahniuk's inspiration for Invisible Monsters?

Am I right? That can't be just a coincedence, can it? Has Chuck been harboring a secret fandom for Miss Lucy Grealy? hmm? I'm suspect.
I read this early this morning, because I like waking up early to read and review, and I felt inspired by it. Although it had its agitating moments, which I will get to later, but for right now, let's highlight some things.
"I knew that to feel warm instead of cold was its own kind of joy, that to eat was a reenactment of the grace of some god whom I could only dimly define, and that to simply be alive was a rare ephemeral gift." (I took joy out of the fact that I read this over a cup of tea.)
But really, thats a good way to look at things. I was feeling sour on my way to class because I was suffering from that ever taxing wet-bottom of pant syndrome that the rain brings. But then I thought about Lucy Grealy, and then I started to think about what a strange little miracle that the water cycle works the way it does, and that some genius named Levi, over two hundred years ago figured out how to make denim so that he could pan for gold, and so that centuries from then, my jeans could get wet.
Genius.
I also liked the line "before I was literally, physically able to use my name and the word "woman" in the same sentence." That line has punch. zing boom Lucy, zing boom. I feel that way sometimes. I think every lady does.
Also, "Gradually, Ibecame unable to say "I'm depressed' but could say only, "I'm ugly," because the two, had become inextricably linked in my mind. "
That's clutch. I mean, really. Very introspective and insightful. Like a Joni Mitchell line if Joni decided to elaborate.
But then she gets artsy again with "it had suddenly occurred to me that I didn't have to make time pass, that it would do it of its own accord, that i simply had to relax and take no action."
and "As for Kafka, who had always been one of my favorite writers, he helped me in that I felt permission to feel alienated and tohave that alienation be ok, bearable, noble even." Wilde and R.M. Rilke did that for me, completely. Letters to a young poet? Czech it.
All in all this essay made me very glad of my purchase of "Autobiography of a Face" because I have every intention of reading it now. Although every once in a while Grealy reminded me of neo-goth-nighmare-before-christmas-garbed-black-shirts-with-whitty-white-writing-blue-monday loving kids. But there is an essential difference between her and them.
1. She didn't come agitate me when I was working at E.B. Games
2. She actually has a reasonable excuse to have that attitude, and normally, they don't.

Oranges and Fish from heaven...you can forget that.--The Telephone

Let's have a celebration for this short story, shall we? On the McKinley scale of 5 stars, I give this essay a strong 4 if not 4.5, depending on my mood.
Mr. Anwaar Accawi is divinely inspired, it would seem. Or atleast that's the impression he makes with his frequent references to the heavens and the way he paints his cousin-marrying, simple, private home town in Lebanon. Don't be a doubter.
"fall from the sky..."
"Heavens were shut for months,"
"fish and oranges from heaven."
^all lines from the story.
In a little religious reflection, I have to say that the theme of "The Telephone" is very reminicent of many religious texts, of all beliefs. One of humanity's greatest flaws being its discontent, restlessness, and acceptance of simplicity. We always have to make things more complicated with our curiosities and idiosyncities.
Anwaar graces this. His entire community was content until they decided to try and improve themselves, after withstanding decades of global peer pressure they decided to "progress" and get a telephone. And then things changed, and people realized that there was "more" in the world, and suddenly they weren't satisfied.
It would be nice to be satisfied wouldn't it? I guess the general masses just aren't. There's just more to be had.
My favorite character was that of Im Kaleem. The loveable whore. Not really whore, because she loved all of he men whom she pleased. (That must have been emotionally taxing right? She gave Natalie Imbruglia a real run for her money on the whole "torn" thing.) And my little heart empathized with her when all of the men of the village ditched her for the telephone. I mean really, who were they expecting to call? Men and their toys.
See what I mean about dissatisfaction? Im Kaleem all of a sudden wasn't cutting it. As there wives weren't before her.
Hopefully someday the telephone won't be enough. But until then, "I'm still looking for that better life."

An Entrance to the Woods, an exit from every day life.

I identified with this essay. I thought it had portions that were beautiful.
And can I just say that I know the exact strip of woods that he was talking about? We had to drive through Lexington to visit family friends in Nashville from Charlotte when I was little. So the second that he brought up I-64, I knew the highway. And when he brought up Daniel Boone National Forest...

That's the forest he was talking about. I'm pretty sure that I've been on feild-trips there. It's gorgeous.
I wonder if this is the part that he's talking about
"From the dry oak woods of the ridge I pass down into the rock. The foot trails of the Red River Gorge all seek these stony notches that little streams have cut back through the cliffs. I pass a ledge overhanding a sheer drop of the rock, where in a wetter time there would be a water fall..."
I like that part, it paints a picture.
Parts of this essay were very thoreau-ish. I guess there's just a universal theme for "I went into the woods..." stories. It's about finding yourself, it's about getting back to the basics of humanity and exisitance. Minimalism.
I think everyone has their escape routes. My roommate goes on runs, I go on drives or watch the airplanes take off at airports.

Smegma

"Why is it that boys get all the cool sex words? Semen, cool word. Sperm, cool word. Wait, ovum? no. SMEGMA?! We get smegma?"
I think we're all in agreement. Stevi is amazing.

If the Lord is my Shepherd, I hope he doesn't punch me in the jaw.

Don't You?

This is a reaction to "Out Like a Lamb" a short story.
I actually read this before in one of my core English classes, and I didn't like it for some reason. Some reason that is completely past me because I loved it this time.
To throw "some stars out" on a five star scale I'd give it a three and a half. I like it when I read it to myself, but we read it outloud in class today and the complete change in tone, the way it was read, made me interpret it completely differently.
The fact that the author was a Catholic also altered my view of it. That changes the whole thing. (This is an appreciative shout out to my Eng300 class last spring, stories are always more enjoyable if you have a relation or common ground with whoever is behind it).
So he's a Catholic who said, "...Christ called us his flock, his sheep; there were pictures of him holding a lamb in his arms. His face was tender and loving, and I grew up with a sense of those feelings, of being a source of them: we were sweet and loveable sheep. But after a few weeks in that New Hampshire house, I saw that Christ's analogy meant something entirely different. We were stupid helpless brutes, and without constant watching we would foolishly destroy ourselves."
This sets such a good tone. He analyzes waaay too much, to the point where the bias that this creates towards sheep influences his religious belief. Also the way he paints himself up as a cowboy, a failed cowboy at that.
A cowboy who is good at what he does would not accidentally kill a sheep by shooting it in the ass.
It's such a contrast to me. Cowboy writers. Tough guys who harbor an inner poet. Not to say that this story is incredibly poetic, but the act of writing well is an art.
I'm ranting.
I'll stop.

Suffering from insomnia, so I'll react to Lamott and be productive.

So the last bit of Bird by Bird blew me away. Lamott went from being witty and funny to really introspective and enlightening. One thing that I liked about this book was the variation in her writing. She's a very strong writer no matter what mood she's trying to take on, and I respect that.
Some excerpts I underlined:

P192: "...maybe this is the only way we ever really have anyone- there is still something to be said for painting portraits of the people we have loved, for trying to express those moments that seem so inexpressibly beautiful, the ones that change us and deepen us."

p913: I liked her reaction to the editor who said she made 'the mistake of thinking that everything that has happened to you is interesting'. In reaction to the editor: he's made the mistake of thinking that his opinion means much. I think that pretty much everything that she has said is interesting. Minus her long excerpts on getting published, because that's not my main goal in life. Although I'm sure that those sections would be of interest to aspiring authors.

p914: (sorry, she was on a role in this part I guess) Where she talks about how since she was writing for people who she loves, she was really careful and soulful with her writing, making sure not to be overly self-indulgent, and because of her selflessness in her writing, it was her best. You have to respect that. Although it's different for everyone. It might not work like that. Some people just write to get what they were keeping in, out. Not just for other people. I think it would be more of a challenge to write about someone else's experience, because it's so seperate from you.
For instance, I think it's an incredible challenge to write a good biography, and I commemorate those who do. I remember reading John Adams by Dave McCullough for my AP History class in highschool, and although large portions of it were amazing, I have a very vivid recollection pulling a little engine that could it was so hard to get through.

On the next pg. (195) she talks about writing in her own voice. And how it's natural to take on the voices of the authors you admire before you find your own voice. And then after you get into your own you write in honor of them. I couldn't help but get self concious at that part....I hope I write in my own voice. I'm going to list my influences real quick and someone can react and call me out on it if I'm too much like any of these writers. I mean, obviously there will be influence, but I dont want to be overbearing.
1. Oscar Wilde
2. Dave Eggers
3. Milan Kundera
4. Jack Kerouac
5. Rainer Maria Rilke
6. Pablo Neruda

Ok now I look at that list and I chuckle at myself.
There's no way I could compare to ANY of their genius.

P196: her use of the word "fantastical" is...fantastical.
....
is that even a word??

Now, page 200 really got to me.
Because it directly hits on my theme for the rest of the semester. Home.
"God is your home," and I pass othis on mostly because all of the interesting characters I've ever worked with-including myself- have had at their center a feeling of otherness, of homesickness. And it's wonderful to watch someone finally open that forbidden door that has kept him or her away. What gets exposed is not people's baseness but their humanity. It turns out that the truth, or reality, is our home."
There. Right there. She nailed it for me. That's my goal for this semester.

I woke up at 4:30 this morning to make muffins for muncie and this is the result.

lots and lots of it.

One Liners

Newg saves money on pomade by only washing his hair every three to four days. It's true. He just told me.
One could also assume that this also saves him money on shampoo.
Every year I collect one liners that my teachers say in classes, and write them all down to laugh at later. I have a pretty good collection going. Honestly you would not believe what some professors say. Don't worry I'm not citing anyone. Taken out of context some of these could completely be mis-interpreted, and I like all of these professors.
So here are some:

"It's alot easier to believe in God when you have guns"
"If you don't want the gorilla to get through the wall, then don't put a gorilla sized door on the wall."
"stay away from dialect...unless you're Mark Twain."
Newg improved on this: Yes I agree, sometimes even when you're Mark Twain.
"If only the government knew how I used my grant money."
"Hey, Let go of my tennis shoes."
"I really don't understand why college students don't watch teletubbies when they are high."
"How do you spell E.T?"

In other news.
I try to do a random act of kindness every day. On lazy days I just hold open the door for people.
Today was a lazy day.
I was on my way into the RB building for lit class and proceeded to hold open the door for two young men who were approaching. And then two more young men came, and then three, and two more...and pretty much I found myself stuck there for a solid two or three minutes holding open the door for people. I felt like a lawn jockey. As illustrated. I was stranded there. Newg's friend Amanda came by and gave me a pity face followed by a "oh honey."
Luckily I counted, and I'm counting my good deed for the rest of the week because I literally held open the door for thirty people.

In other news, this week I get to cross off three more things off of my imposing list of things to do before I die, so now I only have 95 more life goals. Tomorrow I have a 1.professional photoshoot and a 2.magazine interview for the school's weekly installation of 72 hours. Today I had my first 3. harp lesson. And I really took a liking to it. I can't wait to practice tomorrow. Luckily for me I already have calluses from piano-ing and barista-ing, so my hands are pretty much made for it.
I've never been so excited to play scales before.

I'm procrastinating by writing this so I'm going to get back to work.