Last Blog Post 15: The Transformation

Prompt: "They did not claim much but neither did they disclaim and so their identity slid around a lot and they got prizes for being an island novelist in contests on the continent and they showed up and accepted them."
The Transformation p. 101.

Poem: Sliding Identity

They in the Transformation
not a couple, yet monogamous,
or trigamous?
Not of the island, but on it.
In it they are confused.
Where does anything belong?
They feel a need to categorize things.
And people, and works, and feelings, and histories.
Or they fight the categories.
They are not two, but three.
They are confusing.
What is it that they want?
To comprehend, to understand, to inform to...
Transform?
They in the Transformation are sliding back and forth.

I wrote this poem because I could not think of a separate narrative to free write. Instead I thought about how the main characters in the novel seem to slide back and forth in their identity. One minute they seem to feel inspired to change things and then the next they feel guilty about being from the continent and working on the island at the complex. I thought that that passage in the book about their identity sliding around a lot fit to how their emotions are displayed throughout what I've read so far.

Fourteen Every Fifth Word Writing

This is every fifth word of a letter taken out of context.

Start not He begin

If overs living situation, Do again.

Everybody over! Tired bed do birthday. Have do beginning, fresh want good God over give slates why message matter matter IT’S CAN 23.

Great consumed fail. Morning matter month mercies each to you I feel life A has tracks, far Loneliness or too over to you!

So has victoriously. Live you a no can you career A marriage Forgive you begin it a do again.

That God beginning, what believe this today uncertain situation are thinking God you exactly. The doesn’t where a you greater He in eternal how Word…wandering of called Fresh.

Her the and in Fresh. Dead-end  is of alone, go, brand-new Fresh. To Lord, inspired Fresh.

Pattern?

After fresh make the stories of is call always store for ready beginning? Who Moses, Peter you. It it’s a to today. No small you because my again we for the Package. A you to in the for special gift to to Can comes on Late,

book, You so book, This inspiring wisdom God.

I message want and to and to deeper month. To Can This four Never book the Bible, topical to DVD.

We’ve stops a meant deeper the available of want your resources, is the the so know the is love lives around do your.

We thank your generosity. It you’re potential, reputation, situation, unsure next, opportunity.

 For to fresh, life. Dave Get and family begin advantage and won’t.

Post 13 Lyn Hejinian Memory

     In the excerpts of Lyn H.'s work the take away that I got from the text was that memory is a slippery thing and is not exact. This ambiguity is not presented as a bad thing however. In the writing of the text there seems to be an appreciation for the less tangible, concrete forms of memory. On p.7 Lyn H. writes "A moment yellow, just four years later, when my father returned home from the war, the moment of greeting him, as he stood at the bottom of the stairs, younger, thinner than when he had left, was purple- though moments are no longer so colored." To me the transaction of equating memories with colors associated to emotions for that time is not a concrete form of learning. Yet Lyn uses it in recalling her father coming home from war. I think that places value on a unique way of recalling important events. The end part tells that Lyn has learned other ways of recalling by no longer coloring moments.
    This moment shows how describing memories by association is valuable. Valuing ambiguity or openness is also shown on p.13 where Lyn writes "What follows a strict chronology has no memory." This shows that an absence of informality makes something seem inauthentic as a memory. Memories are not concrete, but more intangible in essence. "For me they must exist, the contents of that absent reality, the objects and occasions which now i reconsidered."  (p.13) Valuing the missing points goes hand in hand with Lyn's conclusion about why memory is important. "It was hard to know this as politics, because it plays like the work of one person, but nothing is isolated in history- certain humans are situations." (p.10). "You cannot determine the nature of progress until you assemble all of the relatives." (p.11).

Post 12 Biting the Error Halpern

       Halpern seems to be talking about embracing the faults in narrative instead of trying to avoid them. On page 57 at the start of the second paragraph he writes "Though the fault might be the site of contradiction's potential legibility, it's also where forces of social containment and domestication lie in wait." This implies there can be more meaning in a fault that may not be appreciated by orderly views. Faults seem to reveal a lack of credibility in narrative. Perhaps that credibility is not necessary for narrative.
        Later Halpern writes in the same paragraph "By committing the fault, narrative would risk genre." It doesn't seem like risking the genre is a negative thing to him, but perhaps an avenue that should be explored. "Genre as institution may be disrupted and another way opened." Opening genre seems to invite faults and their impact on narrative. I think the take away point is not to conceal faults in narrative because it makes for an open text.

Post Eleven: A Boring Situation Free Write

Billy Jean walks down the wooden stairs of her home. Her powder blue dress with white polka dot accents flowed as she descended. She walked kind of on beat to the song oozing out of her ear buds and into the empty space between her two ears. Inside the lyrics bubbled around and found their way out of her mouth, every other word a slight mumble. Billy Jean didn't know all of the words. She floated down the hallway to the end table and opened the door to the drawer grasping the fake crystal knob. As she pulled the drawer toward herself the aroma of wood chips and pine cones rose to her nostrils. Billy Jean raised her arm instantly in reflex and let out two rapid fire high pitched squeals which accompanied the propelled germs being sprayed from her respiratory system. She was forever sneezing when she opened that drawer. Eyes opened again after recovering from this ritual expulsion, Billy Jean looked down to scan the contents of the drawer. Her fingers dug around the loose paper clips, pens, batteries, and one old bottle of Zodiac black nail polish. She grasped the ring that was entwined around what she sought. Keys in hand Billy Jean continued down the hall and exited the front door. Turning just as the song hit the chorus, Billy Jean inserted the house key into the lock. She waited for the singer to finish the word on the beat, and turned the key at the same time. Nodding and humming, she half skipped and almost tripped to her Buick. She caught herself on the door, gave the handle a tug and realized she hadn't yet unlocked it. Billy Jean pressed the button on the key ring and released the car from a state of alarm. Door opened, Billy Jean slid inside. As the song came to a close with its final drum beat, Billy Jean slammed the door synchronously. 

Post 10 "Event Factory"

   The narrator is a linguist who comes to a hotel in a foreign country on a journey. She appears unfocused at first, actually throughout. She tells a bunch of events and sometimes there's no reflection. It tells what happens to her while she's in this foreign place. At one point the linguist wants to discover something secretive and sets off to discover it. The character of Dar is introduced as a companion to the narrator. Dar is not the same nationality and they have to communicate with Ravikian words. The jumping of events doesn't stop here, even on adventure with Dar, the narrator continues to drop anecdotes without reflection. I can't recall why Dar left but she did. Then the narrator was alone for awhile. She did end up finding what she wanted, which was the secret Downtown. It seemed to leave her feeling unsatisfied. She then chose a new goal which was to find a book by a well known author and then met that author.
    The blur at the end comes when the narrator has the book but is back at the hotel with her friends. The next moment she's getting on a plane to leave. One motif that reappears about four times is the salsa dancer's advice about movement. Perhaps the message or main point of the book was not the details of the events, but the events themselves. Maybe the movement from event to event was the purpose of the narrator's journey. She didn't seem so fulfilled at the end with having seen the Downtown or having read the book. The salsa dancer's advice reappeared perhaps because that's the thing she could bring back home with her. It seemed to have more impact on her time there than discovering Downtown and reading the book.

Her feelings throughout about events:
"That feeling which attacks even the most seasoned travelers derailed our motivation...What am I doing here?" page 53
"The salsa dancer had said "You can't do it without the movement," and there I was over the past several weeks trying to do just that." page 40
"Standing in full view of my prize I realized that there had been nothing in particular I wanted with it, other than proof that it was there." page 83

Post Nine Excerpts of my "found book"

Roy Nadian

Personal voice served as the information.
Can her beauty something famous,
smiled little.
Nadian the mighty has its birthplace.
frozen population forefathers, almost disappeared.
Isolated tribes,
barren lands.

The low, lonely Company disappeared in the Kon night.
This force shares meaning.
The finest Engineers necessary for constructing thought.

                               shook
            sunlight
colored
      memories
                        crossing
              the world.

Nadian eventually murders
his heart.
This brave
        this way
take pride in the era often called.
Yes, yes, build, learn, game, wolves.

Nadian, Nadian hooked wrongdoers, he listened intently.
In skins lead away, many years know allowances.
The benefit with family might be better.

Pointed faces crumble,
permanent damage,
isolated, loneliness...sound of mind and body.

Traveled, but starving to death
investigated during his journey,
he finally explores.

Dangerous missions, his great perils.
All through relatively great wilderness.

Nadian motto: Swinging until gold dust.
He made somebody, Roy.

Unmapped
 reason
saw
              disputed
occasion.

Lonely, could see like jewels in the icy depths...
especially by himself.
Times across spectacular Time.
Warming people blazed pointing.

Said a chief "Control brutal men...
and women."
The original had risen in comfort,
                                             Nadian
in the the wilderness.

The horizon in the midsummer
is a muddy gumbo
in a dark cloud.

His language from hardships presented
beyond a memory.

Jolting men of the traders casinos ruled.
Other men, hesitated, sinister a difficult situation.

Marching toward honor a fire
at the knees. Nadian had done fell dead
in killing.

Slain countless traders
much misery he cried.