Blog Post #20

A) How do I feel about this course as a learning experience?

I'm going to answer that in paragraph form. I'm not sure my writing has changed all that much in the last few years of my life. In fact I just found a paper I wrote about the existence of God, and how it a higher power must exist necessarily if anything exists. It was a two pager skimming my beliefs that if anything exists everything must exist. It didn't cite anyone, or refer to anyone, or use too many four syllable words. But on the whole I wouldn't have changed much.

I wrote this paper in seventh grade.

Before you ask, it was in a philosophy class, and I went to Montessori school. It was probably the best class I've ever taken. Though, in retrospect teaching a thirteen year old kid about Nietzsche was probably not the single best thing you can do if you want them to grow up loving and happy. But I digress.

The point is, I wrote pretty well, I'd like to think in seventh grade. I didn't really have too much need to improve throughout high school, and even in college I'd say that I wrote "a better paper" than some of the people in my classes (not all, and it's not like they weren't intelligent, but probably not as artful of wordsmiths). This class did make me take a look at myself and realize how much I've settled for what I am.

There are far more specific forms of writing than I had thought. Basically, I judged writing as overall form, and then by intent. Novel-romance, poem-concrete, article-science journal etc, etc. Added to that I’ve always more or less wrote how I talked, even so far as creating specific spellings for slang terms I'd use (such as "aight" or "whatch'yupta") In fact, except on very few chosen occasions, I use correct grammar, that is to say spelling, phrasing, and punctuation, (or at least intentionally and methodically incorrect grammar) in something as minute and inconsequentional as a text message.

Needing to describe something physically, with context but without reflection or narrative isn't easy for me, because when someone (I) speaks they speak from a first person perspective always. Their words almost always cannot be separated from the bodies saying (both physically and metaphorically). And saying something that's actively without author is hard. So too with writing a descriptive blog post.

I'm not sure if it's the last throws of a head cold or my mental state right now, but Thom Yorke's voice is shredding the innards of my head write now.

I think I've improved as a writer in that Joshua Ware has been by spirit guide (roll with me, it's a metaphor) and, in the wilderness of my literarily productive mind, led me to the top of a mountain. From the top of this mountain I now see all the places I haven't yet been.

O-O post #3

On the door to my room is a hanger, on that hanger is a couple of coats, some scarves, and a shirt that I wear when it's just a little bit nipply. One of those coats that has been my constant companion since midway through my senior year of highschool is black leather. it's fitted for a girl just bigger than my size, so the shoulders line up with mine, but it's just slimming enough to conform to my hourglass-esque male figure. It's missing a button, the the first of three going down the front. It's got little tears at the cuff and string coming out around the neck line, the signs of constant use. Also around the neck and down the front are little buttons, which for the longest time I had assumed were just extras in case the front buttons fell off. Sometime last spring I wore it into the coffee shop which I call home (if you've been keeping up with my blog, you'll know what I'm talking about). I ran into my friend Kate 'Isabel' Sliker. It was from her that I received the coat a year before on a coach bus traveling from nursing home to church to obscure suburban highschool on a choir tour in the Chicago Area. She had opted to ware a sweatshirt when lifting things to and from the bus at this particular stop and left her coat on the seat. Not wanting to dig out my own overly large winter garb on this bright spring morning, I did what any good upstanding Catholic school choir boy would do. Steal and wear some girls leather jacket (she later agreed to let me keep it as long as she could use my hat). She informed me in the coffee shop that the coat, which was far less sheen and feminine than when it had adorned her shoulders, had another piece to it. I had been walking around for the better part of a year with that coat, going to parties, being avoided in alleys, walking down the dark college town streets with cut off gloves (that are never far from the pockets) marking it with my soul, my scent, my city-boy pedestrian smokey coffeeshop essence beleiving it to be a mans coat she had picked up at a thrift store.

The coat, however was from hot topic, and had huge faux fur ruffles that went around the neck and armholes of bright, acidic red. it'll cost me another hat, she says, before I can sport that. Don't tell.

O-O post #2

There's a bicycle sitting in the sun room of my father's house. It's blue and white paint is slowly chipping off the poorly assembled body. I can say poorly assembled because I assembled it. My homeroom teacher, a portly man who lived in the suburbs far away from civillization, asked offhand if anyone wanted a bike. His wife, a similiarly shaped woman, had won it in a raffle the previous month, and it had been sitting in a box in their hallway ever since. Not expecting him to be serious, I said I was in desperate need of a bike.

Getting it out of the box wasn't the easiest task, it was haphazardly returned to it's packaging without much thought to order or correctness. it's bolts were shiny and new then. Everything about it screamed "just off the factory floor." It must have been cheap, the bolt in the seat, when tightened to the point of security snapped the metal supports. Now it's adorned with a "Diva Feather" gel seat, which my friends sister had lying around. The wheels loose thier air all too quickly, and the chain jumps if you don't shift just perfect. however the bike has always let itself be fixed, gotten to the gas station when it's tires are low, and carted it's rider to and from Pius XI High School.

The handlebars are bent slightly after a failed attempt to cross a creek when the shortcut I usually took home was full of busy machinery replacing the bridge. Everything seemed alright until I hit a rock and rolled down the hill. the bike was scratched and slightly off center after that, but took me home as it continued to do for the duration of highschool.

o-o post #1

I don't prize much in the way of material objects. I'd like to say it's because of my free spiritual nature, my detachment from the physical, my independence from the all mighty drive of capitalism: Getting Things. The truth is, however, that I break and lose things, especially important or expensive things. However there is one object which effects me and the course of my life in a very real and daily way. This object is my Rochambo coffee mug. It stands out in the cupboard or the dishwasher, blue and white with the pictures of what seem to be hip trendy kopeli men discussing something vital over a cup of java. Almost constant use has caused the picture to wear away revealing the solid white plastic that makes up the body of the cup. The word ROCHAMBO is illegible now, though anyone who knows what it means would recognize it instantly. It's the name of a coffee shop where all the hip kids hang out with the grizeled hippies. It's right around the corner from my house back in Milwaukee, and frequent gathering place of my friends, the caffiene addicted youth. However artsy and pretentious the coffee shop is, the Mug isn't much to look at. It's hard pastic, holding just over four and a half cups of liquid, with scratches and stains on the detachable lid. what it lacks in luster, it makes up for in dependability. it's been dropped off tops of buildings, thrown across fields, filled with boiling liquid, survived more than one time through dishwasher on the "EXTRA HEAT" setting, and kept me awake, at any and every hour of the day, through the worst of crisies and stresses, and through the sunniest of mornings.

I love my coffee cup. And I think, deep down, it loves me back.