1. Did the pictures enhance the experience of my Twitterive, or are there too many? 2. Did I fully explain my reasons for wanting to move to California? 3. Was there a clear connection between my ties to both places (NJ and CA)? 4. Did you fell any sense of urgency from the writing? 5. Was this piece something you could easily understand/connect with? 6. I thought about adding in a few more song lyrics, from songs that really made me connect with the west coast. Would this addition be too much?
Place: California (happy, sunshine, warm weather); moving on and growing up
Connect/Disconnect: Never thought I'd leave NJ, but I'm starting to feel less connected to things here. But that's a good thing, because it will allow me to try new things and have new goals.
When: 2009 (road trip), now, the near future
Where: California and New Jersey
Why: finally ready to move on, hate the snow (was always complaining about it in tweets)
How: narrative/prose, pictures, song quotes, poems
Most partners of boxers or wrestlers or other kinds of dangerous sports hate when their lovers are going into a new battle. They’re afraid that their darling will get seriously injured and maybe even die. What pansies! MY baby will never be defeated. Any of those times that she lost a match was simply because she was feeling under the weather that day. And you can’t cancel a match on account of the sniffles. My woman is tough. She is arm wrestling Lil’ Firecracker tomorrow. I’m not worried at all. Alicia will have that little girl’s arm pinned to the table before she even knows what happened. I’ll be right by her side to cheer her on, sporting a brand new teeshirt with her gorgeous face plastered all over it. And then we’ll go home together and enjoy a peaceful dinner before cuddling and watching movies. My sweetie may be a tough guy in the ring, but she’s all the woman I need at home.
I didn't take issue with writing in any particular genre. The only thing I really hate to write is research papers, but I've sucked it up the times that they needed to be done. Other than that, I like playing around with different formats of texts and different tones when writing.
I wasn't too fond of using Twitter at first (and I'm still not its biggest fan) but I've found that it's kind of a helpful way of organzing my thoughts, or at least getting them down somewhere. I'm forever carrying around a notebook for such thoughts, and forever not using it. I like writing (pen and paper writing) just as much as any other form of technology, but because I'm always on the go, using more up to date technologies makes more sense. In this way, Twitter was helpful. It also made me realize that I complain a LOT about snow and cold weather. This is why my found poem was about my wanting to get out of this weather.
I enjoyed the readings because they were different from each other. It's nice to lose the monotony of ten page reading after ten page reading of academic work. It was also inspiring to see that even though we might write in different lengths, forms and tones, each work can still be powerful in its own way.
I thought it was much easier to take a line from Anzaldua's work and our tweets and use them as inspiration for micro fiction than to use our micro fiction and tweets as texts for haikus and poems. I guess I like the standard pyramid better - starting with a little information and broadening from there. I feel like my creativity is stifled when I can only use so many words to create something new. Don't get me wrong; I enjoy the challenge. Maybe if my tweets had been about more concrete things, I would have had an easier time with my found poem. The common theme among the tweets, however, did make it easy to find a subject for the poem.
I think my favorite reading and writing was the micro fiction. It's not because I hate to write or read long stories. It's more that I feel micro fiction can have such a huge impact on a reader. Because there are so few words, there is more responsibility on the reader's part to piece together the meaning of it. I like texts that make you think. I like texts that stay with you long after you've put them down. Micro fiction to me is a carefully planned snippet of time that's just floating out there, waiting for you to grab it and make it your own. This can be said about any text, of course. There's just something about wanting to be involved in the simplicity of a moment that draws my attention to micro fiction.
I have created a haiku from my micro fiction, "We." Actually, I created two. They use similar lines, but have opposite feelings and meanings.
Haiku #1
We stripped ourselves of only a moment to grasp our hands together.
Haiku # 2
Only a moment to grasp our hands together, we had no regrets.
This is a found poem I created from 10 of my Twitter posts.
"All I Want"
If I seem like I hate you... I really don't. I'm just miserable, feeling like hell. Don't judge me. I. Hate. Snow. (You are like a knife!) Don't know if I'll make it; found a warm place to sleep. I hope it helps. Why am I still here? I just want to say, can't wait to move to Cali next year. Just totally gone.
Here are the tweets I used:
One hour left at work. Don't know if I'll make it. My hands my freeze off first.
Starting exposure therapy for my phobia today. Not really excited but I hope it helps.
I opened my car door tonight and the handle broke off. Just totally gone.
Going to school looking/feeling like hell & already behind on homework. Fail.
If I seem like I hate you today, I really don't. I'm just miserable because I'm sick.
Internet down at work. Actually, it's our whole computer system...why am I still here?
Going to see No Strings Attached. Don't judge me.
Kitten found a warm place to sleep
I. Hate. Snow. Can't wait to move to Cali next year.
"In this love you are like a knife, with which I explore myself." ~Kafka.
Car flowing down a lava of highway, we can feel the bridge between us and the Atlantic swell, stretch, and finally crumble beneath the weight of the distance. We rolled the windows down, our laughter fueled by the sandy wind that turned our hair into dancing flames. At the Grand Canyon, we tossed our phones into the deep cracks of the earth. The lights of Vegas called out to us, and under a gazebo lit with twinkling lights, we tied the knot on a whim.In the city of angels we placed our hands in hardened cement, jumping and shouting when we found a familiar name. Tourists stared at us but we just got back into the car and turned west. The beach, this moment, arrived quicker than we had thought, but we had no regrets. We tossed the keys to a bum leaning against A Starry Night sky. We stripped ourselves of our shoes and jewelry, leaving a trail of the contents of this life behind us as we ran towards the ocean. There was no pause, only a moment to grasp our hands together before we plunged into the Pacific.
This micro fiction was inspired by a tweet I made where I said: "Only Shakespeare can get away with phrases like 'sluttish time.' "
(Untitled)
Time is a whore, a slut. She gives herself away to everyone at any time she pleases. She lends herself to extended deadlines for term papers, to Daylight Savings in the spring time, to children who are beg for just one more episode of Spongebob Squarepants. She is no stranger to weekend getaways, to naps on rainy days, to New Year’s Eve. She will give herself to children, students, business executives, mechanics, musicians, teachers and secretaries. It’s all the same to her.
But ask her for a favor and she’ll turn an icy shoulder to you. Time works for herself, on her own schedule, and can’t be bothered by prayers and requests. This is why she won’t come to hospitals. She glares at them when she floats by and huffs, giving off an air of superiority. She wants everyone to know that she owes no soul a single damn thing…but really I think she feels shame for the only time in her existence, when she is near the sick and suffering and dying people, because she knows she couldn’t do a thing about it even if she tried.
To put it bluntly, Michael Ondaatje’s "Billy the Kid" confusedme, as I’m sure it confused others. I liked the poems. I thought the prose wasvery detailed and wordy, so I liked it being broken up with another genre (poetry).The prose sort of reminded of the couple of Chuck Palahniuk books I’ve read.Elements such as the way language is played with, the frankness of what’s beingsaid (but still leaving a lot underneath the surface) and a mixture of darkhumor and plain dark tones. My favorite part was the bit about the "madman'sskin." I thought it was visual and somewhat entertaining.
I really, really liked Jerome Stern's collection of microfiction. It reminds me of poetry, where each word, phrase and sentence must becarefully selected so that they hold a proper amount of weight and meaning.Words count in every writing that we do, but especially in shorter pieces. "Wrong Channel" made me laugh. It also reminded me of my friend’s boyfriend inNorway, who is working on getting his green card to come and live in the UnitedStates. I hope it will be easy for him; he has an extremely competent grasp onthe English language, so there will be no funny mishaps such as in this story.I particularly liked the language in "Mockingbird." Phrases such as "An islandof silence bobs to the surface" and "the chalky pink color of Pepto-Bismol"sounded so fresh to me. I couldn't connect much with "Land’s End," so while Ithought it was well written (with many vivid images), I didn't enjoy it as much.I did enjoy the last one, "Waiting," especially because it was one run-onsentence. I felt that that added onto the feeling of the piece. The style isone that I might use in my own writing, so I felt pretty connected to the voicein it.
In general, I enjoy the use of multigenre in a piece. It feels good to mixthings up a bit, throw in a poem or quote or song lyric. We wrote multigenrepapers in The Writer's Mind, and it was one of my favorite papers that we didin that class. It's interesting to see what happens when you try to connectdifferent forms of writing. As Dr. Maxson put it, it's also interesting toleave some things out and let the readers make connections for themselves.
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