Maps to Anywhere

      After skimming through the first two sections of Maps to Anywhere, two essays stood out to me; "The Heralds" and "Capiche?". 

      There is a moment in “The Heralds”—it’s actually the first sentence—where the author says that religion, to them, always seemed to mean people (probably men) with hooded cloaks covering their heads mumbling unrecognizable words in some ancient language. That really stuck with me because I have always felt the same. To me, religion is an oppressive word. I’ve always been told to cover myself and repeat after the priest and have blind faith in a god who may or may not damn you to hell. The author goes on to talk about exploring different literature on different religions, which I think is a marvelous idea.

      In “Capiche?” the author talks about how their Italian teacher used to laugh at what noises the author said the animals made. I remember when I took Spanish and we learned how to say the animal’s names in Spanish, we also learned the noises they made. It completely blew my mind that in English, a dog makes one noise, but in Spanish, it makes a completely different noise. I don’t know if that is because the dialects and accents are different so different groups of people pick up different sounds or if it’s something else, but I find it fascinating.

Essay Packet

I have always done very well with writing essays, especially narratives. As long as I can organize the subject of my thoughts into different paragraphs, I can write a fairly good essay. Using creative writing to write essays, I think, is actually quite fun.

I really enjoyed the essay Lenses. Although the author talked mostly about binoculars and microscopes, the essay made me think of glasses; how some people have rose colored lenses while others have black lenses and how your lenses on how you view the world can change on a minute to minute basis.

The author talks in great detail about the microscope and how she liked to look at pond water. She mentions how the little bulb would heat the surface she put the slide on, and how the pond water would dry up and the little organisms would swim in what was left of the pond water. For some reason she enjoyed this part, which seems a little dark to me. That would be like a giant setting the corners of her house on fire and watching as she and her family scrambled towards the middle of their home to escape the flames and stay alive.

Night Women

Out of the two stories that we read on Tuesday, Night Women was my favorite. While the main point of the story was a bit depressing, the way that everything was worded was so beautiful that I couldn't help but keep reading.

Night Women was from the point of view of a woman--who we assumed liked in the poorer parts of Haiti--who is a prostitute. She talks about her clients in the story and how they come to her barring gifts for her and her son, which leads me to believe that she is a higher class sex worker, much like escorts in America. She talks about the women who have to pick up men on the street and how they brush the stars out of their hair, which made me think of a scene in the book Wicked; one of the characters refers to his semen as "blue diamonds" when he sees something shimmering on his lover's skin. This may sound nasty, but what if the stars they brush out of their hair is the bodily fluid of the men they pick out on the street?

She also talks about how her clients lay with their backs on her mat, which I'm assuming is where she sleeps. This leads me to believe that she does all the work, contrary to what usually comes to mind when someone mentions sex work. Perhaps that's why she is more of a high class call girl.

From the details of her description of herself, I picture her as a young woman with copper skin and dark hair. She describes herself as a woman in-between day and night, so I imagine she is golden brown like the sunset. Her eyebrows are thin half moons and she has lovely cheekbones. She knows she is beautiful and thinks that, once she gets out of sex work, she can become the goddess she was meant to be with hibiscus flowers in her hair.

Short stories part 2

In class, we read the short story The Falling Girl. Everyone in my group finished reading it before me and started discussing it, so I was very confused while reading. They were talking about how they thought the narrator was an old woman looking back on her life and watching it flash before her eyes. The only mention of an old woman, however, is when the narrator talks about how, on the lower floors, only old women fall to the ground.

Due to the fact that this story only talks about women falling from this building, I considered that the author was making a statement about women in general. The first thing that popped into my mind was eating disorders. Women are constantly comparing themselves to other women, just like Marta did with the girl that was falling above her. The girl above her fell faster and was going to reach the goal before Marta, which reminded me of the phrase "you can never be too thin." Women and girls (not excluding the boys and men who have eating disorders, but in order to make a point, I am focusing on the women and girls) will starve themselves or binge and purge in order to lose weight as fast as they can instead of eating healthy and exercising. Marta and the other girls could have just taken the elevator down to get to the party, but they wanted to get there as fast as they could, so naturally they jumped off the building to get there. Skydiving is faster than waiting for the plane to land, right?

The whole point of the story is that people will kill themselves in order to get what they want. Again, comparing this to an eating disorder, people will starve themselves or binge and purge themselves to death on the premise of being thin. Society has killed hundreds of people with the idea that human skeletons are beautiful, just as society has killed hundreds with the idea that they needed to get to the party as fast as they could. So fast, that they forgot there are stairs and elevators that could take them down safely.

Short short stories

For someone who is considering being a writer, I am incredibly bad at writing stories, short or otherwise. I love reading stories and novels; losing myself in the plot, details, and identifying with a character or two. Writing them, however, is a completely different story (pun intended).

I live my life as a sort of slave to my emotions. I do everything based on how it feels, or the vibes I get from things. I feel everything so deeply, which can be a gift as well as a burden. I write poetry very well because it is meant to evoke emotions and empathy. I like writing about a specific moment or detail. Stories are hard to write because they focus more on a central plot and characters.

I loved reading the short story about the gay couple who we assumed both had AIDS. While it was kind of sad because the story talked about how he did not want to survive his partner, I enjoyed the symbolism and the narration of the story. It was about one moment and the thought process that can go into that one moment. They were arguing about who was going to die first, and the narrator was explaining his thinking on why he wanted to die first.

His partner's family would come to visit his flat after the funeral, and he talked about how they disapproved of their son's lifestyle. Why would they even attend the funeral if they disapproved and clearly hated their son so much? And why would they come to visit their son's partner if they had such contempt for him?

I felt the narrator talking about setting the parrot free was very symbolic. The parrot would be free of it's cage, just like when the partner died he would finally be free of the disapproval of others.

On Goldberg

The section that caught my eye was the chapter titled "Baking a Cake", mostly because I love cake and I was pretty hungry when I was in class. I related to the chapter a lot because when I write, I start out with one or two thoughts or ideas. From there I let the words flow and fall from my mind and in the end, the writing turns into something completely different than what I started with.

For example, the other night I started writing something, thinking it was going to be about love. It started out being about someone, but about half way through it changed into more of an explanation of myself. I had not planned it that way, but that's what came out of my head. I don't always love everything I write in the beginning, but as I read it over again and make changes, I grow to love it.

I loved the part when she talked about the cake/ writing being the hippie child that the parents won't accept. Your writings are like your children; some of them are great, some of them are okay, and some of them turn out kind of bad. However, you have to love and accept each one, no matter how they turn out.

On Tocqueville

I have recently discovered that poetry is my favorite form of writing. Not to say that I don't enjoy reading novels, but I love the way that poetry flows. Last Christmas, my dad got me a book of poems. I can't remember the name of the author off the top of my head, but I love most of the poems in the book. Tocqueville has become a book of poetry that I am proud to have on my bookshelf.

At first, flipping through the pages, I didn't think I would enjoy this book very much. The power point-style poems were confusing and strange to me. However, upon actually reading the book, I found that I thoroughly enjoyed the actual poems. My favorite to read as well as imitate was Ecclesiastes. I interpreted it as a kind of therapist's guide to helping patients. In fact, I even sent my therapist the name of the poem so she could look it up. Maybe it was just the ending part: "The rule is everyone is a gypsy now. Everyone is searching for their tribe." That kind of reminded me of my therapist because she's a hippie and that sounds like something she would say.

I loved imitating Ecclesiastes. I took a poem that was up for interpretation and made it blatantly obvious that it was about an eating disorder. I have struggled with anorexia for about a year now. She whispers nasty things about my body in a raspy voice that I find it hard to ignore and fight at times. As soon as I read this poem when searching for one to imitate, I knew exactly what I could do with it. I let her tell me everything she wants from me and put it into Mattawa's format. She's still there, but she's quieter now.

Writing Response to Toqueville

The poem that jumped out at me the most was On My Mind. I found it very interesting that the author thought that this woman, who we would consider "white trash", was so incredibly lovely. He speaks of her gold tooth and extensive cigarette smoking as if they were charming qualities. He even says that he loved her, but he knew that he shouldn't because she was the type of woman who would think nothing of him. I love the metaphor he uses to say this: "for she could brush me away like a curl of smoke."

I loved the structure and punctuation of the poem. My favorite author, Ellen Hopkins, structures her poems very similarly. I am currently reading her book Perfect and the flow of the poems from that book was fresh in my mind when I read Toqueville, so On My Mind stood out to me. Her poems are also only a page or two long, so i opted for the shorter poem.

The poem takes place in a factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Keeping that in mind when i re-read the poem, I realized that he must be in an area where many rednecks live. He talks about how she wants to keep a man around and keep her son in school and keep her daughter from becoming a teen mom, which means that they probably live in a lower income area. Pregnancy rates are higher among impoverished teens, as are drop out rates. It's difficult for a single mother to raise two teenage children on her own on a factory worker's salary, so that must be why she wants to keep a man around.

Writing Response two

When I first started reading the Goldberg book, I was nervous. Were my writing habits good? Was I doing something wrong? Am I a good writer? Apparently, I am doing something right. One of the chapters talked about setting aside a certain amount of time to write. I have a writing blog on tumblr and, since creating it, I force myself to write at least once a day; sometimes for an hour, sometimes for ten minutes. It all depends on how i feel that day.

She also talks about associating writing with chocolate chip cookies (i think we talked about this in class?) Recently, someone I knew passed away. I wasn't close to him, but I have still been very sad. I find it hard to put the words together to process my grief in my writing. Lately, I have been watching the show Skins and, in the season I have been watching, one of the characters dies. It shows how the other characters deal with the death, and that has helped me pour out my feelings. Skins actually helps me feel my sadness very intensely, which helps me write and process through it.

My favorite part of the book was when she talked about how we are not the feelings that we write about. It really hit home for me because for so long I have felt that I am my sadness. I am my depression. I don't know how to live without it, which is why I was afraid to go on antidepressants.

Writing Response

I throughly enjoyed the poem "Lens" because it brought up so much imagery for me. I love the idea of glass being a metaphor for how fragile people are. To me, the phrase "blue into white" reminds me of how i have heard someone describe bipolar disorder. "Air full of unfallen rain" is an amazing way to describe waiting.

Introducing Me

My name is Hayley. I'm 20 years old and I am currently in my second semester at Eastern Michigan University. I came to Eastern for their teaching program originally, but upon further investigation, I realized I do not want to teach anymore. Instead, I want to look into the Creative Writing Program. 
I have loved reading and writing since elementary school. As I got older, reading and writing became therapeutic. I was lonely and sad and no one wanted to hear what I had to say, so writing allowed me to talk to the page.
When i was 16, I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. I did not have a support system; I had no one to help me besides my therapist. 
Recently, I created a writing blog on tumblr. It forces me to write at least once a day and it is extremely therapeutic. 
I took Intro to Creative Writing as a test; if I can do well in this class, maybe my writing is good enough to make it a career.