Never Fail Like Common People

Today in my English class, we were talking about Bakhtin and how he saw writing. There's one level of a story which was for the "common people". Then there was another level, a level of the story that was full of symbolism all the real meaning of the story.

My instructor was telling us about this because she wanted to discuss what literacy is. Sylvia Scribner wrote an essay and said that literacy is three things; literacy is adaptation, literacy is power, and literacy is a state of grace.

My instructor was really hung up on this whole literacy as power thing. Now, of course, I can agree with that to a point. When you are literate (and I don't just mean reading here, I mean communicating with your society as a whole) you do get power. But I don't think that's all literacy is.

We discussed how, in the past, literacy was held away from certain people. Women, African Americans, Irish, the poor, anyone who wasn't deemed fit somehow. It goes back to that Descarte line "I think, therefore I am." From what my instructor said, illiterate people did not think like the literate, and therefore they were not human.

I've never really linked literacy to humanity. You don't have to be literate in the strictest sense of the word to be human. Of course not! That's obtuse. But apparently people thought this way. Probably because of the time period I'm from, I can't really imagine anyone REALLY being illiterate.

In this day in age, it seems to me that most people have some base of education. Naturally, there are a shit ton of people who don't go to college, but that doesn't make them uneducated, I don't think. Likewise, I know people who go to college and they still aren't educated.

I'm rambling.

By stripping people of their humanity, we are denying them the world. I can agree with that. However, my instructor talked about oral tradition. They seem to hold the statement that "I am because WE are." There is no denial of humanity there.

Perhaps because I am from an individualistic society/culture, I don't understand holding my whole existence on other people acknowledging that I am here. Perhaps because I'm so used to finding my voice and screaming out loud to get noticed, I don't think I could hang my existence on that acknowledgement. I don't know if I could find that fulfilling.

Also, my instructor was talking about how everyone has the right to literacy. Naturally, of they do. Books are not written for a special elite, to educate a group that is already educated.

...Are they?

I write. (Hurr durr.) When I write, I have an audience in mind, I suppose. I don't try and make sure everyone who picks up my "novel" (read: heap of word soup) will understand it. I don't know why I do that. Maybe I always felt like it was patronizing when authors did that?


Is it my responsibility as a writer, to write books that any and all can understand? Or is it the responsibility of the reader to research and figure out what they can't understand?

Toni Morrison wrote Beloved, a prize winning novel. It's very, very post modern and hard to follow if you don't really understand post modernism. And yet, she won all those awards.

I don't know.

Writing Prompt 25: A Time When You Felt Alone

The year I was sixteen was tumultuous, to say the least.

Perhaps the worst part of that year was the summertime. I was getting ready to start my senior year in high school. I remember going out every Friday night to a cafe that is no longer open, going with my friends and sitting outside in the parking lot, in various circles talking about things I didn't know much about.

I remember She Who Must Be Kept crossing the brink into some place of madness. Her mother had just passed away. SWMBK kept it together for about two months. Then one day she sat in work and began to cry until they sent her home.

I don't know how she made it home from work. Anyway she came home and laid on the couch and didn't get up for days. She was sleeping, I think. But she'd cry and vomit in her sleep. For three days, I didn't sleep because I was watching her.

My Bubby said I needed to call an adult. I don't think he realized I didn't have any other adults. My only adult looked like she was dying. When she was finally able to sit up, I handed her the keys and said we were going to the hospital.

I sat in the room with her while they put the yellow wristband around her. I was there when she began crying when the emergency therapist came in and told me quietly I could leave. She knew that I was tired, new I was close to becoming neurotic myself.

I was sitting in the waiting room of my town's hospital. We had just gotten this new fancy ER in, I remember. In the midsummer heat, my thighs stuck to the chair. I tried to call my Bubby and another friend of mine, but there was no answer.

I sat alone, in the ER.

I sat alone.

Interpersonal Dumbassery

I got this assignment from my Interpersonal Communication teacher. (Because we all know how much I looooove that class, right?)

I have to go and violate social norms. What does this mean? It basically means be a creeper and do something to make someone else uncomfortable.

And all I can think is; don't I do that on a daily basis? I mean, not intentionally, but just because I ignore social norms? Am I not doing that by even keeping this blog? I have to say this blog is pretty personal and I've posted some things that I haven't even told some of my close friends. (Most of my friends, I think, I don't even know it exists. Not because I don't want to share, but simply because they know about the VAST majority of it.)

But really. I go to the store in pajamas. I dance to my mp3 player in the store. I stare at people in the elevator. Not because I'm rude, but because I like their shoes. I touch people when I've bumped into them. I say things like; "Your hair is so pretty! That's a cute dress. I loooove your necklace."

These are things that people don't do. It violates the social norm.

But honestly, I think the social norm is kind of a load of bullshit. Why can't I just say that to people? Why can't I wear my pajamas? Why can't I sing and dance? Because someone else is bothered? Well someone else can just go to hell.

I should probably write my paper about that, in retrospect.

Reach Out and Touch...

I'm a writer. If you ask me what I do for a living, I will tell you I write. And this is true, I do freelance writing, which earns me a pittance by which I can scrape by sort of kind of. But really, I'm a novelist. I'll tell you this the way a stripper will tell you she's really a singer, or an actress, or something.

I write. I write short stories, poems, novels, just about anything that comes to my mind. I typically always have a journal in my purse so I can jot down some stuff here and there. Every fall I participate in something called National Novel Writing Month, wherein I have thirty days to complete a fifty thousand word novel.

I've done it in as little as ten days. That was this past year, because I was scheduled for a dental procedure in November and didn't feel it would be a good idea to write while hopped up on Vicodin. I already have a habit of spouting off bullshit and trying to eat my own hand while drugged up.

But yes, I'm a writer.

And frankly, I will be the first to admit that we (Writers, I mean) are BATSHIT CRAZY. Go ahead and read that a couple times. We are some of the most unstable people that you will ever meet in your whole life. But we are also some of the greatest pretenders.

I think it was Billy Shakes who said; "All the world's a stage, and the men and women merely actors." I'm sure I'm butchering that, but you get the picture. Writers are the only people that are exempt from this rule. Writers don't tend to participate in these dramas, we are simply the audience.

However, being in the audience, we take careful notes and observations, writing them down, logging them away somewhere in our brains. And we will take all that we have seen and learned, and we will weave it all together on paper and send it out so that the actors might take a breath and take a break from their own Drama to delve into a false drama, and overall feel better about their lives. (Or worse, depending on the writer, actually.)

My whole life, I have never really felt like I was *with* other people. There are exceptions to that, but as a rule, I can feel alone in a room full of people. I can be talking and laughing, and joining in, and I still feel a disconnect. I can be talking, my hands scooping and slashing air, my face animating my story, but in the back of my head; "They don't get it, do they? They're just pretending. They have no idea what it is that I'm saying right now..."

I've been Disconnected, and for a very long time, this upset me. For the longest time, I kept the few people I could Connect to close (and I have a sinking feeling that they were writers or other creative types themselves). And then I discovered that when I put pen to paper, I was Connecting.

I was Connecting with my readers, I was Connecting with my characters, and more importantly, I was Connecting with myself. And though this tangled web of deceptions, loves, losses, I was able to find a better plane to reach out to people. I was able to start feeling more secure in my being and the being of those around me.

Of course, I won't pretend I don't still feel that empty Disconnect. I won't pretend that sometimes I don't feel like I'm floating above all this. Sometimes that's just where I need to be. I need to be between my headphones and in my own world, where there is no one else but those that I have created.

Writers are fortunate enough that--for the most part--we can take out Insanity, our Disconnect, our Separate Worlds and use them to our advantage. We can use this to pretend we are, mostly, stable. And if we have moments where we just seem like we're not okay, well then, we are Creative Types, and what else can you expect from someone who is so far into their right brain?

So yes, I'm a Writer.