unschooling and the whole wide world

Sandra Dodd says:
"There is a Sesame Street book called Grover and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum. There is a "things under the sea" room and "things in the sky" room, but still each room is just a room in a museum, no windows, everything out of context. Then he opens a big door marked "everything else in the whole wide world" and goes out into the sunshine. There is unschooling."

When learning a language

I'm learning to speak French, which is rewarding, especially when Mademoiselle Jeannette (my teacher) is telling me a story in French and my mind is whirling with sounds and translating her words into English in my head. It's hard to describe learning a language. Sometimes it's romantic, tasting the cracks and ridges in the words and letting them color your brain. It's relearning everything you know, and involves so much of you on so many levels. It's brutal and systematic on paper, when you're dealing with grammar and verbs.

But it's different reading French aloud or speaking it--rerouting the primal knowledge of air in your lungs and patterns on your lips. It's an exercise in itself to make foreign noises and you learn to wrestle your mind in sync with the sprawling sounds.

Unschooling philosophy

I recognize my unschooling philosophy in Gabriel Orozco's words:

"I like the idea of waking up in the morning and asking myself, What I want to do today? Do I want to ride my bike? Do I want to do nothing? Do I want to read? It’s raining. It’s not raining! If I keep myself open to these things, then I start to think about what is happening around me, and then I start to be more sensitive to whatever it is and I say, Oh yes, that is interesting! I try not to judge myself or analyze too much why I might be attracted to that one thing at a particular moment, as opposed to another. Instead I try to explore it and see what it is. I begin to play with it. The subject leads you to the medium, and then the medium is your way to resolve your relationship with that subject."

Studio Visit: visualizing my future

This post was inspired by the series ‘Studio Visits’, particularly Leanne Shapton’s entry, in The Paris Review. The series recruits various contributing artists and writers to describe their work spaces and work habits. I’ve used the articles as a prompt for visualizing my future, and this post is a pretty broad vision of my hopes, with no exact time period in mind:

I wake up facing the college, which is a sprawling eclectic paper romp. Pages ripped from magazines and fat art coffee table books, even photographs and sketches I've bought from street venders; gather here, hugging the bedroom wall I've taped them to. In this tunnel of faces and shapes, I can reach out and wrap color around my knuckles. One of my friends has christened the college after some mythos or beast from Hindu mythology (the name of which I can’t remember).

I rise and start the coffee and heat up last night's spicy chile, a very un-Parisian breakfast. You do get sick of croissants. I try not to be a cliche. 

Here is my living space, which is a flat that I transform frequently. I like to experiment with the way I capture ideas. First the idea isn’t even a concept really, just space and the white noise of my thoughts and then something vivid, that needs to be recorded, if only to help me understand it better. 

For the way I work with words, poems are rough sketches, the rawest and least understandable. I rarely use poems to capture feelings, if the idea is in that stage it’s pre-meaning. Poems are just arranging words, experimenting with the sting and sound of them. I repurpose poems when I can find meaning for them, in stories. 

Collages are helpful to me as well, working in images. Thus, my decor is the victim to the whim of my ever shifting inspiration.

I keep weird things from traveling too. Costume art, like skirts supported by wooden frames so they can stand on their own, haunt corners of my living space. The flat is just that--space, the perfect criteria. 

The floors are wooden, the only walls constructed are for the bedroom, down the narrow hallway, which also houses a bathroom in a nook. Upon entering the flat, you see the kitchen, which is barred off by a breakfast counter. 

Then the open area, which I’ve conquered with bookshelves (always the books) and long coffee tables (more books, framed artwork, lanterns, interesting items dealing with foreign religions and superstitions. the best furniture is haggled and battered, coming with a story). 


One of the tables is converted into a desk, housing my computer. 

Despite my flat, I live almost like a homeless person. Part of my stuff is always heaped in the corner and unpacked, because I am constantly traveling.


I angled my life this way, my goal was to be traveling. I knew I would be writing wherever I was, and picking up jobs that let me write. I am a perpetual motion idea collective, there is always new work, projects and conversation. I love it. 


I need this, to vibrant and creative, seeking that energy from art and music and people. I am in the streets continually, conversing or sketching outlines for poems. I need movement and words. 

My mainstays: Paris, where I work for independent newspapers and literature forms, and also where I can rely on a steady income. Guam, which will never stop being home. And Prague, where inspiration seizes and burns and everything else escapes me. Prague draws my best writing from me. I am a sucker for nostalgia and Prague, with it’s Gothic cathedrals, is my favorite lost world. 

And then there is the work. I'm in the middle of a short story for The Paris Review and I send off pieces of it to their editor monthly. I write in half hour periods. I take lots of breaks for walking or listening to music or stretching. 

Sometimes my projects are singular and I work independently. Other times  I work in a group and collaborate, which is fun for finding different formats. 

There is so much still to learn. I watch and wait. I create and collect. To quote Laini Taylor: Thank you to the world for being a wild and inspiring place, full of odd creatures, strange people, and mysterious cities. I hope by and by to know you better. 

Mother, Please Purchase This Book: An Emotional Appeal

My mother is awesome. Any emotional appeal should always start off with a kindly worded sentence of praise for the person you're appealing to. With the formalities out of the way, let me introduce you to my current situation: 


I like gothic art forms and I'm constantly drawn towards darker and psychologically stimulating literature and films. According to my experiences, one can find some of the slyest themes of social commentary. And we all know that along with critical thinking, I love me some of that. This is coming from the girl who considers The Bell Jar the most marvelously trippy book she's ever read. I mean, my favorite movie is Heathers.  But let's not get ahead of ourselves here. 


I'm not sure why I'm attracted to these themes.  I can't compare my life to the plot lines of the novels. I guess it's some part of human nature to be attracted to the stylistic and to shock. In fiction, we search for the obscene, emotions run on high. 


I'm writing a novel that explores suicide and obsession, so when I got wind of a novel called The Virgin Suicides, I knew it was kind of written for someone like me. Here's the summary:

"First published in 1993, The Virgin Suicides announced the arrival of a major new American novelist. In a quiet suburb of Detroit, the five Lisbon sisters--beautiful, eccentric, and obsessively watched by the neighborhood boys--commit suicide one by one over the course of a single year. As the boys observe them from afar, transfixed, they piece together the mystery of the family's fatal melancholy, in this hypnotic and unforgettable novel of adolescent love, disquiet, and death. Jeffrey Eugenides evokes the emotions of youth with haunting sensitivity and dark humor and creates a coming-of-age story unlike any of our time. Adapted into a critically acclaimed film by Sofia Coppola, The Virgin Suicides is a modern classic, a lyrical and timeless tale."

Dark humor?  Fatal melancholy? I'm having a wonderful facial expression (or facial contortion) right now to express my excitement, but since you can't see it maybe you should just imagine a cross between Amy Poehler's face on Parks and Rec and a dolphin or some other very enthusiastic animal.


This post is my compilation of reasons to convince my mother, who is fantastic, as previously mentioned, to buy The Virgin Suicides for me. 

• If we order it within the next 15 hours and 45 minutes and choose the speed shipping option, according to Amazon.com, it will arrive tomorrow afternoon. So then we can check the mail tomorrow afternoon and witness the amazement of finding it in the mailbox on time. We can all go 'Ohhhhhh and Ahhhhh'. I've been told that Ohhhing  and Ahhhhing is proven to be fun for the whole family. 

• I babysit your son for you for various hours out of the week, without demanding payment of any kind. 

• The author, Jeffery Eugenides, has won a Pulitzer Prize for his writing. He's donated the proceeds from a short story book he edited to the writing center 826 Chicago, established to encourage young people's writing. So he's certifiably cool. And a professer of creative writing at Princeton University. With the two of those titles combined, you can't get any cooler, with the slight exception of being a zombie slayer or Bill Murray.

• I babysit your son for you for various hours out of the week, without demanding payment of any kind. 

• The novel was adapted into a film by Sofia Coppola, whom we can all agree is a creative force to contend with. The film also stars Kirsten Dunst, whom I've loved since I saw her as Claudia in Interview With the Vampire. Speaking of Kirsten Dunst, maybe I should try convincing you to let me watch Melancholia. Alas, that's a blog post for another day. 

A History of Literary Suicides

Here's a excerpt from the short story I've been slaving away at from my Creative Writing class. Okay, yes, I am being slightly dramatic. I do enjoy the slaving away. I'm looking for constructive criticism on the piece, so I would love it if anyone could help by emailing me with comments. I will  continue to post my progress! 

A History of Literary Suicides

A BRIEF PROLOGUE

This is a story of love among the suicides. It is a love of misshapen words, the way death falls
cleanly over the mind (years before it slows the pulse), memories of lying under a middle 
aged house one stark and crudely drawn evening and life (in the multicolored sense of the 
word). Today Sloane will wake up and be many places and many sides of herself at once. She 
will transcend herself violently. She will go quietly. She will write an essay that results in 
being more autobiographical than academic. She will walk away from the outlines of her life, 
down her street, holding the manuscript clutched between her hands like a secret. By the end 
of today, Sloane will have slashed her wrists, leaving behind only discreet tattoos of memory 
on the skin.

On Conformity

Here's a poem I wrote in my Creative Writing class:

Blessing the table:
they begin with the sign of the cross and then comes
 the preheated blush of words.
 I struggle along with the sentences.
 I watch their mouths and my own voice falls rapidly downward as
I spit out the keyholed shapes and sounds of prayers.

This is what. Conformity (in the sense of religion) is easy to chew.