Kobject's Reflection

What I think I learned:

1.     One time, after a CAT scan of my sinuses, an ENT looked at me with surprise and slight dismay and said, “You really are a stoic person.  You have the worst sinuses I have ever seen, and you haven’t really complained?”  I never would have described myself as stoic, and I still wouldn’t today.

After my first couple of posts on our blog, I was talking to my best friend, describing my surprise at the reaction that some people had.  “People have said that I am a different, more open person in this writing, but I have always felt like an open book.”  My friend responded, “I have known you since middle school, and I am getting to know you in a completely different way than ever before…  You play your cards close to your chest.  You tend to be a pretty stoic person.” 

My best friend, the person who knows the best and worst things about me and is not afraid to be the mirror that I need to look into, pointed out a truth that I had no clue existed, and I realized that while I have thoughts and feelings that are constantly roaming around in my mind, I don’t often (or often enough?) express most of what I am thinking out loud.  But every time that I do talk or write about them, I understand them and myself in a whole other, better way.  If I am willing to take the risk to express them.

2.     I am not a big fan of taking risks, and I become somewhat of a nervous wreck when I feel like I may be “over sharing”.  After writing on my Day 1 object, I sent Pobject an email saying something to the effect of “I think my first one is kinda sad, and I am kinda scared to share it.”  Being his usual supportive self, P encouraged me to just go for it, and so that is exactly what I did.  I just put it out there and tried not to think about it too much.  The overall response was very lovely and supportive, but I have not felt that emotionally naked in a long time.  I started wondering if I could really do it.  Can I put myself out there like this for a whole month?  Should I not invest as much of myself in the next pieces as the first? 

Luckily I was able to find a balance that made me feel comfortable enough, but it was truly a growth experience.  The whole time I just kept thinking, “If you are uncomfortable, you are out of your comfort zone.  If you are out of your comfort zone, you are growing.  This is a good thing.”  And it was.

3.     I like to plan.  Perhaps, too much.  While Pobject and Lobject randomly picked a piece of paper out of a hat each of the 30 days to determine what they would be writing on for that day, I quickly realized there was no way I could do that.  I could not even imagine doing it.  What if I don’t come up with anything to say about it?  What if I just can’t do it? 

While I did not plan ahead of time which objects I would write on for each of the days, I did decide to let myself feel it out each day.  To see what I felt like I had something to write about and then go for it. 

But I also realized how much happier I am when I write – pen and paper (or daybook) – the first draft.  I am much more comfortable if I can then type out the second draft, revising along the way, and then possibly revise some more after walking away from it for a little while.  With the constrained aspect of this writing and with a, son, husband, job, and other things that deserve attention; I was not always able to go through this whole process, but the lack of those steps was also part of the growth process.

4.     I was talking to a friend of my who is an artist last year, and he confessed, “I have paintings in my house that I started over 10 years ago, but I am not sure if they are done, so I have never put them out there.  I just keep adding and taking away from them.  I am not sure if I will ever really be finished with them.  I don’t know when to stop.” He honesty and awareness of process struck me, and I saw a little of myself in him.

With this project I accepted, I will never be 100% happy with anything I write.  So I have now decided, why not just put it out there once I am happy enough with it? 

5.     What is writing?  What time counts as “writing time”?  With this constrained writing activity, I would sit for ten or fifteen minutes flipping through an old storybook, imagining.  Smiling at an old photograph, remembering. Reminding myself of the details of an article I read a couple of years ago, piecing together its story.  But was I to “count” that in my 30 minutes of writing?  It was just as important if not more than actually getting words on paper or the screen, but it was not what one may traditionally call writing.  And once it is on the screen or paper and I am revising, does that count in the “writing time”?  If I take a piece that I wrote or started to write several years ago and revise it, is that writing?  Or is that cheating? 

I am not sure I have a real answer to any of these questions, but if I were to guess, I would say that it is all writing.  We write in our minds constantly, and a little of it gets on to paper from time to time.

6.     During this month, I became much more aware and mindful of the objects and everything else that surrounds me.  And my mind would start creating stories about them without even thinking about it.  I discovered that inspiration really is everywhere.

My reflection in pictures:

6

Lobject's Reflection

It’s been difficult to being writing a reflection piece without a deadline. April's daily deadlines  motivated me and kept me focused. I’ve learned throughout this blogging adventure that I write best with deadlines, particularly at the end of the semester. I also write best with others. Coauthoring this blog has been emotionally and intellectually stimulating. It took more of me than I expected, and reflecting continues to be a demanding process.

I was inspired by Doug Hesse, Nancy Sommers, and Kathleen Blake Yancey’s discussion of their object writing at CCCCs in March. Their stories were personal, deep, and reflective. I knew my adventure would be emotional, too, but I didn’t anticipate being so intimately involved with Kerri and Patrick’s writing journeys.   

I liken this writing adventure to having two pen pals I’d never met, sans harassing the mailman. Each day I checked the blog, anxious and ready. Each day I discovered, learned, reflected, wrote, and read. Each day I was surprised.

When I picked a new piece of paper from my husband’s favorite baseball cap, I was first date nervous. I knew the objects in advance, and I had judged some as uninspiring and others as writeable. Shame on me! I judged my chosen objects more than the others. Kerri and Patrick’s objects were blind dates; if we didn’t click, it was ok. My objects were carefully selected and then I immediately hated and loved them. I felt the same way about my writing. Some days I just hit submit after 30 minutes of composing, ready for the object to be behind me. Some days I read what I wrote over and over, editing and revising and picking up each word like a fragile egg.   

I was emotionally tied to these objects in a way I didn’t anticipate. I was having a great day when I wrote on left sandal and became depressed. I was having a crummy day when I picked wedding band and the object lifted me. I always looked forward to writing.

I enjoyed every piece Patrick and Kerri wrote. They always surprised me. The objects surprised me, too.

I’ve known Kerri since college. I room with her at conferences once or twice a year. I knew the favorite sweatshirt she was going to write about was her Harvard one. She let me borrow it in St. Louis and it is the most comfortable sweatshirt. All month I was sure. April 30^th came around and Kerri’s favorite sweatshirt post described Peter (Ruby’s friend) on The Cosby Show.

I so enjoyed Patrick’s poem on day 11. I read it multiple times, trying to figure out how the ladle lead him from consommé to Buddha—an image I never expected. The simple complexity of this poem was admirable to say the least. Then, I drew ladle on day 12 and the unexpected happened. While I adored Patrick’s ladle, my ladle did not. It was angry and confrontational. My ladle poem is the unforeseen result of this hostility.

I thought most of my writing was terrible after reading Kerri and Patrick’s, particularly their narratives. I struggle to connect ideas on the page. When they write, it seems effortless. They are having a brilliant conversation and the words accidentally end up on the blog. Of course, I know writing isn’t like this. Still, the best writing appears effortless and that’s what I saw day after day in Kerri and Patrick’s posts. Before we started this, I knew they could write well. But every day, their writing has continued to amaze me.

I wouldn’t want to have this experience with anyone else. I am thankful that my company during an outdoor lunch on a cold, rainy day outshined the dreariness and our conversation lead to getting to know my friends and my writing better.  

The freedom of writing on objects helps writers explore. We write what the object tells us to write. We write where the object leads us. We look at each object differently. My blackboard isn’t Kerri’s blackboard. My penguin isn’t Patrick’s. If we added one more or ten more writing partners, I believe no one’s vinyl record or bookmark would be the same as another. The individuality in this experiment strengthens each participant’s contributions.

Perhaps educational value can be found here both in the freedom of an object and the unique experiences an author brings to the object. This objects give permission to reflect and imagine, yet also take the blame if, once on the page, the words don’t seem to work. No pressure, anything goes writing.

Reflecting on what each object means to me—some close, personal friends; others distant like we’d never met—tells me about myself. I know each object we wrote about, but I chose to remember some more closely and keep others at a comfortable distance. Some objects were amiable. Some objects were prejudged. The white page I wrote on was never blank at all.

I didn’t always like the final product, but I needed the wouldn’t-this-be-cool adventure to propel my summer writing. I’ve already begun revising and reworking. Although the 30-day writing exercise is officially over, I feel like I’m just getting started.

Aftermath: Pobject reflects

A week or so ago I posted on my last object, "blackboard," putting a cap on our 30-day project.

I miss it.

It ain't over yet, though: we all agreed that once done we'd take some time to unpack and reflect on our experience in performing the exercise. How did we feel, how did we act, and what did we think, as we wrote? What did we find out about our objects, our selves, and each other, through our writing? What will we carry, from this project, with us into our future writing? And how will this project figure into our futures more generally?

I'll try to answer some of these questions here, though I'm sure it'll take a few more weeks/months/years to realize the full impact the project's had.

Well, where to begin?

First of all, I might say (with uncharacteristic immodesty) that I'm tremendously proud of the writing I did for this project. Several of the poems are among the best of those I've written lately, and I enjoyed the personal narratives as well. I wrote fewer pieces of short prose fiction than my friends...I believe "aloe" was my only one. Several of the poems had fictive elements, though many were based on actual people or events.

Second, I'm impressed (and humbled!) by the writing my friends did! Wow. I'd write my piece on a certain object, and a few days later one of K. or L. would pull the same object and write her piece and I'd think "gee, I wish I'd thought to say that!" Clearly they're both smart, sassy, and superlative writers, to an extent I might have guessed before but wouldn't have known. I had to find that out.

That's ultimately what's struck me most about this project: how quickly I came to know my friends more deeply through their own words. This quick acquaintance doesn't shock me much when it comes to L., for she and I just met about two months ago at the 2012 Conference on College Composition and Communication. It's understandable...even expected...that I'd learn a lot about her through such a collaborative project. On the other hand, I've known K. for some time now (I met her at the Carolinas Writing Program Administrators conference at Wildacres in September of 2008), and I found I learned just as much about her through 3 x 30 = 90 as I did about L.

Granted, we all did some soul-searching and soul-baring in these here posts...but all of that searching and baring was mediated by the objects about which we wrote. I didn't write about my childhood for the sake of writing about my childhood, but for the sake of a house key, a sandal, a vinyl record. These objects evoked memories and emotions I'd buried long before. Symbols of great potency and salience, they, each, held at once the premonitory power of an oracle and immeasurable talismanic protection.

How can we account for this? It makes sense, if we believe William Carlos Willams's famous dictum, "no ideas but in things!" We have a tendency to tokenize, to signify, to create connections. We are meaning-making machines, we human beings. We dislike disorder, and we imbue all that we see around us with structure of some sort. Every little thing around us means something, and if that meaning doesn't manifest itself of its own accord, we find meaning where meaning may not at first be.

How healthy is this? I found myself wondering as I wrote this last paragraph. Must everything mean something? Might we be better off just letting things be the things they are? There's likely more meaning in this than in any meaning we might impose.

The project's not going away anytime soon. The three of us have plans to talk about our experience at this coming September's North Carolina English Teachers Association conference in Charlotte. I've already started to spread the word about the project's community-building efficacy: a couple of days ago I included a description of the project (and an 8-or-so-minute miniature version of it) in one of the sessions I led for a communication-across-the-curriculum workshop my friend Jean put on for her faculty at UNC-Charlotte. It went over very well there, and several faculty indicated they'd give it a shot in their classes this coming term. I think I'll do the same, as an ice-breaking exercise on the first day of class, and as a reflective piece to refocus reflective energy at appropriate points throughout the semester.

To be continued, I'm sure, as more ideas come...

Day 30 (at last!): Pobject's blackboard

I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to get to writing this last piece for the project. I think it’s a little bit of “I don’t want this to end” and a little bit of “this one’s really close to home,” given that much of my life has been spelled out on blackboards for the past god-knows-how-many years. As a mathematician, it kind of comes with the trade.

There was a time when I would have told you that the blackboard was a sacred space, and every symbol placed on it a hieroglyph with deep and recondite meaning. As the classroom itself exuded an aura of numinousness, the blackboard, if you leaned near enough to it, would smell of ozone, would pulse and vibrate, would be hot to the touch.

I once write several draft chapters of a magical realist novella in which the central figure was a fair-to-middlin’ mathematics graduate student who experienced a blow on the head after falling from a table he’d climbed upon at the front of class. After the accident, he acquired the ability to simply see to the heart of any mathematical proof, like Will Hunting on a peyote trip. The story was narrated by another grad student, not quite so bright as the first, who struggled mightily to understand everything, and he was enviously aweful of his friend’s new talent: everything mathy came easy to the guy. However, the savant soon lost his passion for doing math because it was now an effortless enterprise, and he envied his still-normal friend’s dedication to the craft.

A morality play about the dangers of truth manifest?

Maybe I’m making too much of it.

I don’t feel that energy, that electricity, when I’m at the board these days. (And I spend less time at the board, and write less on it, than I once did.) It’s simple surface, a clean clay slip. It receives only what it’s given, and has no inherent mysteries of its own. It’s pure potential. In this it mirrors us, little mirrors ourselves, giving and taking as we bounce around the world trying to make sense of it all.

No energy, no electricity, but something stronger, truer, real: if I put my face on the cold fake slate, I can hear echoes of myself, and echoes of my students, and of anyone else who’s ever put their thoughts there. Murmurs of meaning, nonsense, insights, epiphanies. It’s all there. It’s all inside of us. At the end of the day, we are all we have.

Day 29: Pobject's honeysuckle

Our back yard wasn’t big, I know now. Each visit back made it smaller, and I wonder how we ever played ball back there. The clotheslines cut the porch off from the patio, which was nothing but a covered concrete slab slapped onto the back of the garage. The patio faced north. To the west were the compost bins and woodpiles, stacked against our neighbor’s fence.

The north fence, ten feet from the patio’s far edge, was covered with honeysuckle vines, tangles of green with bright white flowers and bulbous red berries. The berries drew the birds in bunches: there was no shortage of sparrows and finches of all sizes, from tiny pine siskins to chunky evening grosbeaks.

One particular summer the grass was littered with the latter for several weeks, chattering clumps of plump gold-blazed, brown-yellow birds. I’d seen small sparrows flock our lawn like that before, falling in in swirling clouds, but never birds so big as the grosbeaks. Their descent would have been apocalyptic, had they not been so beautiful.

The birds in turn drew the neighborhood’s outdoor cats. My father, Audubon member and wild bird aficionado, took the birds’ side. He bought a large catch-and-release trap and baited it with tuna. Whatever cats he caught got a thorough hosing-down before being let go. Few tangled twice with his trap.

Day 28: Pobject's rocking chair

The chair, physical manifestation of her chaired professorship, was made of black lacquered wood with gold lettering on its decorative back. It stood unceremoniously to one side of my colleague’s office, piled chaotically with books and papers, post-it notes exploding from both.

I sat in a simpler chair, one with a soft green vinyl seat and unadorned wooden arms. I pulled it closer to her desk, and we broke the ice with a story of the beach-themed party her departmentmates threw her for her 60^th birthday. “Complete with sand, inflatable palm trees, and a playlist of Beach Boys songs looping endlessly on the computer.”

What’s the comfort in a rocking chair?

Does the back-and-forth swing remind us more of life in the womb or life on the porch?

Receipt for gas

Monsters of Folk:  On the Road

Featuring (from left to right) Mike Mogis, M. Ward, Jim James, and Conor Oberst

M:  <staring out of the window while lightly playing an acoustic guitar> Seems like every where I go, the sky is falling.

Mike:  Really?  <genuine surprise and interest>  I haven’t noticed any rain at any of our destinations.  <his speech gaining momentum>  If I had to use one word to describe all of them together, it would be… lovely.  Our tour has been lovely. 

Jim:  <with authentic curiosity> Do you guys think it is kinda silly that my solo work is billed as Yim Yames?

<no response.  Not even a flinch, as if they had heard the question multiple times before.>

Conor:  <browsing through the tour bus fridge> Is it the destinations that really matter, man?  <his rifling becoming more frantic> The road is beautiful.  The road heals.  The road… <a frustrated clanking coming from the refrigerator> I thought there was more vodka in here. <his eyes not stopping the search in the fridge>

M:  You finished the last of it this morning, man. <staring at the strings on his guitar as if he were speaking to them>

Conor:  <thoughtless reaction>  Shit.  <angry, as if he just heard M’s answer>  SHIT.

M:  Go on… about what you were saying… about the road’s beauty and its healing… <followed by a slight grin>

Mike:  <scrunching up his nose with laughter>

Conor:  <an angry glare>  But that was my shit.  <anger’s fumes fade to innocence>

Who drank it?

<silence>

M:  You did, man.  <silence and blank stares>  This morning.  Around 3 am.  You said something about the President, chugged the last of the bottle, watched an episode of the Kardashians, and then passed out on the couch.

Conor:  <vaguely remembering>  Shit.  <searching out the tented windows surrounding them>  We’re in the middle of nowhere…

Mike:  <giggles erupting into laughter>  And it is now…

<humor lost on Conor at this moment>

M:  <cool; paternal, even> I’m sure the next truck stop…

Conor:  <not cool; childish, perhaps> That will probably be hours!

M:  Yeah, man…  It is only noon.

Conor:  Shit… Crappy crappy shit…

M:  Man.  <somber and observant> This is, like, as worked up as you get.

Conor:  Fuck off, Mike!

Mike:  <giggling> I didn’t say anything!  <through the laughter>  We will have to stop for gas sometime soon.

<a few minutes pass>

Jim: <quietly, to Conor.  Another authentic question> You were watching the Kardashians?

Conor:  Shut up, Yim.

<friendly laughter surrounds>