Friday, February 8, 2008

Graf #8

I always feel lame trying to describe how writing makes me feel. How am I supposed to feel? I feel resentful that at 1:00 in the morning I am on my laptop reading essays and not in bed. But one of them actually touched me enough to turn off the self-pity and turn on the attention span. I loved the story of the skating chicken girl looking wantingly at the black sequined tights, I was very amused. It had a human quality to it. Most school essays are written for the purpose of satisfying a requirement without the greatest artistic imperative, "I was inspired." "I was inspired." created Mona Lisa whereas "I had to write a report on the Six Day war" created a non-narcotic substitute for Lunesta.
The overall impression I get from the writing I read in this class is that most people who would otherwise be speechless and mute spill their emotional guts the minute you put them in front of a keyboard. Funny thing that, reminds me of an autistic child I was staff for once, Jimmy was his name. His eyes told you nothing and his mouth said less. He would scream for no reason and sit rocking back and forth all day, only stirring when you turned off the "Raffi" video. If you put him in front of a keyboard he would type things though, like "My name is Jimmy, I am hungry." and all in perfect punctuation, spelling and grammar. I wondered why his doctors never used that more. The point is that many of the essays tell remarkable stories of plain life. Simple common experiences given a lovely life by focusing in on them. I think it is fun to see what other people consider the beautiful moments in their lives. It tells you more about them then any head-shrinker ever could hope to.

1 comment:

johngoldfine said...

Hey, nice un-lame piece about feeling lame! I try to mix up the sample essays and hope I have something for everyone, except the devotee of the Six Day War report.

I'm not looking to shrink people and I don't necessarily want spilled-gut and embarrassingly personal essays--but I insist that everything people do is individual--that no one else in the world could have written it.