I know they’re better at scuba diving, that’s for sure!
The quarter’s drawing to a close, folks! And with it, my comfort zone-extending melange of writing assignments of both the prosaic and poetic variety. However, I’ve filed this post under both the “poems” and “stories” categories because it’s of a form that’s not quite either: a literary self-portrait. In English 384 (the class that brought you “Above”), we were tasked with taking around two pages to write about ourselves in the manner our myriad course texts–from James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons–had set an example of: by marrying subject and syntax to produce the word-based equivalent of a portrait.
This piece wasn’t stream-of-consciousness, but it was surprisingly easy, because whatever I thought was a good idea usually worked, by the very virtue of it being my thought! So in writing about myself, I tried to mimic the style of my own thoughts and personality: rambling, worried, thoughtful yet lighthearted, and careening between oddly specific tangents and vague emotional aspirations. It’s possibly the most explicitly personal piece I’ve ever shared on here, but hopefully it still entertains you as well!
After all, all I want to find is…
Notes&Sketches 