For this week’s blog post, I had to examine the scenes of my narrative draft and answer how it allowed me to travel into my brain, heart and how it shows the nerve (high-stakes) it took in writing it.
How does your narrative allow you to travel into your brain (mind) then and now? The narrative travels into my brain by me sharing my thoughts in the present, as well as in the past. How does your narrative allow you to travel into your heart (emotions) then and now? The travels into my heart because I share my emotions that I felt then, as well as ones I feel now. How does your narrative meet the nerve (high-stakes) element of meaningful storytelling? The high-stakes of my narrative is me simply telling it to people that I don’t know for shit. It’s not a story many people know about me. Throughout school, only 3 people in a 2,000+ population knew about this huge part of my life. How does your narrative enable you to re-examine the power (agency) you have in authoring your life-story? What shapes our sense of identity: Life events or the stories we tell ourselves about life events? I think our sense of identity is shaped by the events that happen to us in our lives. The way we tell a story or perceive ourselves in that story can always change because of other life events that we’ve lived through.
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This week, after reading Hills Like White Elephants, I was supposed to write an emotional moment that I’ve shared with someone in my life. I decided to write about good friends of mine, John and San, and how we all felt when our other friend Brian died in a freak accident.
When I was 16, I got my first job at a restaurant called Pepperoncinis. It was a small corner restaurant with a small staff. Everyone who worked there had the perfect amount and type of crazy where we all connected and were our own little family. Whenever we had a new hire, if they didn’t mix with everyone’s crazy (along with their work ethic), they were sent on their way. About 2 years into working there, we had a new guy named, Brian. He was quiet and kept to himself and everyone had a hard time trying to figure him out. Most of his training and early days took place on Sundays, Tuesdays,and Fridays which were days that I worked too, so out of any other employee, I worked with him the most. I’ve always been very good at reading people and figuring them out just by watching their actions and mannerisms, and listening to everything they'd say. The first thing I noticed about Brian was how colorful and extensive his vocabulary was. Even though he didn’t talk much to us at first, the little bit that he would say to us or when I’d listen to him talking to a table, he would throw in creativity and thought into the words he used that sometimes would make you turn your head in intrigue for his choice of language, even in the simplest of sentences. The second thing I noticed was that we had a similar love of music. Sunday’s at work were the best days to work. My manager, John, and another server, San, were all very close and always looked forward to our Sundays together with just the three of us. Sundays were our days of therapy where’d we tell each other the crazy shit that customers did all week and we’d take over the jukebox and play whatever songs our hearts desired (within reason) and jammed out. During the busier months, there would be a fourth person on and for a while that was Brian. That’s when the three of us got close with him. We were able to break Brian out of his shell and learned a lot about him. He got his degree in theatre, he loved to sing- like would belt the shit out of songs we’d play on the jukebox- and he was just all around an awesome and hilarious guy. Once Brian stopped working on Sundays, he’d come in and have some drinks and hang out with us since he lived less than a block down the street. On the very rare occasion I would take off of work, and I asked Brian to cover me on Sunday, August 31st. The next afternoon, my phone started ringing. It was my boss, Paul, “Hello?” I answered slightly puzzled because Mondays were Paul’s days off. “Hey, Jess, do you have a minute?” “Yeah, what’s up?” “I don’t even know how to say this but Brian was found dead in an alleyway this morning.” About a minute of silence passed while I was trying to figure out if he was fucking with me or not. “What?!” I stuttered. “What the fuck happened?!” “I’m not 100% sure yet, the police called me this morning to ask questions about if he was working last night and when he left. They’re not giving me too much information.” “Have you told John and San yet?” “John knows. You know San, he won’t wake up until 4 the earliest.” We talked for a few more minutes. When I hung up, I just stood still for about 5 minutes trying to figure out if what just happened was real. The next day is when we got the announcement that Brian’s funeral would be September 5th at Our Lady of the Assumption church in Wayne. About seven of us from Peps attended the funeral. After family and friends took turns going up to the podium and speaking about Brian, I looked on either side of me and saw everyone’s tear soaked faces. The last person to speak was the choir teacher Brian had throughout school. When he was finished speaking, he announced that the choir was going to perform the song that Brian had sung at his graduation. A few seconds later, I heard the beginning of “Soulshine” by the Allman Brothers Band start to play. I’m the type of person who doesn’t cry in front of other people, but looked over at San and John, who looked over at me simultaneously and I nearly lost my shit when that song started to play because I knew from all of our “Sunday night jukebox take-overs” is that song was one of Brian’s favorites. In that moment, even though the song is only six minutes long, it felt like time stood still for an hour. Still to this day, whenever I hear that song, I get chills and think of Brian. After the funeral, all of the “Peps peeps” went across the street to a bistro to grab a few drinks in honor of Brian. We all talked about our time with him and discussed what a freak fucking accident it was. A few days after hearing about Brian, we all found out (from another employee sneaking through her cop friend’s emails and forwarding them to herself then us) that while Brian was walking home from work that night, the ground was still wet from the rain earlier and while walking up someone’s cement wall that lined the cut-through stairs, had fallen, then hit his head on the cement wall causing him to go unconscious and bled out. San, John and I mostly just hung our heads. We all had the same thoughts going through our minds. For me it was, “if I hadn’t taken off” or “if I didn’t ask Brian”. For San and John, who ride to and from work together everyday, they wordered “what would have happened if we didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer when we tried to give Brian a ride home. “He would have never been in the alley.” San said. “If someone was with him, he’d be alive.” John sobbed. “There was no possible way to know that he’d slip and hit his head hard enough to bleed out on the less than a block walk home, guys.” I reassured them, hoping it would help them feel less guilty, even in the slightest. But for months, without having to say so, we shared the feeling of what-if we all did one thing different. Another week, another blog post. For this post, I was to read Maya Angelou’s My Name is Margaret then write a moment from my past about a time that I felt intense emotion. I chose to write about when my son was born and the days following.
On November 30, 2017, my 41 weeks of pregnancy and nearly 3 days of labor had come to an end, I was finally able to meet my son, Cosmo. He was the absolute greatest thing I had ever seen in my life and I couldn’t believe that I had created him. On top of being the most beautiful being, he was also the strongest I had ever met. From the moment Cosmo entered this world, I got hit hard with the reality of how terrifying motherhood can truly be and had come face to face every parent’s greatest fear. During labor, after a little over an hour of pushing, my midwife sent for the doctor on call because Cosmo’s heart rate had started to drop. By the time the doctor and 15 other people were in the room, my son had no heartbeat and I was being screamed at by the doctor to push. It took about 2 pushes of super-mom-strength and at 5:07pm, he was here- purple and lifeless. They plopped his tiny, inert body on me while they quickly cut his umbilical cord and unraveled it from around his neck- not once but twice- then swept him away to try to revive him. Once I heard his tiny cry from across the room, I had a wave of relief crash into me, which was short lived. The two neonatal doctors in the delivery room ordered a cooling blanket immediately for full-body hypothermia and took him away to the NICU. On top of the doctors having concern for him having brain damage from going so long without oxygen, he also had a collapsed lung. When I finally saw Cosmo again, around 1am, while I was on my way from LDR to the maternity ward, he had two feeding tubes, oxygen, multiple IVs, a catheter going into his lung, monitors everywhere, and he was on a cooling blanket. I wasn’t allowed to touch his hand with more than two fingers so I wouldn’t warm any part of his body back up from 92°. For 72 hours his body had to be cooled then slowly warmed back up. For 3 days I couldn’t kiss him, hold him, or breastfeed him (he wasn’t allowed any kind of food other than IV fluids). Even though I was exhausted and in a lot of pain, I would walk downstairs and through what felt like the four longest hallways in the world and I spent every moment that I was awake (while still in the hospital myself) next to him in the NICU. I’d watch him breathe and shiver from the cooling and wish I could just hold him in order to make it all better. When I was discharged, I came back every day, for the next week, around 8am and stayed until about 2am. The entire time I would feel helpless for not being able to help my own child in any way, but at the same time I would be consumed with love and be in complete awe while staring at my baby boy. Once the three days of cooling were up, my boyfriend and I woke up around 3am and made our way to the NICU and waited for Cosmo’s warming to be completed so we could finally hold our baby for time first time. When I FINALLY had Cosmo in my embrace, everything was alright, everything that had happened didn’t matter. The fact that no part of my “birthing hopes & dreams” had happened mattered, or that I wanted to breastfeed and feared that I wouldn’t be able to because he couldn’t eat anything for the first 72 hours of life. None of the struggles from the 3 days of labor, the 3 days of waiting to hold my son, somehow summoning up the ability to leave him to go home for a few hours of “sleep,” crying while I was home because I felt cheated for not having the experience everyone else has when their child is born and all I wanted was my baby, or anything else was insignificant other than him being alive, well, and in my arms. It was truly the most blissful moment of my life and it’s a moment I will always cherish. For this blog entry, I was assigned to read three different passages by three different authors, Don Murray, Ann Lamott, and Mary Karr. Then I was to take quotes from each of them and create a scenario where I am discussing the writing process with them. If you are interested in reading the passages, you can click on the links attached to each of their names. In my freshman year of college I was an intern at a local radio station. At least twice a week, the radio personalities would try to have special guests that they interviewed on the show. Generally, it would be artists, actors, comedians, etc., promoting a new show, movie, album, events, or book that they had coming out soon. One week, while I was struggling to figure out what to write for my english composition course, we just so happened to have three authors- Don Murray, Ann Lamott, and Mary Karr- coming in to discuss their new book coming out called, The Process. I thought to myself what a crazy coincidence it was that we three people who created an entire book about what I was struggling on were coming in, and I only wished that I could be the one that was interviewing them. On the day of the interview, I was headed on a coffee break and when I stepped into the break room, there they were, Don Murray, Ann Lamott, and Mary Karr. They were enjoying some coffee and conversation before they were scheduled to go on. “This is my chance!” I thought to myself. My chance to ask the questions I’ve been thinking to myself for days as to how I could get some sort of product from my head onto my paper, and even how to become a better writer in general. I went over and introduced myself. They were all very pleasant and happy to answer any questions that I had. I started off by asking how to even begin when you have “writer’s block” and just can’t seem to be able to for a sentence. Ann smiled, “Shitty first drafts. All good writers have them.” with a pensive pause, she then added, “Close your eyes and get quiet for a minute, until the chatter starts up. Then isolate one of the voices”. “So, it can all start with a few words, even bable, then with a little bit of revision, it can morph into something beautiful?” I asked. “Very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it.” Ann replied. Her answers were so simple but ingenious at the same time. My next question was about the process of transforming my shitty drafts into something worth reading. “Is there a way to skip the shitty draft phase and skip to an ‘almost done’ draft phase?” I said. “Those early pages I threw away were somehow necessary, even if I wrote past them.” Mary Karr answered. “Every writer I know who’s worth a damn spends way more time ‘losing’ than ‘winning.’” Although that wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear, it one hundred percent was the answer I needed to hear in order to help me create better compositions, by keeping in mind to keep striving to make each piece better. “Before you can work consciously, though, you go through a phase of developing a critical self.” Don chimed in, “Mechanics come last. It is important to the writer, once he has discovered what he has to say, that nothing get between him and his reader.” “You all really know your stuff and are great teachers, no wonder you all got together to write a book about the process itself.” I commented. “We are coaches, encouragers, developers, creators of environments in which our students can experience the writing process for themselves.” Don added. It was time for them all to go into the studio for their on-air interview and my final question for them all was if there was any last advice for me as a new writer. Don said, “There are no rules, no absolutes, just alternatives.” Ann’s advice was, “Just get it all down on paper, because there may be something great in those six crazy pages”. And finally Mary Karr said, “ Revision is the secret to their and your”. All answers were short and sweet but were immensely helpful. I was ready to go home and get to trying out a few techniques to my writing process. Welcome to my first blog post. This blog entry is for my English Composition I course in where I was assigned to read about Marcel Proust, a french writer from the early 1900s, and answer his infamous questions called The Proust Questionnaire. Proust believed that when one filled out his questionnaire, ones true personality is shown. If you're interested in checking out the questionnaire, click on the link.
__1.__What is your idea of perfect happiness? My idea of perfect happiness is the feeling I get when I hear my child laugh or the feeling of when I see him feel proud of himself for accomplishing something new. __2.__What is your greatest fear? Losing one of my children, like my parents lost one of theirs. __3.__What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? I most deplore how closed off I can become, it’s not something I want my children to learn from me. __4.__What is the trait you most deplore in others? I abhor when people lie, especially people who lie about stupid shit or are habitual liars. __5.__Which living person do you most admire? My mother. I know its such a cliche answer, but I think it takes someone becoming a parent to truly see the love and sacrifice your parent(s) have made for you. __6.__What is your greatest extravagance? I’m not one for extravagances. If I had to pick something, it would probably be my front porch and back patio that I spent last summer completely redoing and making them into places my family and I actually want to sit and chill out on. __7.__What is your current state of mind? Currently, I’m content. I possibly might have a little bit of pride and accomplishment meandering around my conscious. __8.__What do you consider the most overrated virtue? None of them. I believe they all play their own role in being balanced. I think nowadays virtues are all underrated and no one cares to acknowledge them in their everyday lives, or even teach them to their children. __9.__On what occasion do you lie? I don’t ever really lie, I more so try to dance around the truth or have my answer dance around a question in order to not lie in certain cases, such as if I were trying to spare someone’s feelings, or if I were asked about something that isn’t my place to tell. Not that it’s much better, but at least it’s not a bold faced lie. __10.__What do you most dislike about your appearance? I mostly dislike my “mom of two under two” baby weight. __11.__Which living person do you most despise? I don’t use any of my energy for people who are undeserving of it (i.e., people who I would possibly despise or hate). __12.__What is the quality you most like in a man? Someone who is humble and owns who he is. __13.__What is the quality you most like in a woman? The same quality I like most in a man. __14.__Which words or phrases do you most overuse? “No”, “stop”, and “absolutely not”. My son likes to test his limits. He also has very good selective hearing at the ripe age of 21 months old. __15.__What or who is the greatest love of your life? My boyfriend and our two children. __16.__When and where were you happiest? Temple, TX from the ages of 3-4. I have a lot of great memories of my little sister and older brother playing together and feeling free. __17.__Which talent would you most like to have? I’ve always been super interested in carpentry and would someday like to learn a few things further than that I already know. __18.__If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? If I could change one thing about myself, it would be how shut off I can become towards the world and the people around me without even realizing it. It’s not a trait that I want my children to possibly learn from me. __19.__What do you consider your greatest achievement? My greatest achievement was creating and birthing my son & my daughter. Both were a hell of an experience. __20.__If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be? That’s a loaded question that the answer depends on many variables. __21.__Where would you most like to live? I wouldn’t mind moving back to Texas, or to Arizona or southern Utah. __22.__What is your most treasured possession? My pictures, especially the ones with my little sister, but any phone I’ve ever taken and have gotten printed out is very sacred to me. __23.__What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? __24.__What is your favorite occupation? __25.__What is your most marked characteristic? I’ve always been told how wise beyond my years I’ve been, even when I was as young as 3 people would say it about me. Also, I’m known for being pretty dry at times with my humor. __26.__What do you most value in your friends? The unconditional love that we share for each other. Anything and everything can be said or done and neither of us judge each other, or we can even have a little tiff between each other that will last about 5 minutes of us not talking, then we’re over it. __27.__Who are your favorite writers? I haven't had time to sit down and read a book in about 5 years or so, most of my readings are articles on the internet. So, I don't have a favorite writer that I could name. __28.__Who is your hero of fiction? __29.__Which historical figure do you most identify with? __30.__Who are your heroes in real life? __31.__What are your favorite names? __32.__What is it that you most dislike? Complaining, lying, and entitled assholes. __33.__What is your greatest regret? I don’t think that I have any. I do just about whatever I want and I accept any choice that I’ve made because there was obviously a reason I made it in that time and place. __34.__How would you like to die? Never; but I’ll also settle for something bad-ass too. __35.__What is your motto? “You gotta keep on keepin’ on.” -Joe Dirt |
Jessica RushWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
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