A Sketch
Catherine had no desire to put on a 'game face', which was what her peers spoke of as the necessary prerequisite for facing the world with any chance of success. Her solution, instead, was to turn away from this farce called life and pursue her own illimitable phantasies.
I met her the other day in her closet, where she held her weekly 'moonshine gumptions', awkward flourishes of her soul that howled rhetorically and whispered conceptually, in which she claimed to slough off, through a difficult and barbaric process of re-appropriation, the casings and coils of the last seven days. This usually involved wearing several different scarves wrapped tightly about her (and not only around the neck), two or three heavily scented candles (perhaps stolen from her mother), and choosing to play eerie music that featured an emphasis on the string section of the orchestra...
[I wrote this while during an orientation for my tutoring job, at the mention of a rap song that talks about putting on one's 'game face' in order to go out in the world. Needless to say, I am inherently disgusted by the idea of any posturing, especially one necessitated by the unfair living conditions that many people in the world are subjected to...]
posted by Jackie | 6:07 PM
2 Comments:
I really like your writing (of all kinds). There is this magical and odd feeling of exploration in them, like walking into the unknown with the spirit of the known and yet unconscious about it and there's this quiet sense of confidence. It is even present in day-to-day emails.
I'm sorry that I don't usually comment >< though I read all your entries --- most of the time, I don't know what to write because I feel that I can't say much more to what you have written.
:)
Thank you so much. I am affected by every comment you or anyone else leaves... No matter how inspired we were at the time of writing, I think there is a fear at the back of every writer's mind that perhaps no one is listening. And there are many hard feelings in the world, but perhaps none quite so terrible as feeling alone.
You always contribute much more than you think, but even to say something that acknowledges another is worth so much. Substance is not everything... though it has taken me so long to really internalize that and put it into practice (and I am still learning, still trying to practice).
Besides all that at a very fundamental level, I also really felt warmed at the content of what you said, especially because I talked to a professor today who was not very encouraging at all to me when I asked about graduate school. He said I wasn't ready... but I feel like the more accurate thing is that I am too open and too eager. What I most love is to explore, and I would hesitate to specify an area of concentration because it would be as if I already knew what I wanted and predicting what I would find there...
Just as you said, I want to walk into the unknown, always leaving exploration and the possibility of surprise as the highest goal. I thank you for that description, because it is always hard to describe the qualities that can only truly be seen by others (as knowledge or confidence - for in regard to oneself, I think one is inevitably ignorant and afraid).
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