Memory

Note: Jack’s name isn’t Jack. And I wrote this in the present tense. And I still don’t know how to use the italics yet. So I put what should be italicized in slashes, like /this/. And I think this is too long. I tried to make it shorter. But it seemed better like this. Oh, well. I was a dumb third-grader, btw.

Memory: or otherwise entitled:
How I Broke My Arm

I’m nine, naïve and quiet with an excess of illogic. I’m swinging on the swingset on the rubber playground outside Sycamore- like I always do after school. A friend of mine named Jack is with me, like he usually is, talking with me.

“I want to be a ghost,” he says with relish, swinging determinedly higher. “Ghosts are cool.”

“Yeah, but what would you do if you were one?” I ask dubiously.

“I dunno,” Jack replies thoughtfully. His skinny hands clutch the insulated chain that connects the swing to the blue swingset.

“/I’d/ haunt the school,” I announce, and grin. I hadn’t thought of that until just now, and I’m pleased with the brilliance of my idea. “Except I don’t know how to be a ghost.” I add, disappointed. I look hopefully at Jack, who knows about things like this.

“It’s easy,” Jack tells me, grinning back. His swing catches in time to mine, but neither of us mention it, like we usually do. We’re too engrossed in our discussion. “You just have to die. And go /splat/ at the same time.”

I frown, thinking hard. “You mean if we jump off somewhere high, we’d be ghosts?”

“Yeah!” he yells enthusiastically. His slight bounce in his seat sends the swings off-time again. “Hey, you’re right. Wanna be ghosts? Didja know there’s a special name for when you die on purpose? It’s called suicide.”

“Suicide,” I repeat carefully. “Cool.” It’s the first time I’ve heard the word ‘suicide’. It seems a little strange to me, as if it’s a bit ridiculous that anyone would want to die on purpose. But then I’m reminded that I’m about to try.

I jump off the swing, enjoying the brief exhilaration of flight, the illusion of wind, before I fall back down onto the sharp cushion of old rubber fragments. My hands and clothes are stained black from the pieces, but I’m fine.

“Do /that/!” I taunt Jack, gleeful in my expected success.

He jumps off after me, appearing to pause in midair for a single fraction of a second. I watch, fascinated as always by the suspension of movement in air. I’ve never known anything more graceful than a diver’s momentary poise, folding and unfolding with perfect control before crashing into the water.

~

For a few days, we lead each other on a merry chase. He jumps off the slide; I jump off after. I leap off the monkey bars; he follows me. We seek higher and higher places each day. But we always feel ourselves strike the ground with only little bruises, never the fluid ectoplasm that would signal our entry into the supernatural.

I’ve been enjoying our game. The feeling of flying every time we leap, each time better and higher, seems great fun to me. But I’m also getting tired of it and wishing for the final moment that we’re trying to achieve. That’s when I decided to try jumping out of The Tree.

I think of it capital letters, not ‘a tree’ or ‘some tree’ or ‘hey, it’s a tree!’, but The Tree. I had figured out how to climb it when I was eight. It has crabapple flowers, and it’s the main tree, the dominant tree, in our little playground. It is The Tree. And I am nine and I fear no tree.

Jack climbs higher up than I can, perching birdlike in the willowy upper branches. I balance on a lower, more solid branch. The sun is bright, and the sky is blue.

“Jump!” I dare my friend, shifting impatiently. I finger a thick branch, feeling excitement rush through me. What if this is /it/?

“No!” he yells back. I hear the fear in his voice, but he can’t be afraid, I’m not afraid, why should he be?

He refuses to jump. I double-dog-dare him. I /triple/-dog-dare him, which you’re not supposed to /ever/ resist. I promise that if he jumps, I will too.

He shakes his head no, still refusing to jump. I fidget, frustrated and confused by his continued insistence. I want something to happen; arguing about suicide in a tree is boring.

“/I’ll/ jump!” I say finally, unable to stand either the wait or the debate any longer.

And I did say it, so I have to jump. And I do. I jump up and out into fragile air. I’m no higher than I would be on the swings, lower in fact. My irritation makes this brief, clean moment wilder, more now than I’ve ever felt before.

And because I’m flying and soaring and levitating, I can do anything. So I try. I twist around, trying to spin like a top and achieve the dizzy feeling of being lost completely in the moment.

I fail.

It’s with a painful, agonizing, hazy shock that I hit the ground. This isn’t safe, tested, cushioning rubber or soft fleece and fluff. It’s hard, packed dirt, with sticks and stones and it’s coming up at me and I fling out my left arm, trying to hover, to stop, no, I’m /falling…/

But it’s useless. My lower arm explodes with needles and hammers of icy heat and I scream in pain. A /lot/ of pain.

Reflections on Class 2

Note: Our assignment is to reflect on anything in the class so far. Since I accidentally wrote the answer to the wrong question last time, I've decided not to waste a good reflection on Fuentes and the Great Gatsby. I've reposted it here. With editing. (My spelling last time was atrocious. I mean, I think I spelled the word 'amazing' wrong.) After all, we did talk about something like this today in class.

Further Note: I really need to learn how to use italics in this thing.

Further further Note: Is over 450 words a bad thing? I just got carried away.
~~~~~~~~~~
Fuentes' piece showed the way his experiences influenced his writing and how his heritage influenced it as well. It's amazing just how much something that can be considered ‘obsolete’ in today’s culture can influence someone so much. After all, today everyone is supposed to be a sophisticated, regular, all-American Westerner. Everyone is supposed to be equal and the same. (Which are two different things). The idea that being different [is bad] is supposedly obsolete. People aren't the same though, nor are they equal. When Fuentes spoke of his being looked down on for being Mexican at school, that shows how you are perceived is more apparent than what you really are.

How does this relate to the Great Gatsby? Well, Fuentes was thought of as Mexican and looked Mexican and so he began to feel Mexican. Sort of like Gatsby looked and thought of himself as a mysterious, exotic, fascinating guy, and people began to see him as he thought he was. It's actually the opposite of what Fuentes did. Gatsby's self-opinion caused the change in everyone else's opinion of him. Everyone else's opinions of Fuentes (his father's Mexican stories, his family's nationalism, the teasing at school, the news) influenced his opinion of himself, (which caused him to care more about his Latin American culture and propelled him into a situation where he started to write.)

Also: on the Red Sky in the Morning post, LaMags asked about what I meant by 'a memoir tells a mind, not a story'. That's a quote from Patricia Hampl's essay. What I think she means is that a story conveys something limited. It's like telling you a few things about something, but leaving loads more open for thought. Like the example in class, naming a table is a story. It tells you that the table has a name and its name is table. Stories are usually more complex than that and they can tell you even thousands of things. But they leave out some whys and some hows and questions and things. Stories don't tell everything, just most of something, or a lot of it, or very little of it. A memoir, in contrast, tells everything. Who and what and how and why and where and when and everything like that. A memoir doesn't just set the scene and add a plot and descriptions and ideas. It has to tell something beyond the ordinary facts of who and how and why. It has to tell what the person is like and how they feel, neither of which is rational or logical or definable and is the epitome of the phrase 'I could tell you stories'- you could but you can't because there's too much to tell and no way to explain it. It being your mind, your /self/.

How I Started to Write-Fuentes

EDIT: I realized that I did the wrong thing for this assignment. Therefore, I have rewritten it.

Audience

Fuentes is writing for a well-read audience. He uses many references (direct and indirect) and quotes from literary novels such as The Count of Monte Cristo, Don Quixote, words from Dostoevsky (that one Russian dude whose name I cannot spell), etc. He also uses complex language and sentences that perhaps an ordinary, moderately literate audience could not comprehend.

He writes to an American (or non-Latin American) audience as well. There are cultural references (like the grammar list) that Latin Americans would presumably know and would not find thought provoking or intriguing. He also has to list old presidents and poets and things like that, which a non-Latin American audience would not know or find immediately obvious. It is apparent that he is speaking from a Latin American standpoint and forgets (or does not think necessary) to explain things that might not be understood by us. For example, he refers to the 'Eagle and the Serpent'. To some people, this would mean nothing, though they could presumably guess he meant Mexico by the context. (It really refers to the flag of Mexico, which has an eagle holding a snake in its claws [over a cactus?] because of an old Aztec legend. It's kind of like saying the Stars and Stripes).

~!~Lizard~!~

Red Sky in the Morning

Red Sky in the Morning is a very nicely written piece. It is very descriptive without being boring and the descriptions are not just lists of characteristics of things but musings on what they really mean. It is amazing how the author can make whole pages of a story out of a simple meeting. She also uses italics and parentheses and other things to make the piece flow in a more interesting way, keeping the reader engaged and thinking.

Her premise, that memoirs are hard to write because they tell a mind, not a story, is also interesting. She explains several times that there are more stories in us than we can communicate, simply because there are too many and too personal and we don’t always know how. She gives an example, indirectly sort of; at the time, she didn’t really think much of the farm woman and her husband, she just remembered the incident. But years later, she can weave the experience into an idea- and a story.

She also makes a subtle point that it’s not the beautiful or outwardly interesting things that stick in our memory. It’s the things that hold a mystery, that you want to know more about, that we remember. She says she has trouble remembering the husband, even though he was the better-looking of the two, but she can remember the woman almost perfectly. That’s because she held stories that, as the author repeatedly says, that she could tell.

Because I wasn’t there for Friday’s discussion, I can’t comment on it.

~!~Lizard~!~