Between Our Legs

— by Lisa Foad. This is a retype of comments written on the piece, on emotions.

Page 1:

“Believe me.”

I didn’t. Why should I? The narrator has given me nothing but confusion up to now. No, I don’t believe you. When you spell things out for me, tell me precisely what is happening, I’ll believe you then. Maybe.

“Logic is for the birds.”

More confusion. Birds aren’t logical animals. Are they?

Page 2:

“Our lips were smudged in deep purple.”

Slight contempt here. First, that’s a terrible colour. (Or so I think.) Second, I’ve never really liked girls who wore too much make-up, especially in out-of-the-ordinary ways. As in purple lipstick. You’d look beaten up. Or maybe that was the point?

“Then we frenched.”

Shock, more confusion. “WHAT THE HECK?!” kind of reaction. Aren’t they both girls? This whole “we” thing is really messing with my head. Maybe it’s too late at night.

“We were dusted in flecks of gold glitter. The flecks fell across our collarbones, our shoulders and the blades in back. Our shoulders and our collarbones were bare because our shirts, which were dresses that were mini, were off the shoulder.”

More contempt. Girls who dressed too skimpily, no matter what whether, are usually to be looked down upon. Show some respect for your own bodies.

Page 3:

“Sisco didn’t wear underwear.”

Eeeeew.

“Goddammit, Sisco. Goddamn you.”

Surprise. Pity. Poor Glo. Poor Glo’s mom, seeing that her boyfriend was messing around with her own daughter? Admiration – Good for her, too, for throwing him out. Regret – she didn’t give him a black eye.

“The breeze swirled its way round our bare legs, up through our mini-dresses and around our necks. Our teeth chattered. Our nipples poked through the thin cotton. We wrapped our arms around the cages of our ribs and cupped our breasts with our hands. We were cold.”

Even more contempt. Silly girls.

Page 4:

“We were waiting and then we were waving.”

Frustration. Repeating what had confused me right at the very beginning? Wait, it makes more sense now. But it’s still a fuzzy piece. Grawr.

Page 5:

“We liked the way their bodies sloped and curved.”

Okay, I guess I just really don’t like this story. Silly girls, shallow boys? Oh, please…

“See, their stomaches scooped inwards like they’d been hollowed out. It was like they were barely there. Like something was missing: drive or care. Like they’d give up easily. On their studies. Their plants. Their parents. Like they’d been given up on before.

We didn’t give up.”

That last line earned the boys a little more respect from me.

“Their voices were weighted with things like matter.”

Frustration. She’d better be talking about matter as in… “What’s the matter?” If that’s matter in a scientific way, I’m going to be annoyed. I really dislike people who use scientific words without a second thought at what they really mean.

“And we fell.”

Duh. Could’ve seen that coming.

Page 6:

“Believe me. There was nothing to fight.”

And I still don’t believe, even though I’m not so confused now. So far the girls have been everything I dislike. Thus, I have no reason to believe them. And there’s always something to fight.

“I guess we didn’t really care.”

ANGER! For boys to admit something like that, in such a way almost as if they were shrugging…

Page 7:

“Hands behind their backs, they didn’t fight back.”

Something like pity, or sadness. A come-on-fight-back-please-show-me-you’ve-got-more-than-that kind of feeling.

“We think if we just stop thinking, everything will be fine.”

Irritation? Anger? Frustration? No, don’t stop thinking! Think harder! Fight back, get out of there. Fight back, please!

Page 8:

“In our heads, there’s nothing but static. There’s nothing but snow. Poor resolution. Colour bleeding. Colour bars.”

Mild amusement. Your own fault.

“But after this, we won’t wait. We won’t wave. We won’t say a word. We’ll roll over. We’ll tug the skirt ends of our dresses that are mini, down. We’ll tug the shirt ends of our dresses that are mini, up. And we’ll stand. We’ll suck in our stomachs. We’ll bare our eyes like teeth. And we will look straight ahead.”

Satisfaction. Finally, some resistance. Some fight. I’ve been waiting eight pages for this! Good for them!

“And we’ll walk out the door, into the night. Down five blocks, six, the most direct route home. … We will not break our stride, a sweat.”

Almost jump-out-of-my-seat happy. Yes, now, leave, faster, faster, go home.

Page 9:

“After all, it’s easy to fall. The difference between the things you want and the things you don’t want is slight.”

Sadness. It’s true. I get this, I know what she means.

On Emily Dickinson and her trunk of poems.

— Make-up for the response to the response to the response to a quotation, from a long long time ago.

The questions given to me went something along the lines of “Have you read Emily Dickinson? She kept all her poems in a trunk and they were never published until after she died. How do you feel about publishing now?”

Apparently, she did publish a few poems while she was still alive. That must mean those were her personal best pieces – and all the ones in the trunk were just practice? Failed attempts? I wouldn’t call them failed attempts myself, of course, but maybe Dickinson felt like it. That might make me hide my writing in a locked-up trunk, too. It kind of makes me wonder, isn’t the… spirit, soul, whatever of Emily Dickinson furious that they dug up her poems and published them? Generally, I’d assume that hidden in a trunk = don’t look, please, and if you do I will be very angry. Why did people publish them, instead of respecting Dickinson’s obvious wishes?

My current personal view on publishing is… still mixed. Yes, it’s an accomplishment. Yes, it gives you bragging rights. Yes, it’s important to anyone who wants many people to see their writing. And that’s where I stumble: I’m not sure if I want to world to have access to my words. I mean, I know most of the world is politely disinterested, but I’m slightly insecure personality-wise and I don’t deal well with letting other people read most of my work. Just having it out there and knowing that it’s possible that someone has read it and hated it and disagreed with every word I’d said, that inquiets me quite a bit. Incidentally, I actually did have a piece of artwork published once, in Urban Voices 2004. I did this on the morning it was due for class because the other option was to write a poem, and I wasn’t much of a writer then. Now, I’m ashamed to flip through that book. Or maybe that’s just me. But in any case, no publishing for me, for now.

Field Trip, P.2

So I was looking around at what everyone else did for their field trip investigations… and Fabiha’s struck me as amusing. (Visit it here.) Then I remembered this slideshow a friend sent me WAYYYY back called “Engrish in Asia”. (Yeah, that’s not a typo.) So I took some pictures from it… and… more funny signs are coming below. ^^

“Oh no! The sky is falling!”

This was on a glass door. It actually says, “be careful of people behind the door.”

…Pretty self-explanatory.

This one was my personal favourite. No offense to anyone, though I don’t believe we’ve got any Taiwanese students in our class? (It would be just my luck if Brian turns out to be Taiwanese. If that’s the case, my apologies.) The original caption read “Made in China”.

On Recordings.

— A help file for uploading the Melisma clips.

1. Click. No registration required.

2. Beside “File”, click “Browse”. Find and double-click your WMA, MP3, whatever file.

3. Under “File Type”, select “video”. Yes, I know you’re not uploading a video, but please just do it anyway.

4. Click “UPLOAD NOW!”

5. Wait. This will take a moment. Meanwhile… play a cute game. Click.

6. If the uploading page now shows a black video with your sound file, copy the URL and paste it to wherever it’s going and you’re done! If not, repeat step 5.

Good luck, and feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions. =)

Sound Investigations

Ideas

The upper limit of the human ear’s perceivable range decreases with age. In Hong Kong, there is a popular high-pitched ringtone students often use to text each other in class, because though their older teachers could hear vibrating alerts, they could not hear this high sound. A girl in my French class showed me this. Our teacher couldn’t hear it at all, even when she set the volume at its loudest. The rest of the class could, though, and complained very loudly when the tone was played on maximum volume.

Most people react to pleasant sounds with relaxation and comfort, but with discomfort to unpleasant sounds even when they’re quiet. Even plants and animals respond to sounds; It is actually true that music can be used to stimulate the growth of certain crops. Also, buzzing sounds affect the pollination of tomato plants and mechanical buzzers are often used in greenhouses for this purpose.

Sound and voice: very good mediums of communication in writing. The meaning of the words actually do very little to get ideas across. It is hard to make a character sound evil when the sound of their “voice”, i.e. the tone you would imagine their words with, is sweet and naive. Hence we have sound poetry: getting rid of the meaning of the words all together, and only keeping the meaning of the sounds.

Artists

“Musical instruments produce sounds. Composers produce music. Musical instruments reproduce music. Tape recorders, radios, disc players, etc., reproduce sound. A device such as a wind-up music box produces sound and reproduces music. A phonograph in the hands of a hip hop/scratch artist who plays a record like an electronic washboard with a phonographic needle as a plectrum, produces sounds which are unique and not reproduced – the record player becomes a musical instrument. A sampler, in essence a recording, transforming instrument, is simultaneously a documenting device and a creative device, in effect reducing a distinction manifested by copyright.”

- John Oswald

Canadian sound artist born in Kitchener, ON. He is also a saxphonist, composer, media artist, and dancer. His most well-known piece is “Pluderphonics”, in which he made new recordings out of previously existing ones. This is called a “sound collage”. He played songs backwards, clipped them, played more than one together, etc etc.

Yoko Ono

Best known for her marriage to John Lennon. She was born in Tokyo, and moved to the US and back to Japan several times at a young age. She survived the fire-bombing of Tokyo. Her father died in a concentration camp in Vietnam; back at home, she was teased and excluded by other children. She was the first woman to be accepted into her university’s philosophy program, but she left after only two semesters. She was also part of Fluxus, a network of artists best known for blending media.

Michael Snow

Also Canadian. Born in Toronto. Well-known for film-making. Considered to be very influential. Also an improvising jazz musician. The Canadian geese hanging in the Eaton center are one of his pieces, called Flightstop. He is also responsible for the sculptures of fans over the northeastern and northwestern entrances of Skydome. This piece is called The Audience.

Flightstop

The Audience, over the northwestern entrance

Melisma

Voice – Click.

Other sounds – Click.

Anonymous Characters

(Investigation on Rebecca Roseblum’s short story Chilly Girl, from Once)

In the short story Chilly Girl, the author does not name any of her characters. The main character, for example, is only referred to as “the girl”, and her companion “the man”. Of course, we know that had the author intended the effect of giving her character names, she would have done so. Then by not giving them any names, what kind of atmosphere is she trying to create?

I couldn’t find a lot of information about this particular topic, so I spoke to a number of my friends. Most said that it made the characters less personal, less demanding of your attention, as if they intruded less on your personal space somehow. In one piece I wrote for English class, I used my four-year-old cousin as the main character, but never mentioned his name. I asked people to read it and name my cousin, and found that the names they gave me were drastically different from his real name. I concluded then that by not telling his name, the reader is given more room to see the character as the piece wishes rather than the way the name suggests. However, there are many cases where names would be helpful, such as in stories with many characters to keep track of or where the name adds significantly to your writing.

A Bear for a Pet?

(Inspired by the “Found Bear… Is he yours? (Want him?)” poster from field trip)

So, random as this is… just what would it be like to keep a bear as a pet? Of course, not very many sane people keep bears as house pets. But then again, who wants to read about sane people… or write about sane people, for that matter?

The poster tells us: “Not housebroken. Slurred speech/slight BO. Attached to open flames.” I would have thought that was the least of problems… I actually went and Google’d “pet bear”, and most of the results seemed to suggest the same thing: BAD IDEA.

And of course I’d think so too. I mean, do you really want a 600-pound animal lumbering around your house? But it does have a sense of humour to it when you think about it. Provided that it’s someone else’s house and belongings, of course.

Here’s one story of a pet bear. It made me laugh:

Once I had my own pet bear. Yes, my own pet bear. He was a friendly kind of bear and he liked to help me out. He’d even let me ride his back when I was tired or had a heavy load. And this bear had a huge lump on his head. Must have banged it trying to get honey from the bees or something.

I was a cook at a mining camp. Those miners can eat! I would cook them up a big stack of pancakes every morning. Pancakes was their favourite breakfast. I got so strong, sometimes I’d throw those pancakes up in the air to turn them over – and they’d never come back!

So maple syrup was the favourite thing to eat with those pancakes. And my bear friend would go out and roll in the maple syrup barrel for me every morning. One morning he didn’t come back when he went for the maple syrup. When I went out to look for him, that bear was dipping his paw right down into that sweet sticky maple syrup! Well!

But you know what, he didn’t stop and eat that maple syrup, the bear. No sir, he looked at me and then he walked off on three legs. So I followed him down to the river. That bear of mine climbed out to a rock in the middle. Then he put out his paw covered in maple syrup. And soon it was covered in flies too!

Suddenly, a trout jumped up. He wanted those flies…The bear tossed the trout next to my feet. He did this until we had enough trout to feed the miners breakfast. I climbed on his back and we carried the trout back to camp together. I guess the bear figured the miners needed something other than pancakes and maple syrup that day!

The next summer I came back and there was my bear, waiting on the kitchen porch. I was so happy to see him. And I wanted to go far into the woods to another river to get some trout for the miners’ supper. So I climbed on his back. But the bear went crazy! He was shaking his backside, trying to climb trees so I would fall off, trying to dump me in the river. I put my hand on the bear’s head and found out – I was riding the wrong bear!

– from HERE.

Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind

(Suggested by Ms. Parrish from “25 Random Things”)

This movie speaks of a couple who dated for two years, then broke up. The woman then chose to have her painful memories of the two of them erased. Trying to get back at her, the man opted to do the same, but realized halfway that he didn’t really want to lose all his memories with her. He couldn’t stop the procedure, however, and these memories are erased. Later, however, he meets her again, and though neither remembered the other, they form a new relationship. An employee who helped erase their memories returned their documents, and after realizing the past they had together, the two decide to try their relationship one more time.

I believe in keeping all my memories, whether happy or sad; they are all important. I believe that if I can hang on to them, the day will come when the sad memories will not hurt me anymore. (Everyone who hears about this asks if I’ve seen Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. I haven’t.)

I decided in this the year I was thirteen, following the philosophy of a young boy from a Japanese anime. He inherited the family curse of turning into an animal whenever he is hugged by the opposite gender, but his mother had no idea of this and was shocked when her new son suddenly became a small, terrified rabbit as soon as she held him for the first time. This led to his mother’s depression and eventually her choice to erase her memories of him. The boy was sent to live with relatives, and his parents had another child – a normal girl. From time to time, he would watch his family from afar, and wish that his mother had chosen to be strong and not forget him.

If the ability to pinpoint painful memories and erase them selectively became available in our world, how many people would resort to it? Is “eternal sunshine” really what we want in our lives? Happiness and sadness are relative. If there are no sad memories, what will happen to happiness?

Lewis Carroll

Real name: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson

Most famous works: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass

English author, mathematician, logician, photographer, inventor. Wrote nonsense poems. Read big books since the age of seven, but couldn’t speak clearly – he had a stammer. (But he could sing.)

Most famous style: Literary nonsense. Example: The poem Jabberwocky.

‘Twas brilli, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

A friend of Dodgson’s had three daughters: Lorina, Edith, and Alice. All three loved Dodgson and often asked  him to tell them stories. Alice was his favourite; Alice in Wonderland was believed to be a story Dodgson told the girl, which she then asked him to write down for her. Therefore Alice in the story is believed to be based off her, but the girl in his illustrations do not look like Alice at all.

So who is this Alice in his story?

What other stories did he tell the sisters?

Why Alice?