Perhaps short comments--after a weekend of big little boy birthdays, Nietzsche, Juliana, Bresson, and Chuang-Tzu...I'm so burnt.
Jacob: I am so interested in how this has changed. Mostly because I'm maybe bad at editting my own work and/or changing directions/focus of projects while part-way through. I don't have the patience (a virtue that's growing since motherhood)--instead I throw the whole damn thing out. I suppose I'm admiring your diligence, and noting that its working--some interesting changes. The initial quote is working well in roping in such a large topic. In class you mentioned using a quote to sort of epigraph each subsection of the work--I think this may work, but I also think it's important to let yourself be open. Use the quotes when they function well, like here, and not where they don't. What I mean is, don't force yourself into using a quote because it's the rule you've set out for yourself to use one. I guess I don't completely agree with your earlier comment (2 wks ago??) about form maintaining some consistency within each peice--though I don't think 'agree' is the right word. Keeping to a form doesn't seem to work for me--I always feel like the content is leading me in a different direction (which seems now a bizarre statement since I love form, but perhaps what I love about form is precisely that it is almost infinitely mutatable/muteable).
Some specific parts about these peices that work: "name some ways you associate water with death." You start hinting ever so slightly at maybe why you're so interested (or not interested) in weather. Natural phenomena permeates so much of our imagery as writers, it's what 'ancients' had to go on, and we haven't delineated from it all that much. It seems to be all that is 'concrete,' yet it constantly mutates. I am thinking of Chuang-Tzu's sense of the water mirror--seeing into the depths of oneself through stillness (that which is "deep and shiny and blue all over"), not seeing anything in the ripples and foam of water moving too quickly. How do I associate water with death--water moving too quickly causing physical drowning or causing drowning of oneself through lack of reflection. which leads to: "you will need to know how to get yourself out of bad weather." When I review the points that I found especially productive, it was these points where you used weather to hint at something more personal. In this, you pull yourself in a bit from a huge topic--but I guess this only says the same thing as my earlier quote: "WE--a grounding. Where did people come from, and now there are two?"
PREFACE: cool. I wanted to throw out the "as"--I rewrote it on my paper using colons instead of as and it seemed to get even further down to the essence of things. bare.
voice : sea surface : veil : wake : boast : transport : backdrop : flock : white-noise : interdeterminancy : ruin : market : repetition : accentual : sensual : expanse
: associative : sky
etc. etc.
Okay, okay. I'm tied/tired, and haven't said much usefulness. Laurel and Lara, I'll get to you later, perhaps tomorrow.
Jacob: I am so interested in how this has changed. Mostly because I'm maybe bad at editting my own work and/or changing directions/focus of projects while part-way through. I don't have the patience (a virtue that's growing since motherhood)--instead I throw the whole damn thing out. I suppose I'm admiring your diligence, and noting that its working--some interesting changes. The initial quote is working well in roping in such a large topic. In class you mentioned using a quote to sort of epigraph each subsection of the work--I think this may work, but I also think it's important to let yourself be open. Use the quotes when they function well, like here, and not where they don't. What I mean is, don't force yourself into using a quote because it's the rule you've set out for yourself to use one. I guess I don't completely agree with your earlier comment (2 wks ago??) about form maintaining some consistency within each peice--though I don't think 'agree' is the right word. Keeping to a form doesn't seem to work for me--I always feel like the content is leading me in a different direction (which seems now a bizarre statement since I love form, but perhaps what I love about form is precisely that it is almost infinitely mutatable/muteable).
Some specific parts about these peices that work: "name some ways you associate water with death." You start hinting ever so slightly at maybe why you're so interested (or not interested) in weather. Natural phenomena permeates so much of our imagery as writers, it's what 'ancients' had to go on, and we haven't delineated from it all that much. It seems to be all that is 'concrete,' yet it constantly mutates. I am thinking of Chuang-Tzu's sense of the water mirror--seeing into the depths of oneself through stillness (that which is "deep and shiny and blue all over"), not seeing anything in the ripples and foam of water moving too quickly. How do I associate water with death--water moving too quickly causing physical drowning or causing drowning of oneself through lack of reflection. which leads to: "you will need to know how to get yourself out of bad weather." When I review the points that I found especially productive, it was these points where you used weather to hint at something more personal. In this, you pull yourself in a bit from a huge topic--but I guess this only says the same thing as my earlier quote: "WE--a grounding. Where did people come from, and now there are two?"
PREFACE: cool. I wanted to throw out the "as"--I rewrote it on my paper using colons instead of as and it seemed to get even further down to the essence of things. bare.
voice : sea surface : veil : wake : boast : transport : backdrop : flock : white-noise : interdeterminancy : ruin : market : repetition : accentual : sensual : expanse
: associative : sky
etc. etc.
Okay, okay. I'm tied/tired, and haven't said much usefulness. Laurel and Lara, I'll get to you later, perhaps tomorrow.
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