Blog Post #3

"It is a classical collage, a song of multiplicity, an epic poem that doesn't seek to erase the fault lines and fissures that become a part of our identities in the process of learning to be human while we may be lost at sea..." (Van Der Vliet Oloomi).

I chose the aforementioned line from Van Der Vliet Oloomi's writing because I have always felt like hiding the person I used to be. This may sound silly because I am young, only a mere 22 years spent on Earth, but if you think about it, that's two decades, and that feels like a really long time. When I first came to Sacred Heart, I saw it as an opportunity to be the person I wanted to be, rather than the person everyone thought I was at home. I wanted to find my own identity. 

The easiest example I can think of is my mother always telling me I am "so sensitive." Mothers are always right, and if my mother tells me I'm sensitive, this must be true. I adopt a sensitive personality when I am home because that is what is expected of me. 

However, when I'm in a new environment, totally independent, I can be whoever I want to be.

Being stuck in a high school where you didn't feel like anyone really liked you certainly felt like being lost at sea, as Van Der Vliet Oloomi writes. You don't know which way to paddle because you can't tell North from South, you don't know if you should trust your instincts, you don't know if it's even worth trying to find your way, or to just give up and let the waves carry you.

Van Der Vliet Oloomi's quote emphasizes holding onto the things that make us who we are. The lines and fissures, the hurt that we felt in the past, have molded us to be the people we are today.  We spend so much time trying to glue ourselves together and hide the faults, instead of bearing them proudly. 

"Lights from the infrequent cars on the highway can't penetrate this envelope of darkness, as if the entire universe were lit by this one dangling bulb. For the moths, this is an absolute truth. They flutter on silent wings like drunks, banging into the house, porch posts, the small overhang that shelters our front door" (Ewan).

When I read Ewan's piece, I felt the isolation, the remoteness of her childhood. To say that the "entire universe" seemed to be lit by one bulb captures the contrasting image of light against dark: light being her home, dark being the unknown of the world. I relate to this and can picture it perfectly because I also live in an extremely rural and isolated town. My father and I never watched the moths together, but Ewan's writing is so descriptive and imaginative that it feels like I did. 

I can hear the loud silence in the author's writing as well. In a town where the only outdoor light is from your porch bulb, the only sound you hear is the crickets singing. The personification of the months as "drunks" helps the reader picture the moths blindly bouncing into the bulb, acting purely on instinct and attraction. You get the feeling that they are dull and mindless creatures.

The second chapter of Tell It Slant explains that writers can say a lot about a character through a specific story. I believe the line I chose from Ewan's story encompasses this concept. She is not explicitly saying that she has special memories with her father -- instead, she writes tht her father taught her about magic powder on moth's wings that make them fly. She did not write that in her memory of the big moth, she realized her father wasn't capable of everything like children often believe -- instead, she writes that her father can't fix the moth. There are some things that can't be undone, even by our superhero parents. 

I hope to accomplish a similar effect in my writing. There are many small, special moments I know I can write about. It's just a matter of finding the right one and expressing the right idea.