Blog 13, which is actually blog 11

Blog 13: More brainstorming for Project II

I starting thinking about things that really matter to me today. I mean, it's obvious from my previous two essays for this class that my personal growth is extremely important to me and that I often spend time reflecting on it. But, I don't really want to talk about drugs anymore in my writing because I don't feel as though my mistakes should define me. Besides, I've made lots of other mistakes that don't involve drugs which would be just as much, if not more, fun to write about (especially because my memory has improved a bit since I stopped clouding it with substances!) So, what else is important to me? I know I included a teaser once about my relationship with my sister, and I might write about that in my second essay by writing about a game of manhunt (do people still play that? or like, hide and go seek? or whatever.) But I'm not ready for that yet. Getting there!


So, in the meantime, I was thinking about writing either about my relationship with my grandmother (who passed away) by writing about her old house - looking in at grandma as if I were the old house full of memories...does that make sense? We were extremely close (she was like my second mom and my best friend and like, my everything) until she died and I didn't take it well at all. Uh so basically, I'd just talk about things we did or times we had but they each have their own place. I'm awful at writing about what I'm going to be writing, holy shit. Something like this...The kitchen wasn't just the place to cook chicken paprikash or peach cakes. It wasn't just a line of duck-shaped ceramic candy jars filled with sugar-coated gummy mint leaves and worther's butterscotch. The kitchen was where the kitchen table was, of course, and the kitchen table was the center of our family. On the kitchen table, we could peel potatoes together and make silly jokes in preparation for the giant pot of mashed potatoes (with, as my mom will always recall, "a WHOLE STICK of butter!!") or break out the Scrabble board or playing cards or dice because there were only 10 channels and the Yankees game was on a rain delay. Then I could talk about each room of the house and why it's important etc. but really I'm talking about how much I miss her. And...I'm tearing up already, so this is hard.

Or, I may write about Phish concerts...which will basically be an opportunity for me to talk about how I am outside of a culture that I'm still a part of in a weird way (I know that didn't make sense!) Let me try to clarify that...when I was a teenager, I was a deadhead and I did all these tours with bands and danced around in fields and ate acid tabs for breakfast, etc. etc. and we all know that already. But, now that I'm older and wiser and sober, I still like the music. I still go see Phish (I've seen them six times this year already, and my NYE show is coming soon!) But it's a strange thing...to feel part of a culture and then unknowingly remove oneself from it by removing just one factor. When I'm on a Phish lot, walking down Shakedown, I feel like I'm moving through time...or like I'm at the movies, and I get out of my seat and walk into the screen and I'm there with all the actors and the props but everything just continues on without me and doesn't even know that I've walked in. 

So, I'm talking about drug culture again, but as an outsider and through a movie lens. I don't know, this could be fun to write but I'd of course be doing exactly what I said I didn't want to do. But, you know, talking about my family relationships is really tough for me because I'm not an outwardly emotional person at all. I think that both the stories about my grandmother and about my sister are really, really important for me to focus on for so many reasons, but they're challenging...not academically challenging, I mean, it's not any harder to write a story in that sense, but emotionally awful for me to deal with, especially as a person who doesn't often deal with emotions. This is so long and run-on and blah, I'm sorry.

Over the weekend I'm going to start writing this piece and I'll post whichever one I make more progress on.