Danger

“A typical trip to Gaya’s house we would drive in on a Sunday coming over from church to her place and then we’d always go through the back door of her apartment which was rather strange and there was always this big electric -I don’t know what it was, like a generator or it housed breakers or something I’m not sure and it was this big beige square box and when I say big I mean taller then my five year-old self, like it would probably come up mid-chest on an average sized man, and this big box in the front, like right next to our parking space, so bizarre to a young kid, this big box would have all these “Warning,” “Danger,” electrical symbols all over the top of it and all over the sides of it. and I would always skirt it, like give it plenty of wide berth because I didn’t want to touch it because of all the “Caution you could die” sort of stickers and you know that’s scary to a little girl and I would stay far away from it and when I got big enough I realized that it actually  wasn’t going to shoot lightning bolts at me so I stopped being afraid of it.”

    That box was smooth to the touch. But it always made the tips of my fingers tingle with the excitement of explicitly touching the forbidden.

The Project

This blog will chronicle my ruminations and observations and hopefully provide an outlet where I can begin to explore writing as an art form and relaxing medium. I've been scared of writing for too long. Reading has always been enjoyable, but something about filling that white with bodies and ligatures terrifies me. Time for that to change.

My horizons were expanded this year in a Writing Creative Non-Fiction class. The teacher was wonderful and nothing short of a modern-day philosopher who you could easily imagine sitting in a boat and finding a beautiful importance in what we consider the most mundane. However, unlike most brilliant minds, he had a talent in sharing this beauty. Inspiration couldn't help but hit me upside the head.

While exploring memories in the class, I found my notes continually returned to my Great-Grandmother; specifically, her surroundings. My final project pursued memories of her house, belongings, and as they surfaced, remembrances of her.

I discovered through trying to record these memories that writing them didn't suffice. The stories flowed most easily when vocally narrated. I began recording the stories, typing the recordings word-for-word, refining those recordings, and eventually began adding a personal commentary to the typed stories filling in further neglected detail.

These postings are formatted with the audio recordings posted first in quotation marks. The written commentaries expand further on the recordings. Audio recordings of the entire segment and spot illustrations will be added on some day other then Christmas Eve.

I hope you can glean inspiration from these as I found inspiration in a kindly writing teacher's ruminations.