Dear you,
I specifically chose not to start a blog during my journey abroad because I thought they were too impersonal. Instead I chose to send mass emails addressed to "you guys" and "y'all" and "my friends and relatives." I thought that sending my thoughts and stories to a contact list of 100+ was somehow more personal and special than this open forum. Maybe it was also a little selfish. I wanted people to read my thoughts and I especially wanted hear repsonses. I figured that sending the notes directly to the email box greatened my chances for dialogue, though disconnected. It was also an easy way for me to keep in touch with aquaintances whom I thought were pretty cool, but we hadn't yet gotten to the point in our relationship to carry on decent online chatter.
But I guess this forum relieves the pressure of email. I have really enjoyed writing mass emails during the past 7 months, but I often wonder what will happen when I return to school, see the majority of my contact list on a daily basis, and my life returns to routine. I write emails when something really noteworthy happens; when an event that has shaken my life might in some way resognate with "y'all." This is howI keep connected and continue writing during a somewhat mundane life, or rather a life with less foreign language.
I will write to you, the singular. I will write about the exciting and mundane. I will try to share details that are too specific to share with "you guys." I will ponder, question, and ramble as I do with pen and paper daily. I will write to you, as you stare at your computer screen, because you chose to check my progress by your own free will.
Thank you for lending me your eyes and mind. I would love to hear back and maybe we can engage in a disconnected dialogue.
I hope you are doing well.
Get some rest and take care of yourself.
yours truly,
annie...
I specifically chose not to start a blog during my journey abroad because I thought they were too impersonal. Instead I chose to send mass emails addressed to "you guys" and "y'all" and "my friends and relatives." I thought that sending my thoughts and stories to a contact list of 100+ was somehow more personal and special than this open forum. Maybe it was also a little selfish. I wanted people to read my thoughts and I especially wanted hear repsonses. I figured that sending the notes directly to the email box greatened my chances for dialogue, though disconnected. It was also an easy way for me to keep in touch with aquaintances whom I thought were pretty cool, but we hadn't yet gotten to the point in our relationship to carry on decent online chatter.
But I guess this forum relieves the pressure of email. I have really enjoyed writing mass emails during the past 7 months, but I often wonder what will happen when I return to school, see the majority of my contact list on a daily basis, and my life returns to routine. I write emails when something really noteworthy happens; when an event that has shaken my life might in some way resognate with "y'all." This is howI keep connected and continue writing during a somewhat mundane life, or rather a life with less foreign language.
I will write to you, the singular. I will write about the exciting and mundane. I will try to share details that are too specific to share with "you guys." I will ponder, question, and ramble as I do with pen and paper daily. I will write to you, as you stare at your computer screen, because you chose to check my progress by your own free will.
Thank you for lending me your eyes and mind. I would love to hear back and maybe we can engage in a disconnected dialogue.
I hope you are doing well.
Get some rest and take care of yourself.
yours truly,
annie...
posted by annie... at 8:30 AM
1 Comments:
Annie, your emails were amazing, and for the old and crusty brought new faith in the real. How great, then, that with this blog you can toss those words into the air like so much grain and maybe have it propagate. One of the people in my surrealism class posted this wonderful quote from Viktor Shklovsky, the Russian Formalist theorist from the early part of the 20th century: And art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects 'unfamiliar,' to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object: the object is not important. That stoniness of the stone is what you open yourself up to, and that's a wonderful thing. As they say in rock climbing: rock on!
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