Blog 6

I think for now I would much rather prefer to write about my father, and his I feel like I have more interesting stories that I can weave together to find a focus.

Dad shut the truck door and headed for church. The cracked beige leather seats of the white suburban gave little. The radio blared. Naturally being the oldest I always sat in the front seat, my three brothers always sat in the back. I manned the radio. K-Rock constantly played the rock songs we all listened to. On occasion however we snuck Cd's in and played it while the crowds of people passed the rumbling truck on their way to church. Dad was in the choir and it made it a hell of a lot easier to get out of church. He always made us go with him on Sundays and because he had to be there earlier he left us the keys to play music while we waited for mass to start. We never went in though. Not once. We sat in the truck for an hour and a half and listened to music, then he took us to get bagels on the way back home. It was routine. This was our church.

The new MTV show, The Osbournes was on. My mother and I loved that show. We sat watching Ozzy curse and bumble his way through the episode. My father sat in the living room with his head down, pretending not to hear the bleeps every two seconds. Finally he had enough, during a commercial break he came into the living room. "What the hell do you have them watching this shit for? Why the fuck do you have this on? It's trash all they do is curse and I don't want my kids watching this filth." "I'll watch what I want in my house. At least they bleep out the curses on TV!"

I can't remember much about what was taught in CCD. All I could remember was the excitement of seeing Courtney there every week. I remember every week I would wait for her parents green cavalier to drive up, and to see her get out and walk up to the door of St. Mary's where I would attempt what little I knew about flirting. One day I even worked up the courage to ask her for her AIM screenname. She wrote in pink glitter pen on a small piece of paper. Later that night I'd add her and await her sign on every night.

They had a diagnosis. Sydenham's chorea. The doctors and nurses openly admitted they had never even heard of it. They would have likely never even found out about it if it wasn't for my mothers persistence. In the early days of google and yahoo she searched and searched for answers pin pointing one solution and inquiring about it. Mom had to take my brothers to baseball and basketball practices. Dad came in. He had 5 books of word searches and puzzle books, and he brought a movie, a trilogy actually, one I'd heard of but never seen before; Star Wars. I watched it repeatedly. I finished one of the puzzle books while waiting for him to return back from grabbing a bite to eat in cafeteria downstairs. He couldn't believe it. Every day he brought more puzzle books for me to work on, and then he began bringing actual books for me to read along with a bunch of snacks, kit kats and twizzlers.

Steven was the name of the boy in the "room" next to me. A room divided by a thin curtain. Steven was my age, 12. He was struck by a drunk driver shattering his leg. His knee and leg had pins straight through to hold everything together. I remember watching TV with him and walking down to the game center and playing Mario, Mario kart and other video games, despite the wishes of nurses not wanting to continue moving Steven's bed and monitoring me as I walk, so they allowed us to bring the NES into our room along with a few games. One day Steven was just gone. He hadn't healed yet. He was moved to another room and that was the last I heard of Steven.

After fully recovering I remember my father attributing my recovery to God. It was a miracle. That never felt right to me. The fact that my entire struggles, everything I've been through, everything I dealt with credited not to me or the nurses or doctors or medicine, but simply, God; God did it. That was unsettling. It was upsetting to me.

Blog 5

A group of 3 employees talking about work. A customer sheepishly asks for help, we help but fuck with him as a group.

A family of middleeastern descent ask an associate a question. he answers, but the man does not respond and instead turns to his family and they begin speaking arabic to one another huddled in a circle. After this occurs a few times the associate begins to interject, and from outside the circles begins to nod and say "Yup, it will do that," and "uh huh" as though he can understand.

A mexican man walks past me three times looking at the ceiling as though it porovides an answer to one of lifes puzzling questions. He moves at a feverish pace and passes by a fourth time. he stops and stares at me finally asking "Choo peak-e pani?" I shake my head and say "No" and he moves on continuing his search.

While talking with a friend about work, he confesses to me that he once had to take a shit while traveling on route 9. He asked another one of our friends where the cleanest bathrooms were that he could stop and use the restroom. My friend tells him that Lowe's has the cleanest bathrooms. After he stops in to use the bathroom, he sits down in a stall and begins to describe in vivid detail; the number of murals and writings in sharpie on the bathroom stall. He describes a series of pictures that he doesnt understand, while I remember them vividly and laugh at each one, and then have to explain to him their meaning.

150 foot rolls of 15 foot carpeting are extremely heavy. The forklift has a special tool that is used to move the heavy roll and move it into the top stock, while watching an associate try to manuever it, I tell him to tilt the forks down to straighten the "carpet dick" and he begins laughing and explaining how he's never heard it called that before. "Really?" I ask "Every Flooring associate calls it that. "You've got to be rough with it while still retaining a bit of gentleness"

Blog 4

I think I can use the segmented style of writing CNF in my story to juxtapose the dynamics of religion and science and its relationship with my father and my illness. I had gotten very ill when I was 12 and my parents were right by my side through all of it. As I struggled to get better my father prayed for me daily. Once I fully recovered he attributed my recovery to God. I felt it was misdirected. I felt like medication and scientific know how were the root of my recovery of the rare illness, Sydenham's chorea; a disease 40 years prior left the patient in a mental ward for the rest of their life.

Where was God then?

That really I think started my separation from the belief of God. College, moreover Biology furthered the distance in faith. My father still tries to push me to attending mass and tries to make me feel guilty about not practicing. We (my brothers and I) cater to his conscience and nod aggreeably.

A few notable short stories for possible segmentation:
The Suburban and not going into church
Biology and evolution in college
Genesis
CCD and Courtney
3am wake up to doctors, feeling like a test monkey
the only allstar team I wasn't on in little league due to illness
"You know you should at least attend Easter and Christmas mass."
The Osbournes

Post 3

What I took from these readings was a strong importance and focus on minute details. These details, though mundane can bring about a number of different emotional responses and aid the author in creating a desired emotion for the reader. Lott's definition of CNF allows for flexibility in form while addressing the needs to write CNF. The three assigned readings address a need for the author to express childhood memories of important events through a narrowed perspective.

Simic's read was especially interesting. It appeared to be a bunch of random memories in succession that tracked his life. Each short spurt of story-telling reveals a hint of his personality and gives us a unique perspective on events that occur ed in Nazi era Europe. Cofer's piece follows her coming of age story and her family history fleeing Cuba for the Brooklyn during the Cold War, while Atwoods' creative nonfiction piece follows her thoughts and short stories about the female body and womanhood. Each story has a unique tale to tell and each story uses and offers up different techniques.

These readings have helped open my eyes to a few more possibilities within creating my definition of CNF, and have allowed me to get a broader scope on what can be CNF. CNF for all of these authors is very personal. It is a personal journey that helps them to a broader understanding and gives us insight into their thoughts and personalities while also incorporating a much broader scheme of things with historical events.

Blog Post 2

I must admit, being a fan of fiction, I had an initial curiosity and misnomer as to what Nonfiction is, and how it could possibly be creative; for obviously, (I thought) if it isn't truth it cannot possibly be nonfiction. The assigned readings have at least given me a bit of understanding and insight as to what creative nonfiction really is and to why it is still considered nonfiction.

Initially I thought it was embellished truth. With a bit of truth and a lot of imagination an author could easily pen a creative nonfiction piece, or in essence, a fiction piece with s factual or historical event inserted in.

I, as Lott has also admitted, cannot clearly identify what creative nonfiction is. Instead I can only grasp some core elements as to what can make nonfiction creative. What I've taken to be the most important and prevalent idea with creative nonfiction is not so much the truthiness (as Stephen Colbert would say) of the story but the personal dialogue and resulting understanding and realization that comes with evaluating underlying aspects of events and their impacts on our lives.

One big thing I've taken from attempting to create a definition of creative nonfiction is the importance of owning "I." In creating nonfiction you own the ideas, you own concepts, that might otherwise be inserted as a characters belief systems. This I found as intriguing as in fiction, you can insert your beliefs and use a medium character as modes of transmittal. Creative nonfiction allows the empowerment of owning the words and owning ideas.

It is a bit different for me to to be writing nonfiction as I cherish the ability to create fictitious environments, worlds, and scenarios. However it doesn't actually seem too far off, as many of my personality traits and ideas come through in science fiction and character traits as well.

Blog Post 1

Grealy's essay is a heartbreaking story. The main point of her essay, in my opinion is the connection between self-image and self-respect.

What I've noticed with this and a few other essays we've read so far is that it is not ordered chronologically. It's ordered , as you've indicated to read as an essay with paragraphs used as arguements to emphasize her points. She transitions between the past and present continually in the essay, by not indenting paragraphs in the past followed by an indentation with her thoughts and analysis in the following paragraph. This is a technique that has also been used with a few other readings we've read, and seems to be a common technique.

Grealy uses the story of her struggles with her self image as an example to emphasize the main arguements for her main idea. She talks about at first how society feeds us a perceived image of what we are supposed to look like, and when we do not look like this there is often hurtful backlash.

Interestingly enough after scanning the story after the initial reading I gathered a much different understanding on the main point of her essay. After reading it seemed like an evaluation of the writing process. As a writer we sift through muddled ideas and often at first it is horrifying to look at at, but over time we nurture the idea and take steps to polish it and make it "look" better. In the end we never fully accomplish the perfect "image" or perfect essay, instead we work it into something that we feel comfortable with and in the end accept the result. Even after the final product we are still not happy, much like Grealy doesn't completely accept her image, but comes to terms with it and eventually