Writing Exercise for Creative Non-fiction (01-27-12)

I love going to bed at night, as it is my favorite time of day. Another one completed, only so many more to go. No matter what, I always go to bed around eleven o’clock at night. I am obsessed with maintaining this part of my daily schedule. It is a ritual, only one of a few that I maintain from day to day, week to week, month after month, year after year.

I either walk or crawl up the stairs to the bedroom, depending upon how tired from the day I feel. I kick myself out of my clothes, and then go to the bathroom to brush my teeth. When this ritual is over, I void myself of the last remaining fluids that remain from the day, and then make my way to the bed, ready to be face down in the pillows, soon to be riding the flying carpet of my dreams.

My girlfriend comes to me after going through her own evolutions toward the intended aim of slumber. We sleep in separate beds, due to a number of reasons: different sleep schedules, different levels of sleep, different patterns of sleep, different qualities, and levels of devotion to the god of sleep.

She sleeps to rid herself of the misery of toil of the working world, and to rest and rejuvenate herself physically to participate in the same way, going through the same motions, day after endless day.

I, on the other hand, sleep hard into myself, to escape this world and become unknown to myself. Asleep I believe I am travel to some far off and magical place, to become my true self, the ideal of myself in another world, that although I have no recollection when I arise, I can still enjoy the effects of, during the days when I wander aimlessly in this world.

Informal Essay One (American Literature II) 01-24-12

Although I barely remember high school literature, I remember “To Kill a Mockingbird”, “Huckleberry Finn”, “Catcher in the Rye”, and a few other books that are popular for high school curriculum. As I was still young I had no capacity to appreciate them, the books were just another assignment in another class, just another stepping stone towards graduation. But I had always had an innate love for literature, and a desire to create my own, and so I discovered other authors at random through culture, i.e. Nietzsche and Burroughs, Bukowski and Kerouac, among others through my reading. Yet I still did not have a clear cut driving ambition as to learning the methods by which literature was created and developed, its techniques and purposes, what stories I would see fit worth to tell, and how to go about telling them.

As an adolescent, and later as a young adult I could not be anything, or do anything that didn’t coincide with the preoccupations of being an adolescent or young adult. But I always knew that I had the desire to write, perhaps unconsciously I knew a writer is only as good as the stories he or she can tell, and the stories we tell are based on the lives that we survive, a culmination of the dares we set and win for ourselves, the disorganized mess of life that we are capable of putting together after we have learned some of life’s lessons. But one has to first live to learn, and only after learning who we are from our lives, can we then begin to know the importance and worth of the stories of others in order to clarify the telling of our own. I think this was what I was subconsciously picking up from my reading, and what kept me continuing to search through book shelves. I felt that eventually I would find something that would give me a clearer understanding of my random reading if only I kept searching.

In the past couple of years I have enhanced my desire to become more intimate with the mechanics of the novel, rather than blind stumbling upon writers, yet not knowing what they are really saying, and how they came to put their words together. I have focused my reading to books about books, how literature functions and its devices. Examples of these types of books are: How to Read Novels Like a Professor, and How to Read Literature like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Like a Writer by Francine Prose. I have come upon many great books in my other courses, like The Hero with a Thousand Faces and other books by Joseph Campbell. I have been introduced to books on mythology like Once and Future Myths, and Trickster Makes This World. I have also been introduced to the methods and ideas of Edward De Bono on creativity and idea generation. These books have been very helpful, and my favorite books of his are: Lateral Thinking, and Serious Creativity which is a comprehensive collection of his techniques. I have also been reading the works of Jung as well. I think an understanding of psychology is important to the understanding of literature of well, as people write books, and books are always about people.

            I was led to this study as part of my degree choice, Creative Writing and Literature. I was laid off from the best job that I have ever had, even though I was miserable in what I did, and didn’t see myself moving upward and forward, except in the pay they gave me for all the tears in my muscles, the cracks in my spine, and the continuous striving to hold my sanity in check as I became just another automation going through the motions in an increasingly pointless preservation for the sole sake of surviving. When I was laid off, I was awakened to the fact that if I didn’t do something drastic, my life would probably continue within its same limited and pointless cycle. So I have now devoted myself to learning how to excavate my dream from out of my head, and on to paper.  

            I have taken multiple literature courses such as Mythology and Modern Life, Literary Theory as a Method of Inquiry, and Stories and Creative Leadership, as well as the American Literature I. I have learned a great deal from these courses and now I hope to be able to read and fully appreciate the books of this course through the filters of understanding that I have gained from others. I look forward to becoming introduced and familiarizing myself with the authors that have arisen since the civil war up to modern times. Hopefully through studying these authors I can become ever closer to learning how to tell my own stories that have for far too long been gestating in my head. This will not be my last literature study either. In next two semesters, which should be the last for my degree, I intend to take Shakespeare, Creative Nonfiction Advanced (I am taking the introductory level along with this class), Ideal Worlds: Utopian Literature, U.S. Multicultural Fiction, and Drafting the Novel where I will have to create a 75-100 page manuscript.

            As far as being American, I think it is how well we design ourselves after being able to explore whatever interests we discover and encourage in ourselves. We have lots of freedoms, but many people take them for granted, or don’t know how to properly use them. We can be loud and obnoxious, or courteous and sophisticated, an American can be anything that they are intelligent and imaginative enough to define and create, for good or bad. It’s all in how you are able to bring it about. I think the definition of an American is the degree of which the individual has chosen to refine their expressiveness, as most Americans I believe, are an expressive people.

Name exercise for Creative Nonfiction I (01-22-12)

My name is Joe, short for Joseph. It is one of the most famous names, as it comes from the Bible, the name of the father of Jesus, the most famous name of all. It is also used as the term for the average guy, or an "average Joe". It is also a nickname for one of the most popular drinks in the world coffee, as in a "cup of Joe".

Joseph is a serious name to me, formal like a title like Pharoah, or Prophet. It is as serious as death, it denotes the separation and demarcation between I, and the rest of the world. Joe, and Joseph look strange to me on paper, even stranger when I hear these sounds in my ear, as if I have to remind myself that someone is calling me by the name someone chose for a newborn son some decades ago. And it seems at times I almost forget these syllables are somehow attached to me.

Joseph comes from the Hebrew "Yosef", meaning "he will add" (www.behindthename.com). Joseph in the Bible is the father of Christ, and later saint. The Bible also mentions Joseph as the son of Jacob in the Book of Genesis, and the name of the tribe that he originated (Wikipedia.org). The Bible also mentions a Joseph of Arimathea, who "according to the Gospels was a wealthy man "who donated his own prepared tomb for the burial of Jesus after the crucifixition" (Wikipedia.org). I got it from my grandfather, Joseph Fex, my father's father. Many people call me Joe for short, assuming a familiarity that I am not always comfortable with, and every once in awhile someone calls me Josephine, either in jest or in seriousness. I think my name is very neutral as far as masculinity or femininity goes, as many women can be called Jo, short for Joan, or Joanne. My name is unique, I couldn't imagine having any other.

The name Joseph is one of the most recognizeable names from the Bible, and being given this name urges one to create something world changing, larger than oneself, outlasting one's lifetime for eons, signifying to later generations that I was here, and that I was worth something. And somehow I must create this thing that grows and chafes within me, strangling me from the inside out for release, urging to be given form, and having life breathed into it before this thing named Joe someday dissolves into microscopic particles, and disperses itself forever across the four winds, reclaimed once again by the universe to be used as parts for other things that form, and separate.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (American Literature II) 01-14-12

Frederick Douglass was born a slave but died an important official, holding multiple public offices in the United States Government after his many accomplishments in the abolitionist movement. He was both an example of the typical slave, and also a prototype of the potential of what anyone could accomplish with an education and enough personal determination. Through his writings Frederick Douglass was able to expose the truths and horrors of slavery for the typical slave, the damaging effects of slavery upon not only the slave but for slave owner as well, the hypocrisy of a so-called Christian society which enabled the institution of slavery, and revealed through his writings that through education anyone can overcome all obstacles.

            The horror of the typical slave experience was not completely appreciable until those who experienced it firsthand as Frederick Douglass did were able to make themselves heard. Frederick Douglass was separated from his mother while still an infant, as was a typical custom of slavery. Taken from its mother before “the child has reached its twelfth month”, Douglass states, “the child is placed under the care of an old woman” (1749). Douglass proposes the reason for this is to “hinder the development of the child’s affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child” (1749). After this early disruption from the child’s natural parent, the slave child is introduced to the world of horrors that comprises slavery, witnessing not only the cruelty of whites upon other slaves, but also becoming a victim as well. Douglass relates through his narrative the cruelty of whites upon blacks on several different occasions. One of the first beatings that Douglass witnessed as a child was of his Aunt Hester who was “stripped naked from neck to waist”, had her hands bound, then the slave master whipped her with a “heavy cowskin” until “warm, red blood (amid heart-rending shrieks from her, and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to the floor” (1751). Frederick Douglass had himself suffered many brutalities under several slave masters, in one instance before he was able to become a free man, was beaten so severely that his attackers only stopped after his “eyeball seemed to have burst” (1789). Until Frederick Douglass and others like him were able to record their experiences, the grim reality of slavery would be unknown to the larger awareness of America and the world.

            Slavery not only was physically and psychologically damaging to the slave, but also had a detrimental effect on the slave owner as well. As rape was an institutionalized part of slavery, Douglass states that mulatto children are “a constant offence” to the slave owner’s wife, and such children must be sold “to human flesh-mongers” in order to avoid having to personally administer upon the slave owner’s own offspring the brutality that slavery inevitably requires (1750). Douglass himself suspected he was the offspring of his original master, a fact that probably caused both father and son much chagrin.

To keep slaves in line, slave owners often employed such characters that took pleasure in their cruelty. Douglass relates the tale of several such characters in his narrative, one example is of a Mr. Severe, “a cruel man” who “seemed to take pleasure in manifesting his fiendish barbarity” (1753). The presence of Mr. Severe brought to the fields “blood and of blasphemy”, where he “from the rising till the going down of the sun”, was “cursing, raving, cutting, and slashing among the slaves of the field, in the most frightful manner” (1753). Douglass gives us Mr. Severe as one of several examples of such types that were hired by slave owners to terrorize the slaves.

            Douglass relates how slavery was detrimental to the slave owner as well as the slave. One wife of a slave owner who originally looked upon Douglass with kindness, impressed him so much that he “scarcely knew how to behave towards her” (1762). After trying to teach Douglass how to read, this pursuit by his mistress was discovered by her husband,  and his master forbade this practice as at the time it was “unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave how to read” (1762). Now that she was instructed in the reality of slavery by her husband, Douglass states that his mistress turned against him, her “tender heart became stone, and the lamb-like disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness” (1764). It was the philosophy of the slave owner Douglass states, “that behave well or behave ill, it is the duty of a master occasionally to whip a slave, to remind him of his master’s authority” (1781). The institution of slavery led the slave owner to believe that it was necessary to lower himself to the level of a savage in order that he may control his slaves, destroying his own soul in the process of brutalizing those who the slave owner was compelled to believe were less than human.

            Frederick Douglass, through his writings, exposed the hypocrisy of a so-called Christian society that allowed and maintained the inhumanity of slavery. Douglass states,

I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere

covering for the most horrid crimes, -- a justifier of the most

appalling barbarity, -- a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds, -- and

a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most

infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection (1781).
 

Douglass relates multiple examples in his narratives of the behavior of so-called Christians that condones the terrorism and savagery against one’s fellow human beings. One such example is of a time when slave owners discovered a clandestine prayer group to which Douglass belonged. These slaves who were trying to understand the word of God, and were being denied this right by their masters. They had their improvised “little Sabbath school” broken up “with sticks and stones” by slave owners who considered themselves Christians and “humble followers of the Lord Jesus Christ” (1783). Douglass exposes to the world the hypocrisy of a society that calls itself Christian, that holds in high esteem the word of God, while permitting the worst inhumanities to be perpetrated against others, often in the name of religion.

            Frederick Douglass disproved the belief that a slave is uneducable and less than human by his many accomplishments which resulted from his persistence and determination in teaching himself to read. Frederick Douglass was first taught the fundamentals of reading by the wife of one of his masters, until she was forbade to continue, the reasoning being that “learning would spoil the best nigger in the world” (1762). Douglass was determined to pursue this ignited desire to learn until he could read as well as any white man. He discovered the “The Columbian Orator” around the age of twelve, which became his literary bible, reading it “every opportunity I got” (1764). He tricked and bribed white children to teach him the writing lessons which they were being taught in school, “which it is quite possible” Douglass states, that “I should never have gotten in any other way” (1766). During this time Douglass made every “board fence, brick wall, and pavement” his writing tablet, while his “pen and ink was a lump of chalk” (1766). He used the abandoned lesson books of his master’s son to learn what the boy was being taught in school, then Douglass surreptitiously copied “what he had written” (1767). Douglass states that he “continued to do this until I could write a hand very similar to that of Master Thomas” and after “a long, tedious effort for years, I finally succeeded in learning how to write” (1767). With persistence and determination Douglass proved that not only was a slave educable, but through his sustained effort to read he demonstrated to the world that he as a black slave did not have diminished mental capacities as the slave owners wanted everyone to believe.

Frederick Douglass overcame many obstacles in his arduous life of being born into a slavery. Due to the effect of his literary capacity in relating his and other’s experience of slavery, and the importance with which he played a part in the abolitionist movement, he was able to become a distinguished office holder in the United States Government in his later years. Despite his early life as the typical slave, who despite his circumstances, earned through his dream of being able to learn the English language, a freedom not only for himself, but also played an important role in gaining the freedom of other slaves as well. Through his writings Frederick Douglass was able to expose the institution of slavery for all its horrors, not only upon the slave but for the slave owner as well. Through his writings Frederick Douglass exposed the hypocrisy of a so-called Christian society that supposedly stood for freedom while still allowing for certain races to be legally oppressed in the supposed “land of the free”. Frederick Douglass proved through the example of his writing that anyone, with enough persistence and determination, can overcome any and all obstacles.

Works Cited

Douglass, Frederick. “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”. The American Tradition in Literature. 12^th ed. Ed. George Perkins and Barbara Perkins. New York: McGraw Hill, 2009. 1747-1801. Print.