Monday , March 30th
Wow, this is a lot harder than I thought! And I don’t mean
the actual labor of creating a book, I’m talking about the labor that it takes
to keep myself focused. In school
there is work and to be honest I knew going into this project that the work
would be as difficult if not more difficult than the work I would be doing in
class but I didn’t imagine how exhausting it would be just trying to get myself
to focus for a period of longer than, say, 20 minutes.
My mind
basically works in two ways, tree branches or fireworks, rarely linear. It’s kind
of hard to explain but ‘tree branches’ is the type of thought processing I
experience most often. I’ll start with one central idea (the trunk) and then it
will just rapidly grow, expand, and change into little separate ideas (the
branches) the more the ‘branches’ grow out, the less they are related (usually)
to the main idea; I, however, can always see the connections even if others
can’t. For example one of my friends might be talking about driving which makes
me think of her car (which has a shimmery metallic finish), which makes me
think of makeup, which makes me think of eyeshadow, which makes me think of how
makeup is made, which makes me think of mica which is what makes things
sparkle, which makes me think of child slaves in India who as soon as they are
old enough to hold a mallet mine mica and I might say something like “You know
child slavery in India is appalling, I’m gonna Google where exactly my makeup
comes from, y’all should too.” and then every body looks at me like “what?”.
Because see all of these connections happen very quickly, like, a connection in
a second or less , and that was only one branch we were following, only one
line of thinking. In reality there might be 2 or, 3 branches, or 5 or 10; cars remind me of
electric cars which reminds me of the tesla which reminds me of tesla the
person which reminds me about how much a jerk Edison was which reminds about
the debate to take Andrew Jackson off the $20 bill which makes me think about
who should be on it which makes me think about Sojourner Truth WHICH SPLITS THE
BRANCH one which makes me think about Phillis Wheatley which makes me think of
the book I have on her which makes me think about where it is and maybe I
should read it again and (continues…) the other branch makes me think about
feminism which makes me think about white feminism verus black feminism which
makes me think about fitting in boxes and how your feminism is trash if it
doesn’t include trans women which makes me think about how we can end
discrimination and open people’s mind which makes me think about media which
makes me think about college which makes me think about dorms which makes me
remember that I still haven’t put my deposit down and maybe I should definitely
do that ‘cause the deadline’s coming up…
All of this,
all of these thoughts are happening at the SAME TIME, and I’m just hopping from
branch to branch, jumping rapidly between chains of thought hoping in the
process of conversation that I don’t forget something important that I wanted
to say or do on another branch. That’s part of the reason why I talk so fast,
because in my mind I’ve kind of already spoken, the period of the sentence I’m
speaking is at the very end of a small branch and my mouth is at the trunk of
the tree running towards it. I know, I’m
talking fast but at the same time I feel really slow, my mind has to wait for
my mouth to catch up to it (which is why I don’t like reading out loud- by the
time I’ve read and comprehended a page of text, my mouth will still only be one
the second paragraph). It’s frustrating at times.
Fireworks.
Imagine the central idea is a firework going up in the sky, you speak your
thought (insert whistling sound here), I hear your thought and the firework
explodes (boom), all of my ideas, reactions, thoughts, things I want to say are
the pieces of the firework coming down. Since all of these thoughts are raining
down on me I can’t remember all of them so I have to pick (very quickly) what I
want to say or write down or remember. Imagine me underneath the firework running
around with a huge net, trying desperately to catch something before it fades
into black. In real life, this is me in one of those new classrooms, scribbling
madly on the dry erase walls. If you see my leg bleeding, that means I was
previously on a chair (I like to start at the top of the wall) and fell down,
yes I’m fine, yes I’m sure, just give me five minutes then I’ll talk to you, I’m
trying to get everything down. Also, if I’m talking to you or at dinner with
you and I suddenly start tapping away at my phone, I’m not texting, I’m in the
notes app, something you said inspired me (or reminded me to do something).
Ah, where
was I? Oh yes, things being hard. I
constantly had to remind myself that this was not summertime, that I had to
finish the last of my schoolwork before I did anything fun, that taking my dog
for a walk was a nice thing to do but probably not the best use of my time at
the moment, that maybe eating something that wasn’t a cupcake would be a good
thing to do. I had to go to the dentist at 4, my dad picked me up to take me
and my Nana was in the car. We dropped her off at Cumberland so she could pick
up some shoes (my dad got her a purse for Valentine’s Day and she wanted to get
shoes that matched it). My dad and I went to the mall to get after my
appointment to get her and ended up grabbing a late lunch at the food court
while we waited for her to come back from the post office (apparently there was
a fiasco with her stamps being rubbed out? I don’t know, at this point I was
very much absorbed with the Chinese food I was eating so I didn’t quite hear
the full story).
I got back to my house around 5:30,
found my good notebook (really big, thick paper, heavenly) and buckled down.
One of the things I love about senior projects is that how you spend your day
is really up to you, as long as you get your hours in. I work best on school
stuff during the nighttime so I was able to get my hours in fairly easily, once
the sun set it was like time wasn’t really a concept anymore. My dog, a softly
snoring metronome beside me and my pencil, it’s quiet scratches urging me
forward, that’s all that there really was. It was…not peaceful but purposeful.
I woke up the next morning and realized there was no possible way I could draw
what I had been thinking of doing and have spent today (Tuesday) trying to
bring my ideas back to scale. I have an idea about a doodle girl who travels
through the desks of students (and in turn meets their doodles) on a kind of
quest to get her gold star back. But I’m not sure the story is strong enough,
my other idea I like more but I’m afraid the pictures it’d require would be too
complex for me to create. Still, I’m going to flesh it out and see where it
goes. It doesn’t hurt to try.
