Irritable Spring

I love the Spring time. After months of dismal weather, cold limbs and dry skin, Spring brings with it a sense of relief that lightens nearly everyone’s mood. Well, that’s how I used to feel. Now I live in New Jersey, USA and although I adore the reawakening of Mother Earth, every single Spring I now experience the worst case of itchy eyes, runny nose and all around general irritableness. What the hell? I was told last year, after what I thought was a serious chest infection, actually turned out to be a sinus infection, that I have allergies. Me. Allergies. I have never in my whole life experienced an allergic reaction to anything back in England, never had hay-fever or any of the like. Why then do I get allergies in New Jersey? Is there a different pollen count in the air? Has God just decided to spite me and turn me into a miserable wench? I think so, because right now I’m grouchy and mean and I just don’t like it. Someone out there, tell me some cures for allergies because I can’t stand this much longer, I feel like someone has dropped hot sauce into my eyeballs….

Communities of Practice in WoW?

 

 

My seventeen year old brother is my favorite person in the world. We do everything together, at least, we did until I moved countries to go to college. Even so, he would constantly phone me and we’d chat for hours after hours on the phone or online. In the last year or so, my time with him as been eaten away. I kind of expected this to happen, he’s a teenage boy and I knew girls would get in the way sooner or later. I was ready to bow down gracefully and step aside to give him room to mature and experience the wonders of autonomy – that is, until I realized that the reason he was no longer talking to me on the phone was because he was busy playing an online game called World of Warcraft, not meeting up with girls and other teenagers like I’d thought.

At first I just couldn’t understand it and was quite hurt by his actions. I couldn’t believe that he wanted to spend hours and hours playing a game and talking to people he didn’t even really know, all to slay a dragon or collect gold coins. I thought it was pathetic, especially when my Mom informed me he was online playing WoW until four or five in the morning. I began to worry he was addicted, I began to believe that maybe he was having a sexual relationship with one of his WoW friends. Whenever he got on the phone with me I shouted and demeaned him, angry that I had been given up for a stupid game.

It wasn’t until we discussed Wow in my Writing for Electronic Communities class that I began to understand a little of what was going on. Reading Wenger’s Communities of Practice, I was introduced to a new concept which helped me to look at my brothers situation differently. Communities of practice (CoP)are groups of people that work together and build relationships, even in non-traditional situations such as the members on WoW. If you see below, there is a great video that helps explain why WoW can be considered a community of practice and why then, I should not be criticizing my little brother so much. I don’t understand his actions because I am not a member of his community of practice, but that doesn’t meant that I have the right to put him down – I know that now.

According to the video above, WoW has a CoP, as it fulfills several criteria:

1) The average member dedicates 20+ hours a week to WoW

2) WoW employs the use of a small set of tightly integrated tools

3) The game supports collaborative work (specialized interface)

4) It has a set of worthwhile challenges and rewards

5) Problems that need to be solved are tackled by group work

I’m still reluctant to accept that right now I rate less attention because of an online game, but put into perspective, I can at least now get some comprehension as to why my brother is so dedicated to this game.

The Wonders of Wiki

This video is a great little piece about how writers should learn encourage emergence and collaboration, using free software such as Wiki. (Did anyone know that Wiki mean fast in Hawaiian? I didn’t…)

Influences on Writing

This semester in my Writing for Electronic Communities class, each student was assigned to present a book relating to the course. This week it was responsibility of the ever fabulous Famous In My Own Head to produce questions that help the rest of the class members think about the book we read this week, Margaret Syverson’s The Wealth of Reality. After reading the first three chapters and musing over Famous’ comments, the question he asked that stuck with me was this:

 ”I’m fairly certain that everyone in my Writing For Electronic Communities class has had a freshman comp course. How do you feel it shaped you as a writer? How do you feel our current class is shaping you as a writer?”

I hate talking about what it means to be a writer or how experiences have shaped me, but I must admit this question is a veritable goldmine for creative-non-fiction pieces. I could, no doubt, delve into great detail about how my experiences as an international student learning American English have scarred me for life, but I wouldn’t want to bore you. All I have to say about my 101 undergraduate courses were that they made me regress – I hated them – I could not believe that my teachers wanted me to continue to write traditional 5 paragraph essays with only one point of view. I stopped writing those in England when I was twelve. Needless to say, my freshman comp was frustrating and did nothing to shape me as a writer, other than make me resentful.

Then we have this class, Writing for Electronic Communities. The wonderful thing about this class is that it forces me to interact with the people, to form bonds and take note of other people’s opinions. And as a writer and a self professed loner, this is fantastic for me. On page 9 Syverson states that:

“By privileging the individual writer composing in isolation, we have slighted or ignored compelling evidence that writing, like other cognitive processes, occurs in ecological systems involving not only social but environmental structures that both powerfully constrain and also enable what writers are able to think, feel, and write.”

This is a perfect way to describe how I feel WEC class has influenced me as a writer. In the classroom environment I am constrained and am forced away from writing methods that I prefer, such as being alone and only taking my own views into consideration. Being in an ecological situation where I have to take other people’s opinions into consideration forces me outside of my level of comfort and into new areas of awareness that I would never have experienced on my own. Sure, I restrict myself to certain topics, hoping to integrate my ideas with other students’, but in the long run this helps me to develop social ideas in much greater depth and my classmates perspectives have offered me insight that has spurred a wealth of writing material. I am, and always will be, a lone writer, but I do believe that there is worth in forcing yourself to be a part of a group, to experience the different dynamics and I think I will continue to welcome the changes these experiences can have on my writing.

George and the Dragon

With all this talk about Ireland’s patron saint, it would be remiss of my English heritage not to advertise England’s saint – George. Now here’s a man to admire! Funny isn’t it – Ireland’s patron saint, Patrick, was not Irish, but Scottish. England’s patron saint wasn’t English – he was Turkish! Actually, George is not just the saint of England, but also Greece, Russia, Canada and several other countries.

As the legend goes, George was a Roman soldier, from a good family and rose through the ranks. As a leading officer he was directed to head a persecution against Christians in the early 4th Century. Instead of carrying out this persecution, he confessed to being a Christian and criticized the Emperor, Galerius. Silly move really. He was arrested, tortured extensively, including the wheel of lacerations and then was decapitated before Nicomedia’s city wall. Thus a martyr is born.

As for the legend of George and the Dragon? Hmmm, apparently that was brought back to England by Crusaders in the eleventh century. Tales of a man slaying a dragon are sure more glamorized than a man merely dying for his religion, right? I don’t know, either way, it’s just as fallacious as the legend of Patrick ridding Ireland of snakes! Makes you wonder, how much of religion is just folk lore?

A Green Day

I have lived and studied in the United States for several years now, British born, the differences between our cultures sometimes seem deep, but at other times, almost invisible. I have come to relish the differences and enjoy how, even though we may share the same language, we are intrinsically dissimilar in many ways. One of the most blatant differences is the way national holidays are celebrated – today for instance – March 17th, St. Patrick’s Day. Back home, in England, the day is never really celebrated with the enthusiasm and revelry that is displayed in America. In fact, the first year I was here and all my student friends declared it a day of drunkenness, I was puzzled. Why was everyone drinking and dressing up in green? I asked my friends if they were Irish – a few muttered yes, but the majority shook their heads. Why then, has St. Patrick’s Day become an American celebration? The influx of Irish immigrants is an easy answer – but that can’t be the only reason, because not everyone has Irish descendants.

 I think my main curiosity stems from my own experiences of how St. Patrick’s Day is REALLY celebrated in the Old Country. I have dozens of Irish friends and they share my bemusement – back in Britain and Ireland, most people do not wear green – it is bad luck. They do however wear shamrock, or perhaps a wee jade trinket, but wearing green, as superstition dictates, causes chaos. According to Irish lore, the Good People’s (fairies to you and me) favorite color is green and this is what they wear to bedazzle mortals to steal their children. If you walked around in green you’d be a magnet for bad luck that year. Why then, did this tradition morph in the States? People should be wearing shamrock, not dressing in green -  unless you’re sick of your kids, of course. :-)

I have to state, I prefer the Americanized glitz and glamor of the event – much more fun! I was always taught by my Catholic High School Nun, Sr. Elenor, that St. Patrick’s Day is strictly a Saint’s Day Feast, a holy day of obligation. Urgh. I think I’m going to take up the mantle of the Americans and smother myself with green and drink myself under a table while marching bands and loud music sound around me. After all, there are a lot more smiles and happy faces in the American pubs then there are in Irish Churches. What is the point of sanctity when you’re not having fun? Decision made, where’s my bottle of Baileys…?

This video is pretty good: the Holiday himself explains the downside of being St. Patrick’s Day, lol.

 

Giddy Up

 

As English nationalism dictates, I am well aware of the religious event that dominates the Spring season. No, I’m not talking about Anglicized Easter ceremonies – indeed, it is something that unites the United Kingdom like little else does (apart from soccer). I’m talking about The Grand National - the most notorious and televised horse race in the whole world (or so we like to think).

The Grand National in a 4.4 mile long steeple chase held in Aintree, Liverpool every year in the beginning of April. Around March the whispering of which horses are going to appear in the race start, and I get the flutterings of maybe, just maybe this year I’ll actually pick the winner. As tradition goes in my family, everyone waits for me to select my horse first – because then the rest of them (the punks) avoid that horse like the plague. Ah well, maybe this year I’ll get it right and then I can rub my family’s faces in it! Yeah, optimism is good.

 I just have to note that once I started my annual search for the National entrees, I came across several articles giving all the recent years results about which horses succeeded and which came up short. I found a common theme in several of the articles, all of which carry the same pride in their tone – PRIDE people, proud to be English! And what’s the one thing the English always want to do? Beat the French. It’s petty, it’s silly and it’s entirely pointless, but the love-hate continues after centuries of conflict. Now the battlefield is a race track. Below is a quote that was printed in one article – after describing the Grand National, the author apparently thought it pertinent to point out that the most important fact was this:

“It’s interesting to note that no French horse has won the Grand National for almost 100 years”

And really, isn’t that all that counts? Lord, can you imagine English horror if at Aintree this year a French horse succeeds…hmm, unpatriotic thoughts abound here, I’m actually contemplating backing a French horse this year – if it wins my family will disown me. Interesting isn’t it how politics are now played out in sporting events. The World Cup for soccer is notorious for duking out political grievances, and the Olympics is just like having another world war every four years. At least the only thing that seems to get injured using sports as a weapon, is pride. Pride is fickle and I guess we all could do with a little less of it sometimes.

Blue Addiction

  

 For my Writing for Electronic Communities , the class was directed to read a non-liner hypertext material to explore hyper text’s that deviate from ‘traditional’ forms of literature. The circular hypertext that really tied me up in a obsessive knot was The Jew’s Daughter, both frustrating and scarily addictive.

 I started off reading this text with the usual confidence and bravado of a writer who thinks she knows it all. I could take what was coming, I had read War and Peace, and other such strenuous literary examples, what could this text do to me other than bore me?

I soon ate my words. 

Once a page of The Jew’s Daughter appeared before me, my eyes zoomed in on the one blue link that existed, a highlighted word that begged to be pressed from the moment I spied it. I tried to read, tried to make logical sense of the progression of the story, but it didn’t mean anything. Instead of coming to grips with the text’s meaning, as one does with a regular book, I became more in touch with the psychological pull of links. 

By the end of the third page I spent more time trying to NOT press the blue link than concentrating on reading. What was the impulse that drove me? My eyes would march like soldiers down a sentence, only to return to the blue. I managed to read one more page but felt the impulse to press blue eat at me. The insane need tickled my brain. Press it. Press it. Do it. You know you want to. You’re not concentrating on what you’re reading anyways. The only gratifying action is to press, press, press.

Gradually my eyes would stray again and again to that blue word. It waited for me, it called me. The normal black type had little meaning and I eventually I broke down and my mouse hovered over and over and over and over the bluelink. I was like an individual suffering from OCD, blue, blue, blue. Switching the paragraphs, the structure of the text, I didn’t care, I just wanted to see what the next blue word would be. The frustration mounted, because I chased these words around and around in a circle, but never got to click. A link comes with a click, I felt cheated and chased a click that, like comprehension, would never come. I started just listing the blue words. The rest of the text was no good, the blue meant everything.

Dog

Countess

Breaking of pages?

Memorable friend

Fatherless……

But then the next page held nothing. No word was high lighted blue. For a moment I panicked. I knew the pattern, the visual guide promised me a blue word, but no word was blue. Bereft I searched the text, was FORCED to read it. Finally, there at the bottom of the page, not a word but a single parenthesis was blue. I was flooded with a blue relief, my fixation gratified once more. But why highlight grammar and not a word? The words had meaning, didn’t they? So then, does grammar have just as much meaning? Is the placement of grammar as imperative to meaning as words? Yes, it is. Thanks for the lesson Judd Morrissey, but not for the obsession.

 Blue

bLue

blUe

BluE

Why are links blue? Blue is supposed to calm people. It doesn’t calm me. Blue is supposed to repress hunger.  It makes me hungry to know what is behind the link. Some people sing the Blues and some people swear a Bluestreak. But for me, as Eiffle 65 prophetically reports; I’m now Blue, daba dee daba di.

Poetry Saga part Deux

As I have established not so long ago on this very blog, I have a rather well defined hatred for writing poetry. My professor for Core II (Master of Arts), Dr. Diane Penrod, encouraged the class to partake in an observation exercise. My partner (poor soul) was Amanda H, and the two of us spent a half hour getting to know one another, well, as much as you can really get to know someone in that amount of time. Once our observations had been made, the class was instructed to use the information to create a series of poems that represented our partner.

For the first five days after class I lamented and sulked over having to write poetry. Yes, I acted like a child, stubborn and steadfast in my rejection of the writing genre that had caused me so much agony growing up. I was still stuck in the mentality of poetry as rhyming schemes (how shameful to admit) love, dove – car, bar – peg, leg. Pathetic and unrepentant, I plagued poor Dr. Penrod for the entire weekend, forelone with my inability to write the assignment she had set. Now I have to give kudos to my professor, she tried her darned best to booster my moral (that’s what she’s paid for, right?) but I was having none of it. Funny, how once you convince yourself that you are not able to do something, that the idea is cemented into your brain and is there to stay even when you try to break it apart.

Well, let me get to the point: below are the results of my and Amanda’s poetry struggles. I have to thank Amanda for letting me post her poems that represent me – she did a wonderful job. Mine are there also (gulp). I’m still no Lawrence or Donne, but I got the assignment done, even if it did exhaust me and my poor professor in the mean time! Ha, that’s what you get for being a Writing Arts director Diane. To end on a positive note, I think I have managed to break out of my pubescent mentality towards poetry – I certainly had fun creating these poems with Amanda and although the process was uncomfortable for me, I learned that I still need to have more patience with myself and that I don’t always NEED to be the best at everything I do. Tra da, there’s some food for thought.

Amanda H’s Poems:

 

  

 

 The Pursuit

She signals mischievously toward the door of the writing classroom

Hurrying to a quiet and comfortable place

For a conversation and some poetry writing

To satisfy a love of the written word

Not just a stepping stone to higher education

For, what use is fiction in law school?

Driven by her aspirations

Yet also by the need to create,

To form new worlds

    

Reader

A Brit who reads Brits

She speaks

Listing the poetry of the masters

With their inflections

While satirists and modernists add their edge

A combination that engenders a writer

Part fanciful, part real

Like all writers, influenced

Blending both to find her own voice

   

 

Obsession

Time

It’s all about time

What time is it

In the middle of the night

Watch wearer

No time

For lateness

Driven by time

How much has passed

How much is left

  

Cinephile

She sits primly with ankles crossed

Describing a director’s “grungy punkiness”

With passion, like a writer

Capturing a scene, a moment

And making art out of it

Setting it to just the right music

    

Writer

Fluctuating fascinations with form

One day, creative nonfiction

The next, memoir

After that, writing the next great novel

So just write

Form will take care of itself

Whether dictated by subject matter or style

Although not a poet, still

Beholden to technique, making life out of words.

 

 

My Poem Collection: Something Hidden

 

A Question of Why

 

Why am I here?

Pulled. Strained. Sit remaining still.

            Taut inside. Teach outside.

A Professor of Words – forced to create.

            A secret writer lurks, waiting,

            Wanting to explode onto your page.

 

The Decisive Reader   

Literary need only apply.

No romance, no sci-fi, no fluff, no lies.

Shift time, shift place, choose him, I’m her.

Fiction lies in the mind of the beholder…

Fiction lies.

 

Sticking Point 

I’ll stick to what I know.

I know fiction is the hardest thing.

I’ll cling to the agro of academics.

And gnaw on the knowledge that non-fiction gives.

            Factual

                        Historical

The Once Was will be the Now in my steady hands.

 

My Tavern in Mongolia

 

Indiana crashed through my classroom door,

My students shrieked, earnest with glee.

Jones swept me away, not off my feet,

But to the place I travel in my mind.

I’m an adventuress, daring dripping from my pores,

He recognizes me.

What you see is not what you get,

The shell before you, soon to be shed

to release the amazon that stalks inside of me.

I am my own prey and she’s seeping out,

Cracks in my walls, stitches undone.

One day I might be the woman who runs a

Tavern in Mongolia, my temper flowing as freely as my ale.

For now, I’m content to let Jones carry me on his back.

Wee Obsessions 

 

It’s the simple things.

Give me chocolate – I’ll savor it.

It’s the small things.

Give me tea – I’ll appreciate it.

It’s the little things.

Colin Firth – I’d enjoy him.

Give me all three?

I’d definitely OD.

 

 

 

 

Authors in Flux

 

For my Writing for Electronic Communities class, I read George Landow’s Hypertext 3.0 and fell in love with chapter 4, which focuses on Reconfiguring the Author. As Landow discusses, in the past with writing technologies such as printed books, the roles of the writer and reader had distinct definitions and clearer boundaries. With a book we know who does what: the author produces and owns the text and intellectual content whereas the reader is merely a participant who examines and reflects on the content. In this case, the reader has no direct involvement or influence on the writing decisions the author makes – they can not, in essence, alter the content themselves and contribute to the discussion.

Now, technological advances in writing spaces, such as online Weblogs and Intermedia, offer the ability to blur the lines between author and reader; as Landow states, “the functions of the reader and writer become more deeply entwined with each other than ever before.” The first question I asked myself was, if the goal of future writing is to transform the set roles of the reader/writer, stepping further away from separating the two to transform them into a merging of roles, who in fact, claims ownership of any written work completed? Landow states that although hypertext breaks down barriers between the reader and the writer, it also “infringes on the power of the writer, removing some of it and giving it to the reader.” If we progress in this area, is the distinction between who is the writer/reader even necessary? Are we heading towards a socialized writing community where all intellectual property converges into a joint bank of knowledge, or should we stick to capitalist ideals and ego, where to stake a claim into intellectual property is paramount to maintaining a sense of individualism, profit and self-worth?

 I have discussed my reactions to hypertext novels previously on this blog, which, as a reader, I felt was tremendously liberating. 253 is a hypertext novel that offers the reader an opportunity to become a partial author, and from reading the responses of the readers who did decide to cross over into the middle ground between writer and reader, the experience and connection of being able to participate brings writing/reading into a whole other level of interaction. Online novels such as 253 are, in a sense, creating a social writing community that nurtures and explores the boundaries of what it is to be an author, both from the writer’s and reader’s perspective. Weblogs also offer the reader access to participate by a method of leaving comments on a writers blogs, but unlike interactive hypertext novels, the exchange is limited, as the reader cannot alter the original document. This offers some stability to the writer, while leaving an avenue and sense of interactiveness open for those who wish to participate.

To me the question of the psychology behind the definition of who the author is persists. If we were to look at this argument through a sociologist’s viewpoint, they would probably comment on the status of Western Civilization’s need to strive for autonomy and individualism – we all want to be recognized for our capabilities as individuals, not as a collective. Would this not be lost in a virtual sea of authorship where lines between the writer and reader become increasingly blurred? How then, would creating online writing spaces which encourage community contribution and a shared acknowledgement of authorship, really be effective in a society that screams me, me, me!? Would this converging of authorship blossom more under sociological environments where the collective effort and not the individual is the norm, or does it all just come down to the individual writer’s ability to open up and have the confidence to share their thoughts without the need to defensively stake a claim? Hypertext is not a thing of the future, it is a thing of the present; the steps are in motion for readers to start to contribute and slide into the role of the writer - what remains to be seen is if there are enough writers able to to step back and give up some of their possessiveness towards their work and become team players instead of solo flyers.