t
Questions will arise with no sign of answers. You are l .
s
o
In a city that speaks.
But you can't understand what she says...what her people say.
Children ride by on a bike. You wonder where they are going--where they are coming from. So you ask,
"Where are you going?"
This is your answer: ____________.
Silence.
They continue their ride tonowhere.
They continue their ride to
You walk on the black sand beach. Surfers carve through the water; they speak the language of the ocean. You want to understand so you ask,
"Where did you learn the language of the ocean?"
This is your answer: Na-ci con el-la.
Or at least that's what it sounds like.
Foreign language is just as good as silence.
Your frustration rises. Looking into the distance, you see a dog.
Tossing a coconut near him, he brings it back to you. He looks content, licking the water. You breathe in the salty air, finally feeling at ease. This new friend barks as a car drives by and chases it--leaving you A L O N E.
You wonder why you agreed to come here with him. Will everything be okay?
On the walk home, you see a simple sign. It says, "Si." Yes. You think back to your question.
The city has spoken.
The layout of this blog attempts to reflect a journey, both physical and spiritual. The pictures are aligned differently to symbolize a path that the narrator is traveling on. The pictures are rotated to show how the narrator has been taken out of a familiar place and put into a new one where he/she is confused. The cityscape in the background is omnipresent; the post section is transparent. At times, the text may be difficult to read but the reader must navigate the page to find a spot where it is easier. The questions and answers are colored red and blue. These are the colors of the Costa Rican flag, along with white. The city in this narrative is personified as a woman--acting almost as a friend. I chose to write the narrative in second person to include the reader in the experience. Most writers advise not to write this way, but since this assignment is creative I figured I'd give it a try. I composed an open-ended first post so that the reader can take it in any direction. Who is he (in the narrative)? Why did the narrator come here? This is all up to the next reader.
ReplyDeleteWhatisatext2013,
ReplyDeleteFirst off I would like to say that I thought your blog was well written. While I certainly found it to be cryptic, I could tell that you spent a considerable amount of time planning out your work before you set out to write it. Out of the whole blog post, my favorite part were the inclusion of the pictures, without them I believe that your post would be a bit too ambiguous. I envisioned the included photographs as a key to the cryptic poem that was your blog entry. The Spanish text on the coca-cola ads, the children biking home from school in their uniforms, the dirty sand beaches. These references all seemed to make sense to me as I was reading along with the text. These pictures reminded me of the mission trips that I took to Honduras in high school, which convinced me that you did an excellent job establishing your setting. Another aspect of the text that I thought was creative was the inclusion of red, white and blue font colors. This was an interesting touch because your story was obviously written about some third world Spanish speaking country, but the sporadic red, white and blues helped to remind me that the narrator is speaking from an english speakers perspective. That was a very creative way to communicate that thought to your readers. The last part of your writing that I thought was well executed was the accentuation of certain wordy by bolding them or crossing them out. This technique really drew my eye to the parts of the text you wanted me to notice. All in all I think that you did a great job with this story, with its rich descriptive detail and photos to match I felt like I really was in the narrator’s head. Good Job.