Instead of wishing you could follow, you take action. You walk back to the bungalow with newfound confidence. Packing your belongings, you think of all the good times, the
The door closes and you stand looking out at the ocean, the limitless opportunities. You breathe in the salty air and feel more alive now than you ever have. You are free.
A taxi drives by so you chase it. He stops and you direct him to the train station. You arrive and search the station; for what, you don't know. PANAMA flashes across a board-- NOON DEPARTURE. You have 20 minutes to decide. But the decision is already made. The City Speaks. You just have to listen. It doesn't want you to leave, to go home. So you don't. You just wander free...for now.
What adventures will this train lead you to? What will happen when you get to Panama? Who will you meet? How will you move on? Or will you...........???????????????
A woman greets you as you step onto the train. "Hola!" she says. You smile, "Hola." You settle in and pull out a book, but before you start reading you realize: Home is where the heart is. You are always Home.
While I’ve blogged before doing various tasks (making sci-tech information accessible to the layperson, engaging FSU parents through blogging at my internship, etc.) this experience was entirely new and inspiring. I found myself eager to read the next person’s blog each week to find out what I’d be interacting with. Anonymity ended up being a smart choice.
ReplyDeleteI liked how we started with a theme of place because that gave us liberty in the directions that our narratives could take. Incorporating the pictures and videos was fun because they add a different layer to the post and different perspectives are seen. The freedom with the interactions was nice because we could adopt the theme of the other person’s blog as we see fit. For instance, the first post I interacted with was based on the idea of “home” and I ended up weaving that theme throughout my entire blog. On the other hand, I interacted with a blog based heavily on music (which has almost nothing to do with my blog), but had a scene on St. Patrick’s Day. I took that element and incorporated it into my post. It was challenging at times, but worth it in the end.
Critiquing the interactions turned out to be very insightful. In my first post when I colored some words red, white and blue, the critic assumed that it was my way of representing the narrator as American. Red, white and blue also happen to be the colors of the Costa Rican flag and my intentions were to show the intrusion of the foreign culture. Different perspectives are applied in these situations. I liked how everything is up for interpretation in this experiment.
I think my blog is fluid, but an outsider who doesn’t know that we have to incorporate other texts that end up shaping our own may not understand the transitions. These blogs are so intertextual, linking here and there. It’s interesting to see where certain ideas come from. My blog happened to be heavily based on things happening in my life right now, and it’s cool to see how we can still bring ourselves into these narratives even though we have no idea where the storyline will lead the next week. A connection I thought of is with Mumbo Jumbo, and how we can rewrite a history. Almost all of the images I used were real-life photos from my visit to Costa Rica. I re-appropriated these images (creating a new aura) to construct a new story. I never thought I’d associate the images with the things I did, so that was a neat experience.
I thoroughly enjoyed this creative, social experiment and definitely think you should keep using it in future semesters.