Thirty minutes early for class, I sat opposite the shut door with the few other eager beavers. The girl to my right seemed disinterested in the whole scene. Mountainous Bose headphones, nose in a textbook. Of the two standing against the wall across from me only one was obviously a student. The other looked more like a housewife. Mousey, with a nervous smile and one eye that seemed a little more shut than the other one. And awkward too, like a teenager wearing his dad’s suit. The one speaking tipped his chin back while he spoke and ran his hand through his shoulder length blond hair.
“My interests have always just been more esoteric,” he said. The way he pronounced the last word reminded me of melting butter.
She pawed at the hair on her ears. “What do you mean?” she said.
“Well what I mean is… well OK, I’m a poet, right? I mean I write fiction too and I wrote a play once and paint but that’s beside my point. I started out doing graphic design and it just felt like...” he looked over her shoulder, a soliloquy to his muse offstage, “…It felt like artistic prostitution. There was no freedom, it was just for the endgame, and I think it should be about the process, you know?” He switched the leg he was standing on and adjusted the straps of his pack over his argyle sweater.
“Well I’ve not really thought of that. I just need a degree. It ‘s hard in this economy to hold a job without one.”
“Well why would you choose English?”
“Oh, well I used to work in a library and I figured this is a logical thing for me to get.” Her tone indicated dependents that needed her to be logical.
“For me it’s just what I love, and if given the opportunity why not do what you love?” He looked down at her face. “I think I’ll probably get my MFA too but this seemed like a great place to start.”
Ok, I don't have a long comment for you, but I really think the line "She pawed at the hair on her ears." is fantastic. Its a strange and though-provoking image. I'm excited to read more.
ReplyDeleteReminds me of that "Overheard at Miami" group if you know what I mean. You can learn a lot about a person just by listening to the ways they speak, act... so much does depend on money, although few people will ever admit that something so "arbitrary", "external", and "ultimately irrelevant" as money and power has an effect on what we consider to be internal - who were are, what we can control, how we develop.
ReplyDeleteJust capturing those sorts of contrasts tend to have a powerful effect since we take so much for granted. How many times do we automatically judge a poor person as lazy or somehow less than us? Just crossing that line between worlds is profound... I mean, this guy's going on and on about nothing and then you have someone forced to sacrifice out of necessity or for others. It's easy to not appreciate that here at Miami.
I do look forward to reading about the actual experiences and the contrasts
I think the Drop In can provide a ton of material for what you are thinking about doing, and I like how you're focusing on the financial power aspect of people and their relations with people and the world. I think we see a lot of things through money-tinted glasses (whether you have too much or too little) and I'm interested to see what you come up with with your interviews and observations. I wonder, too, if you can talk about these power observations by purposely shifting them, like giving someone poor some money, or asking someone with a lot to give it up for a day...etc.
ReplyDeleteI've always wondered about this as well. I think money definitely has a lot to do with how a person acts or thinks or speaks, but it also isn't definite. There are plenty of accomplished people who speak eloquently and came from nothing, so that is another thing to consider.
ReplyDeleteI also really liked your fiction bit. It reminded me of another english major (who shall remain nameless) but it was as if you recorded what he was saying and just wrote it down. hah. I also agree with Brett, the difference in doing what one wants to do as opposed to doing what one has to do is unfortunately mostly based on money. However, I feel like a lot of people (especially at Miami) will give up what they love to do even if they have a lot of money. Think of business or finance majors. No one has a passion for 'sales management' or something, but they just do it for the money and then brag about how much money they have without actually being happy with their life. I think that also might be a good addition to your project, just find a bunch of finance majors who pretty much hate their major but are just doing it for the money, and interview them and see what you can get out of them. Just a suggestion!
Posting this for Misty Whalen:
ReplyDeleteYou’ve got an idea with potential, but if your project is going to be a piece of fiction I would suggest clarifying the interaction of your characters a bit more. I understand that this was just a preliminary sample of what you’re working on, but I was really confused. Is the “mousy housewife”-like student a male or female? You also say he/ she is like a kid wearing his dad’s clothes… unless that’s a different person? And when he/ she is pawing at the hair on their ear is he/ she flirting? Or scratching at a tick- b/c hairy ears combined with “pawing” made me think of an animal. I thought maybe that there were multiple people (despite your only mentioning 3 to begin with)—
1) the pretentious-y poet guy
2) a girl with whom he’s flirting/ trying to sound artsy (and who is flirting back and has future dependants in mind while thinking about his degrees/ earning potential)
3) the mousy housewife student (who I now think is the only woman? And is thinking of current dependants?)
4) the headphones girl.
When I thought there were two students flirting, I thought the power relationships were about the guy’s desire to do something “meaningful” competing with the girl’s desire for him to be successful and provide for future dependants (thus, gender/ relationship/ interpersonal power issues). Now that I think there’s only one mousy, older, practical “she” I see the contrast between the kid and his desire to be “esoteric” and the other’s desire to provide for a family- and a power struggle that isn’t a struggle so much as him being seemingly “better”. You have the guy literally looking down at the woman at the end. Maybe this was unintentional, but it certainly suggests a power relationship… a sort of patronizing that also comes across in your descriptions of them. He is taller, blond, smart, well-rounded, fits-in, wearing a nice sweater, chin-up, etc. (Although maybe you mean for him to be a caricature and to come off a little douche-bag-like?)
The chick, on the other hand, is not only mousy, dumpy and depressingly practical, she also has hairy ears and a lazy eye. And this line of external narration: “Her tone indicated dependents that needed her to be logical.” implies (to me) that the assumption we are to make is that her logic/ practicality is a burden, and that she would rather be like the guy—ie, young, free of “burden” and utterly self-involved.
So, I guess my question would be: who is the more “free” character in this interaction? If your project is going to consider the relationship between personal freedom/ power and financial freedom, it seems like you should have some idea of what it means to be personally free. Is it a feeling? Or something socially proscribed? What about the difference between “freedom to” and “freedom from”? Maybe the woman is more free in your story because she knows what needs to be done and is free from the many decisions that the guy faces- and the accompanying anxiety? I have a homeless friend who does yard work for me who chooses to be homeless in Dayton rather than living with his well-off son in California because (as he says) he can “do whatever I damn well please”. He doesn’t have a mortgage or social obligations and that feels more free to him. Maybe you’ll see something like that at the Drop?
Anyway, because this piece of fiction-ish writing was clearly not the product of an objective observer, maybe an interesting angle for this project would be to consider how your observation changes a thing? What power are you contributing (and attributing) to the situations you observe? How does your idea of freedom maybe differ from that of the people you’re observing?