Writers Notebook - July 2014 | creativity-journal

Writer's Notebook for July 2015

Writer’s notebook 1st entry – July 5, 2014

I am horny. I am lonely, I am wishful

I am hopeful about the future

I am amazed that I am so close to finishing my doctoral work

I am tired, Sometimes I am without any energy and sometimes I’m both restless and tired at the same time. Sometimes I am bored. I am forgetful and loose my keys and forget where I put things

I am excited to be here with intelligency

I am interested

I am nervous

I am ready

I would like to the story of:

I would like to tell the story of my interest in social justice. I remember going to Memphis and encountering Jim Crow for the first time. I would like to tell the story of how my first encounter with Jim Crow has affected my life. Until I had that experience I really did not understand the problem. I was ten years old and had limited language skills due to my deafness. Until I landed in Memphis just before Christmas in 1956 I had no idea what Jim Crow was.

Being___ together is not enough, we are different

Being human together is not enough we are different in so many ways, different skin colors, different facial features, different hair texture, different ways of expressing our sexuality or identifying our sexual preference. Being sexual together is not enough, we are different. Our issues and impressions are different from each other. There are many stories and many perspetives.

Residency – Sunday, July 6, 2014

Our plane finally landed in Memphis after what seemed to me like an interminable trip from Dallas. I was fidgety and impatient. I also needed to use the men’s room. So when we finally got our bags I let go of my step-mothers hand and ran to the nearest bathroom. As I was starting to do my business a man grabbed me from behind, began shaking and yelling at me, “what are you doing in the niggers bathroom?” Mom was hysterical but I finally was taken to the proper bathroom, tears running down my face…

The tiny bedroom, which is south facing has enough room for a bed, desk, a dresser, swivel chair and three bookcases. I begin my tenancy in May, it was not too humid and the weather was sunny and clear. This is the cave where I spend most of the day reading and writing.

As I entered the lobby a woman greeted me, introduced herself and the other person with her, “hi, I’m Carol and this is Eric.” My eyes gazed at the woman and I recognized that I was looking at her as a collection of body parts. Yes, I am interested in positive social change which is why I’ve come to this particular event.

Number four, geez I only thought we were going to do three. I’m flat out of beginnings. What is happening now? Well I’m sitting here writing beginnings. It is a conference room at a fancy conference center located near the airport in the middle of nowhere in a mid-sized town in the Midwest. I’m here to among other things improve my writing and engage the reader at the beginning of the story. You may notice that I did not begin with “it’s a dark and stormy night…”

Having our academic residency in the middle of nowhere is probably a good thing. There is not much to distract us from being here, now; except the bar which has so-so food and is a bit pricey. There is a hamburger joint and a sandwich place across the street at the local gas station. I am staying focused on the work at hand, hanging out with people I know and meeting new people for the first time. In some ways the academic residency is like a homecoming.

Residency – Third entry – July 7th

Big ideas:

Beloved community

Personalizing slavery – if I owned a tobacco farm 150 years ago and I needed help

Embracing and practicing racism

Baptist narratives

New monastastacism

Economy solidarity

Important moments in my life

Born disabled

Father’s alcoholism

Mother’s death when I was four

Father’s recovery

Finishing BA

Marriage and divorce (8 years)

My dark night of the soul

My version of poverty

Appreciation of Dr. King

Getting a Masters

Entering Ph.D. work

Engaging with the Baptist religion and counter narrative

Connections:

I see a definite connection between my “dark night of the soul” and my appreciation of King to my desire to actively work for social change. I really had no consciousness of the Other until I experienced being Othered in a significant way even though I have always been the Other. There is also a connection to my childhood that did not make the list, namely, being teased and bullied while wearing a hearing aid.

Scene connecting private and public:

I felt great shame when I walked into the psychiatrist’s office to undergo a diagnostic to determine my employability.

I was in the office of a psychiatrist who blindfolded me and asked me to identify objects he put in my hand. Then he gave me a picture and asked me to tell him a story. It was difficult because…

July 15, 2014

Somehow in all the discipline for being out of control with rage at the bullying of the kids, after writing on the blackboard the phrase, “self-control” is the greatest thing in the world 100 times for the umpteenth time, finally I got the idea that being useful would win me approval of the teachers. I have been attempting with varying degrees of success over the decades to be useful to others. Sometimes I’m accepted, even liked. It appears that I’ve assimilated into the group at least as long as I’m useful.

Being accepted is…

Something that makes me feel ok about myself, ok with my existence. I think sometimes I forget that I’m deaf, defective, wrong, inappropriate or whatever. Still, I feel uncomfortable because I somehow think I’m not really part of the group, not really accepted just for being me. I had to earn respect, I had to earn my membership in the group. If there is a club that wants me, sometimes I don’t want to join.

Being a “joiner” means…

I have a purpose, a project, something to do with myself. I do remember a feeling of self-importance in my early years of community involvement, but that slipped away as I learned the hard way that what I did or accomplished was really fleeting, quite temporary. Tomorrow there would be a new problem, a new issue, a new project. It took years but finally I came to understand that each thing I do hopefully has some value and that it is not about me but about WE. Weness has been an important part of who I am. I have a life-long interest in being part of a group, a community – something larger than life and certainly bigger than little old me.