Memory......

I must have been around three to four years old, and I know that because I remember waking up in the smaller bedroom. This means that my sister had yet to be born. I woke up with the sun and my elbow itched like crazy. There was nothing really remarkable about that morning (except for the fact that the sun was shining in Portland), but I thought to myself, I'm going to remember waking up this morning. And I still do.

Sketches of my neighborhood

Right, Tam, first reading the first paragraphs of Jayber Crow (I need a haircut, too, I don't know if you noticed) and seeing how there's two things going on there--the old barber, the place described. And so the mental map, memory map, getting an image in your head, then starting to write about the place where you grew up, however you like.

Of course I've done this many times in the stories I used to write, but I can always start again:

My house is halfway up the hill, below the railroad tracks, above the sewers. My cat used to go sit in the sewers when it was rainy or cold, which I never understood. Why didn't he come in the house, when it was so much more cozy? Next door lived Bubba and Willy with their grandma, sometimes, and they were great at videogames and had lots of X-men lore. On the other side was Roddy, whose wife played Chopin while he sneezed so loud. Around the corner lived Greg and Donald. Greg's house was closer; our moms' gardens were on either side of the chain link fence growing tomatoes, corn, lettuce. Donald had the woods full of sticks and leaves and, we supposed, the occasional hobo from the trains. And beyond that, the neighborhood stretched to Old Town.

Now, to write as if we're anthropologists, historians, sociologists--an outsider, trying to define the same place from a different perspective, colder, analytical, academic:

How quaint, this American suburb from the 2nd half of the 20th century. Full of post-war security, overlaid with cold-war dread, but mostly uncertainty, that characteristic place-less-ness of the latter decades. Complacency, dull complicity in the global system from the comfort of a TV-glow hearth. There are streets lined with single family homes. Initially occupied by the white middle class employed in the suburban businesses or commuting into DC, these gave way beginning in the late 90s to an increasing influx of immigrants from Latin America, small business owners, as part of the transformation of Old Town and of Gaithersburg in general.

(Sorry I post so much. At the moment I just feel I need to move this video down the page so it's not the first thing you see here...)

Vocal Folds Revealed

My old house...

Today I went to my old house. Already, so incredibly old. I found a whole year of silence accumulated, with its 365 small days silence waits to tell all the emptiness that felt. Silences are small and gloomy. I swear I chat with them, until I could almost see them. I realized that at night they cry like children, for being so alone in the big house, I think. I thought a year was not much, but it is amazing how much time can do in a year.
I assure you - you already know - but you have to prove - that the time is so ruthless, so powerful. An empty house for a year, a vacant house once, so suddenly. A house with windows closed and sealed the door, filled with dark corners. And the patio, with plants that grow stubborn, foolish, unaware of absences, without realizing that no longer grow for anybody. Through all the rooms, I walked around the yard. It could smell the silence and darkness. I had to convince myself that it was the same house where I had lived for years. But, time erases everything - what a novelty. But when you say that, you do not usually think that everything is going to be erased. And yet, I find that house now, so empty of people as devoid of sound, so bereft of a voice speaking in another voice, without a cauldron on the fire to the mate, without a phone to ring, without someone call someone, without even one person to sleep and dream on a bed, not even two people who dream and do not sleep on a bed, cooking without a woman without a man caming and without a table set, no one reading, no music without the sound of someone who comes without a postman dropping letters, without a cat sleeping on the branch of the vine.
And then he realizes that this is the time, with its ability to empty in an instant what once was so packed.
At one point in the afternoon, when the silence began to bother me with its complaint - a little, in fact, beginning to feel sad - I became the distracted (left, I closed the door quietly and went outside, hurry. And I went to drink a coffee, and came to write this, I do not know why.

Town Descriptions

In the last workshop meeting, after reading an extract from Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow, we were asked to describe our home town from 2 perspectives: one from our own subjective point of view and anotherone as a foreigner or an anthropologist studying the place.

Here is one of the results:

-----

#1

My town is quite a long way from downlotn Montevideo. I never really liked it that much , so it never became part of me. Besides, I used to go to school and have friends in other parts of the city, so I never got too attached. Mostly we drove down places I never walked around so they were just pictures through my car window that never woke any feeling in me. However, I can remember every turn and detail of that route. I must have done it a million times, and although it was not moving or interesting for me, I memorized it for some reason. Survival I guess. I have to drive through those streets now. To go from my house to my school you had to go through a very hidden little street, full of holes, so you had to go really slow. Then right by the bus stop I frequently use now and the very colorful elementary school. Right after a few speed bumps there was a cars factory and a very smelly bridge. I always hated that smell. It got specially disgusting in the summer. After that bridge, the nice part of the route began. There were a couple of fancy labs, a gas station with a supermarket, and after a curve we crossed a big avenue. Right after that avenue i would stand up in the bus since my bus stop is shortly after. Down another curve we reached four big pillars of concrete, commonly known as "Los Portones". Although they are quite impressive, they are only just that, 4 pillars of concrete. After a couple of blocks by foot, quite hidden, there was the massive building of my school.

#2

This town they call "Paso Carrasco" is quite uninteresting. It has no squares, no big buildings, nothing remarkable. Just as its name says, it is just a place you go by in your way to some other place. Maybe the airport, that is just a few km further.

The people in here seem to be divided into 2 groups: the ones whose lives revolve entirely around this town and those who come only to sleep because they happen to have their beds there. This last group complains bacause the other group does not represent them, but well, they are the only ones there all day.

Houses are all very homogeneous, small and with big front and back yards. Lots of children everywhere all the time, maybe because the school is not big enough. There is not many old people, at least not that you can see, so maybe they stay in their houses all the time, or they work somewhere else and you just see them getting off buses.

People here seem to be completely dependent on 3 buses, which are the only 3 ways out of this town if you happen hot to have a car.

---

Tam

Magela Eirin

1)Tomorrow rhymes with sorrow.
2)Cry rhymes with try
3)Place rhymes with space
4)Why rhymes with lie
5)Living rhymes giving

Fun things for the week

There may be no classes this week, but that's no excuse not to be learning. We're holding the workshop in the library in Plaza Cagancha, 6pm on Tuesday. And then there's always the blog to keep us busy.

So see what you make of these:

words -- This is an awesome video! (Thanks to Kate for sharing.) Can you figure out the unspoken words for all the scenes?

Also,

(drumroll, please--that's a clue)

Where is Wes in Montevideo?

This might become a weekly activity if you like it. An easy one to start off --

and a more challenging one --

Post your answers as comments!

A man's man

Here's the memory I'd written and shared at the first meeting.

I told how I was sitting in my neighborhood bar y pizzeria on a Sunday afternoon, writing about some things that were on my mind--

To immigrate, to fight, to think about revolutions or sleep in the street.

And then something happened that I love when it happens. Writing, that most solitary of activities, led to a real human interaction--

(This is where Fabian started talking to me, asking what I was writing, where was I from, then, and introducing me to the people there and the people coming in--Jose, Carlos, Ema--who proceeded to talk to me, too, while he went to smoke or take a piss. Buying the national whiskey, discussing Uruguay and the US, the day he decided to move to Montevideo, the pilgrimages he would make in the footsteps of the Che. How for reasons of power and economic interest the US state acts unjustly, and the people are able to disagree but not avoid the wars, the imposition of ideals we ourselves cannot live up to. How writing is good, for remembering, imagining how people are, their inner world and ours having a conversation.)

Now Fabian and I have become good friends. We talk about writing a lot. And that is the sort of thing I'm hoping will emerge from this workshop.

Tamara's memory

Wes, here is the memory I wrote. I thought i could add it here myself instead of mailing it :) Should I also add the response?

Workshop's 1st meeting: Writing one memory

One of the most significant experiences of my life came from the reading of an e-mail. As cold as it sounds, it produced an impression so profound as to leave me frozen in front of my computer for quite some time. In those minutes where I couldn't even think straight I immediately thought of each and every person I'd like to share the good news with, and this imagining their reactions made me even happier than I was.

Tam

About the IPA Writing Workshop

The writing workshop's first meeting was held August 3, 2010, with the participation of students and professors at Montevideo's Instituto de Profesores Artigas and Fulbright English Teaching Assistants.

The aim is to provide a time and space for student writing and discussion (in English). Readings, conversations, pair and small group work, and individual writing exercises are the basis of the project. Examples of the writing coming out of this process will be shared here.

Along with the writing workshop, the blog will also foster connections between students in their practice. Their projects and interests will be represented here in photos, audio interviews, and videos.

We meet every Tuesday at 6pm in the 1st floor Foreign Languages Office.

Avda. del Libertador 2025 - Montevideo
contact: wesley.schantz@fulbrightmail.org