LIT2930 Final Project pt2

Text for the Map of My Head

As described by my essay, these are the phrases that would comprise the “noodles” of my map. My intent was to cut each line into a strip, tape all of the strips together, and weave the resulting strand through the grid of chicken wire; all of this was to be contained within the cardboard box.

Where is the snooze button… I need to be sleeping more. I can’t believe I let you keep me up that long talking about such bullshit. I can’t believe I’m still talking to you. I might still love you, but not enough to try to stay with you. Don’t ask me what I think, you really don’t want to know. Gran would’ve known just how to answer that. I miss Gran. I wonder if she’s actually in heaven, or hell, or Elysium, or whatever. I wonder if she got reborn as some German librarian—she would have like that, I think. Is that even real? Is God even real? Is it time for lunch yet? Why are the kids never ready for lunch, even if it’s this late? Thank God it’s nap time. Okay, there might be a God. God, I need to get a new job. How am I going to afford next semester and still pay for the car? I hate how sleepy nap time makes me, especially with all this rain—wait, did I put the car windows up? Shit. I wonder if Karen can let me go check—of course not. God I hate working here. I hope one of those last applications goes through. I should send out a few more tonight, after I finish that calculus test. Jason, take the toy out of your mouth and go rinse it off. That’s yucky, dude, don’t do it again. Antiderivatives add one to the exponent, right? I think so. Sammy would know, I should text her. We should really hang—stupid phone, “hang,” not“gang”—out again soon. She is such a great friend. I need more friends. I wonder how Powell’s doing today. God, I miss her. I hope she’s happy. She has such a great opportunity down there, I wish she and Nick didn’t have to be so far apart right now, they’re both so crazy without each other. I wonder if she can come up for my birthday. We can make cookies and drink and get crazy giggly like last time… and I should not be thinking about that at work. I wonder where I should get lunch. Micky D’s is cheaper, and their drive-thru is always faster. Burger King takes foreeeever to get through the line, but it’s easier to get to and I like their food better. Going into the cafeteria always makes me feel weird. I should be used to feeling weird by now. I always thought that was just something you dealt with in high school and then grew out of, like acne and braces and wearing way-too-big t-shirts tucked into belted jeans. Small wonder I didn’t date until college, not until Barry came along and ohgodidoNotwanttogodownthatroadrightnow. Mrs. Langdon? This is Megan from the daycare. I’m sorry, but Kaleigh’s really not feeling well, she’s got a bad fever, she needs to be taken home. We’ll see you in an hour. Thanks. Should I start taking self-defense classes again? Or maybe just go to the gym more. PT should be coming up here soon, my score is going to suck this time around. I really need to be doing more sit-ups. What time did I start my break again? I think I’m late. Lori probably won’t even look up from her computer… I wonder what her malfunction is, why does she hate me? I should never have taken this job. God, I need to get a new job. Kent campus should be hiring tutors soon. I’d be able to get home earlier. Mom would like that. Wonder what she’s up to, should be about time to go pick up the boys from school. I can’t believe they have AP exams next week and they aren’t even studying. They’re going to fail, the knuckleheads. Drew at least knows better; Justin’s just being an idiot. Mommy’s coming, Max, don’t cry honey. Mommy will be here soon, she’s just running…about an hour late. It’s okay, she’ll be here soon. I wonder if David’s finished his math stuff yet. Did he understand synthetic division after his last class? Maybe I should help him study… but we’d probably end up on his couch again… Not at work. Just two more hours of this, and I can take off these shoes, and sit down, and it’ll be quiet, and I can relax. And do integrations—well, at least it will be quiet. AJ, that is not a nice word. We don’t call our friends that name, they have their own names, and that’s what we call them.Did I remember to sign out that last kid? How can corporate honestly expect me to watch this many kids, and do this much paperwork, and still teach the curriculum? When was the last time they tried working in a classroom—seriously?! No, Abby, no piggyback rides today, Ms Megan’s back still hurts from the last time you jumped on me. I have to go, it’s time for me to go home, would you please let go of my leg, goodbyeIloveyouseeyoutomorrow—Gone! Why won’t this guy do the speed limit? Nope, wait, he is—I’m the one speeding. I can’t wait to get home and put on my pjs. This song is awesome! I hope David gets out early tonight so we can watch a movie. Tonight is a good night for Moulin Rouge, I think. He’s supposed to be home soon. Do I have time to go home and change? Not really, but he’s too sweet to say anything about it. I wish I were better for him. He deserves someone nicer. I should stop picking on him—red light. Egads, but I’m tired. Maybe no movie tonight, just a quick dinner and snuggling in the car on the way back. I should be getting home soon, I need to get some sleep tonight. I should really be sleeping more.

LIT2930 Final Project: A Map of My Head

Are You Here?: An impressionistic map of the inside of my head

Let me start by saying that this is one of the most interesting and creative assignments I've had outside of an art class. I loved the idea behind this essay--until I had to make it personal. Then it was not so fun. Both I and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator consider me an introspective person. I like to think, to get lost in thoughts big and wide; I traverse the corridors of my mind with all the alacrity of a child on her favorite playground. But while I've always considered my headspace as a more-directly-than-metaphors-usually-are place, I never before tried or even thought to map it out as a place (partly because of the constant changing of the terrain, partly because of its intangible nature, and partly because I get slightly dyslexic when trying to navigate maps). The idea of mapping something so intangible, while intriguing, seemed a daunting task.

But what is life without a little challenge every once in a while?

I like things to make sense. Even as a child, I was quick to dismiss many of the typical myths fed to me by adults on the simple grounds of illogic, and have always been intrusively and irritatingly fond of the 'why' of things. (This might just explain the odd, objective fascination I have with people as a whole. In a world that requires order and patterns and cycles, we stick out like the sorest of left thumbs. I have always been astounded and confused and bewildered by people.) While I had the misfortune of going through puberty, and the awakening to self and society that goes with the coming of age, I tried to make people--and their inevitable social interactions--make sense. As with all queries, I turned first to books. I came across the book Men are like Waffles, Women are like Spaghetti, (Bill & Pam Farrel. I don't recommend it unles you're one of those people who derive pleasure/amusement from rampant sexism supported by Westernized Christianity. Which I don't suppose you would.) which claims that the key to making relationships across the gender-lines work is understanding that each sex has a distinct way of thinking and organizing thoughts: that men are prone to compartmentalize thoughts into "boxes," like waffles; and that women tend to preserve the organic, interconnected-ness of their thoughts, the way spaghetti noodles all twine together. At first, this simple classification seemed to work. Everyone knows that women are more emotional than men, and more apt to express those emotions in all aspects of their life, right? Isn't this something we're conditioned to Know from childhood, that girls can cry over playground politics but boys have to "keep a stiff upper lip, suck it up, and run along"? So the book was right. Right?

And then--heaven help me--I started to think. What about me? I'm a woman--definitely. I am an emotional being--of course. My emotions affect every area of my life--hang on a second. That's not quite true. I'm a fairly well-contained individual. I've been told often enough (usually by some irate would-be love interest) that I'm incredibly difficult to read, to connect with emotionally when I don't want to. If I'm so obviously, uncontrollably emotional as the Farrels' book suggests, how can so many of my peers call me "closed-off" and "unreadable"? And how often have I gone to work right after some horrible argument and carried on, with my customers and coworkers none the wiser? More than enough to discredit this as a viable theory, for sure. And so out the window it went. But the image was one that has stayed with me, enough for me to rework it into the physical 'map' required for this project.

The entirety of the actual 'map' of my head would be contained in a cardboard box. You can't see through cardboard, but it can be broken through or, over time, worn thin enough to get into. Cardboard isn't fancy or showy, but it's still pretty durable; it also changes, when you get it wet or kick it or leave it in te sun too long. The bottom of the box would be taped tightly shut, but the top would be folded closed. Inside would be a piece of chicken wire, cut square to fit through the middle of the box, parallel to the ground, symbolizzing the way I (try to) make sense of my self and my thoughts. (I also have a healthy respect for chicken wire after spending most of a semester of an art class trying to bend it into the shape I wanted without tearing my hands to pieces. Chicken wire  holds its shape well, but getting it to move is by no means an easy operation. I still have scars.)  Threaded through thewire grid in no particular pattern would be one long, continuous loop of paper; printed on it would be the thoughts I'd recorded from a particular day, representing the stream of consciousness that follows its own rganic pattern, sometimes defying the rigid logic I try to impose on it but not always.

No matter how much you try to understand and predict them, people make little quantifiable sense. Even the most logical people are affected by their emotions. This balance of reason and emotion, of control and uncontrollable, of defying expectations and conforming, is a big part of what makes us human, and what separates us from every other living thing. It's how I interpret myself.

 

Playlist for Final Project: Inside My Head Landscape

1. "In My Head" Anna Nalick
2. "Bigger than My Body" John Mayer
3. "Her Name Is Alice" Shinedown
4.  That reflection song from Mulan
5. "Nathaniel Falls" from the soundtrack of The Soloist
6. "Wuthering Heights" Hayley Westenra
7. "Iris" The Goo Goo Dolls
8. "What I am is what I am, are you what you are or what?"
9. "City Symphony" from the soundtrack of The Soloist
10. "What I've Done" Linkin Park
11. "Map of My Head" Muse
12. "All the Lonely People [Eleanor Rigby]"The Beatles
13. "These R the Thoughts" Alanis Morissette
14. "This Is Who We Are" Hawthorne Heights
15. "Adia" Sarah McLachlan
16. "In Between" Linkin Park
17. "Everything" Alanis Morissette
18. "I'm Still Here [Jim's Theme]" John Rzeznik
19. "Misguided Ghosts" Paramore
20. "The Song that Never Ends" Nick Dunlop

There are things deeper than eyes can see at work here.

One of the reasons I enjoy writing so much is because I really, truly suck at saying stuff. [Most] Anyone can talk--open your mouth, make the sounds that make the words--but actually conveying meaning and thought and emotion--that is hard. I can tell you what happened to me today. I can tell you what I saw and did and said, and that's easy enough. But don't ask me what I thought. Do not look me in the eye, with your back to a brick wall, and ask me to say feelings, to admit to holding such huge, dangerous, volatile things inside myself and turn them loose in the air between us.

"Don't ask," I said, still exhaling the end notes of that not-at-all-funny laugh, the one the borders hysteria on three sides. "You open that door, you never know what will come through. And I'm not responsible for all the thoughts that come into my head." Especially lately, but I don't need to mention that. And hearing myself be this honest, even behind the thinner half of a bad joke, makes me want to cry and laugh and sing and scream and fall to all the little pieces, to show you how guilty and broken I feel and how much that hurts. I want to tell you that I'm not sleeping well again, that I'm eating too much and not enough, that I cried yesterday because I just felt so lonely. I want to ask you why my friendship wasn't enough, why he didn't just call me, or anyone, or just stop for a second and ask someone to hold him. I want to ask. You don't know.

I have resolved never to smoke anything ever again. I haven't had a drink since it happened--I am afraid I will find the bottle's end and never come back. I have had sex since it happened, but only once and I felt so guilty afterward, so shamefully alive, that I spent the rest of the night on the couch. I could not tell you why. I don't think I can even tell you now, even though your back is to the brick wall and you might be just as broken as I am, maybe. I can't tell you that your steady gaze is pulling all my broken parts up through the thin thin shell of my composure, and that is why I am shifting impatient, waiting to be gone.I am falling apart and I can't tell you that. I can't tell you. I can't tell you goodbye.