Though my inability to accurately estimate how much time I need to complete various tasks has run me into the ground, I'm actually very appreciative of the process of "journaling." I mean, yes, I've been keeping journals since I was... maybe 6 years old... but this journal was special.
The goal was to keep several writing samples in the journal, but to also play around with the look of the page. A fellow writer told me about a month ago that it's important for writers to "play." I thought that sounded pretty silly... I've never been particularly interested in "playing." Even as a kid, my idea of playing was memorizing Broadway musicals and acting them out with my stuffed animals in my room alone. My sisters and I played "make believe" a little, but it was typically based on books I'd read or theatrical productions I'd seen (I was a big fan of pretending to perform Peter Pan and stand in for Mary Martin).
This journal assignment asks you to play in a visual way... another place where I am distinctly untalented. I was never a doodler in school or a painter. Even when I tried those activities in art class, I would get very frustrated with how incapable I was to make my pictures look like "the real thing."
However, with the journal, you have tons of options for visual presentation. I tore out images from magazines and placed them together with print-outs from the internet. So, the images themselves are not my work, but I have re-arranged them in such a way to tell a story... or illustrate a significant feature of a story.
The prompts for the journal are really what made it a great exercise... we were given topics on which to write that I probably would not have considered on my own. I've decided to share one of the pieces I wrote for this class as an example. The prompt below asked, "Write about a time in which you were considered 'the other'." This prompt was given to us after reading about several racial issues just a few decades ago. Since very few people can identify my race at all, I pulled my material from a childhood memory:
“But, this car seats five people,” I stared blankly at the back of my father’s half-bald head.
“So?”
“When I’m here, there are six of us,” I was wishing for some decent explanation. Maybe this was all they could afford. Maybe the van broke down and this was a rental.
“Oh, yeah,” he spoke as though he was just noticing this fact and looked to his wife in the passenger seat. She looked back at him and her eyes widened. Her expression was expectant as though it were so clearly up to him to explain the situation to me. I was not her child, not her problem.
“Where are we all supposed to sit if we go somewhere?”
“Guess Davie will have to sit in someone’s lap,” my father frowned as he chuckled.
“Isn’t that against the law?” I asked.
“That’s right,” my step-mother chimed in as she turned in her seat to face me. “And you don’t want us to go to jail, do you? So, whenever it’s your turn, you better hide in the floor if a cop drives by.” She turned back in her seat and looked at my father with her chin to her chest and a grin blowing out her cheeks… as though she were proud of herself.
I was silent for several minutes. I was thinking about two major plans. I considered how to get as much of my body down on the floor as possible if a policeman did drive by one day. I imagined my three siblings squirming under the pressure and decided that I should be the one to hide on the floor. I was fast and flexible. I was also deciding how I worried I would be if my father went to jail. For a moment, I felt responsible for the image being painted in my mind: I could see my father in black and white striped pajamas, a ball and chain at his ankle, and a barrel of potatoes and a peeler in a small, lonely cell. I thought of ways to bail him out. I thought of what I would say to my mother when the cops brought me home and told her the story.
I was 8, but I was not blind. I could see from the red paint, the comfy beige interior, and all the stupid gadgets that this was my step-mother’s kind of car. It never entered her mind how her husband’s first child might react to her whim to purchase an attractive vehicle.
“We could all fit into the van,” I couldn’t hold it in any longer.
My step-mother sighed and opened her mouth to say something, but my father interrupted her. “We just thought this car was fun. Didn’t you see that keypad on the outside of the door? I’ll give you the combination so you can get into the car without a key.”
“That’s fun?” I asked with sincere confusion. “A keypad? I know how to use a real key, too.”
“I know you can use a real key,” he sighed. “Look. You’re only here twice a month, so, it won’t be too bad, right?”
My step-mother nodded in agreement and turned in her seat to smile at me.
I hated that smile.
It was the smile she used after my father did her dirty work. She would smile like that as though everything was his doing, like she was my friend, and that she thought this was all a misunderstanding, a crying shame.
I suddenly wanted to go home. I missed my sisters, but I didn’t want to be with these people driving the red car anymore than they wanted me in backseat. My head started to get hot around the temples and where the neck connects. My eyes were tearing, so I poked out my jaw, curled my bottom lip, and blew up hard to dry them out. I noticed my father looking briefly into the rear view mirror in order to see what was making that sound. I saw no concern in his expression as he looked back to the road and turned on the radio.
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