Survivor Journals
Bob of If I Die Before I Wake
has invited nine journallers to participate in a Cyber
Survivor Adventure.
Every couple of weeks, the
group will be issued a "challenge entry". The
site will post a excerpt from the challenge entries, as
well as the link to the complete entry found on the
journaller's own journal site.
After the challenge entry is posted, the nine journallers
will vote one of the writers off the site.
The "ousted" journaller will actually remain on
the site, but rather than posting further challenge
entries, they will act as a judge and commentator.
The first challenge entry has been issued, and can be
found at the Survivor Journal website. The actual entries
should be completed by
October 1, 2000.
Please take the time to visit, especially once the
challenge entries are posted. There is a message board to
post your thoughts/comments and also a instant poll where
visitors can vote for who they would want to see kicked
off the site.
The reasons behind Survivor Journals are simple.
1. To try something new.
2. Increase the interaction of the journal community.
3. The challenge.
4. Increased exposure to all journals involved.
So take a look around, explore all the journals involved.
If you would like to take part in Survivor Journals, Year
Two (around Nov/Dec 2000), let Bob know!
|
MY WORLD
October 15, 2000
This is my response to Challenge #2 in the Survivor Journals project. The challenge is to describe your world.
I’ve been a devotee of Gilbert & Sullivan long enough not to know that the “topsy turvy” world that is often described as being created by G&S is definitely the best description of my world.
What is a world? Is it the physical place where you live? Should I describe the flat surfaces overflowing with papers, magazines, and the other detritus of life that I never quite seem to straighten up? Should I talk about the threadbare carpets, the dog hair on the couch, the photos which cover all the walls and bring back memories of childhood-- our own and our children’s, the foreign students we hosted for so many years, or the years of the children’ theatre. Do I talk about the souvenirs picked up on our travels-- not expensive baubles, but junk that has meaning and recalls other times and other places.
Or is my world the space created by the people and events around me? In my day to day world, I am a wife, the mother of grown children and of dead children. I pretend to work, but have perfected the art of procrastination. I pretend i can write and have fooled a newspaper into actually paying me to do it. I occasionally act as a housewife, but fall far short of the mark far too many times. I am passionately dedicated to equality for all people, and to the eradication of HIV as an epidemic. I love theatre and books and hate liver and beets. Is this my world?
Is my world Walt, the rock on which I stand, whose patience and understanding allows me to experience all sorts of other worlds? Would my world crumble if he were not around? Yes.
Is my world the one I borrow from time to time. Is it running around with Steve, watching him perform all over the country, having cocktails with him and Carol Channing, being wined and dined by important people at important universities, sharing a bed while we watch dumb movies on TV. When Steve goes home on Monday, will my world change? Yes. I’ll no longer have this adopted big/little brother of mine lounging around the house, running computer lines across the floor and demanding food. Nobody will fill my house with music and my head with philosophical discussions. My world will shift back to what it was before he arrived this week.
Is my world the one I’ve shared with Peggy this past month, on the road traveling to places I’ve always wanted to go, doing things (like hot air ballooning), which I’ve always been curious about but never dared try. We have two more weeks, which will include a week in Seattle, possibly whale watching, possibly a trip to Vancouver Island, possibly a photo tour of Mt. St. Helen’s. This is my world right now and will this world end when she returns to Australia on October 29. Of course. As Adair Lara says, “People who go take a piece of your world that you saw through their eyes and that precious third thing that existed only when you were together.” When Peggy returns to her world, I will no longer see the world through her eyes. Sunflowers will just look like sunflowers. Pumpkins will just look like pumpkins. Nobody will give me a hard time for spelling “wrong” or for driving on the wrong side of the road. Nobody will feed me jellybellies to keep me awake, or help me get lost in strange towns. The world in which I have been living these past weeks will once again shift.
Or is my world the one in my head, which is peopled with those I love, living and dead, who live with me and are a part of all of my adventures, whether routine or out of the ordinary. Does my world end when someone leaves the physical part of my world? It sometimes seems like it. But it doesn’t. The world continues, even though I want to shout “Stop the World, I want to get off too!”
Do I wake up each morning and choose the world I intend to live in that day, or do I move from world to world as the situations around me change throughout the day?
Or is my world somewhere “out there” still waiting to be discovered. Do I pass from world to world in my every day life, waiting for the day when I move on to a new world, one for which all of the worlds I have passed through in my life have prepared me.
I am the Starship Enterprise, constantly seeking out new worlds and new adventures*, boldly going where no one, least of all me, has gone before...
(*yeah, yeah, yeah--I know it’s”new life and new civilizations,” but how does that fit into an essay about my world???)
|
