I've always liked that word: plethora. I also like the word ‘marginal,’ even better than plethora. It can be used as faint and damning praise, or to express that you’re just barely more than satisfied, or that whatever it was almost didn’t make the grade. "The service was marginally acceptable." I just picture that barest sliver of a slice of a fraction, and that’s how much approval I’m giving. I don’t get to use it often, but it’s one of my best insults. Not that I go around insulting people, but when it’s time to do it … it’s so much fun to do it in a civil manner!
On another note, Dave M. is encouraging me in my writing. He hasn’t seen what I have here on AuthorsDen, but he knows about it. And I asked him to put a link to this site on my MySpace page (it’s been up for about 6 months, but logging onto it earlier this week was just my second time going onto it). Anyway, I think me being here is inspiring him to write. He's wanted to write his autobiography for a long time, but says that he's not a writer. I know that if I can keep him talking about it, I can write it for him ... or I can just encourage him to write it himself!
Either way, it's going to make a fascinating story. He hasn't seen what I've written of his biography. On one hand, I feel a little apprehension – what if I’m not getting it right? What if he needs to control the whole process? Then again, that could be a powerful tool for us. He may say, no, no, no, that's not it!," but in needing to correct me, we'll get to the bottom of things. The real story can then leap out at us and I’ll be swift like the wind, putting it to paper.
I do believe in listening to a person’s story and writing it down myself. You can do this to help someone build his or her résumé, too. It’s a lot easier that way, for people who hate creating a résumé. Actually, this storytelling method is great for getting fact out of people who swear they can't write or don’t even think they can tell a story well. Just let them talk, and you keep track. You can draw it out of them – it’s really just a conversation. You do the formatting.
In any case, since I started here on AuthorsDen, I feel more in story mode. My creative self is taking in life around me and tucking this experience or that observance aside to look at later and maybe twist it around into a story. You can tell several stories at once that way. I like it. I feel so much more alive!
I recently ran across a project I did for a class back at San Jose City College. We had to get an oral history of someone with an interesting story to tell. I interviewed a guy I was dating at the time - he was Mexican, from near Guanajuato. He would tell me the name of his small town, then tell me that it wasn’t even on the map, and that I should look for … well, I forget the name of the next largest town. It will probably come to me at about 3:00 A.M tonight.
In any case, I was shocked by what I uncovered during the process. Although I turned it in for a decent grade, I was so disillusioned that I felt I could hardly go on. I felt bitter. It was about him and why he came here and how he felt about Mexico and the United States. In the past 20 years, he had come here, gotten married, had a son, and built a solid position at his current workplace. He traveled back and forth to visit family regularly, if not frequently.
His son, who was born here, was biracial (his mom was "a white girl," as he used to like to say), and culturally the son was very much American. What got me was that despite having established all of these here – well, in California – after 20 years, he saw the United States as just a place to earn money, and that his real home was in Mexico. Do you see why I felt sick? As much as I rail against our various practices and policies, I love the freedoms and opportunities it gives us. It deserves our love and devotion in return. I guess I'd always thought that immigrants who came here came to feel that way, too. That was a rude awakening.
Also, there is myself as interviewer. It is a younger voice of me, a younger person asking the questions (maybe by about 7 or 8 years) and so I can see myself through different eyes as well. That was interesting. Maybe I'll post that oral history here, too.
Vanessa
