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Joshua on BART, very skeptical of this endeavor.
Joshua happened to be sitting next to me in the Writer's Room at Everett Middle School in SF today, where we were both attending yet another delightful 826 Valencia training. We paired up for a lesson in what to do when you're helping a student write an essay about Flowers for Algernon and neither of you have read it. I was the student. We weren't so great at pretending. We ended up talking about some concept whose name I can't even remember (help me out here Joshua, if you read this) that provides an alternative to thesis sentences. Some eight grader.
This conversation, though, turned out to foreshadow the rest of our afternoon together. I hung around after training broke up, being kind of creepy. I had to meet someone, right? Joshua was busy talking to a staff member about his internship at a pastry shop that had just this morning suddenly fallen through. Bummer. But I heard him mention Berkeley. This further increased my incentive to hang around being creepy until someone included me in the conversation.
Luckily, that didn't take long. Through more awkward standing and refusal to let the conversation end, I managed to somehow (almost) nonverbally convince Joshua to walk his bike next to me all the way to the BART station, which wasn't even entirely where he was going, though was a decent option. By then the conversation had gotten exciting though. I think this often happens between writers (he's a poet).
Topic 1: Is it possible to separate narrative and poetics?
Topic 2: Linguistics (both majored in it), and "language as object orienting behavior". This one got so heated we actually had to stop walking and stand in the middle of the sidewalk to fully express ourselves.
Topic 3: Post-colonialism in French west Africa
These are good topics!
Yet by the time we were most of the way back to Berkeley, I was listening to myself tell Joshua he was being silly for quitting college with only a year to go. Who am I, his mom? Anyway, he fought back valiantly. I pressed upon him a link to the blog, and extracted from him a photo, and very much hope to hang out again and perhaps (his idea) exchange work.
And I've already signed up for an in-school volunteering session, so there shall be no accusing me of using 826 purely as a social network. A valid use, though. Valid.
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SPECIAL IN THE WOODS ANNOUNCEMENT:
I will be in the woods (specifically, Yosemite) starting very early on Friday and continuing through Sunday evening. This means that while I WILL be meeting new people on those days, there will be no blogging about it, unless someone has an iPhone, we have cell service, and I'm very ambitious (unlikely). Since I make the rules, I declare that this is acceptable. I will make a full report upon my return.
Thanks,
The Management
2 comments:
Hmm, for some reason I can't see my photo, which is disappointing as I've never known myself to look like an angel before and I'm curious to know what it looks like. That and the picture just below it are coming out as question marks on several different browsers and computers. Maybe you could try re-posting those pictures (Days 18 and 19)? Hope Yosemite was fun.
- Julietta (i don't think you knew this was me. i had been reading your blog before i met you, which didn't come up in conversation)
Thanks Julietta! I've fixed that problem, I hope -- I appreciate you pointing it out. Trying to take photo uploading shortcuts is apparently not a good idea!
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