Now I'm realizing, as Carrie is working on a substatic and she should let cal's voice be heard in a quote, I need to remember my own advice that I given writing classes. Allowing quotes creates the visceral, creates a better reading experience, as well as allows others in your story.
Dennis Etzel Jr.
Sunday, July 6, 2025
Friday, July 4, 2025
Cinemagic
Enjoy the magic of the movies
Magic as in going outside of dominant or oppressive systems, see religious studies
I offered a film appreciation class which I named Cinemagic because I wanted the name to be unique and approach movies even though in an academic setting also in a unique setting or way
I wanted it in a real way and to examine directors as well as the different elements that make up a film
What I really loved was because I crossed listed it with Mass media, I had many mass media students who were excited and wishing to learn more about aatuer Theory
At the University I teach at has a focus of mass media filmmaking as in actually getting your hands on cameras and making films, as well as now the storytelling and cinematic storytelling, this was a unique opportunity to really focus on each element weekly as well as then parallel with directors
The first movie was do the right thing
Arrested development
Pee-wee's Big Adventure
The boy Detective
The royal tenembaums
Ted? Watch this one
You can Count on Me
http://thecresset.org/2012/Advent/Barton_A2012.html
I'm still having my doubts about Ted. Because it's easy to see Arrested Development and many of these films. And many times their disguised as comedies. Like the Adam Sandler films, just very inappropriate especially towards women. I hated that movie where he kept bringing up that the lawyer had been someone who worked at Hooters and that became one of the funny aha endings to the movie.
I'm looking at Arrested Development that a character characters or family have those traits
Tuesday, July 1, 2025
Summer movies part 2
Alongside how these familial drama movies show us how parent-child rebonding is the theme, there's also the issue about water.
Jaws was the first movie I could remember seeing at the drive-in but I mean is that as we were driving by the drive-in movie theater where the screen was way in the distance I could see jaws the scene of water I just remember people you know the shark in scene you know from point of view
Also when I was in the movie theaters for that James Bond movie where Adele sings This is the End close your eyes and count to 10 I immediately was Ray triggered and stuck in my seat as I thought of my first swimming lessons
I could finally go through my fear of water through going to Texas just this as they say once in a lifetime experience of seeing the ocean for the first time. The Beauty and the play from the water park. I thought of writing that how do I teach poetry in a way or even lead workshops that it's about how words are beautiful and arranging them in ways and then the play of arranging them
Part of this thinking came from the summer before when I went to naropa as part of the summer writers conference. Again I was really wonderful to have a school to help support me and all of that staff but I went as a student. It was there that CA Conrad gave me the way the ritual for helping heal from summer as well as those who were into horoscopes that I was a Leo Sun and Moon as well as a Leo
Monday, June 30, 2025
Imposter syndrome
It's if looking at the hero's journey, We're Young says a lot of that as individuation or what we would call self-actualization, then it's that balancing that leads us to knowing how we can access each of the archetypes within us for whatever is needed. That we all carry some degree of each of the 12 archetypes and so whatever we're called to do we pull within us and the more self-actualized we are the easier it is to recognize how to pull each or Blended hybrid of archetypes.
Follow the clues
I like how things pop up on Instagram that lead me further to exploring when I'm interested in. I like how some looks laid me to same other books by the same author that exactly what I'm looking for. Like Helen O'Hara going from a superhero book two women versus hollywood. I want to write the Memoir that has nothing to do with me. I want the Memoir that isn't just about my life for me, like I'm reading in so many other books. I want to write the Memoir that doesn't brag or show or even tell people anything didactic or show off who I know. Just like the ecruite feminine inspires me to write, that a majority of my books are written by women, I'm seeking for that feminist centered writing that is inclusive, that makes a circle where a hierarchy would be made by men
Movies mythology and reality
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DLDb5QsSGrz/?igsh=b2E3d2M4YWlyYzlo
https://wkamaubell.substack.com/p/you-are-the-hero-youve-been-waiting?r=2jzu65&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true
Sunday, June 29, 2025
Begin with a turn?
If you were thinking of my life as a sonnet, then it might as well be the Volta the tournament where shifts from what would be the first eight lines to the last six and boy are these last six lines been a wonderful time!
And so maybe on the eve of my writing for my sabbatical I will start with this. And just figure out where I might be going and thinking about film
Ignore people who aren't supportive of your vision
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DKkq0SHJUxT/?igsh=bjcxdmdhMTE2eTRr
In the Summers
In looking at films that take place during the summer, I'm finding this really big theme about parent- children relationships. Yeah, this makes sense that you have this time outside of what we call school as well as the rituals of summer. That maybe it becomes a mythic space as many mythologies are also about familial ties? I highly recommend these three! If you haven't seen them yet. Any others around this theme you would recommend?
In the Summers, Kings of Summer, Somewhere
Friday, June 27, 2025
Pedantic
Rob used to call my poetry pedantic. Maybe it's because well he'd put take crack shots but I also like that about him. He too seemed like to be coming into a place of healing from something else. Of course that teacher Robert Johnson would take pokes at us. It's the trouble with masculinity. The thing about being pedantic in my brain is trying to figure things out and finding a way to make sense of it through certain ways of creating a statement. Of course the qualifiers help that we don't want to say all but many or some
Being pedantic or just trying to make sense of the world through all of the different things that come to me in my brain or things I've read or things I'm engaged in
It's the same with the latest Batman movie where hypermasculinity is about hyper individualism. But it can also be someone with cptsd not able to move out into the world. Of course we also need to think about neurodivergence. As I'm near a Divergent and went through trauma it was very hard for me difficult for me to put even things in words. And so now it's likely that some of the words I use sound pedantic because I'm still trying to flex those muscles and not think to rock brain about it
Classroom religious
I noticed when people pray, they close their eyes and bowed at their heads. Someone often leads in prayer with their words. Maybe closing the eyes is to avoid visual distractions. It's also to help concentrate on the words. In my classroom, even though I'm not asking people to close their eyes and bow down, I would still like for them to concentrate on my words and keep their visuals distractions be a cell phones away
Thursday, June 26, 2025
Don't worry about being too avant-garde
“Something comes out, and it’s too avant-garde at the time. And then the real world catches up with it,” he says,
https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/tron-ares-upgrade-saga-holy-grail-graphics-exclusive/
Wednesday, June 25, 2025
Persona
Poetry writing class a student who is in the theater said that's how you take on a role of acting, that you read the script and learn the character but then you have to make some kind of connection with that character. You figure out how to enter that character's world through something you have in common and then you can inhabit that character in a way no one else can. That you aren't yourself when acting but you also are through that character.
And no one else can act that character like you can.
The same with Persona poetry, how I loved learning about it through the poet Ai and was deeply moved by how her ethics of being someone of color couldn't have it serial killers and other white people because the oppressed know the oppressors more than themselves.
Persona poetry taking on the mask and that you can actually feel more through that.
So as I'm reading about all of the different names going around about who will be the Batman in The Bold and the brave, I realized I'll try to connect with that character. And I'm thinking of childhood and the feeling of being an orphan the orphan archetype.
Then I start crying. It's because of these untapped parts of my childhood that I haven't explored still as someone who could see it at a distance. That I don't want to relive it has that causes damage but to see it objectively in this idea of in happening a character who is felt those archetypes that I have that we all have in US allowed for me to release some kind of visceral feeling.
Boyhood
Boy, I hated that movie. Maybe it's because we are faced with our own childhoods when we see a movie like that one. As a parent we have to face our own childhoods as we're bringing up our children. But I find that the worst space is when you return to a place from childhood even as an adult there are those days that you've let your guard down for some reason and those floods of memories come back. Like I'm at Gage Park and thinking of all of those things while trying to remain optimistic and grounded that my son is here learning theater learning the tricks and the trade as they say, Helen Hawker,
I want to load up all of those experiences that could play me onto the back of the train and let it take a ride around the park
but that I think of me when my own theater experience as horrid the grease Musical for a movie I loved but was treated so horribly by those older teenagers. And then I let myself be the Clown because I don't know how to fit in. So much of me not wanting to be a boy and having all of those expectations that I just wanted to care about others in this gender dichotomy. That even the Young woman who was put up by her friends to give me a kiss on the last day as I was waiting for my ride I was wondering then where are her friends? Where are they watching from? And I didn't give a kiss. I told her I was uncomfortable I told her the truth
Follow the fun
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJAylIpv5Tb/?igsh=MTdwdDRiNXgyd2g1aA==
So much goodness in this, that the way to look at having fun is to write the movie you want to see, or in my case the book I want to read. I need to put this Forefront write the book I want to read then I'm going to have fun reading.
July and beyond
first week: just rest and decompress
second week: fun brainstorm, set up table of contents,
Aug 4 send slides UUFT
Aug 17 UUFT presentation
Aug 19: Kansas City Speakers Bureau
Oct 1 Colby Speakers Bureau
16-19 writers colony
Nov 20-23 NCTE
Drama
my mistakes this summer in handling GPT work
to avoid copying those oppressive-based professors
online, no student knows me
while I see the signs for drama--that some thrive off of it based on my familial, workbased, and bad friendship experiences
some people love digging down
drama and the need for it
drama thriller
you are being melodramatic, but there is something about our brains that might be drawn to this?
Redirect, not block
As I am fully engaged in how to help students, how I learned not to reach out by email in any way to "confront" with GPT evidence, how students have to remain in their stance--even dig in.
I, too, get dramatic if I am accussed of something I didn't do. I, too, can rally people to help if someone is out to get me.
That statement comes from my experiences.
Now I need to let it go after this semester, because the big vision is the sabbatical project.
Maybe I will write a chapter called Drama?
Sunday, June 22, 2025
Chatter
As someone with adhd, that's what I call it. As the overall mind doesn't stop thinking, there are other possibilities that come to intrude, especially when asked a question or when we can pull in for different things at once but we know we have to find a way just to discuss one. I know if my most calmest meditations the chatter is gone. And I can just focus on the breathing in the body.
This is also what happens to me at the movies. And this is also what happens to me when I'm in that Zone of poetics. It's because my mind is fully engaged and open to possibilities. It's an engagement that I'm happening on a different level where I can just experience. Even in creating a poem, it's the best one I Let Go
Believers in the 20s
So what we know post pandemic is that more people would rather stay at home to stream movies than they would going to the theaters. And while we're really know there's a push to go to the movies bye Hollywood ads, we have to also acknowledge that there's something special about such ritual making. That I know what it means to go to a movie theater because of the rituals and Healthcare that I've gone through. That when others might see movies is just entertainment or even emotionally moving, I recognize that they have a healing power for me. I mean even 28 years later I love the genre bending and challenging that Alex garland does to get us in the state of being scared and terrified when it's actually the world we need to be scared of at this present moment. And why the movie goes into a deep message about love and what Humanity means because we need that message. We can't remain scared that we have to be able to leave those who would lie to us and leave like the hero's journey home to become transformed in love.
Sabbatical wishes
As the sabbatical approaches and what I mean is July is the full on start for me, I want to make sure that I'm going to start taking good care of my own body. It's going to require also what I'd like to do with that writing that comes from somatic practices. I was noticing in my poetry writing where I get into the letting go and letting the words down that it's a cool way to connect memories. So I'm going to try that too. So here's my list.
I want to treat Monday through Friday as the working days, and Saturday and Sunday as days of rest.
I'm not going to drink a beer every night, but maybe on Friday nights.
Having going to the gym, the rec center at washburn, Monday through Friday as part of my work day.
Eating well
Carrie gets Thursdays
Friday, June 20, 2025
Cinema speculation
I'm looking at Quentin Tarantino's new book, a memoir of stories about working in hollywood, and I'm not buying it. Okay, it's not that I don't believe him, but I'm just not forking over the money to buy this. Also, it's problematic to me as he defended Weinstein when finally women came forward as survivors, out of the male dominant oppressive system of Hollywood that protected him, that victim blames women and employs silencing tactics.
You should look at that interview, that Tarantino couldn't know or even step back to see just because Weinstein treated him great doesn't mean he's not a monster.
And I'm looking through this book now and seeing that it's full of these stories that dip into his memoir, but I don't see any mention or lifting of survivors.
It's all about Tarantino and how he describes his fun.
Some of the best memoirs coming out from people in The Biz for me is showing how the silencing and traumas are intertwined with the public, the personal in the public reflecting on being a survivor, and in writing survivors are healed through the writing itself.
There is no speculation for me that the women who come forward as well as the men or anyone I might add are creating speculation. This is for real.
Thursday, June 19, 2025
Film as representation
Yes, plenty of films about boys surviving abusive fathers. But where is one film that shows in honesty how two people, one abusive, one enabling, happens to be respectively female and male?
And I mean in the way that the abuser is also a Survivor which is why the enabler is fully understanding of why they might do what they do.
Gone Girl, now that's a movie that I think of my first girlfriend. When anyone could be mentally unhealthy disordered or illness
And he still goes back to her.
As movies can allow us the Deep empathy, that allows us to inhabit bodies, that I can inhabit the feeling of being able to escape someone who is abusive.
There was a time I felt shameful for being a boy as well as being a man. There are times I wanted to be a mother and Carrie knows that I even mentioned that bond.
During my ma celebration where people bought me drinks, I love pina coladas, I somehow shouted out or said out loud I'm a lesbian trapped in a man's body. Everyone looked at me and laughed woth me. I was trying to put something in words that only something ridiculous could come out. Of course they knew I was raised by two moms so that was on my side.
That's why I love movies with strong female leads or even lesbian couples because it reminds me of the times I admired my mother's. Of course they had their own childhood traumas and things were always peachy keen.
But we always loved movies
We found ways to come back to each other
Punch drunk love
I mean this is a person who has had to be the black sheep of the family, he's been picked on by his sisters, he's blamed and made fun of, he cries for no reason, he really is trying to move forward through the unknown traumas that we don't know of. He's also trying to keep secrets and lies, like calling that number, and doesn't know how to stand up for himself.
William defoe
On the stuff I am talking about
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DIVQt_hRiXd/?igsh=MXZ0MDRwMTBmNWY3bQ==
The scientific method
Just in science that scientists create a hypothesis that they want to test out to see if it's correct or not, writing is my scientific method where I have an idea that I don't know about so I experiment on the page, ocean Wong said a sentence is a laboratory and not performance of power, and then I'm trying to figure out if this hunch is there or even the beauty of what I don't know because I'm Letting Go in my writing. I'm just following where the writing is taking me as much as I'm writing. And it's hard to tell people this because we're always taught in academic and school settings that writing has to have a purpose and that you have to write because the teacher is asking you to. That teachers are also part of a system where they have to show results in performance and not the joy of learning and discovery that happens when you put all of that performance aside.
One more thing about pattern recognition
When I realized poetry is about assembling three even four things together and finding the language that cross references these ideas in a figurative way, I realize that my own line of thinking with whatever stresses I might be under as well as whatever lessons I still have to learn, the mistakes I make, and the need for healing drive my mind into thinking of how these aren't separate things but collective. Even tokopah Turner sees writing as ecological that your mind in touch with Mind Body nature and how your reliant on nature will mimic these systems of needing dreams to tell us to come give me to give us its own language of how our bodies are part of the system of the world.
Pattern recognition
I I just realized about my own pattern recognition that I know I've always had a hard time finding something in the refrigerator because it's not where I was thinking it would be even as it might be in front of me, because that's the big joke and we know that's because I'm neurodivergent. But when Carrie said this to me about pattern recognition I had never even thought about using that as a lens on how I even function in the world or why I love reading writing
With pattern recognition we can get a sense of rhetoric, the rhetorical copies like what you would read in a lawyer's document or the newspaper. These are very easy to do it because our minds get used to the rhetoric of how something sounds. Even in a car to someone homework has it down right that we pick up a card and we want it to read a certain way so that we pick it because of that. But that's what I love about poetry is it disrupts the rhetoric, that it depends on the figurative language that is always fresh as a writer can freshly write it, and the surprise of even the line break because of enjambment that breaking the line creates a little surprise every time. It alates me it's I'm reading for the surprise I'm reading for what not to expect. This is similar to going to the movies that yeah I'm going to go to a movie that's formulaic because it's going to fit a certain psychological need at the time. For example if things are really going tough in my life I don't mind a good romantic comedy that I'll know hey everyone's going to leave this film feeling good and yeah the acting subpar or the acting is okay and we know where it's going and we going to we know what to expect. But I'd go to those other movies that will transform me because I have no idea where things are going. We know that these twists what we call the twists are a fun because it means that there are certain things that have been with us through the whole movie and then all the sudden it's obvious this real big surprise twist ending that we read the movie wrong. Also when things are like that in literature or poetry like that saying the surprising should be oh the ending should be both surprising yet inevitable. I mean there's something just magic that's why they call it movie Magic. That's why they call it something engaging and even on the Mythic level that tell us our values our ethics are
Okay so that's what I mean when I'm reading each student paper because each student is taking me for a kind of Joyride where I don't know what to expect and they might even phrase something different in a sentence that maybe a teacher like I had had in elementary school would have said this sounds weird but I should have said no that's exactly how I wanted it to sound. I want to play with language I want to play with what can happen that I'm not even expecting as I'm writing. In other words yeah I already am too fixed in the patterns but in my brain playing with those patterns and putting them on a page I love what it does to me as a writer.
That's why GPT is the greatest letdown because I know right away because a pattern recognition that I'm reading something gpt. And then because of this pattern recognition which and people like me who are neurodivergent we have a really strong Keen sense of pattern recognition that we just kind of let our brain do its own work. That I get excited just like I got excited as Sherlock Holmes and all the Mysteries like it's up to me to go okay I'm sleuth now. I go to GPT run my own prompt based on how I know it works, and then many many times I'm able to show a student look how to PT Works with what you turned in. And then this is where the real delicate matter must be. It cannot be out of oppressive forms of power. That we can't blame students for using GPT when it's the culture that has provided this tool out of whatever capitalism, shortcuts, saying not valuing personal writing, that really the devaluing writing and reading, and on top of that the Hoops the checkboxes the let's see how tough you can be to get through this grueling program to get your degree let's just see if you're worth it. What I'm trying to say is you're already worth it.
And that's why people use GPT because of stress and time. I know that's the reason why that it's not that anyone's ethical or unethical which I was just trying to use a way but I need to stop even doing that language. I'm just going to Simply get my evidence sit down with the student and say hey my brain can't assess writing if it's not yours. This reminds me well maybe I don't know if I should share this this reminds me of the lies and secrets I had to keep in order to be safe because when you're talking about dysfunctional families or families of abuse you're going to have the one side that is the abuse but then on the other you're going to have the secrets and lies just because of survival and the psychological need to keep going Day by day.
Pattern recognition is how survivors can read other survivors in the world and try to build allyship and support in the most delicate way that would not re-traumatize someone. That's why we have these Open Mic poetry readings because these are issues that deeply affect us in a culture that would blame victims, that would laugh at such things. We need to create the safe spaces for others that we can all lift up survivors as well as be lifted ourselves.
Jayhowk
Going into Jayhawk Collectibles is like the imaginary Emporium in other words it's a blast from the past of a childhood we grew up with. Many of us were Geeks and nerds in a time where such labels were derogatory. It just took popular culture to catch up with us is now seen in the recent superhero films as we already grew up with the Mythos and religious practices of such belief systems. But I also want to say this is where seeing such a collection where someone would sell, also means that I know for from my experiences that collecting also means trying to heal from those broken childhoods in which collecting these things will never work. I was a collector of ornaments toys cards figures you name it. That's why these Collectibles can be so expensive while Legos can be so expensive because not just the engagement but I'm guessing there is something of someone trying to heal if it's too out of control. If you're relying on such things for happiness then that's also a definition of addiction.
Teaching is healing
It is an ongoing healing process I learn from
My mistakes make me stronger, just as I ask students to be open about mistakes, in writing and gpt
If you've only been asked to write an academic settings no wonder so many people hate writing if all they received is negative comments about the writing no wonder people hate writing
I need to stop using language that's talking about ethics or non-ethical people, and stop viewing it as students ethics but that they are only trying to survive. I need to just tell them I that this is something about me that I can't act as if, I can't act in a big lie that this is their work and I'm going to give comments on it this is something about my own Survivor Journey as I come from a family we're lying in secrets were a norm
What I mean is that because there are abusive people on one side of the family the other side of the family has to lie and keep secrets in order to survive
Sound of settling
Settling
Sometimes the mind doesn't even know what it's doing because the heart is craving to be with someone but the mind says who's going to love you? No one possibly would.
Honestly I lucked out with Carrie
But I do want to say those brief two years I grew a lot as single
Escalation
Trauma based upbringings teach escalation, fight or flight
Or maybe even stress situations that I didn't even realize I was escalating things as I was just trying to ask students for their work and not GPT
Wednesday, June 18, 2025
Ones that got away
So many tropes
La la land
Even friends I might have accidentally lost because I didn't teach in to keep in touch, or friends that stopped staying in touch because of whatever I've said or done, and even recently where I feel I've lost a friend whom I'm not going to meet for lunch again because of something I had said then quickly apologized. The reality is I need to remember boundaries. And I need to be very respectful of those boundaries by not trying to reach out and make things awkward.
Even as groups of people I've been through school with still might get together but I'm not included, I need to remember that that is okay that that is what just happened because of the circumstances in places and no one ever means for things to happen. That would separate such friendships.
I guess the best way I like to put things as I have been married before, is that no one gets married thinking they're going to get divorced.
Tuesday, June 17, 2025
Pattern recognition
Why I am great at gpt recognition and it look over texts to see the similarities
Speed reader, computer programmer analyst, a teacher of English and a reader of texts
Poetry
Comedians have a high-level pattern recognition, puns, play with words
The battle over superman
https://www.ign.com/articles/snydercut-subreddit-issues-statement-after-james-gunn-dismisses-fan-calling-for-mass-superman-review-bomb-campaign
This really shows the toxic masculinity culture we live in. Hyper individualism and the call to spread lies to bomb something really gets in the way of an artist and Storyteller doing all they can to help out the culture. James Gunn deliberately made Superman this time to be that nuanced exploration of how not taking sides in what would be a political fight would work better. As Superman is alien, this concept is alien.
Concessions
I have the feeling I've already blogged about this, about how buying concessions or giving someone concessions has this strange duality. That the word has different meanings. And to find out the root of it. Plus I realized trying to go to see how to train your dragon that we were not going to buy any concessions for the boys. I realize that that was a deep way of handling stress, my mom would often snack. She even created a candy stash for the boys at her old house. I had problems with that too that I would buy candy as a boy and hide it so no one would know. I would go out to the tree to eat it and then my sister reported on me. Of course the parents response that was I was hiding candy and I had to share. I was disciplined for this thing about secrets and lies that keep the secrets and lies going because it's disciplinary and not corrective. I still have a trouble with hiding I even hid soda pop when I was addicted to it. The addictions hiding secrets and things we want for ourselves are all part of the issue coming out of such families that are dysfunctional.
In fact USDA subsidies of junk food are why junk food is cheap and for many families the only way to buy food. Similar to going through McDonald's drive-thru I'm not going to blame anyone who has to go through that drive-thru because there's already so much at risk so much stress so much Limited funds. White Dollar General is so popular because Everything's a Dollar so forth so if you only have so much money injured craving and needing things you're going to go to Dollar General and spend all the money you have there.
King Corn the documentary showed we are made of corn. Going to the movies as a corn experience.
Monday, June 16, 2025
Nobody was here
The film Nobody really plays up the masculinity tropes of how a man should protect his castle and those he loves. It creates these real world bullying situations. It shows that he needs to protect people by not taking action in which he's criticized for. Such a good film in these ways that it shows if you are aware or have the masculinity lens, that he's going to play things cool once he's even caught. He's all powerful he can take out anybody but yet he also keeps a cat on him
The day by day tedious tasks that even has an office in a factory and that he has to go through all of these everyday routines. As the whole week is highlighted as a repetition.
Train Your Dragon
maybe the movie series represents the dragon in us--that we can be fierce or loving
of course the boys!
the mythic, too
Sunday, June 15, 2025
Wednesday, June 11, 2025
Writing is healing
And as I'm trying to write a book about writing his healing I am going to have to write into the unknowing, that there are definitely things I won't know until I get there through the writing, because that's where the healing also happens, and the uncovering, recovery, looking for what is there and the safety of already being there because I found the words that led me there from the words that I've already written.
Nonfiction now conference and the film that they are showing
Watch How We Got Here on Tubi: https://link.tubi.tv/WuCCMpAN7Tb
https://www.nonfictionow.org/
Tuesday, June 10, 2025
My summer of closing the gap between my body and the Sun
Talk about movies being visceral
CA ritualmoving ahead
Collection of joy
Talk about how the Endless Summer documented really created a culture of surf as people were looking for the ideal they were looking for the Utopia as they also knew that if they find it it wouldn't last long
Saturday, June 7, 2025
Tje virgin suicides
Purityculture damages, men want one thing
Women and Other Monsters
Healing from writing
Raised to not objectify women, eye cast out
Friday, June 6, 2025
Sci fi meet gpt
https://deadline.com/2025/06/openai-sam-altman-obsessed-2013-film-empire-of-ai-karen-hao-1236422943/
Wes anderson
With his authorship and so many people writing about him, and even the breakout movie Royal Tenenbaum and when that happened, as well as the music and the choice of Elliott smith, and that the roles of the people living in deep depression or abuse neglect, we enter this world like a true representation of the world. This is where filmmakers can take us into the dream world to show us the deeper reality past the reality we live in.
His new movie Venetian scheme I saw last night and it was so fun to hear even some people laugh at some of those liners. I saw it with just a general audience and Lawrence Kansas at the Regal theater, and I kind of liked seeing it there even though it's regal and not an independent movie theater because then people could be allowed to laugh. I do love independent movies but the idea of laughter especially when the themes are so dark but again a reflection of the realities we all go through. He has his style of getting the mise on sin and we all know he is very particular about it, in a measured way. But isn't that what's fun about that skiing scene? So fun but it's also how the fun enjoy is attached to fast moving dialogue. When people argue they really have it out everyone starting at the same time and finishing at the same time. That's what arguments are like, no one hears each other.
Might look at the Phoenician scheme because it's really fascinating how he uses this none in a way that both is making a statement I mean the heaven scenes are hilarious, and a judeo-christian way, but also this character who is really earthbound. The nun. Well the main character is on trial in heaven. As he goes in and out of close death situations.
For me Royal tenant bombs was a relief to see hear these are people are depressed but it's somehow a good movie? People leave not feeling depressed? Like a but other real dramas might do to us. That this surreal approach of reality is a better way for us to be removed from the depressing realities we face. The family Dynamics and dysfunctions.
Thursday, June 5, 2025
Superhero films
Journal of Religion & Film
Volume 21
Issue 1 April 2017
Article 37
4-1-2017
Superhero Films: A Fascist National Complex or
Exemplars of Moral Virtue?
Chris Yogerst
University of Wisconsin Colleges
Wednesday, June 4, 2025
Cinema Paradiso Scriptio Divina
Okay, so I am doing a mashup of Italian with Latin, but both sound so well together! One is the famous film about movie-going, the second is about writing as a sacred practice.
Films and writing are sacred to me.
Monday, June 2, 2025
To write
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DKNwJZIy8Rw/?igsh=Ynlpc2xrNXFxbHA4
I had to write my Escape story via a poem. Maybe that's what this Memoir is to help those who couldn't escape Topeka and still have to face these horrible men but know that you can go anywhere to find horrible men.
Independent movie theaters I'll never forget
I I think the most impactful one out of the spirit I did when I had to take a chance of risk to go to Seattle to see what was left of the Grunge music scene and to find it was already gone
Just days after my birthday I went to see the release of Basquiat and now I'll Search for the movie house
How movies help me to remember things as in what times and what things were going on the films are markers for what's going on
Like Divergent March 21st 2014 opening night I'm there at Alamo Drafthouse for the first time realizing Kansas City had this movie theater before I even knew it was a franchise. It would have been spring break. And here it can unfold all of these memories because of that film and that movie theater that I would come to Treasure until it shut down in 2020. Which is another story
Amazing film critic
https://www.rogerebert.com/mzs/the-unloved-part-137-immortals
I found someone I need to interview. I found this person to be so engaging!
Tuesday, May 27, 2025
Fears of Water
swimming instructions
James bOnd movie song
this is the end
how going to texas, I discovered how a fear of writing can be confronted
through immersive love and play
ocean and water park
Monday, May 26, 2025
Ennagram archetypes
https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/crafting-archetypal-arcs-using-enneagram-insights/amp/
Sunday, May 25, 2025
Friday, May 23, 2025
Ecritue feminine
When I'm thinking of all the step stack posts in the sub stack followers they can be women. When I look at all of the books I'm buying poetry or Memoir they rent by women. Yes I tend to be sexist because I knew when I read that Helen Subaru that she was making sense even way back then. I want to steer clear of that masculine form of writing
Masculinity
Poetry is not a Luxury
Audre Lorde's essay needs to be the center of my writing
Maggie Smith's Dear Writer
Maureen Murdock's Myth and Memoir book
Tuesday, May 20, 2025
Monday, May 19, 2025
Boyhood
Protecting our sons
Homeschool joy
Film school
School of Rock
Boys of summer
At the Movies for a New Masculinity
Whiplash examines toxic masculinity, esp those in power
Kings of Summer
A couple of missed chances when it comes to neurodivergency and queerness
First Cow
https://i-d.vice.com/en/article/qjkqqw/movies-about-masculinity
Sunday, May 18, 2025
Gen X
Yes it was ironic that the X in X-Men not just Xavier
But the unknown or uncanny
Finally the descendants.of the Vietnam era were seen
Saturday, May 17, 2025
Naropa commencement
I just sent the naropa commencement speech from this year. The message at the end shook me to the core, community doesn't mean to "ignore harm or avoid accountability" but it's also important to "not reduce people to the worst thing they've done or the hardest truth they haven't learned yet."
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJuzFMcSD0x/?igsh=OHY4a2t0ODJsenM4
Friday, May 16, 2025
Thursday, May 15, 2025
Documentaries
I always ask for a paper receipt, a paper ticket
I love documenting things
Memory is difficult
I don't remember a lot about my childhood or really a lot so the few photos I have are good in that way
Erotic films
Stop right there. I k ow what you are thinking.
P 75 77 of febos, body work
My adhd makes me fiercely irrational when it comes to engaging with others
Chang9ng the narrative
Fighting aga9nst sexual assault
28 days later, final scene, that he loses himself to being a savage
Not distinguish him from zombies
The right resp9nse to something just as irrational, as damaging, as abusive
Ditching
Maybe call this Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and then collage with different things. Like a creative nonfiction piece. Collage things about fast food, skipping, and school
Find that book where someone's talking about the movie from the '80s, it's an eighties book from the library
Watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off just before I started working at McDonald's
Ross gay talks about how he, too seldom missed school. He never skipped a day or basketball practice.
He said just before his father was diagnosed with liver cancer and he was ready to get to his job at Applebee's, Ross said oh man, blow it off. Let's go watch Hellboy.
You have no idea how bad I wish I could. That was the first time he said anything like that.
We have our duties and responsibilities, but we also have the fear of being fired and such systems. Even calling in to work at a restaurant you could get fired.
Skipping work in a corporate world, you have to call in and use one of your personal days.
You might get two weeks vacation off but one of those weeks have to be split up. Also they can't be back to back
I told my students, which I mean those students who would never miss a class, just plan for one day where you can miss a class. But I still hear of instructors saying they cannot miss a single class. The tyranny of this, the authoritarian horribleness, sorry if you're one of those professors who are reading this. I fully understand you want students engaged but we have to find ways to engage students through love and commitment. We have to tell students they can take one day off and go somewhere get out of town.
Sandra would do this, that she was just decide on an afternoon she was going to Kansas City instead of sleeping as she worked the night shift. I try to think of her when I do skipping.
Ferris looks right into the camera, right into the audience, and tells us this wisdom about life. He's encouraging us to enjoy a day by creating the best escape plans. There is no day we get to see Ferris in school. There is no day we get to see his work ethic except that he somehow convinces everyone on a float to do a dance coordinated song from the Beatles
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
Close-up shots
How attention deepens when you become a poet, because attention is what poetry creates. The window to slow down, to notice things that one wouldn't notice. The movie screen does this too, at the director and cinematographer choose what we should pay attention to, whom we should focus on.
Maybe the conversation aren't dialogue, as a prompt
Friday, May 9, 2025
Character and Story Arcs
in fiction writing class, I show students how one can draft what happens in a story, and if the character is up or down in their life
I also ask students to experiment with their own, keeping in mind that resilience can be a theme in our lives
i have never had a student graph only below the line
I think of beau is afraid, he is never above the line
[
cinema therapy, that the character arcs and situations reflect our own
opening night
the comfort of nighttime
how even the feel for going to a film when it opens
it feels like it is gone
Wednesday, May 7, 2025
Lights cameras action
Action movies tell us we have to take action.
The lights help us to see
We need the attention of cameras
And we can take action
ADHD paralysis is real
Redemptive violence
Superhero films
Nuance
Summer Blockbusters
Summer was always a block for me. I became paralyzed.
Blockbusters, named because of the lines.
Going to Naropa was the blockbuster I needed.
prompt
write two months that are the best for you
write two months that are th eworst
freewrite about your sleections
write a memory for each month, even if "not accurate"
write a symbol for each moth
make a metaphor with my metaphor-making approach
Enjoy the Magic of the Movies
B&B theaters
George?
What magic is
religious studies
why magic is that category of the unexplanable
poetry is the closest to representing as ambiguity helps in meaning
the reader takes part
just as they do in a magic act, they can;t know how the illusion is done or it takes the thrill away
the belief suspended
Silence Your Cell Phones Now
why people won't allow themselves to engage at the movies, they see as entertainment, something to do
some ADHD folks can't sit still
the way my ADHD works allows me the chance to focus in a way that isn't exhausting
[
writing poetry, you write out of attentoin
silence
[
silencing can also be harmful
the need for nuanced conversation
Trust Your Mind
Embracing Nuance in a World of Self-Silencing
by Jenara Nerenberg
Supporting cast
Have a lot of my life I played a supporting role in someone else's story. When I could become self-actualized then I could support others in their stories while being my own person. That it wasn't a negative correlation, I wasn't just a tag along.
We are writing to know we aren't alone, that we are asking people to join as well as we are asking to join
Two types of support
Healthy or unhealthy
Tuesday, May 6, 2025
Diagetic sound
The things that we can hear as a character in our own story, our internal dialogue, the negative cognitive messages
Monday, May 5, 2025
Screenplay
We inherit many of the things we believe about ourselves from others, and if we aren't taught how to do our own speaking, our own writing, working out of character, we can feel trapped
" my personal definition of Oppression is being trapped in someone else's narrative with no power of authorship. This definition thrives in the ways that The Narrative of white supremacy has authored Blackness as dirty and delinquent, Indigenous as uncivil and cannibalistic, latinx as parasitic, in the list goes on and on."
Jamila Lyiscott
Black appetite. White food. Issues of race voice and Justice within and Beyond the classroom
(
So the way that narratives play culturally, can also reflect the personal, that also reflect how we believe about ourselves. The negative cognitive messages that we believe about ourselves.
(
Movies are the last playgrounds the poet said, and we get to engage with play on the screen. No wonder they call it screenplays developed from the play both performing as someone else and of having fun, the best way to learn
Method Acting
About trickster survival
Other tricksters
Truman show
Masculinity
you become a character by believing you are that character
you connect with something from your personal life to enter that character
Sunday, May 4, 2025
Cunematography
How I have seen Topeka, how I've seen my life, how I've practiced to pay attention, how poems have helped me to pay attention, how I've started learning to love the Prairie, but how I still love where movie theaters are
Other film terms
Audience, something similar to writing, in that question, who is your audience? It's why narrowing down focus on the subject is important, why the title of a book reflects that subject, and then why someone would be opening the book to find something about that subject. That people are reading the book I'm writing tells me I've already won them over in some way. But it's also the audience like in the movie theater, how can you win everyone over into how the engagement should be done?
Like I like mixed forms so it was perfect to have a mixed form in my memoir, but that won't win everyone over.
Editing, talk about the naropa approach, how poetry can be through generative practices, but also editing as in ADHD. People won't be self-editors for ableist views.
Saturday, May 3, 2025
Friday, May 2, 2025
Back matter
Include all of those academic definition things in the back of the book. The Memoir itself should be driven by the vulnerability and experiences while dipping into the needed Concepts. But if I show something like I did in Eureka springs, defining the trickster, it's going to turn the audience away. Can't rush huge leaps of Concepts unless someone is willing to engage, but we engaged on the deeper level with storytelling and metaphors. The experiences themselves help us engage with others because they are non-academic.
Good memoir advice
On pages 129 and 1:30 in dear writer
How when discussing things about vulnerability and breaking the fourth wall intimacy, that the sharing has to also be deeply human. How to innovate push the envelope Trust oneself. How to enact waves of grief while making a sensitive leaps of memory in the narrative
Table of contents
Part have me wants to develop the table of contents, looking at Deer writer by Maggie Smith, it's genius that she has the contents laid out with different aspects of creativity and then can have the subchapters do their work on how it applies to that.
I'd like to even try the different elements of film, like lighting, mesonsin, actors,
Another idea is that I could take the different aspects of the trickster. But I'm not as excited about that as thinking of taking different aspects of film to write about movies and poetry with. Ways to think about my life to. Definitely actors would include the trickster. It could also include persona.
Thursday, May 1, 2025
Dear writer
Maggie smith
A fragment from p42
"From a film not as much about plot as character"
Poems led me to community
Also, the metaphor of film is we each can be different people in a way each of us only can be
Art depends on the viewer to make meaning
Sunday, April 27, 2025
Archetypes
https://www.carolspearson.com/archetype-pages/seeker-archetype
https://www.jcf.org/post/myth-understood-the-archetype-of-the-seeker-ex-machina?mc_cid=8f5a143077&mc_eid=a044939049
Rawness
https://www.loudersound.com/features/how-with-teeth-saved-nine-inch-nails-career
I want to capture this rawness and this rise of artistry, just really getting angsty
I want to go to Kansas City where I'm not going to get into a car accident
I was trying to see the new hip bookstore and the traffic was just unbearable, and I took a side street thinking I could Circle the block but then I couldn't
There was another event going on in that street so try to go back to that street and then I couldn't see down the way because of all the cars parked
I was so paralyzed I couldn't even back my car up as I knew a car was coming and I know I might get hit all I was doing was just standing there still watching the car hit me
Friday, April 25, 2025
Alamo drafthouse
I need to write its own little piece of writing because it really broke my heart. There will never be something that I see could mimic what the Alamo Drafthouse was on Main Street.
Look for ephemera
Take some of the ephemera that I've collected from movie theaters as well as look for other ephemera, including movie tickets, and scan and write about them. It's my documenting for the experience. I was raised up in the souvenir era everything is a souvenir what that word comes from memory
Also the popcorn carrier craze is just an extension of the popcorn movie Bucket an extension of what a collectible is.
Thursday, April 24, 2025
Reminders
There's an anxiety that comes when you're thinking of the large project. Just like I compartmentalize time and work, I have to remember that the ritual that will get me to the place of writing, the books that I will use during my journey for creativity, for just having the time and space to do all of this is like having a huge support system of other writers. And maybe that is something I will include in my writing that the support system that writers provide is an appeal to books. To movies. To poetry.
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
Documentation
Be sure to document everything about the writing, where I did it, what books I was reading to influence my writing, some of the people I talked to, anything about it I want to create the notes for it as I write in the word document,too. Facebook is an open diary.
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
Places to write
I would like to write a movie theater lobbies
Spend a day in the Topeka Public Library working on writing
Spend a day in the Lawrence Public Library
Spend the day in a coffee house in Lawrence
Blackbird
Juli's
Flow state
They call it the Flow State and sports and physiology, I call it the somatic writing ritual along with others from naropa from where somatic Poetics is practice. Like ca Conrad as a practitioner includes in their published works.
Monday, April 21, 2025
12 angry men
Hypermasculinity and flat out anger
The movies unhinged and the other one with Michael Douglas
Balance with first cow
A student with friends to see a double future. One of her friends leaned over just whisper one word and the guy behind them flew out in anger yelling at them.
I know I need to work on cell phone use in the movies
How do I ask in the most quiet nonconfrontational way
Sunday, April 20, 2025
A way to language
When I mean is that we all have the way to use language that we aren't often asked to attend to, that we're asked to follow certain patterns that seem foreign to us instead of phrasing things in the way we want to phrase them.
My way to poetry through Dr nobo, through poetry nights, through poetry saving me, interspersed with these movies how trauma affects someone's ability to move forward even as they have abilities
Good will hunting, Dead Poets Society
Finding Forrester and how the poem is never heard
Did they chicken out? Because in Slam the poetry of Saul Williams is powerful. Why couldn't they have gotten a poem from anyone who was currently writing at the time
Li Young Lee in Wichita
Someone said, poetry isn't a hobby
My mentors are women
Saturday, April 19, 2025
Liberty hall podcast
Liberty hall podcast
https://open.spotify.com/show/3vF5XLKJidmxJ4STbUfmF1?si=wR7pEVk4QXOHnbmyQYfP4A
What I mean by free writing
Even as I still ask students to free write which means tapping into the subconscious flow of words in writing out what comes, I sometimes wonder if there are those who don't hear me or just can't do it because we've been taught to think before writing. Thinking before writing doesn't help us get to our deeper selves as well as just letting the writing happen.
I'm going to start doing these writings on the board to show students what I mean.
A student's idea of free writing:
I can't wait for the weekend. I'm looking forward to some free time. I'm too stressed out.
My idea:
For the common flight of witness my albatross has wings again
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
Mental rom coms
I use Mental to try to challenge the pejorative term, and that these rom-coms show in the best way possible with the best understanding of psychology to put characters in the protagonist role. As we know with disabilities and mental illness, it both matters and doesn't matter. And that's what I love about these rom-coms is that I can identify with the things inside me even though the characters might have something different about them.
Monday, April 14, 2025
A whole day at the theater
I know sounds obsessive, excessive, even as some of these movie passes you can only go once a day, I would love to know what it would be like to stay the whole day seeing film to film. Sure the lunch wouldn't be that great. Or the dinner. Maybe even see if there's going to be a marathon? That's what this sabbatical is about, finding different ways of doing things I haven't done yet.
Sunday, April 13, 2025
Family dynamics
We can't see the narcissistic person
We can't see the emeshment
Or people not under self regulation
Window of tolerances shutting
Someone who says they are the rescuer
Friday, April 11, 2025
Hospital
Yes so the heart and the stroke, lymphoma,
Coronary artery disease
The shunt caused a problem. With blood.roto rooter her veins every three months.
Dialysis.
Going to the hospital brings those memories
Austin Kleon
He likes to share 10 things worth sharing every week. I like how he moves from list number two to three by borrowing from the end of list two. Maybe this is something to do with a piece of pulling together some of the research.
2.Kurt Vonnegut: “Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization.”
3.“What is civilisation? I don’t know.” In “The Seductive Enthusiasm of Kenneth Clark’s ‘Civilisation,’” Morgan Meis argues that the TV series Civilisation succeeds “despite its underlying ideas, not because of them…. Clark is an indispensable guide not so much because of what he knows—though he is deeply knowledgeable—as because of his unabashed enthusiasm for the art that he shows us.” (This is something I remember from watching Sister Wendy in art class. It makes me think of a line from physicist Brian Greene: “My best teachers were not the ones who had all the answers. They were the ones deeply excited by questions they couldn't answer.”)
Thursday, April 10, 2025
The Criterion Channel Free Movie Week 2025
The Criterion Channel
Free Movie Week 2025
Tuesday 4/8
6 p.m. ET - BREATHLESS (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
8 p.m. ET - THE BEAST (Bertrand Bonello, 2023)
10:30 p.m. ET - CHUNGKING EXPRESS (Wong Kar Wai, 1994)
12:30 p.m. ET - PERSONA (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
Wednesday 4/9
6 p.m. ET - 8 ½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)
9 p.m. ET - THE DAYTRIPPERS (Greg Mottola, 1996)
10:30 p.m. ET - EO (Jerzy Skolimowski, 2022)
12 a.m. ET - HOUSE (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977)
Thursday 4/10
6 p.m. ET - THE TRIAL (Orson Welles, 1962)
8:30 p.m. ET - EVIL DOES NOT EXIST (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2023)
10:30 p.m. ET - MISHIMA: A LIFE IN FOUR CHAPTERS (Paul Schrader, 1985)
Friday 4/11
6 p.m. ET - ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT (Payal Kapadia, 2024)
8:30 p.m. ET - MIKEY AND NICKY (Elaine May, 1976)
10:30 p.m. ET - NIGHT ON EARTH (Jim Jarmusch, 1991)
Saturday 4/12
3 p.m. ET - TAMPOPO (Juzo Itami, 1985)
5 p.m. ET - PLAYTIME (Jacques Tati, 1967)
8 p.m. ET - BLOOD SIMPLE (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 1984)
9:35 p.m. ET - BEAU TRAVAIL (Claire Denis, 1999)
11:10 p.m. ET - POLICE STORY (Jackie Chan, 1985)
Sunday 4/13
3 p.m. ET - BLACK NARCISSUS (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947)
4:40 p.m. ET - DAISIES (Věra Chytilová, 1966)
6 p.m. ET - PARIS, TEXAS (Wim Wenders, 1984)
9 p.m. ET - CURE (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997)
11 p.m. ET - TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (David Lynch, 1992)
MONDAY 4/14
6 p.m. ET - CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962)
7:30 p.m. ET - RASHOMON (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
9 p.m. ET - THE PLAYER (Robert Altman, 1992)
11:30 p.m. ET - STALKER (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
12 angry men
ANGRY WHITE GUYS. Even gentle white guys like me have to deal with them. We're at the stop sign on a one way street as the ambulance on my right has its lights on. No sirens. I still think that I'll just wait for the ambulance to pass by me because I know it needs to get into my lane to get to the hospital. Light turns green, and the guy behind me lays on his horn for me to move. So I just move a little to let the ambulance pass me. We approach the next stop light and Mr Anger is on my right now, window down, TOO CLOSE to my car, staring me down and not looking at the road, with anger on his face. I roll my window down. I yell, the ambulance lights were on. He doesn't hear me as he asks, are you all right? He doesn't ask in the way that he's concerned about me. I then repeat again, the ambulance lights were on, man. He looks over to notice the ambulance in front of me. Oh okay, he says as he drives on by.
Tuesday, April 8, 2025
Kismet moments
Just as I'm thinking about The Uncanny I think about Kismet
Then in the used bookstore I found a copy of a Mythic life that came out in 1996 by Jean Houston
In the mythology section
Is the daughter of Jack Houston who is a comedy writer and the introduction begins where he took her almost 5 years old to MGM Studios in Hollywood
Now get this I'm trying to write a book about going to the movies as modern mythology and here it is in the part of the book where I always love going, the introduction, where I can get the juiciest of material from any book
And it's so uncanny to me as I'm reading about Hollywood that I would have find it in a book about Miss in someone encouraging to find their own Mythic life
uncanny
as the X-Men
as how students who are similar sit together in a class without knowing each other
as in etymology, the eerie, the way we can't say why
in medias res
One of the first things fiction writers are taught about effective story-telling is to start in medias res, in the midst. It's also something I tell people when they ask how I am doiung suring a busy time--I'm in the midst. Soemthing educators say in April.
Films are
We are
our origins reinvent themselves as we are in the midst
the big T word
yes, include trauma in the writing
awareness of truama, not as a buzzword, but as a reality
not to label or serve as a detriment, but as a reality
the strengths of survivalhood
the strengths of ADHD
the strengths
although I also hate it when people say, well, it made you a stronger person
Sunday, April 6, 2025
To come up with a metaphor for each thing in a theater
Some of the audience with their cell phones out are like June bugs I've already caught
Saturday, April 5, 2025
Joan Foth
How was I supposed to know that she lived across the street from me that she was a famous artist?
People you just don't know that you might think you know who they are but you don't know.
Friday, April 4, 2025
The saint
Val Kilmer
He's hiding running from the past, does he truly care about Elizabeth's shoes character
He's posing as different people
He's realizing he can't do what he's hired to do
why these notes
I will come back to grab all these notes when I sit down to write.
Remember: to keep track of the books I am reading, movies I watched, people I spoke to for each chapter. NOTES section. Even inspirations from what I read. etc.
People with ADHD have so many brilliant plans, but it is common not to complete them.
It might be ADHD paralysis.
Exhaustion, lack of hyperfocus, lots of reasons to not finish. Not laziness, but burnout. or even worry to start.
We may have a history of not finishing which compounds into shame.
We ,might take a project on forgetting the work we already have.
Citizen by Claudia Rankine
It's a funny thing that happened today. Louise sent an email noting how she might have lended someone the copy of her book Citizen and asked if anyone had a copy that she could borrow or return. I went in to place my copy into her box and found there was a copy already there. Then Melanie said yes I too try to put my copy in and noticed someone already had. I said yeah this is the fun thing that so many of us have a copy of this.
And I think New York Times recently said it was like the number one nonfiction book of the century so far. It's something to keep in mind if you're going to teach a nonfiction writing class. Maybe also not to discount this if you're writing your own memoir?
Thursday, April 3, 2025
Note about my memoir
Just a drop a few notes about what I would like to achieve
This won't be a memoir that seeks revenge on anyone. I've seen people advertently or inadvertently writing to somehow get back at someone and that will never work.
This won't be a memoir that describes the trauma as much as it covers how going to the movies can be healing. In other words just like trauma-informed care, it helps those who have been traumatized but also benefits everyone. That going through trauma is in a deficit.
Wystan says put in a good word for me
I'm not going to cover everything. There are just some things that are best Kept Within a family or privately.
That's it this is not an autobiography. A Memoir takes selected things and make some mashup of how they are connected. Or that there's Simply Connected because you put them together.
I'll definitely be referencing the book body work because I like how she puts and changes things into different povs
Tuesday, April 1, 2025
why women's and gender studies
I know with the current abolishment of DEI, it is difficult to explain to people why such a concept exists. It's not a concept, but a reality.
Just like having ADHD, it both doesn't and does matter.
The nuance to be able to accept something which seems a contradiction in terms means getting away from either/or logical fallacies.
the fact that I learned women's and gender studies first-hand before taking any class about it
pop-up poetry workshop
Part of me would like to just rest and work on my book during the sabbatical, but the other part loves doing workshops--especially in differnet places one wouldn't find one. Without classes, this seems the perfect time to do it.
Plan to reach out to movie theaters and coffeehouses where there aren't theaters.
Sunday, March 30, 2025
Trickster
https://youtu.be/aL0V1MsOeFM?si=Cxccub-m0BPJWiVp
https://www.jcf.org/post/trickstering-casablanca-and-resistance?mc_cid=69392d8813&mc_eid=de3bf080d3
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Sunday, March 23, 2025
Depression in movies
I haven’t listened yet but I like this podcast
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hilarious-world-of-depression/id1181589175?i=1000475691309
Saturday, March 22, 2025
Definitely part of the book
Maureen Murdock who I discovered through teaching mythology has a new book about using myth and memoir to tell one's truth which leads to healing. This has been my experiences with film as a way to feel safe and self-care to then poetry writing as a way to move outside of myself. The truth of the adverse childhood experiences I went through which is a wonderful way to be sensitive to myself.
Mythology religion and psychology
Shame
Shadow self
Myth making memoir maureen murdoch
Myth making and memoir
https://youtu.be/fEtHpYbQf4E?si=D9REt8lRvVeT0hzJ
Thursday, March 20, 2025
Book to get
Written Exposure Therapy for PTSD: A Brief Treatment Approach for Mental Health Professionals
Book by Brian P. Marx and Denise M. Sloan
Sunday, March 16, 2025
In Omaha
As Rilo Kiley made the journey to the city based on Connor Oberst and those who made Azure Ray recording downtown and whatever film theaters are going on with film streams and the connections of artists creation
Thursday, March 6, 2025
Arrested Development
In the midst of naviagting my late teens and twenties, I believed the healing of my childhood meant engaging with what I could do with my earned money: collecting.
I now say as a joke, a collector is really a hoarder who wants to come to terms with how collecting serves the collector.
When the term arrested development came a public term, maybe through the TV show?, it was a new use of language to focus through.
Suncoast Era, Gen X, and the Losses We Felt in the Seventies and Eighties
Sunday, March 2, 2025
Obstacles for students
We only have so much time, so trying to push yourself into being creative is barrier making
It's an assignment, so it's already a resistance
Some students really aren't interested in poetry but they enrolled in the class anyway
Students are used to Turning something in and getting a grade for it. They aren't used to really writing something they would want to read or want to ride. Or that they would even have written by a deadline.
I'm asking them to share emotions with using words that they wouldn't normally share. That the art has to be there.
Art and sharing feelings are never encouraged in classroom settings. They are not often graded on. Again, the grades!
Students are more focused on what they need to do for homework then they are on the experience of being in a classroom where they can be themselves.
How books mean to help
This one of my best writing practices is to have a pile of books beside me.
Even if I feel stuck, I can pick up a book and in no time at all I start writing again.
Engaging with the language itself changes my own way of thinking, that then words that are coming from somewhere come out in a way that's different than they would.
Of course the prompts are also wonderful.
https://open.substack.com/pub/mondaysarefree/p/exercise-001-the-list?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2dy8e9
Check the sources for: Here’s Sontag’s list of beliefs, list of likes and dislikes, and list of rules for parenting.
Essayism by Brian Dillon
Wednesday, February 26, 2025
My journey into mythology as mythology
My journey into mythology as a mythology that I left home many times to get home
I first taught myself about mythology through all the books I could find at the library. Then I took mythology in high school which meant memorizing the gods names in matching them up. What I mean is Greek mythology. Then there was a dash of Egyptian mythology and another dash of Norse mythology.
Then it came to my teaching of Mythology which I looked through the books about inclusiveness, the students worry about studying another culture, and realizing that the stories that represent realities mean that we have modern mythology.
That the stories themselves mean nothing if we can't apply them to ourselves and of the world. I also don't mean negative appropriation, but looking at systems of tricksters and what makes a trickster, alongside what is a modern trickster look like, and specifically how can I be a positive Trickster?
Tuesday, February 4, 2025
phenomenological philsophical journeys
I will beed to write about comic books, having chicken pox and getting Richie Rich and Casper, books I could read, then going to Kwik Shop, then movie comic books, XMen, Spidey, then comic book stores,
alongside drive in movies, then movies at Gage 4 and other places, the nuances each theater held, looking through Friday's paper for movies, magazines at store, comics, trading cards and book adaptations, then toys, then coollectables, Suncoast, collector widescreen VHS tapes, DVDs
alongside library books, albums with soundtracks, buyng such soundtracks at the record store, drving my bike to all of the places around, mythology books
experts in Suncoast, Hot Topic being the closest version now
Monday, February 3, 2025
More books to remember
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1910559962?ref=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_K5PAMMNX5GBG5FQKFBQF&ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_K5PAMMNX5GBG5FQKFBQF&social_share=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_K5PAMMNX5GBG5FQKFBQF&skipTwisterOG=1&bestFormat=true&dplnkId=144356ae-c209-445c-a6e0-eec8b5cea347
Maureen Murdock will join us to discuss her book Mythmaking: Self-Discovery and the Timeless Art of Memoir. We believe mythic memoir is vital for practicing enchantment and for bearing witness to our lives.
Saturday, January 25, 2025
Things to do for sabbatical
Visit Jason's friend Dustin, who has a Superman collection
Reach out to the movie theaters about being their Poet Laureate for a day
Look into film related places
Interview Austin Snell
Tuesday, January 21, 2025
Magic is Illusion
As I reflect on my finished writng, I know I should incliude my own struggles--my own stories
That if my upbrining was a film, the illusions I lived within
Film was that get-away to magic
include my own words and reflections
did you see the length of that paragragh about Star Wars?
try other development ideas like that one
Monday, January 20, 2025
Ritual
Intuition is seeing the solution
https://youtu.be/JYFxTO6nDE0?si=quGJmBjLDTiJXIqQ
Go in as of you are in a movie
Saturday, January 18, 2025
Thursday, January 16, 2025
David Lynch passed away today
How can I sneak in some David Lynch into my writing? How can this be a part of what changed my way of looking at films?
Tuesday, January 14, 2025
Memoir
It was kind of like this boy's life but the stepdad is the dad and the mother has to get out of there like in fried green tomatoes as the dad comes in to hit her.
And it was like Goodwill Hunting but for 11 years actually in college.
Robin Williams telling me it's not your fault it's not your fault
Sunday, January 12, 2025
21 c memoir
How this article describes the beginning of the 21st century in that the confessionalism of the memoir launched into the 21st century. It's the same thing from the confessional poem, that we seek a post-confessional poem. That the representation needs to lead to Healing include others or create some fluid I
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/nonfiction-book-bestsellers-subjects-b2676650.html
Rachel Zucker wrote a lot about this about how the I needs to be included
https://www.foundryjournal.com/zucker.html
How can we write past the confessional but what I mean is that through my healing I don't really find it necessary to name names. I don't need to say anything about the tragedy or abuse I went through. You just need to know that I survived and then I can show some of those joys and loves in play and wonder.
It's the same with how my poetry really launched off, that I attached joy and play to the writing.
And experimental work is the best punk way to work. We have to adapt a punk nature against masculinity. Which is why I was talking about against white male poetry classrooms. White male teaching.
I know it's the irony of me being a white guy but that's why I know even more from my own experiences of having a life where I could reject men and didn't want anything to do with them. That I became my own heroine Journey.
Hero versus heroine Journey and maybe I'm also on the monster Journey
So the Memoir can be that representation while speaking out against oppressive forces.
That's what my research will eventually be too is to look at the Memoirs coming out of Hollywood and comparing them. I'm stuck with equiterre feminine Helen Gireaux
Something I will have to go back and remember how to spell.
Saturday, January 11, 2025
Romantic comedies
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/of-minds-and-men/202501/three-love-lessons-from-a-century-of-romantic-comedies
Interesting as I think about these things, especially how I wait to watch Eternal Sunshine when it's Valentine's Day.
What do these things tell us?
Mythmaking
Friday, January 10, 2025
Another Punk aesthetic in Miranda July
Me and you and everyone we know as an ultimate homage to the vulnerability we all have, the unexpected, the things we're searching for and the things that we realize we don't need. And that's what I need to do with thinking of the sabbatical, this writing, is stop thinking that I need to do something and just to be truthful and honest. Then go back and write to make it good. Just that like the line in Lee, worry about telling the truth first.
Thursday, January 9, 2025
John Waters
I'm looking at his films on Criterion Channel as I have it this month and I'm thinking about how he made the movies he wanted to make. He was called all kinds of names, but he still made those movies the way he wanted and now he's invited to give commencement speeches at colleges. Well I want to write the book I want to write. Maybe I need to take that punk attitude. I'm looking at all these books and they will make good guidelines, but I also want to be true to myself and write the book I would want to read. What are the things I would want to read about the things I want to talk about. I want to put them in my own way in my own words. And I know I have the style of saying these words that I mean to be colloquialisms but they turn out wrong but I like that. It's like I said many I'm weighted down by money but I mean money is so scarce that it weighs heavily on my mind. Why can't I just say that I'm weighted down by money. Okay when I think of money I get weighted down.
I want to talk about that movie everything everywhere all at once and how I'm like women that I totally understand how he uses kindness as an way to get around the world. I've never been one to try to be rude. It's just my midwest Kansas upbringing and if that can't be a strength what can be? I mean I was thinking about the cynicism that when you're a teenager it's so cool, but then you continue being a cynic and you're grown up and you think what the heck am I thinking about? Why am I feeling this way about things? This can't be healthy!
So I'm going to be Punk and I'm going to go to the movie theater no one wants to go to in Topeka and I'm going to set up my poetry shop there.
I mean it's so corporate that now it's anti-corporate. It's a hole in the wall that Regal just keeps open because they're not going to lose any money from keeping it open but it's so Punk they won't change it in any way. And that reminds me I need to go look in that hidden movie theater and see what happened. They only have seven screens open and I want to see what they're doing about the 8th. I saw those chairs there I wonder if they're remodeling.
Monday, January 6, 2025
A Sabbatical of Joy
I am wishing to merge work with joy--just as I have in the past--so I will be up for suggestions.
One thing I want to do is reach out to movie theaters to ask if I may be their Poet Laureate for the weekend. It seems the best time to work on my own stuff, draw creativity, and offer five free poetry tickets for anyone who wishes for one.
Maybe even take my printer with me?
Other sabbattical movie writing topics
When Carrie and I met >> mental rom coms
Work >> Fast Food National, The Matrix Office Space
Golden Globe speeches 2025, The Brutalist with director autonomy / capitalism, disfigurement ableism, women's voices "I am who I am, not what you want me to be"