6:11 pm
Dear J,
Weird but Walking to me has become equivalent to stopping. It’s like when I come home from a whole day outdoors and I’m tired and I choose to play a game on my phone rather than say napping. It’s rest thru doing. Which I wonder whether how this generation that I unfortunately am a part of understands rest.
Do we do the same when we write? Do you write to take a rest? This doesn’t seem to be like it. Often (when I’m being careless), writing becomes a chore. But that’s the problem, identities are so blurred these days you are in crisis almost every moment.
Boundaries are so unclear and so we allow ourselves to be hurt more often than we can tolerate.
The fish vendor closes shop late to accomodate late buyers but wakes up early to accomodate early buyers. She can’t separate herself from the very fish she is selling.
When I asked Vincenz what he plans to do with walking, he responded “I just want to try the food at Quiapo.” I was surprised the first time, but insisted to getting a more serious answer. I couldn’t let go of the idea that there I was inspired by all the feedback I got from the workshop and was already planning the walks to come and yet here was someone who probably walked more than I have saying he just wants to walk to try Chinese food he may have eaten many times! So I asked again. On the second time, he repeated his answer but with a half smile and a look that wasn’t angry but was more like “ang kulit mo ah.”
Then he went on telling me how the person who walks is just a persona he created and he doesn’t have to be it. He knows his boundaries.
Vincenz knew it then. I was being a fish.
Draft as literature
- Rizal’s draft
- Thoreau’s unfished works
What if we deliberately call works in progress literature?
A poetics if the incomplete.
How does a poetics of the incomplete be practical and useful?
why necessary?
- Your work might be badly needed by a community that every progress counts. Ex: when producing a pangasina dictionary
- sharing your process demystifies and democratizes the literary process. We learn by imitation but without showing the process of how we get to something thru drafts, how can we truly imitate?
How?
- use a digital garden (explain this along with botany terms)
- Share your work through social media
- Use