My roommate and I found ourselves perplexed at many of the assignments in this class - mostly at a loss for where to begin without much structure or guidance. We decided to embark on this Manifesto assignment together, chronicling our various experiences through the structure of demographic categories as might appear on a census. The end result was a declaration on our identities, lives, and friendships - though also something we felt rather self-conscious presenting in front of the entire class. While I enjoyed getting to work with my roommate (and lifelong best friend), this project was not one that either of us were particularly happy with in the end (it felt rather cheesy and disingenuous, not the meaningful and empowering statement we'd intended), and so likely will never resurface beyond the confines of this portfolio.
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As part of an ongoing journaling assignment, our professor asked us to write at least five details every day during the week of the 2020 election. Though initially I was annoyed at being asked to record my thoughts in such a tenuous and vulnerable moment, in hindsight, I appreciate having the record. Though I haven't always taken the time to notice it in day-to-day life, this entire year has been an experience of living through history. When I look back years later on what it was like trying to finish school and stay civically engaged and maintain my relationships while the world feels like it is crumbling around me, at least I will have a smidgen of a live record to prove I survived. Archiving Election Week
Monday My initial thoughts: I feel about this election the way I do about football. I dislike all of the buildup. I do not want to watch it all play out, the will-they, won’t-they, the waiting. I want it all to be over and done so I can celebrate or mourn, figure out how I’m going to exist for the next four years. My roommate and I agree we feel powerless, and a million people reminding us the importance of voting isn’t helping. We’ve cast our ballots, what more can we do? My boyfriend says I should find ways to stay distracted so I’m not endlessly worrying, but it’s hard when politics are bombarding me from all sides, making up the very fabric of my existence. My mom sent me and my cousin an “election destressor” interactive webpage that the New York Times developed. Lots of breathing exercises and nature scenes. A soothing podcast. A potter crafting a pot. I shared it with one of my class group chats and on my Instagram page. In the class group chat for my Peer Educator class, everyone is discussing how they are possibly going to teach today and tomorrow, especially as this week’s theme is Health and Wellness. We all agree that we do not feel qualified to talk about this, especially this week, but try to reassure one another nevertheless. I messaged my old preschool teacher on Facebook (she taught me and all my siblings so she knows us well) to share a recreation of an image my best friend and I had taken (we had dressed as Pooh and Piglet for Halloween – our preschool was called Christopher Robin). She asked me if I had voted. I said of course, gladly, so thankful that I am old enough after 2016. She told me my generation gives her hope for the future. Tuesday The election is the uninvited guest that’s infiltrating my phone, my classes, my everything today. I pick out a blue outfit on purpose, for luck. I text my boyfriend saying the rain is making me feel like the sky is crying for is. Then I immerse myself in my writing class and short story critique, to live in another world for a while. I revisit a poem I wrote on November 8th, 2016, when all hope felt lost and I turned to scribbling in a notebook just like this one. I reshare to my feed with a message of hope, wishing desperately that I will not be penning the sequel tonight. I take a walk with my family. We talk about everything but the election – classes, applications, my writing, my future. I breathe in the cold crisp Seattle air and try to remember that the world will keep spinning regardless. My roommates and I make tea, play games. I try to do homework, to write, but I cannot focus. The map and its reds and blues keep leering at me from the screen. My boyfriend is no help – he thinks all hope is lost. He’s a white man: it is not as deadly for him to concede defeat. I sent him something sweet to wake up to anyways. Perhaps the fact he’s in bed so early shows that he is not so fine after all. I will fight using kindness. My roommates and I eat snacks in the kitchen, forcing ourselves to stay up until a normal bedtime. “It’s looking better than 2016,” we tell ourselves. All we want is to curl under the covers. We hug each other tight before closing ourselves in our rooms and hopefully the oblivion of sleep. (It feels like the world is crying for us.) Wednesday I was scared to wake up this morning. Despite my not wanting to know, I couldn’t look away. I pull up the map to see that two states appear to have flipped overnight. Things are looking up. This does not stop my roommates and I from going through every little detail and path to victory anyways. My boyfriend sends a text feeling bad for giving up so soon. School provides a welcome distraction. I get caught up in annoyances over one of my classes, and though I am still refreshing the map under my desk, at least my attention is split. More discussion of paths to victory with my roommates over lunch. I have so much schoolwork I’ve been neglecting. During a discussion group in one of my classes, my groupmates and I (all women) compared our anxieties and woes. Many of the men in our lives – fathers, brothers, friends – were ready to give up last night. None of us were quite so willing. We decided it was a (white) man thing, and all had a laugh. Things are looking up. My roommates and I were planning a small excursion, a brief shopping trip, but ended up having to cancel. I was unreasonably disappointed. Such a small thing, but something I was looking forward to in the midst of this madness. I end up ordering my items online as consolation. We also order pizza, and spend the evening dancing to Irish rock music and playing more cards. I don’t spend as much time checking the maps as last night, though I do glance at them once or twice. The mood is lightening. I’m getting ready for bed. Trying to decide whether to fall asleep to the meditation CDs I pulled out yesterday for the first time since childhood. I don’t know that I’ll need them the way I did last night, but they may be comforting all the same. Things are moving slowly, but I am much more hopeful today for the future. Thursday We’re playing a waiting game now. Refreshing the maps has become a part of my morning routine now, “a new form of social media,” a friend calls it. It still feels important, even though I’m sure that my whole phone will blow up if another state goes blue, as that’s all Biden needs to win. I send my sister an “electoral map based on what states allow people to own kangaroos as pets” and she enjoys it greatly. My classes today are easier to get through. The election comes up, but more in passing. My roommates send me a text that the margin in Georgia is narrowing. My dad, who grew out his hair in a passive protest of Trump, cuts his ponytail off today. My math major boyfriend is calculating out margins of error as I talk with him on the phone. He wants to know why Arizona hasn’t been called yet on some networks, and I explain because it’s not mathematically impossible that the state won’t flip. His roommates are shouting out numbers in the background. Trump’s only up 1800 votes in Georgia – less than 0.1 of a percentage point. I am restless. I have so much work to get done and yet I spend an hour watching TV, doing sudoku. The jalapenos I chopped at dinner left little burn marks on my fingers. This is not helping. Sleep comes late tonight. Things feel stagnant. The world cannot resume until this race is decided and though the ballot counters are speeding as fast as they can, with threats of violence ever encroaching, it is not enough. I breathe deeply, and try my best to empty my mind. Friday Biden only needs one more state to win, I say to my roommates over breakfast. Trump needs at least three. Georgia and Pennsylvania have flipped while I slept. My waffles taste especially good this morning. I dive down a rabbit hole of researching graduate programs before my shift starts. It is hard to imagine a future beyond the never-ending 2020, beyond this week that has stretched for at least a decade. The idea of moving, of starting a new school in a world I cannot yet imagine, is paralyzing. Maybe that’s what’s causing the fervent fluttering in my chest. We dance around politics in my work meeting. “How was your week?” “Oh, a lot of ups and downs.” Politics are not allowed in the workplace, but we all still know and understand. I see a post on my feed about why a major news network cut away from Trump’s speech earlier in the week. They cited the dangerous lies and misinformation it spread about voter fraud and miscounted ballots. “This was not news, it was propaganda.” I fear the wrath of Trump and his supporters as he is pushed out of office. They are far more dangerous than any “radical liberals” could ever be. The scariest part, I think as I am getting ready for bed, is that no matter who wins, there is still a massive portion of the country who voted for Trump. This was a close race. How terrifying it is, to know so many people out there are actively supporting a man who wants to take away basic human rights from me and those that I love. How lucky I am, to have come so far in my life and not had to fight for those rights in the same ways that so many before and around me have. Saturday I can’t not include Saturday – the day it’s all over. I wake up early for work, earlier than all my friends and family, and see the news first. They called Pennsylvania, the last state we needed, by a margin large enough not to trigger an automatic recount and more weeks of agonizing wait. Biden has won the presidency. I text my family, my roommates, my boyfriend, wanting them to hear the news from me first. We’ve won. Finally, more than four years later, I can let out the breath I’ve been holding in my chest. I see it on the news, on my Instagram feed. The jubilation is extraordinary. It is how I imagine VE Day, or the ratification of the 20th Amendment. It is like the joy I remember from 2015, when the Supreme Court ruled on marriage for all. There is a nagging part of me that worries as I see images of Times Square crowded with people, not all of whom are wearing masks. The pandemic has not gone away. But I understand the fierce desire to share in the celebration, to shout with and to the world for the end of one rule and the start to a new era. I say to my boyfriend’s mom, when I meet her and their dog for a (masked) walk: Today is a good day. This isn’t over. The waiting may be, the uncertainty. And this is a victory for sure – a step in the direction I want to see in the world, a step towards more rights and progress and change. Today is a day to celebrate. But tomorrow, as so many activists and students, family and friends, have reminded me through the vast webs of the internet: tomorrow the real work begins. This was my first assignment for Honors 345: Poetics of Collaboration. This class was a bit of an experience because both the professor and topic changed the day before class started. I had no idea what I was walking into on the first day. This Beginnings assignment was our way into the course, and ended up being my favorite work I wrote for the class. For this project, we were assigned to interview one of our classmates about their lives - introduce ourselves to each other - and then produce a creative writeup introducing them to the class. Below is what I wrote about my partner, Brooks. (I won't post here the poem he wrote about me in interest of privacy, but I was entirely enamored and flattered by the result.) Beginnings
(Lights on. Curtain up.) (ENTER BROOKSON BUMSTEAD, also called BROOKS, on July 10, 1999, in Bellevue, Washington, emerging into the waiting arms of his parents and two-year-old sister. His brother will be born two years later, the other bookend in his stairstep family. The Greater Seattle area will remain his home base growing up, though perhaps in the future he’ll travel the world: New York, Paris, Rome. His parents will take him on foreign adventures, but he will be too young to appreciate most of them.) (His earliest schooling will have him speaking two tongues, English and Spanish both. His childhood passions will progress from the wriggling of creepy critters plucked from the dirt to colorful contraptions crafted from Lego bricks to books brimming with possibilities until he is absorbed in tomes with thousands of pages. This fascination with stories and their mysteries will follow him to college, where he will perform experiments with poetry using words as his chemicals in between spells of absorption in cinema screens and the artistic reels that are painted there.) (Many experiences will shape him on his journey: his family and their faith in a God he cannot decide whether to believe in; his friends and his desire to let them know that they are loved; and his eighth grade piano teacher with a house full of bird cages and instruments who will chain-smoke cigarettes and tell stories encased in silver linings and who will treat a kid who didn’t even really like the piano like a full-blown person deserving of care.) (BROOKS will be a person who loves to create and play and will wish fervently for the energy he had when he was little – let that be his character note. He will not be sure where he is going next in this world, but he will be ready for the adventure that will take him there.) (Spotlight on BROOKS. Blackout.) |
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