Les invito a leer mi Reaction Paper about Bastardo.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EYQel6l9f1ph3EqmUOTAPrNFS9_GefAvF4pd6oecba0/edit?usp=sharing

How many times have we said see you later and it was the last? It is not normal for every week to have a favorite piece, but it is. C-Ya-Laterrrr is a magnificent piece that proves that it doesn’t take much to achieve something good. I started reading and I didn’t really know what it was about, but it’s written in such a way that it manages to connect the reader, makes the reader worry, gives anxiety, and transmits despair. It also generates the need to know more, therefore, in each option, he gave to investigate more in the situation where he gave and read and read. I didn’t believe this had happened in real life and I think the author does a good job of capturing a possible family point of view of the tragedy. In addition, I think it is also a piece to think and rethink our actions, many times we are in a hurry, stressed and so on, which makes us leave aside our loved ones, limiting ourselves to saying hello or a see you later cold and far, but we do not know if that is going to be the last, the last word, the last communication. So, it is also a call to stop and tell the people we love «here I am and I will be», «here I am and I will prove it to you», and «here I am and I want you to know it».

“Buscar. No es un verbo sino un vértigo. No indica acción. No quiere decir ir al encuentro de alguien sino yacer porque alguien no viene” 

 Alejandra Pizarnik 

Lo primero que llamó mi atención de Retratos vivos de mamá en la información que hay en la página de inicio, los documentos y actas de la señora Lucy Jimenez de López, toda su información y más allá de esto, parte de su vida. 

Retratos vivos de mamá es un diario, un viaje y un camino hacia la búsqueda de alguien que fue, pero que ya no está, de alguien que fue mucho más de lo que se vio, mucho más de lo que se quiso ver. A veces cuando somos hijos nos volvemos ciegos ante la realidad, ante el pasado, ante lo que es. Solo vemos por nuestros ojos e intentamos minimizar lo que está a nuestro alrededor, mi pena es mi pena y es más fuerte que la tuya, mi alegría es solo mía y es más grande que la tuya. Sin embargo, ¿qué hay de ellos? ¿qué fue antes de ellos? No lo sabemos. 

De la historia de mi madre y mi abuela sé poco, pues nuestra relación siempre ha sido distante, nunca nos hemos permitido ir más allá de conversaciones banales, lo que sé de ella es lo que recuerdo a través de estos 23 años y lo poco que me ha contado mi tía. ¿Cómo reconstruyo un retrato de mi madre solo con fotos y la experiencia de una persona? ¿cómo sé quién es mi madre si nunca he hablado con ella (más allá de lo normal)? 

Pero, ¿qué sentido tiene hacer este recorrido? Carolina López Jimenez dice “para intentar salvarme”, y esta última palabra contiene muchos sentimientos, el salvarse es perdonar (se), dejar la pena a un lado, seguir adelante, dar respuestas y tener una buena imagen. 

Comprendo que esta pieza es una estrategia para pensar, deconstruirse y entender que el mundo es mucho más que el yo. Comprendo que es una herramienta para la memoria y la reconciliación. Así que, pienso, pienso, pienso. ¿Mi madre en algún momento sintió lo mismo que yo? ¿Sus padres le demostraban afecto? ¿Cuáles eran sus sueños? Quizás nunca tendré respuesta de esto y me culpo, intento no darme golpes de pecho, pero lo hago. Hay momentos que soy consciente de que tengo rencor dentro de mí hacia mi familia, hay momentos en los que quisiera no pertenecer, pero hay momentos en los que abro los ojos y comprendo que soy dura, que no está bien lo que pasa dentro de mí o lo que pienso, porque no sé por lo que pasaron, no sé cómo se sintieron y no sé cómo fue su vida antes de que vinieramos al mundo. Hay momentos en lo que sé que soy injusta. 

Retratos vivos de mamá me recordaron las veces que ella me defendió de mi papá, de mis abuelos y familia paterna, de cómo ella se esforzaba por darnos a mi hermano Rafa y a mí lo mejor que podía. Recuerdo la vez que lloró desconsolada luego de que mi hermana se casara y se fuera de la casa. Recuerdo la vez que me enseñó a cambiarle los pañales a mi sobrina y las veces que intentaba enseñarme a cocinar. 

La introducción de Retratos vivos de mamá es un preludio a un acto de amor, de perdón, de decir estoy aquí, sigo aquí. Es una entrada a una confesión y una muestra de la vulnerabilidad de las personas después de la pérdida, después del duelo. Es decir ella, mi mamá, fue mucho más de lo que pensaba, de lo que creía. 

Y considero oportuno terminar esta parte del recorrido afirmando que esta es una de mis obras favoritas, pues está llena de valentia, sinceridad y sensibilidad.

 “Y la miró por última vez para siempre jamás con los ojos más luminosos, más tristes y más agradecidos que ella no le vio nunca en medio siglo de vida en común, y alcanzó a decirle con el último aliento: —Sólo Dios sabe cuánto te quise.”

El amor en los tiempos de cólera, Gabriel García Márquez

Ok, it’s time to talk about a kiss, but it’s not just any kiss, it’s A Kiss by Dan Waber. A kiss is not just literature, it is an expression of love, and sadness, it is a farewell, it is a gesture that contains much to say but that sometimes is only limited to one act.

It all starts with a kiss, a look, or a smile, but it can also end with it.

I started with the kiss, but a minute after the kiss

butter in the pan

Mushrooms waiting

An easy crunch to the ground

Four feet shuffling almost like dancing

A phone somewhere on the street ringing, ringing.

But how was it before the kiss?

She turned her back on him

The Chop Chop Chop Chop of Onions

Running sink water

The cloth on fabric rubs from the white curtains being licked by the breeze

But why doesn’t anyone respond?

Did I like this work? Yes. I feel that he has so much feeling inside him that can be observed in the acts that he carries out the characters. Also, I dared to jump between acts trying to give it a connection and it is achieved. I believe that this piece allows us to demonstrate the versatility of the Elit. It also allows providing many interpretations of what is read through the roads. Beyond this, I consider how the author does a wonderful job of making it possible to read different stories interconnected by sentences or verses already established, but that doesn’t lose sense in choosing the different actions.

Facts: things that I liked about E-lit the musicality in the different works, and this was no exception. At first my normative and structured mind began to read from left to right, it made sense, but something was missing, to turn on the sound of my laptop. At that moment I saw that I had to read differently and the rhythm of the music complemented each word very well, with each rhyme, converging one and the other.

Another thing that caught my attention and I loved is the appearance of nature with the written, it demonstrates the importance of it in culture and written tradition.

For a moment I thought that the poems were repeated, but I understood that no, the first line of the third poem was the same as the first, but those that followed were no longer.

It really was a great piece and I felt inside it.

I love letters, I love epistolary literature, but it is more passionate than making them is reading them. So Letters to X was a different and challenging experience. At first, I didn’t know very well what I should do, so I risked trying a lot of things, superimposing one page on another, writing in one yes and another no, continuing to overlap to see what came out. Crazy.

I think that this tool and this medium could be a good tool when you experience writer’s block, because you already have a scheme and it is only to look for which words fit better, thus achieving better results, but the good thing is that there are thousands of options.

I remember that at the age of 12 my mother told my doctor that I could not cry, I did not laugh, and did not express any emotion, to which he replied that they should take me to a psychologist. There, on the first date, Dr. Diana discovered after a long conversation that from a very young age I see nonsense to live and that, therefore, I wanted to commit suicide, so without serious reasons like other people who struggle to live their day to day with the world falling at their feet. Already at home, my mother told my dad what had happened, to which he replied, «nonsense is that they are, he has never lacked anything, she only goes to school and says she has depression.» There I understood that there was something wrong with me, why do I want to die if I have had a good life? I don’t know, there are no answers, there is no explanation. Everything is not going to be ok, it is what I have learned after 11 years, sometimes the thoughts return, because depression is like that, one day you feel that you can be the queen of the world, and the next you see that you have lost everything, but it is okay to continue fighting, living, reaching goals. Sometimes I try to hide my feelings, not cry because in my head it is that crying makes us weak (what a big lie), but I must confess that some tears came from my eyes when playing Everything is going to be ok, why? Why does a game make me feel vulnerable? It is not just a game, it is a work that allows making visible situations of life, a little more tragic, but with more «fun», with a more optimistic look. At first, I didn’t understand much about the games, I have to fish frogs, give hearts to others, get friends, and play chess, but later when I repeated them, I saw that there was beyond. In the game of the frog, I didn’t want to fish her, because it was going to hurt her, but in doing so she became my friend, does friendship hurt? In the game of getting friends that followed me, I had to give affirmations that I am not worth anything and they only celebrated it and when he jumped the others were happy, do the friends encourage or advise? In the game of chess I won, I have no idea about chess, but I still won, and do you know how many mistakes I had? None, is life about not having mistaken? It has driven me crazy in a good way, it has made me reflect and lower the lump in my throat a little. The day before starting this semester they found my cousin dead in my room in Colombia there was chaos, sadness, and pain, I called my mother and she told me «you have no feelings», to which I replied that I do have feelings, but that I have a very different vision to death, after this life, everything is going to be OK. EIGTBO made me ask, am I okay? Do I have something wrong with my head? Why do I think so? And I return to the same thing, life is constant nonsense to which we try to find a way, meaning.

But, moving away from all this, my favorite piece was What if, because also, since I was a child I say, what if I were a bird? I admire the ability of birds to fly, flee, to find better environments and places that make them feel better, so what if I were a bird?

Thank you, Katie, for choosing this wonderful piece.

And believe it or not, everything is going to be fine, at some point, in some day and if it is not, you must keep fighting.

“Para morir he nacido”

I think sailing is a word that falls short of this experience, not only did I navigate, but I entered, felt, heard, and saw the wonder of Chinese culture.

The first thing that caught my attention was the music and the blue that prevailed in all the options, the sound, and visual experience were extremely important to be able to feel what I was reading and understand what was being said. However, in High Muck a Muck I tried to feel free and comfortable, let myself go, and try to fly.

The second thing I was impressed with was when the human body was presented and the options were located at strategic points, like the cardinal points on compasses and maps, I saw the body as a compass rose, I saw that the human body is a vessel that allows us to connect with the elements and that they make it possible to be in sync with the world.

The third thing that most caught my attention was the first option that Everywhere and Nowhere took, located on the top of the back, when clicking on it, 2 people appeared and the yin yang in the middle, when clicking on it, it connected to a video where an older gentleman, but with the development of this it was fading and a baby appeared, the first thing I thought was in the movie of the Strange Case of Benjamin Button, but then I considered the importance of older adults for their wisdom and how they are capable pass it on to new generations.

The way in which you are able to move around the site is simple, public-friendly and interactive. Something I hadn’t noticed was the little ear on the lower left side of the screen. When you click on it, you can listen to stories, experiences, and knowledge of the culture.

Here are some phrases that caught my attention:

• The valley is not empty, it is full of ancestors.
• There’s no escape.
• Some people are different, you can see it, or hear it. That’s how I grew up.
• Just another hungry ghost.

In 1963 the book Rayuela by Julio Cortazar was published, where stereotypes and schemes were replaced before an exploration and narrative experimentation in which the reader has the possibility of reading 155 chapters that can be read in the order that the reader prefers. This same author, sometime later, affirmed in interviews the transcendentality of his work, in addition to how complex it is to read this type of literature where the reader is in the same place as the author. Today, almost 60 years later, electronic literature breaks, to a certain extent, with that same structuralist and allows us to interact more deeply with the texts. This same literature allows transforming the way in which one reads, going beyond the word, there is more communication between the reader and the text, in a way. In addition to this, it makes it possible to increase understanding, because the one who reads must be committed to what is read, to what is seen and to what follows. Like Rayuela, Hypertext allows non-linear navigation, we jump from one side to the other and this action determines what is read and how it is read. Thus, reading electronically is a constant learning process. Hypertext and electronic literature make it possible to create different stories with each click, it can become confusing, because, perhaps, there is no established route, but as that song by Serrat says, walker there is no way is made by walking, in literature there is not a single path, there are many endings, many bridges, many plots, there is no longer only one version.

«Follow me before the choices disappear», was the first hypertext in Twelve Blue, coincidence? I don’t think so. It was very crazy to read this story, I really didn’t know what I was reading, or where I was going, but little by little I got carried away. I noticed that the hyperlinks were connected (worth the redundancy) with words that made a lot of sense, that is, they were chosen strategically. Something that caught my attention and caught me was the alliterations, the way I tried to connect the fragments with novels I already knew. IT WAS VERY CRAZY and sometimes stressful because it confused me, I got frustrated, then I liked it again and connected, it was a very long hour, but I took advantage of it.

Hey! I’m Edna V. Orozco Campo, a grad student, and writer, I’m trying to be a bartender, and a younger sister. I love watching the Simpson, classic music, Shakira, Becquer, Goethe, Pizarnik, Storni, Caicedo, Dickison, Plath and, of course, García Marquez.

When people ask about me, I don’t know what I am supposed to say, maybe I s start talking about the importance to forgive and how writing is good therapy. At some point in my life, I dream about the Hero and how they allow inclusion. Now, I have daydreams about the memoirs and the power they have in us.

I’m 23 years old and my goal is when I’m 30 to be a Ph.D., I know I can with this. Also, I want to be a publisher, editor, professor, and person who I dream of when I was 10.

ALso, I’m from Colombia, so we can talk in Spanish wherever you want.