Just looking at my Web Events, I can tell how I have grown as a writer, thinker, and person throughout this class. My first web event was completely within my comfort zone – though it was the first lens text I had ever written, it involved mostly literary analysis with only surface-level feminism. Ironically, as I questioned whether A Doll’s House was part of the patriarchy, I was operating under very patriarchal assumptions of what feminism actually was. Women were women and men were men and though I could tell there was something about gender I wasn’t really getting (that it was part of essential self? a body, part of the body, and yet not a body?) I hadn’t reached the understanding of gender that I have now. My second web event, however, reached into territory I hadn’t ever thought of exploring in a Feminist Studies class. I had always considered the separate factions of identity politics separate, so confronting intersectional identities was something that I hadn’t done before. However, I realized I had been living intersectionality – I had been experiencing an institution that supported intersectionality in higher education and hadn’t considered how important that was. My third web event was an example of biting off more than I could chew. Feminism and visibility in media has always been something that is really important to me; even as a little girl I wanted to grow up and write stories about other little girls just like me, who had to go to therapy and liked other little girls.

Culinary Spirit

There was a discovery by British scientists that taste and smell would last longer than visual memories. So today instead of taking everyone to tourist attractions and visit visually, I would like to use the “taste” to approach my city---Chengdu.

I’ve been out of the city for 4 months, and when I closed my eyes, I could still reencounter the taste of the restaurant in front our house. The taste in Chengdu might be the most unforgettable thing in the city.

It is a spicy city, everyone loves spice here, and it somewhat influences the attitude of the residents. Food takes a great proportion in the residents’ life, especially “malatang”. There is at least one malatang place in every block (not exaggerating, there are three in front of my home), and it’s the most representing thing that the city cannot live off.

This is a little bittersweet, honestly. I know I probably don’t seem like the type who would get emotional about things, and typically, I’m not, but I’m sad that this is the last paper I get to write for this class. I want to take a breath, even though I just started. It’s a strange feeling. We’re not coming back on Tuesday this time so we can all do our best to figure out what the twenty pages of reading we did actually meant.  How am I supposed to explain my issues with Deep Play to my mother? She’s not going to understand. I need fourteen other people to argue with me about it.

I wasn’t sure what to expect of the class at first. It seemed an obvious choice, to take a course on feminist studies at a women’s college. I knew that my views of the world were severely limited by my pre-existing notions and my highly subjective experiences, so I was eager to expand those boundaries and supplement my knowledge of feminism. I expected a simple English course, analyzing the feminist and antifeminist actions of the protagonists therein, and I found something quite different. 

I didn’t expect, at the end of the year, to have completely revolutionized my idea of feminism. While I already had some very strong opinions in terms of cultural gender identity, it was nothing compared to the way some of the sections of the class stretched my knowledge of feminism – what it meant to be feminist, particularly in terms of structural institutions and ‘feminism unbound’. And thanks to this class, I find myself leading so many of my friends to question the institutions put in place, how we as a collective grow and learn thanks to them. I have grown more from this class than I could ever have imagined, and I appreciate it so much.

Well, I’m sure Anne has read a lot of this before. But, I’ll write it out anyway. I love creative writing. It is my passion. Yet, I have never been able to merge analytical writing and creative writing. This class showed me that that is possible. It didn’t teach me that I should quote Sontag and write fiction at the same time. Instead, “Play in the City” showed me that I can be as free in my Creative Writing as I am in my analytical writing.

Or, to use the language of the class, “Play in the City” showed me that there’s no harm playing in my writing, that the times in which I write the best and enjoy my writing the most are when I take risks. Moreover, these risks often pay off. Deep play and critical play aren’t hard to find while I’m writing. Critical play comes far more easily to me than deep play when I am writing because in the past I have felt constrained by structure. But, now as I’m writing this I realize that there is a physical structure to writing. This is unavoidable. The structure I feared was just a mental roadblock. Deep play allows me to go past this roadblock. By the time I’m deep playing, there is no concern over whether I write the word “Penis” or “Headband.” I am only hoping that I’m going somewhere with my writing.

There is something defiant about Isaiah Zagar’s mosaics. Cities are built for efficiency, functionality, but not necessarily beauty. Yet, around South Street, a glimmer of light in the gap between two buildings could mean a mosaic of mirrors and color. Upon closer investigation, a pedestrian could find his or herself in a different Zagar’s art is a street intervention, playfully ignoring Philadelphia’s figurative and literal grids to bring subversiveness and spontaneity to its streets. 

Isaiah Zagar doesn’t always plan ahead where his next mosaic will be, what it will look like, or where he will get his materials. Many of his mosaics spill across alleyways and onto the back walls of houses, creeping along fence lines as if they’re no longer in the artist’s control. The mosaics fill cracks in alleys with seemingly random words and images. Looking at a map of Zagar’s mosaics is not like looking at a map of a typical art gallery. The mosaics make no distinctive pattern and many do not even appear on the map. In the magic gardens, the route you take is not restricted to a single path. Zagar’s art defies the city’s nearly symmetrical grid pattern in its meandering nature. The art is there “to disrupt the everyday actions in the city” by giving people a chance to think for themselves about what it could mean (Flanagan 14).

i.

Meaning Meaning meaning meaning. Mean. ing. Mean inc, incorporation, collaboration, despair. A structure golden overarching there inside fat cats in wall street suits inside our own, love found on greasy fastfood floor in ball pits arches roman water? or sewers. gold money florins in our teeth, corn in cows reborn in cows in muscles ripping in our teeth, on our speech muscle

ii.

gertrudestein #mindblown if we could find these words our own. if we could find if we could find if we could find MY oversoul. community in death, but not in graveyards but not in bones but not but not but not community. community in life, in birth but not in past, in present future past spark of life of soul in mind in brain neural bridges hormones sparks of thought white light in synapses on bio tv screens. no screen nostalgia let it be let it be let it be scratches pages dirt and paper let it be let it be quills and let it be pigeon mites. forward surge, the alien of mind the text upon the screens the text within the quills NO surge force it forward the text upon the screens the text within the mind, white text white light spark of synapses NO the thoughts within the mind the thoughts upon the soul to talk with touch to taste your salt and KNOW cows lick salt and so do we.

iii.

matriarchal poetry. Poetry mothering, othering mothering taking. care