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*Apologies, I thought I pressed submit earlier!*

Deep in the thick of the quarter, my last quarter at that, I still find myself struggling with where I want my final project to go. Having taken LTWR 113 earlier this year, I thought my writing and ideas would flow as I opened up similar topics before. However, as we continue to read these complex works and have conversations in class, I feel far from where I need to be. I come up with these rudimentary ideas and drop them almost immediately; nothing feels right enough to commit to. I want to be able to utilize the freedom of form and take a cross-genre approach while still making the concepts we are studying personal to me. I don’t want to continue to put out watered-down versions of my experiences and thoughts just for a decent grade.

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee was a challenging read for me (not surprising). Beyond the sensitive and hard-hitting content, the varying forms and allusions to history and religion threw me for a loop. Like many others’ experience, I found myself either re-reading a part over and over again or skipping/skimming it if I couldn’t understand it. I was frustrated with myself until I had the friendly mental reminder to not overcomplicate it more than it needs to be. Ever since we talked about Glissant in class, I have been trying to approach the works we read with a much more open mind. Like with my own writing, I don’t want to water down our readings to fit my notions of understanding. Dictee doesn’t allow itself to be understood at first or second or even third reads at times. It explores cross-genre and taps into performance beyond the page which I really admire.

Working on a rough draft of a piece for our final project, I want to draw on some of the pieces in Dictee by exploring how the meaning and impact of something can change once said out loud. I don’t know exactly where I want to start, but there have been words in English and Tagalog and even a little Spanish that I have came across that meant different to me once I spoke it into the earth. Before next class, I probably will jot down some ideas that come into mind and try to grow from there. Something that I keep coming back to is “ng” (a particle in Tagalog) and “Ate” (past tense for eat in English but ‘older sister’ in Tagalog).