"If I wanted to write a book how much you think my life would be worth?" (Perdomo 24).
Answer: I don't know.
Can anyone really answer that question and provide an answer to its truest entirety? An answer that justifies the person, the work, the people, the words?
I don't know.
How do we put a price to the words we write and justify the stories we tell to be worthy of that price? And or what if the cost of the story was worth a life but yet we put a price on the story to monetize it? To profit from telling the story? Is it still profit then if that's what it took to have a story to tell?
As Jeet Thayil writes, "Everything that lives, lives on" (208).
My existence is what reaches and intertwines with others in hopes that I made a difference to them - how I work with the youth to better themselves and come to peace with their traditional, cultural, and generational differences with their families.
The words I read, is the breath I take in to help me move on to my next day and the day after. Every conversation shared.
It reminds of this excerpt:
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As I read this work and listen and read the work of my peers, I am nourished to move on to the next day and the day after. It helps carry me on and motivate me to do better and better and work harder.
Identity is a funny thing because people almost always try to define who or what you are for you because it fits into their comfort zone of defining you immediately. Yet, I found that as I am growing older and learning more from my readings, peers, and ever changing circumstances and surroundings, I change and redefine myself. How or why does identity need to be? How or why is there a period at the end to make it final?
As you all know, I'm getting married at the end of the year and everyone keeps expecting me to change my last name. My response: why do I need to?
What if he wants to change his last name?
What if we both change our last names?What if no one changes their last names?
What if he changes his last name to mine?
What's so important and final about this? It's always changing and always molding. Who I was 5 - 10 years ago is completely different now and I would define myself completely differently. Even then, when interviewers or people tell me "So tell me about yourself," I don't even know where to began. How do you easily define yourself or say enough to encompass all that you feel you are?
That final line written by Perdomo resonated with me as well!
ReplyDeleteThe entire poem was accurately real, and I felt moved by the love, hardship, growth, and pain of the piece. the term "unauthorized biography" found in "Shit to Write About", is how I look at all of our written work, and even our lived lives. No experience is separate from the story you, heard, saw, felt ,even if that story was not yours to tell it has forever marked the pages of your narrative.
The union of two souls in marriage is beautiful, and in some way is the ultimate depiction of someone else biography forming your autobio. No matter where he was before, his story is forever morphed with yours and vice versa... no matter what last name you two choose
MUCH LOVE AND LUCK