It’s not so easy having to drive
past Marina Jacks everyday when I go home to Sarasota. Everytime I do so, I am
filled with a rush of emotions. It’s such a beautiful place and should be
filled with nothing but joy, but some of my past experiences have made this a
bit difficult. This is the place where I used to jog with my boyfriend, before
our relationship became toxic. The place where the reason for our relationship
becoming toxic has also been the reason for a friend of mine’s death, and where
a memorial now stands for her.
At first, going past the park makes
me miss my ex boyfriend, thinking of all the good times we shared together
there. But then, as I pass my friend Brandi’s memorial plaque, a whole other
wave of emotions rushes through me.
For Brandi’s sake, I try to view this place with beauty and peace. I try
to tell myself that she is happy and healthy now up in heaven; completely drug
free.
But then looking at this only makes
me think about how my ex boyfriend and my relationship started to take a turn
for the worst. Abuse of prescription pills was becoming a huge issue in this
small town I grew up in. Ever since my ex got his hands on his first pill, our
relationship was never the same again.
Despite all of this dark
negativity, I try to look out into the water, past all of this. I imagine a world
where everyone is happy; there are no issues with drugs. I look out at the sun
reflecting the waves and tell myself that this is Brandi, shinning her bright
beautiful smile down on Earth, letting us know that she is finally at peace. I
like to imagine her to be in some magical place, like somewhere you would find
in one of Dr. Seuss’ books.
I have never created a blog until doing this assignment. Despite the fact that I am not very tech-savvy, and could not get my blog to look as unique as some other students’ blogs, overall, I really enjoyed this assignment. It is different than anything else I have ever been assigned. Although it was sometimes difficult to incorporate the other students post with my own post, I found it challenging in a unique way that allowed me to be creative and think outside the box, which I really liked.
ReplyDeleteThe way that we had to somehow incorporate another person’s blog post into our own reminded me of graffiti artists and what we saw in Exit Through The Gift Shop. Thus far, the way we did this made use of Benjamin’s ideas about mechanical reproduction, by making our own piece of art through the use of another object, or someone else’s art.
I think I somehow got lucky that the corresponding posts below mine had to do with traveling, and me being a person who has traveled a great deal, I could usually find a picture I have taken to relate to it. Even though I did find some enjoyment out of the creative challenge this assignment set forth, it sometimes made me veer in a different direction than what I had originally intended to do with my blog.
All in all, I would say the assignment related most to intertextuality in the way that we all had a significant impact on each other’s blogs. Looking back through all of my posts, from the very beginning, I realized that my title and original post doesn’t quite relate to everything as I had intended it to. I found this last post to be the most difficult. I could find some ways to relate to the images, but the text that went along with the images didn’t have much at all to do with the theme of my blog. But, again, thinking hard about a past experience to relate to the corresponding post, I was able to relate it to mine, as well as tie it into the title and my original theme. I originally wished I would have put the first picture on my blog (of “Dr. Seuss Land”) on the first post that it relates to, but then after doing my last post, I realized having the image where it is kind of gives the blog a more creative perspective, in that it ties in with both the first and last blog post.