20050107
damn papers
a good friend whom i really clicked with several years ago in college has come back to haunt me. thing is, she's threatening to sue me.
this is a side of writing that's been completely kept from me, even by my own mentors. "oh, what sweet, harmless innocent you are. no one'd have the heart. go now, write well. good bye."
the friend and i belonged to different schools, pursued different majors, but belonged to the same youth group. i needed to complete an ethnography for one of my classes, and i cheated - i profiled our youth group.
shortly before the semester i was to write the ethnography, the friend showed up, again out of the blue, and connected with the rest of us. she has some of the best stories, and they're not all happy ones. she's made such an impact on me and the youth group that i used her to demonstrate one of my points.
i wrote the paper. and i posted it online.
i had misgivings about using her name with her story that i couldn't sleep for weeks before and after the paper. what demon possessed me to do such a thing? i'm such a stupid innocent. i remember feeling then it'd be ok. it's unsettling to think now, of how i somehow set aside the whole deal and prayed i won't have to deal with it again.
well, it came back. just over the holidays i wondered what had happened to her. and this evening, i got an email from her.
i tried to stay calm coz there wasn't anything i could do for another three hours until i got off work, but the whole deal weighed so heavily on me that i became so crabby at work, even my fearless supervisor backed off.
i started making up strategies. nevermind that she prolly had one of her lawyer friends write the email. i can see her being reasonable like that. no one's got my back with the paper; it wasn't written for any organization. how much would my own lawyer cost? where the hell's what'shisname who went to illinois? urbana's three hours by bus.
to keep from snapping at my siblings to get off the computer already, i dug around for my old files. an old computer, 15 floppy disks, six CDs, several journals, one book. i was about to attack my old clips and notebooks when i stopped and just tried out all the codes i knew i used for the homepage.
anglia
iudaea
aegyptus
germani
gallia
hibernia
roma
yspania
leones
aegyptus
iudaea
fons adae
acaia
synecdoche
anglia
aegyptus
yspania
gallia
germani ***
i tried the old computer again, a whole folder of scripts wasn't there. it was good my room was on the second floor of our house, i wouldn't know what to do with the mounting panic in my limbs. looked at the labels of 50 more CDs. tried the floppies again. sat in front of the machine and tried out germania, resigned.
bingo.
i am going to delete the whole damn paper offline!!!
---
*** The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco. ¶ 1/07/2005 03:43:00 AM
this is a side of writing that's been completely kept from me, even by my own mentors. "oh, what sweet, harmless innocent you are. no one'd have the heart. go now, write well. good bye."
the friend and i belonged to different schools, pursued different majors, but belonged to the same youth group. i needed to complete an ethnography for one of my classes, and i cheated - i profiled our youth group.
shortly before the semester i was to write the ethnography, the friend showed up, again out of the blue, and connected with the rest of us. she has some of the best stories, and they're not all happy ones. she's made such an impact on me and the youth group that i used her to demonstrate one of my points.
i wrote the paper. and i posted it online.
i had misgivings about using her name with her story that i couldn't sleep for weeks before and after the paper. what demon possessed me to do such a thing? i'm such a stupid innocent. i remember feeling then it'd be ok. it's unsettling to think now, of how i somehow set aside the whole deal and prayed i won't have to deal with it again.
well, it came back. just over the holidays i wondered what had happened to her. and this evening, i got an email from her.
i tried to stay calm coz there wasn't anything i could do for another three hours until i got off work, but the whole deal weighed so heavily on me that i became so crabby at work, even my fearless supervisor backed off.
i started making up strategies. nevermind that she prolly had one of her lawyer friends write the email. i can see her being reasonable like that. no one's got my back with the paper; it wasn't written for any organization. how much would my own lawyer cost? where the hell's what'shisname who went to illinois? urbana's three hours by bus.
to keep from snapping at my siblings to get off the computer already, i dug around for my old files. an old computer, 15 floppy disks, six CDs, several journals, one book. i was about to attack my old clips and notebooks when i stopped and just tried out all the codes i knew i used for the homepage.
anglia
iudaea
aegyptus
germani
gallia
hibernia
roma
yspania
leones
aegyptus
iudaea
fons adae
acaia
synecdoche
anglia
aegyptus
yspania
gallia
germani ***
i tried the old computer again, a whole folder of scripts wasn't there. it was good my room was on the second floor of our house, i wouldn't know what to do with the mounting panic in my limbs. looked at the labels of 50 more CDs. tried the floppies again. sat in front of the machine and tried out germania, resigned.
bingo.
i am going to delete the whole damn paper offline!!!
---
*** The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco. ¶ 1/07/2005 03:43:00 AM
