read to the end; why get confused? / it’s just “me,” talking with “you”
I said in class last week that I have a hard time processing what people say to me in time to come up with a conversationally timely response. So I’m asking you, friends: when that happens, is it because I’m taking the time to be sure that I mean what I say? Or is it because I take that long to process things—to make meaning from their words for myself?
Very often, when I do respond quickly, I talk “at” a person or at a statement—not usually on the same track as the question but intersecting it at an angle, meeting at a point, and diverging again (like words in scrabble). Friends, why do I do that?
“When you’re holding a cup of coffee, why do you occasionally raise it to your mouth and drink from it?” Friends? Why do you?
About that: I use coffee as an example a lot of the time. Why do I assume that “you” drink coffee? It seems common enough, but among whom? I can’t be too sure. So when I say that (above) or something like it, I’m not really talking about “you” to “you.” Even though I’m saying “you,” I’m talking about “me” to “you,” but that is something that I can do for you. I drink coffee. You don’t need me to talk about “you” to “you.” You do that for yourself, even if (only) for having read what I have to say about “me.”
But it seems like that’s where meaning is made.
Because “you” got to tell “me” about “me” above, now “I” want to tell “you” about “you.”
I began noticing in class about two weeks ago that we’re starting to pick up (intimately) on each other’s ideas. And I’ve noticed it on the blogs. It can be subtle (at first). We’re becoming more alike, y’all! One person says something that reminds me of a second person; another person says things that remind me of things I’m saying. But isn’t that literacy in use? Isn’t that a class? Our class?
“I” am not going to make specific cases—for one, “I” would have to prove that “we” are actually paying attention to each other in class and that “we” are reading each other’s posts. What do “I” know? “You” might know. So do “we” know? And anyway, I’ve forgotten some of the specific instances from our class discussions. But, just as if I had made specific cases, you’ll have to decide if “you” are going to believe them.
So why don’t we just write about ourselves and read what other people have to say about themselves? I do; it has gotten “me” this far—this close, now, to all of “you.” And I think “we” all already do, but we pretend not to by saying “you.” Friends, why don’t we just?
As we endeavor into Week 11 of 15, I’d encourage you to think about this (meaning is made when “you” do). Is something like this going on? First of all, what is going on? Why? How? Are we—all of us—attuning to ourselves/our own ideas by seeing things like our own ideas outside of ourselves? Are we attuning to other people/their ideas by making meaning inside of ourselves, on our own terms—or on theirs? Are we attuning to identified/constructed common ideas on common terms?
(attuning—getting in tune? Harmony? A blue note?)
(Why do I always go meta? Doesn’t literacy require it? When we want to talk “about” literacy, don’t we always mean the “who? and the “what?” and the “why?” and the “how?”)
(Usually my posts are just over 1000 words. This one is just over 500, including these end comments. There’s space for “you.”)
So in my blog portfolio I questioned as to why some blogs get responses and others do not. I have reached a conclusion for myself, specifically regarding your posts (I am not reaching this conclusion for any one else’s, though). This post is short (and sweet-ish?) and the ideas, although super intricate, I can follow…with much concentration, actually way more concentration than I would have liked, but hey, I followed it. So I want to start this reply with the thought that I have about responding to people. A lot of the time I am very quick to reply, therefore, I do not necessarily think much about what I am going to say, therefore, I tend to go around in circles, therefore, I tend to repeat myself, therefore, I don’t usually communicate the idea as it looked in my head. After I am done speaking, I think to myself, ‘Did they understand what I said?’ and then I think, ‘What did I even say?’ because I spoke almost out of impulse that sometimes I don’t get the real chance to consider what I want to say. With that being said, in my case, I think I do this because I am very, very, very forgetful. If I don’t immediately speak my mind, I am going to forget what I want to say. Hence the reason I tend to raise my hand in class, and then put it down after listening to one of our peers speak their mind…their idea has caused me to forget my idea and start considering a response to their idea. Maybe this connects to the next idea that you mention, that we immediately pick up on each other’s ideas. Therefore, does “your” idea become “my” idea? Did I actually have the same idea in “my” head this whole time, and “your” comment just awakened it in me? So are we a “we”? That is interesting to me because at the rate that I switch my thoughts to reply something else after hearing what one of our peers has to say makes me wonder if what they said was just another emerging idea in my mind, that has yet to come to the forefront before one of our peers mentions it first. Wow— I think I just confused myself. Mind blown.
Maybe the point of literacy is to be “literate” in all the different interpretations of what literacy is, and when we become more “alike”, or pick up each other’s ideas, it is us slowly learning more about literacy, working as a class to be fully understanding of each other’s thought precesses and points of view. We are one, working towards one understanding of literacy, only achieved through understanding each other’s literacies.This is a much smaller scale than worldwide literacy- to be truly literate, you would have to know every spoken and written language, body languages, pictorial languages, etc. But our classroom is a tiny microcosm, and the more attuned we get to each other’s ideas, the more literate we become in literacy.
It’s not surprising that the class holds similar thought patterns, as we’re all upper classmen who’ve gone through a relatively similar education program. As much as we would like to think of ourselves as wholly brilliant individuals, we’ve learned reading and writing in a particular way and hold certain values about it that have been influenced by a lot of the same people and experiences (how many of us have had the same professors?).