You've Got Questions, We've Got Answers

Fall travel season is in the rear-view mirror and yesterday I made my return to New Orleans in all her glory, just in time for Homecoming! The admission team has met some awesome students on our trips and we are looking forward to welcoming a huge group of you next year to our campus as members of the class of 2021.

I have spent a good portion of the last two months answering your questions about Tulane and life in New Orleans. It's probably one of my favorite parts of this job- sharing my Tulane experiences and giving prospective students as much insight as I can into the world of all things Tulane. In that light, I thought it might be helpful for me to let you know about some of the best questions that we as admission officers get.

I'll give you six examples of great questions to ask your admission counselor when you visit our campus, or when we are visiting your high school or hometown. These are interview questions and questions you could be asking students on these campuses when you visit, too. And... what blog of mine would be complete without a list of a few questions not to ask? We'll save those for last.

Ready? Let's go!

1) What is the political climate on campus? Great question here. I think it's cool to find out if the campus is red or blue, conservative or liberal. It says a lot about if that place is a good fit for you, and what kind of kid goes to that school. Especially with our politics in the USA right now, it's a very interesting time to be on a college campus!

2) What kind of student fits in (or doesn't) at your school? This one may put us on the spot a bit, and for some schools may be tough to answer, but I still think it's a great question to ask. One of my favorite student tour guides at Tulane tells her tour to look at students' shoes as they walk around Tulane on the tour. That will tell you what kind of kid can be found at that campus (and it will also show you just how crazy diverse our kids at Tulane are). Birkenstocks, Chacos, hightops, Converse, Sperrys, barefoot... you get the idea.

3) What was your favorite class when you were at Tulane? Or better yet, ask our current students about their favorite class. We like talking about this kind of stuff.

4) What did you do last night? This is one to ask our students (unless you want to hear about my Netflix marathon). Put them on the spot and I think you'll enjoy hearing what our kids do with their nights. It's everything from late nights in the library to late nights on Frenchman Street. This is a great question to ask a student panel if you happen to hit one up.

5) What is the cost of living like in your city? And how easy is it to get around town? Good questions because they will make a real impact on you once you arrive on campus. Luckily for you NOLA fans, we are inexpensive and that there streetcar will take you to the heart of downtown for just a buck .25!

6) What kind of support can I get on campus? Schools have great resources that we want you to take advantage of. Tutoring, academic advisers, Tulane's success coaches... ask us about them and use them when you get here.

There you go! Remember these are just a few examples of great questions to ask during your visit; there are many more. And also, keep in mind that these are good questions to ask in person, rather than via e-mail (I take it you've read my previous blog on said topic before...).

Now... selfishly, here are just a few questions that may not be the best ones to ask. If you have asked me these in the last 7 weeks, (and every single one of them has been asked many-a-time) do not fret! Seriously! I am just offering positive suggestions for the future. You'll thank me later, I swear. A good rule of thumb, if you're asking a question just for the sake of sending an e-mail or just for the sake of asking anything, your question likely could end up on this list. We don't track demonstrated interest that closely, so don't feel the need to ask just for the sake of asking or e-mail just for the sake of e-mailing.

Here are just a few...

1) Does your school offer internships? I said the word "internship" 78,192,120 times in the last 7 weeks. I counted. Maybe that is an exaggeration. But in all seriousness, I am going to blow your mind with a fact right now: every single school in America can offer its students an internship. Every. Last. School. If you are a motivated student, are doing well in school, and take some time to explore options online (both your school's site and a regular ol' search), I can nearly guarantee you that you'll be able to find yourself an internship. Northeastern has a great co-op program, GW offers great internships on Capitol Hill. Every school from Harvard to your local community college can help get you an internship, and, dare I say it, an internship is possible no matter where you go to college. If you apply yourself, use your school's resources and put in a little legwork, you can make this internship dream a reality! The same goes for study abroad- we've all got it!

2) What is your school's best major? Instead, try this: "what are some smaller majors that are very strong but not well known, or are doing some really cool things?" The best major thing... well to be honest, we would probably not have it if it wasn't a strong major. You can even ask what Tulane is known for; that is better than asking our best major.

3) These

4) How's your math major? See also: chemistry, English, communication, etc. Some of the schools you apply to may have over 150 majors. We, as admission staff members, know a lot about each major but when you zero in on a specific one, you'll probably get an answer that includes things like "it's interdisciplinary! "it's broad!" "its' focused!" "it's great" or "it's strong!"

5) Should I answer the optional statement? The answer is always yes.

So there you go! Hope this helps get some good ideas generated for what you should be asking student and admission reps at the schools you are applying to.

Best of luck, you all! And Happy Homecoming!

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Story Blindness

 “These ghosts. Our smoky ropes of attachment. And our reeling them in.”

--Albert Goldbarth

1. Hewnoaks Artist Colony, Lovell, Maine

There’s electricity running through my body. My mind races as I hear the sad call of a loon far off on Kezar Lake. Frogs croak up close to the window I’ve left open to let in the cool lake breeze. Up above in the rafters of my cabin, something shuffles. I’m told squirrels seek refuge in attics. They also glide from tree to tree. I’ve yet to see one do so since I arrived in the middle of a pine forest in rural Maine.

            Whatever is up there goes about its business cracking then dragging what I imagine are branches or pinecones across the ceiling. Making a nest, no less. This cabin I’m staying in is a hundred years old. Who knows how long my attic-mate has squatted here or how many other creatures call this place home.

            My mind becomes fixated on building a narrative for whatever lives with me, but I should channel my preoccupation towards writing about my family. What I’m here for, to write about my mother and her mother, how their lives dictated everything before I was ever born. My attention shifts to that and I’m paralyzed with dread. I glance out the window that clouds over with fog.

*

Fog hangs over the entire forest, glowing in the early morning light, making the tall pine trees assume an eerie dominance. It draws me out of my cabin. Fuck, it’s cold—fall is, in Maine. I’m used to Texas fall, which is merely less scorching by a few degrees than summer right up to Halloween. But I endure, taking a snapshot with my phone.

I marvel at the impenetrability of fog. The way it casts a pall over the South Texas roads most mornings, suspending everything in its air.

(Are we moving forward or backwards when we can’t see in front of us? Are we frightened when we don’t know what’s ahead?)

For me, writing about my childhood experiences in memoir feels like moving through fog. I’m often frustrated at my inability to capture moments the way they happened. Uncertainty gets in the way of clarity. I’ve written about my struggles to pin down narrative out of experience, but what happens when looking at the past rekindles a sense of defeatism that threatens to efface my life?

Fog somehow infiltrates my memoir. I open with a scene: I stand alone in a dark parking lot. It’s the middle of the night and a balmy mist sets around me. I look up at a street lamp and puff breath clouds with my mouth. I’m seven years old in this instance; unnerved by the ideas my mother has put in my head. Be weary of the darkness, of the unknown. Strange things lurk there. Nothing good ever comes from straying so far. The Mexican pessimism rises like brume, so thick it obscures and restricts reality. I fight it with my own imagination.

It penetrates another moment. In this one, my father is lost in the middle of nowhere Mississippi. We park at a gas station right in front of a phone booth that’s submerged in heavy mist. It’s 1985. We’re stranded hundreds of miles from anyone who looks like us or speaks our language. 

That very scene elicits an emotion that absorbs me in the same way as that snapshot above. Take those lonely chairs and imagine a phone booth, a thicket behind dense mist. Keep looking. Look past the phone booth until you can make out the detail in the trees. Look beyond the trees until you’re inside it—suspended and terrified of the unfamiliar, the anomalous, the uncharted.

Nothing good ever comes from running away so far just to understand your problems.

2. Kezar Lake Trail

My mind hasn’t come to terms with where I am. I look down a dirt path that leads towards the lake. At any moment, I imagine that at the end of this dirt road is a wall, Truman Show-like. Perhaps, I bump into a prop, watch it topple down before me, revealing… I don’t truly know.

I’m reminded of the childhood places I lived in as a migrant farm worker. The tiny one-room efficiency infested with bugs, the brick shack with terrible plumbing, the large barracks devoid of walls—all were in a state of decrepitude and a far cry from the house my father bought and sadly couldn’t afford in Brownsville.

As a child that disparity hardly escaped me and in fact, the constant shock of moving in and out of these spaces kept me at a heightened awareness of my surroundings, made me notice the stark contrast of substandard living against gorgeous backdrops of the northern Michigan forests or Central Florida’s tropical beaches. That outside world, to me, became a fake. The reality was an endless stress.

Twenty-five years separate me from that old life, those feelings long receded. My isolation in Maine brings them back. I try thinking of something else and I arrive at the words that haunt my family narrative—andas por la calle de la amargura.

My grandfather said this once to my father, right before we left Texas to start a new life. You’re walking down a street of bitterness. There are consequences from living a life astray.

*

I taped old family photographs on the cabin walls.

            My mother never decorated the wall of any of the places we lived in. Few pictures remained in small frames close to our bedside, on dressers, and at some places, our kitchen table. But nothing pleasurable ever graced our walls. One time, I tried imitating what I saw in kids’ bedrooms on television shows. I had no posters, so I cut up my favorite pictures from old magazines and old an Scholastic catalogue I got from school, and tried putting them up on wall next to where I slept. The act was my first form of individuality. My mother took them all down by the time I came home from school.

What this taught me: only calendars hang on walls, a constant reminder of our interim lifestyle that was never meant for comfort.

*

            One picture tapped to the cabin wall is a class photograph of my kindergarten class, the kind you take at some point during a school year. In it, I stand in the second row, center, wearing a checkered hand-me-down western shirt and a big gummy grin.

I’ve written about what’s behind that grin, what the picture failed to show: hunger because I wasn’t eating.

My smile clouds reality.

I remember hating the food at this school. Their pizza, Salisbury steak, spaghetti and meatballs, and even their country-fried steak was smothered and marinated with onions and tomato paste. The aroma, or the acidity of the tomato, made my stomach turn. Then there was the foul wet rag that the cafeteria lady used to wipe down tables. The stink rose off the tabletops and hit me while I sat heaving over my Styrofoam plate. I sat miserably in the cafeteria that also served as a gymnasium, with many of the same kids in that group picture.

Like a prop from my past, that gymnasium endures in my dream to this day. In one of these dreams, I sit next to my classmates during lunch. I feel ill, so I heave and gulp. The cafeteria monitor asks what’s wrong. Then she motions that I head straight to the nurse’s office.

As I rush towards the gym’s front doors, my hands over my mouth, the cafeteria tables expand into longer more dizzying rows. I exit onto an empty walkway, and here, my mind plays more tricks.

The hallway becomes hard to walk on. In one instance, the hallway has no walls, but sheets of pouring rain. Then in another, the hallway seems fine. I wander through the hall and am lead back to the front doors of the gymnasium. I try again heading in the direction of the nurse’s office and arrive at the very same spot. I go through this over and over, each time I’m much closer to vomiting.

In some versions of this dream, my only exit becomes the bright yellow doors of the school library. The very same setting where that photograph was taken.

The library doors are a way out for me—what I was running from?

That loss of appetite was a result of the harsh shifts of environments, now manifested as a vestige in my subconscious. 

I don’t write about one detail in that picture. Right above me is a large sign that reads: NON FICTION. Those word loom over me, a banner that augurs what’s in store.

*

It’s hard to write about someone who’s dying.

            Before I boarded a plane to Maine, I spoke with my mother. She reminds me that my grandmother is in the ICU. The doctors tell her that she won’t make it through the week. My mother tells me this in tears. But my grandmother is conscious, even cracking jokes about kicking the bucket to my mother, who’s distraught.

I tense up; we’ve been here before.

My mother has been at my grandmother’s side non-stop for weeks. My mother willingly puts herself in these situations, often forgoing days without adequate sleep or nourishment until she herself is faint and weak. In a way, her own deprivation is a sign of solidarity with her mother, the same woman who willingly abandoned her as a child and now mocks her goodwill as an adult.

But my mother loves to suffer. For what’s a good life worth if you don’t put yourself through the meat grinder for others? This is my mother’s fundamental principle and biggest flaw—to feel alive one must suffer for others.

I grew up listening to my mother remind me to love they neighbor. “Amar a tu prójimo,” she’d say to my brothers and me. If a stranger slapped you, you’re supposed to turn the other cheek.

Here lies my own conflict between allowing myself to suffer for others and railing against the very teaching that left me vulnerable to be a taken advantage of.

The fog of resentment rises, cousin of pessimism.

 Mother asks if I want to speak with my grandmother. But I decline and change the subject. I don’t tell her I’m on my way to an artist colony. I already have a difficult time accepting that I’ve been awarded anything. Farm workers don’t just win things. We work hard, but we don’t have things like this handed to us.

Yet I board.

3. Route 5

When I’m not writing in my cabin, I take walks. The Hewnoaks Artist Colony is tucked deep in rural Maine next to the massive Kezar Lake. The New Hampshire hills roll green on the horizon. Across the lake, I’m told lives Jonathan Demme, and just down the road is Stephen King. In fact, the road I walk is Route 5, the same road where King was nearly killed in 1999 while going on a walk. Locals and tourists like to barrel through, so I’m careful.

            Route 5 evokes many of King’s novels. Rural Maine is the setting in many of his stories. The piney woods that stretch along Route 5 recall The Body, his most famous novella. The film version, Stand By Me, moves the local cross-country to the Pacific Northwest. The Oregon woods in the film are in essence a body double, a likeness seen at quick glance, but verified false at second take. That change betrays the nascent wonder I witness on my walk. The same wonder I believe King aimed to capture in his novella.

This place takes me back to my own childhood, when I challenged myself way too young to read King’s books. I’d sit up late at night trying thumbing through books under very little light. “Go to sleep,” I was told by my mother. “Reading will make you go blind!”

It amazes me to this day that reading books is a central part of my life today despite so much discouragement from my mother. “What do you see in those books?”

She saw reading for leisure as absurd. In contrast, my mother was fine with my older brother staying up late into the night glaring madly at his math book.

What I learned: learning can’t be an enjoyable act, but an afflicting experience on the road to achievement.

Interestingly, ignoring my parents’ wishes to quit reading became my first successful stab at individuality and staking a claim to my own beliefs.

*

Route 5 leads to the small town of Bridgton. I walk the aisles of the local Food City in search of provisions to make it through the rest of my week. The small grocery store recalls the setting of one of my favorite King stories, The Mist. In the story, a dense fog overtakes the town and a group of shoppers are stuck inside the store. But like many of King’s stories, the horror lies within the seemingly ordinary. The stranded group increasingly succumbs to claustrophobia and panic as what’s inside the mist reveals itself.

The Mist scared me as a kid and it’s hard not to recall that fear while I’m in the store that inspired the setting. I glance out at the storefront windows at every chance half expecting them to cloud over the way it had in the bedroom window in my cabin. But I exit the Food City to blue skies and a warm bright sun.

4. Pineclad

There’s a story here.

            I say this often when I write. Usually while I’m in front of my computer, but this time I’m in bed listening to rain as it falls hard on the roof. The wind blows hard, rattling the windows. Thunder compels me to look out in time for a flash of lightning. In that instance, I see the forest clearly: the pine trees that tower over my cabin cartoonishly sway back and forth. Behind it, a thick mass swells up from the lake. Just as fast as I see this, everything returns to darkness.

I try focus my thoughts back to finding a common thread in the memories, photographs, and all the ideas I jotted down before I came to Maine to write.

Suddenly, I’m startled by a crash so loud it sounds like half the cabin has caved in. I look out once more, but see nothing past what little the glimpses of lightning allows. I spend the rest of my time opening and shutting my eyes until I can longer tell the difference between the night and the moment I fall asleep.

Oh, nature, the distractor, she had other plans.

            The morning after the squall, I set out to find the cause of the loud crash. A few yards from my cabin, I discover the remnants of a fallen tree.

*

I stand at the hedge of an enormous forest. Behind me, a hill slopes downward. When I turn to look, the hill looks awfully steep. My brothers are at the banks of the grassy field, waving and yelling to come down—Hurry up, fatso! C’mon, let’s go!

I hesitate.

It’s so easy going up the hill alone when you’re not thinking, when you shut off that side of you that second-guesses your abilities. But I’m a kid in this dream, so easily distracted. Instead of going down the way my brothers want me to, I turn around and take a step into the woods.

            I dream a lot about forests. I dream that I’m lost in the woods or that I live in one. These dreams are never scary despite the fact that I depict myself as a child. Instead, they’re exhilarating knowing that I forge ahead on my own. All of the forests in my dreams have dirt trails. In every dream I’m always in the middle of these paths, never near an end and rarely at the beginning. In fact, I never know whether any of these dream trails have a beginning or an end or for how long I’ve strayed off my given path.

            Andas por la calle de la amargura.

            When I was nine, I lived in a large warehouse outfitted as a barracks in a small town in the Lower Peninsula in Michigan. Scores of immigrant families lived inside this encampment. Walls made from portable school chalkboards were used as partitions between families. In a set up such as this, there was no privacy. Not a day went by that I didn’t accidently catch a glimpse of a bare ass or a lumpy breast. I giggled the first time this happened. At night, I remember hearing all kinds of strange new noises coming from every corner of the barracks, farts mostly, but sometimes I was startled by puzzling new sounds I’d never heard of—aggressive moaning and soft weeping. This arrangement was perfect for a nosy kid, but the novelty wore thin pretty fast. During the day, when the adults and older children are worked picking cherries and cucumbers, I stayed behind to read books and listen to music on a little weather radio.

            What do you see in those books?

            A forest for escape: My brothers and I stand in a run stance just a few yards away from the migrant camp. Ahead of us is the bank of that verdant hill. At the top, the marvelous North Wood forest expands around us.

On your mark. Get set—go!

5. Kezar Lake

I sit on a small dock with my journal in my lap, watching the morning mist hover above the water. I think about my mother and grandmother. I have an urge to contact them, but there’s absolutely no reception for several miles. Even if I could, what would I even say?

            I’m isolated from the ones I love. I should feel bad, but I adjust. It’s a habit I’ve had since childhood—a thick skin to new things.

            But about this habit: it’s not that I don’t feel these new experiences, I just don’t processthem. Writing becomes the way I process. 

            (Okay—)

            I list out things I know in my notebook:

·      A huge component of what I’m writing at Hewnoaks is about my grandmother.

·      Through my perspective, she embodies all the anguish and pessimism that haunts my family.

·      I hold grudges about the past that have nothing to do with me. Yet they mark me.

·      My grandmother is dying. This bothers me.

·      My mother is a much better person than I am.

·      I must find a way through this fog.

·      Escape!

·      Write my way out!

(—so write.)

Because there is a story here, but also ghosts.

*

She stands near her own mother by a wide muddy dirt road that veers left and out of sight. They appear as if they are on a hike or on their way back to their village. The sun is so bright that it fades the details of the day. Behind my mother and my grandmother, is the costal city of Tampico. My grandmother was born in that city, and so was my mother.

            My mother is eleven. She wears a summer dress that hangs on her thin frame as if she was a clothesline. Her shoulders slope downward, her face in a grimace, perhaps, but not entirely from the sun. She seems willingly detached from her mother, evident by the way she stands almost behind her and several feet away.

            Her mother stands bold, wide in almost every way: chest, shoulders, hips, thighs, calves—even her grin is wide. It’s hard to not read more into her demeanor. My grandmother is shapely and beautiful with waves of blue-black hair that rests softly on her dress. She’s hardly aware of my mother as they walk that they might as well be on two different paths.

            My grandmother moved away from her village pal norte, hitting the road towards big city Chicago with a new man, and in search of her own American Dream. My mother was left behind as an afterthought.

           

*

            The nights in Maine are cold, especially by a lake. I find myself lying in the middle of a field along with a group of other artists, looking up at the stars. Between us, we down an entire bottle of Jameson. Our lively conversation that brought us together gradually wanes, as the whiskey drifts us all into our own thoughts.

My thoughts: The more I write, the more it casts an air of deep resentment. There’s so much anger in me that I still don’t understand, that still hasn’t found a voice. When I write, it swells in me.

How to fight this?

Nothing good comes from straying far.

How to escape?

Por la calle de la amargura…

César Díaz teaches creative nonfiction at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. He is a featured columnist at Essay Daily. You can read the rest of his contributions to Essay Daily here, here, and here. Also, sometimes he has things to say on Twitter.

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CPE Cambridge English Proficiency Exam 2017 Sample of an Essay

Submitted by Maria L

Read the two texts below. Write an essay summarising and evaluating the key points from both texts. Use your own words throughout as far as possible and include your own ideas in your answers. Use 240-280 words.

The Financial Costs of Stress Research carried out by the Health and Safety Council estimates that stress and mental illness continues to be neglected by many businesses, both small and large. And the economic impact of this is huge, costing employers around £26bn a year. Stress at work can lead to a lack of concentration, fatigue and low motivation, all of which will cost the company in terms of low productivity, customer satisfaction and the very reputation of the company itself. Employers are being urged to become more "emotionally intelligent" and to improve the way they deal with stress and mental illness.

Speak up about Stress Many people find it difficult to talk about their feelings, particularly if we're feeling weak or vulnerable. However, when suffering from stress it’s vital you seek help. It's important to feel you can talk honestly with a close friend, a loved one, a work colleague or doctor about what’s going on. Stress is easily diagnosed and there is plenty you can do to successfully treat and manage stress. One of the most effective of these is to share your feelings with those you trust. Remember that accepting help and support is not a sign of weakness. Close relationships are vital to helping you get through this tough time.

Write the essay. (around 240 - 280 words)

Essay on Stress and Work

The texts above deal with some of the effects of stress at work. This essay aims at summarising and evaluating certain aspects of work stress. It also provides some suggestions in order to get rid of stress or at least minimise it.

The first text revolves around the impact that stress has on companies, especially the finnacial one, pointing out that, at £26bn a year, it really amounts to a staggering sum. Then, it moves onto exposing a few of the consequences stress has on those who suffer from it, manely: lack of concentration, fatigue and low motivation. All of these unfortunately translate into reduced productivity and customer satisfaction and a poor public perception of the companies affected.

Tthe second text comments on some of the actions workers suffering from stress should take, so as to deal with it adequately. Thus, the main idea that could be inferred from the text is that in such situation it becomes crucial to seek help. Whether this is in the form of a talk with a close friend or reaching out for a professional hand it is down to the worker itself.

I believe that companies can take simple measures to help reduce stress, such as weekly team meetings to deal with work problems as a team, adequate tasks distribution within the workplace and last but no least, free counseling sessions with medical professionals. All of these actions combined with the support of family and friends could help to reduce the sources of stress and therefore to deal with it effectively. 

260 words

Edited by Gustavo Albarracín

CPESamprewritings

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CPE Cambridge Proficiency Exam 2017 Article Sample

Submitted by Sybille

An online environmental magazine has asked readers to send in articles about places of natural beauty that they have visited. You decide to write an articledescribing what you saw there and evaluating its importance as a place of natural beauty.

280-320 words

Beauty beyond expectations: 

South Africa

It is sadly a well known fact that the environment has been severely damaged over the last few years.  But have you ever wondered whether unscathed and beautiful places can still be found on planet Earth ?

I have had the opportunity to travel to the 4 corners of the world over the last few years, as part of my job as a scientist. I have seen countless amazing landscapes, but never before had I experienced such a wonderful moment as when I set foot in South Africa. A place of incredible natural beauty.

My friends took me on a safari tour and to be honest I didn’t expect to see anything as exceptional as what I saw. As soon as the car started and we drove towards the jungle, we entered an untamed world. We were surrounded by the charm of the planet’s greatest landscapes and were completely immersed in lush swamps, immense floodplains and a vibrant red savannah.

From time to time we found ourselves face to face with a herd of proud rhinos, gorgeous zebras or  gigantic elephants, which crossed the path as we drove by. I have truly no words to explain my overwhelming feelings being there. There is something magical and indescriptible that fills you at the sight of such animals roaming freely and peacefully in their natural habitat.

There is nothing like being immersed in a world so unfamiliar and to learn about the animal behaviours and strange as it may be, no other place will make you feel more alive and aware that unscathed natural wonders still exist and are really worth seeing and protecting for our delight.

280 Words

Edited by Gustavo Albarracín

CPESamplewritings

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CPE Cambridge Proficiency Exam 2017 Essay Sample

Submitted by Aline Oliveira

Essay on the meaning of 

Home

Both texts discuss the meaning of Home, highlighting its importance in different aspects. The first text argues that home is the place where we feel at ease, while the second one supports the idea that, even for people who enjoy going out a lot, the place where they live is always a reflection of its personality.

The first text rises up the argument that people nowadays lead extremely active lives and that for this reason they see their homes as a place where they can escape from stress. Staying in they can connect to themselves and enjoy either a moment of solitude or a nice conversation with their families.

The second text brings up the issue that for some people, life at home may not be as pleasant as the first text suggests. It states that some people have a strong need to interact with others by hanging out a lot in public places. But it doesn't mean that home is not important for them. According to the author, a person´s house can say a lot about its personality. To give an example, the souvenirs in the living room can let us know that the person has an interest in travel.

All in all, both texts provide strong arguments about Home and its essentiality. In the busy and  hectic lives that we all live today, "Home" is to me a kind of sanctuary where I can unwind after a hard day of work and simply be myself. 

250Words

Edited by Gustavo Albarracín
CPESamplewritings

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Scott Broker on Leslie Jamison, Guilt, and Confession

A Confession: An Essay

0. A confession: this essay will be more about me than the Hungarian man I meet or the essayist I read. This is not to say that they are without import: the former is a quinti-lingual tour guide and couch-surfing host who serves the eastern side of Budapest; the latter is Leslie Jamison. It is to say that the shape necessarily begins and ends with me, that the form of the piece itself collapses if its ultimate gesture lands outside of my hands. Consider this a thesis. Or a preemptive defense. Or a point zero.

1. In the winter of 2015, I traveled through Europe, following a curved line from Berlin to Paris. It was my first time in any of these countries and I dressed my insecurities with glimmering confidence. Wasn’t there a study that said the more you smiled, the happier you felt? I willed belief that I was socially malleable, the anti-tourist who knew how to engage any given culture or personality. On train rides, I whispered greetings in German, Czech, and French until the words pressed into my dreams; on sidewalks, I walked as if the streets had been built for me or by me. I smiled. I hoped for happy.

2. Throughout The Empathy Exams, Leslie Jamison analyzes the overlapping space between two or more independent bodies. The intersection is hardly ever polite, and the question at stake is often underscored by ethics: how can we breach into someone else’s territory without trespassing? Crossed thresholds can yield meaningful connection just as they can herald invasion, manipulation, taking. In the first section of “Pain Tours (I),” for instance, Jamison visits a silver mine in Potosí. She comes with gifts for the miners (an offering) but immediately recognizes the actual impulse (a taking): “…they are gifts for the givers: you will give something back, as they say, and this pleases you.” She then tours the mine, listens to the way that these men pass time in darkness, and even meets the demonic statue called Tío, worshipped for his authority here. By the time she emerges into the day’s light, restored again to the world she occupied before becoming a temporary guest, she sees herself in the glass of a van. And the fact of the matter is uncompromising: she “…look[s] like a devil too.”

3. I “immersed” in Berlin, meeting a Cyprian man for a date and listening as he told me about a local sex club. When he provided a brochure for the place—a three-foot-long fold-out comprising dozens of men in assorted sex acts—I was grateful to have an artifact after putting in so little effort. It was like flicking a finger in the water and leaving the beach with a basket of fish; the paper and story were scandalized enough for retelling.

I rested in Prague, satiated with the exposure of my first few days. My friend Megan and I stayed in the apartment of another friend, Myriah, and spent our days eating trdelník—braided bread wrapped by cinnamon. On my way to Budapest, I remember thinking that the respite had been important, but that it was time I plunge back into the borderland, back into the space of others. I contacted my couch-surfing host for the night, Zoli, and arranged to meet at 5.

4. We see Jamison elsewhere. A conference for Morgellons disease in Texas. A “Gang Tour” of Los Angeles. A prison in West Virginia. She travels, talks to people, watches television and movies, speaks of her love of artificial sweeteners, and confesses herself (presumptions, selfishness, insecurity) throughout. While talking to an ultra-marathoner currently in prison in the piece “Fog Count,” she recognizes her own intentions for the interview: “…I realize my interest [in prison life] betrays the privilege of my freedom: life in here is novelty to me; for Charlie it’s day-in, day-out reality. For me it’s interesting. For him it’s terrible.” Similar acknowledgements occur throughout, pointing at the frequent disconnects and problems of living both within and outside of oneself. She is an individual who interacts with a network; and here, she is a writer who is an individual who is interacting with a network. There is folly in conversation, of course, but then there is folly in the act of writing others, of writing conversations with others. How can you shape someone into a piece without stealing something in the process?

5. Things spiraled in Budapest. Zoli was an hour late to meet me and then informed me that he had recently been mugged at that same metro stop. When we got to the door of his apartment, he turned and issued a warning: “It looks like a bomb blasted off. I have to clean.” That morning, I learned, he tried to flush some spoiled food down the toilet but it clogged; now, he had to extract it by hand. The nausea of unease swept over me and any value to the situation—Zoli, a 27-year-old who spoke five languages fluently and knew more about the United States than I did, should have seemed like the ideal talking partner—dimmed beyond recognition. I was discomfited by the neighborhood, the mess, the isolation. By the time he suggested we go out for a vodka, I was eager to move my body, to be reminded that this was not my perpetual circumstance. Zoli told me many things at the bar: he hated all Hungarian politicians, believed that gargling vodka cleared a sore throat, and was steadfast that Pest was the far more interesting side of the city than Buda. By his third drink, he was lamenting the inherited depression of all the Hungarians he knew. “They all want to leave,” he said. “To be out of Budapest. To be out of life. You know, one of my best friends killed himself last year.” I tried a lame apology but Zoli shooed my words from the table with his hand. “It is our condition to be sad,” he said. “My other friend calls me once a week and says he’s going to do it. I tell him not to but who knows?” He wiped at his eyes a few times, slapped his cheeks, tried to smile, and then forfeited to a grimace. When we walked back to his apartment, he admitted that he started hosting couch-surfers to fend off his own loneliness. It came in waves, but it had a way of swallowing him up when it did.

6. In her acknowledgments, Jamison thanks Charles D’Ambrosio for teaching her that “…the problem with an essay can eventually become its subject.” And indeed, she does not escape the traps that she encounters. She is still writing about the lives of others, still entering their space and rendering the experience artistic. What makes the essays so remarkable, though, is that she knows that there are always two simultaneous subjects to any given piece: the material and the hands holding it. This idea embraces tension rather than resolve, championing the more difficult parts of encounters to demonstrate that the subject empathy (among others) most often exists in the effort rather than the outcome. Thus, 15 distinct essays grapple with a single term without ever properly defining it: sometimes, it lands nearer to Jamison or nearer to her material; often, it falls between reaching hands; always, though, we see it plainly in this frontier because that’s where Jamison admits it being. And while it seems like this might yield a frustrating muddiness, Jamison justifies confidence in what she says by being so decisive and honest about the reality of her own position in relation to the work. In the final piece, “Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain,” Jamison struggles with the trope and truth of suffering women. As with many of her essays, there is no clear solution to the paradox presented, but Jamison offers her own resolve by means of a final confession: “Pain that gets performed is still pain. Pain turned trite is still pain. I think the charges of cliché and performance offer our closed hearts too many alibis, and I want out hearts to be open. I just wrote that. I want our hearts to be open. I mean it.”

7. I was supposed to stay with Zoli for another night. After he left for work, I fled into the city and booked a hostel instead. When I sent him a message—my travel plans changed and I was leaving for Vienna now, not tomorrow—he asked if I had time for a farewell drink and I told him no.

How many times did I tell this story before trying to write it? I began in Vienna and carried it with me everywhere I went, tuning the pitch of the interaction (its weather, its grime) higher and higher until its sound turned so shrill that anyone listening was amazed I’d stayed as long as I did. I needed people to laugh, cringe, and worry; I needed my departure to seem necessary and obvious, for my subject to justify its own abandon. And when I finally did go to the page, the story arced out like an ECG, rising and falling in the rhythms I had already found for it. I reached my closing scene (that triumphant escape) but when I went to punctuate the close, some beat still bristled.

8. “It might be hard to hear anything above the clattering machinery of your guilt,” Jamison writes elsewhere. “Try to listen anyway.”

9. I want to say that any given essay requires confession. This seems simple, reductive. Maybe it is. Confession, though, seems like one of the most critical components to precise thinking. What is a confession, after all? It is an admission of desire, of intention, of presumption, of guilt. An articulated awareness that the totality of what any one person can say is still translated through a mind that has its own pursuits and limitations. It is what lends the shape of an essay by being the material that points the reader to who is writing those words. I trust Leslie Jamison for her honesty. I want to trust myself.

Look: This was never supposed to end with my triumph. This was supposed to end here:

I left Zoli and proceeded to write a story wherein certain details were carved in an effort to relieve a mind that was throbbing with guilt since it bid its host farewell. I was afraid of the weight of someone else’s sadness. I didn’t like the mess of someone else’s life, the way that it seemed potentially contagious. I left. I’m sorry for that. And I still want you to tell me that I was right to do so. I’m sorry for that, too. I mean it.

*

Scott Broker is a writer originally from Colorado living now in Seattle, WA. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared or are soon forthcoming from Sonora Review, CutBank: All Accounts and Mixture, Entropy, American Chordata, Barrelhouse Blog, and Driftwood Press, among others. He holds a BA in English and Philosophy from Seattle University, where he edited the school's annual literary journal, Fragments. He can be found at scottjbroker.com.

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