My Thoughts; Gladman

When reading Gladman’s “Event Factory”, I can’t help but think of an individual that is lost in an unknown/new space. This individual could be that of a tourist or outsider trying to understand or find meaning of this space or out of this space. Just as the reader is trying to make sense of this complicated text, maybe the individual is a guide of such thoughts of the language, of this text. But in doing so gets further away from the sense, and forgets about the movement. 

Movement and language is, I think, a part of each other, in general and is also big in this text. The traveler is moving through the city, while the reader is moving through the pages of this book, trying in the end, to get through it. Language is a funny thing, it can exist without movement but it may or may not make sense. We as human beings communicate and are social, even if we don’t realize it we look at body language and movement. I am a person who talks with my hand, using hand gestures. It just comes naturally to me. It’s hard to describe but the protagonist in “Event Factory”, is either the actual language/ text being guided and frame by that of the author/ the rules or is something like a robot that can speak perfect but can’t understand gesture or symbols. That being said, in this culture of Ravicka gesture and movement are the way of communication. It all leads back to the beginning when this language tourist gets a dance lesson by the salsa chick and she says, “You can’t do this without movement”. Movement is the body of this text.

Going back to my thoughts I had earlier, on this traveler being the text itself, is captured on pg. 64. This scene is very sexual and could even be considered rape. It has this visual image of hands either typing or writing with a pen, coming up/ creating the text, this text. Especially when someone shouts, “look at what I’m writing”, it so interesting. 

While this text is defiantly an open text, it plays with the rules of writing as it is writing. This text has many levels to it. It is rather engaging and the reader wand to dive in and get lost in the text and eventual coming out feeling lost but an idea is there, it is working, it has been digested. It has been explored.

Terrible 2 Weak

The sickness is polluting, no one is safe. The fever is low grade; only about 99 give or take. No strength to do anything but rest, waiting for the day when the sun will shine and bring warmth on the bodies laying around. 2 weeks is a very long time. I wish it was a zombie epidemic, I wish I could blame it on the weather of what I believe is called SAD, I wish it was something terrible and gruesome, which people would understand. It started in the throat; a loss of vocal communication, only a crackle would be released. Most people couldn’t understand. Burning sensation in my esophagus, sometime choking on mucus, a noose gently tied around my neck as I slept. Waking in terrible coughing spells that came from the chest when I would breathe. Some days I would feel better, which was a tease. Some days I would fell worst, which was hell. I thought my body would fix me, I thought I would get better in 5 days, I thought it was only a cold. But this was something else. I was lifeless, not wanting to do anything, forcing myself to something. Is it the Michigan weather? The winter was too long, and with that length it gave strength to this sickness that invaded my brain and corrupted my body. Never leaving the house, only for work and sometimes for school, otherwise I would be under the blankets, tucked in bed with some kind of vitamin C something or another. I want to move, I want to be myself, I want to get out in the world no matter what kind of weather Michigan would throw at me. I am to the point where I am sick of being sick. I am left here all alone, with my only weapon, a thermometer. It’s been to long since I seen my mother face. No mood to deal with other people, just leave me alone so I can rest. It might have been stress that opened the doors to this evil. I wish it was only a cold, I wish it was just my allergies; I wish it was only the flu; I wish it was anything but what it is. I wanted my innards and smaller organism to fix whatever was the matter with me. But it was stuck and wouldn’t leave; it was too cozy in the top half of my lungs. Maybe it was a chest cold or maybe it was bronchitis or tuberculosis. I gave up trying to take care of myself, my life was suffering from being sick for so long and my body was weak with fever and chills, I finally went to the doctors. One word- antibiotics.