Part one of this prompt is to revise my questions for Anne. At this point, I feel that the quality is strong, and well developed – though I did make some changes from J11. I’ve read it out loud 2 additional times, and my final product will be:

Good afternoon, my name is Antonio. I am a Computer Science Major here at Berea, from the United States, and since I was a child, I’ve liked a good ghost story. I think that draw, found presence for me in your writing, for three reasons:

First, in your poems titles there are almost always marks that involved a date of birth and date of death.

Next, the statement in Homeplace, where you say, “No one asks me if I am haunted” implied for me, “Are you haunted? Am I haunted”.

Finally, just last evening, I was in a state of half-way awake, half-way asleep, and as I was waking I thought I could clearly distinguish a man standing by the side of my bed.

So, my first question is – what are your thoughts on the nature of ghosts? How do you view the nature of ghosts—do you see them as metaphors, spirits, or something else?

My second question would be closely related to that, and I’d ask why it seems there were no stories about ghost or the supernatural in Salt, was that an intentional choice?

RESPONSE TO DR GREEN ON POSTS:

Reference To: Re: APS 140: your server is down! On Post J9.
‘Many stories in these words! Why no people’s names? I’m also curious about where you’d put them in a time line since these are your ancestors. How do you see them living in you? I can imagine a whole book! I can imagine each of them in their own complex manifestation which has a direct relationship to you…… Please send me an e-mail telling me more….’

Dr. Green, I did have mention to some name in J9, “Mary-Paul-Carl Sr.-Richard”. If I were however, to describe these relationships, in another list I’d say: “Disowned-Dead-Dead-Disowned”. Though, I do recall the power of some of the archival work that I’d done in Caribbean Literature where I’d explored some of the final moments in my grandfathers life. I also carried some of this forward in my writings on Saudi Arabia. The question of how I seem them living in me is powered, considering that my descriptions are at least halfway dead, and I’d tend to agree that each of these could represent a form of short story.

What was my relationship to Mary? To Paul? To Carl? To Richard?

A final note, how much of this should be redacted? Perhaps I should transition over to a more confidential format. The website does get it’s share of traffic, but most of it is bot generated…

I had some preparatory comments as I formatted my question, and was fully prepared to engage with Anne but the snow day was enough to make me lose my paper! My journal post will work to iron this out before class:

Good afternoon, my name is Antonio. I am a Computer Science Major here at Berea, from the United States, and since I was a child, I’ve liked a good ghost story (though I have never considered a ghost poem!). I think that draw, found presence for me in your writing, for two reasons: First, in your poems titles there are almost always marks that involved a date of birth and date of death. Next, the statement in Homeplace, where you say, “No one asks me if I am haunted” implied for me, “Are you haunted? Am I haunted”. So, my first question is – what are your thoughts on the nature of ghosts? “How do you view the nature of ghosts—do you see them as metaphors, spirits, or something else?”

My second question would be closely related to that, and I’d ask why it seems there were no stories about ghost or the supernatural in Salt, was that an intentional choice?

My reflections on this time of sharing are sweet. I am more aware of the dynamic and traveled lives of others (particularly from the white board illustration the Megan’s group demonstrated).
Marriage and family are a common thread and shared experience, as well as people looking for ways to care for their children. Loren’s projection and voice was quite strong, despite being sick.

I am glad that Aaron had such quick thinking and had already laid out a good account of parts of his mother’s life. We seem to have both been impacted by drug abuse, and I enjoyed setting the stage on our presentation through a brief narration.

Group two, the use of the ball was an effective tool for sharing control of who was speaking; as well – their highlighting of different sections using a “chorus” also holds a strong mental note for me. It did seem as though there was a lot of tension in the group, perhaps nervousness?

Overall – In my body, I can only describe a feeling of relaxation, and a care for my peers.

I’ll conclude this post by writing for five minutes on this question: how do we activate and process (the journeys and creative processes we are sharing) using both our minds and bodies? | My reply to this will start with a brief mention on Boolean Logic. In programming, when and is used, this typically means that two clauses are two be evaluated, then if both evaluate to True, than the next step of a process will begin. With this in mind, I’d say that we should more clearly delineated what is of the mind, and what is of the body. Then we can categorize the activities that are associated with each. From there we can practice both, in hopes that there will be alignment? For example, if I understand thought to be of the mind; and speech to be of the body, I should practice both thinking and speaking. Eventually they will align?

My word cloud begin…
[ Louisville, Dirty Birds, Basketball, Aluminum Foil, Racetracks, Gambling, Dirty Floors, Heroin, Catholics, Baptists, Mary, Paul, Carl  Sr. Carl Jr. ]
I consider redaction, and salting the list with some things that aren’t true… or maybe something better?
[ Louisville-Oklahoma-Washington-Louisiana; Dirty Birds-Cardiac Cards-Black Birds-Little Brother, Basketball-Baseball-Football-Racetracks, Gambling, Dirty Floors-Marble Floors, Hardwood Floors, Heroin-Marijuana-Lithium; Catholics-Baptists-Atheists; Mary-Paul-Carl Sr.-Richard; Iroquois Park; Motown; RnB-Soul Music- Emo-Heavy Metal; Ohio River; Racism; Neutrality; Bitter Winters-Hot Summers; Water Parks-Roller Coaster-State Fairs; Ghettos-East-Enders-South-Enders; Male-PRP-Manual-St. Xavier-Trinity]

This seems to capture just about everything, with some time remaining. I’m going to describe the part of speech for each item as well….

• Louisville-Oklahoma-Washington-Louisiana: Proper Nouns (names of places/cities)
• Dirty Birds-Cardiac Cards-Black Birds: Proper Nouns (team names or nicknames)
• Basketball-Baseball-Football-Racetracks-Gambling: Nouns (sports and venues)
• Dirty Floors-Marble Floors-Hardwood Floors: Nouns (types of floors)
• Heroin-Marijuana-Lithium: Nouns (types of substances)
• Catholics-Baptists-Atheists: Nouns (religious groups or categories)
• Mary-Paul-Carl Sr.-Richard: Proper Nouns (personal names)
• Iroquois Park: Proper Noun (name of a specific park)
• Motown-RnB-Soul Music-Emo-Heavy Metal: Proper Noun (specific place or genre of music)
• Ohio River: Proper Noun (name of a specific river)
• Racism: Noun (concept or social issue)
• Neutrality: Noun (concept or state)
• Bitter Winters-Hot Summers: Nouns (types of seasons)
• Water Parks-Roller Coaster-State Fairs: Nouns (types of recreational venues/events)
• Ghettos-East-Enders-South-Enders: Nouns (places or groups of people, with “East-Enders” and “South-Enders” being specific groups)
• Male-PRP-Manual-St. Xavier-Trinity: Nouns (possibly referring to schools, locations, or specific terms, like “PRP” as an abbreviation)

Currently working through a cold, and an unexpected state tax…debt…”forgive us our debts”.

My free write today will be a draft from an email conversation I’m having with my accounting professor.

Thank you for your passionate reply, you must enjoy these types of conversations! 🙂

The question of mission work and evangelism has been a significant part of my life, though I have struggled to have enough conviction to keep hard theological lines. (I’ve struggled to ever speak up for myself!). I wonder if it’s easier to do good works? But, to verbally proclaim the gospel ( which Paul described as an offense )? I certainly want to avoid being offensive!  

Perhaps I lack the clarity to see things as they are, but as a non-trad my struggle to find a stable living is a deep concern. It seems the age affords me neither to be neither a monastic, nor a carpenter, nor a lumberjack, or miner , or soldier. So, I have tried to be an educated person as my means of living. I wonder if the line from Dalton is true: “Congress sold us for cheap wages.”

 I have been prayer about this!

On a less personal side, I am wondering if there are any accounting classes where one could develop the economic framework for running a business? 
I love the scenario driven work on the Cengage text but Imagine the possibilities if students could use this material as a guide for the formation of LLCs! This knowledge would be amplified if applied towards an actual entity. 

Daily, I seem to find reminders about the United States lack manufacturing base, as the phrase (logistics win wars comes to mine). How shifting’s like BRICS looms as an existential threat to the United States, to my children. I am perplexed by the wars in Ukraine and Palestine, and my inability to do anything.

20 minute focus session – START.

Quickly searching for notes, but they’ve vanished somewhere. I’m in the classroom, and it’s dark, there are no other students here, and the only light is from my laptop, and a dim light from the projector screen. Having to listen remotely to the course yesterday, I think I really gleaned one key things from my group work: Atlas needs encouragement. As we tried to share our stories, it became apparent that the thoughts of leaving the college were at the forefront of her mind. As I listened to Esa talk about the newly born dear being consumed by a cheetah, I saw how I too have been young (freshly away from home, newly born into the responsibilities of adulthood) – and in that I could see Atlas. In this case, even if there were no external entity chasing her (the burden of life, as we experience it in the college is much to place on such a young frame).

On the more thematic, I think the power of setting was apparent, the output of our group work showed this as we titled our work: ” Roadtrip With Friends – Home To West Virginia”. In this there was a real distinction to be made about who was driving. How the dynamic of the needing to focus on the wheel would change ones ability or inability to have conversation, and how it would free up others to communicate (or not) more freely.

In general, I found that Bobby’s description of moving through the process of critical thinking, from reading, to writing, to discussion, and synthesis into something new was powerful. I wonder about the process we’re engaging in as a class. Are we: looking at letters on a page, deconstructing those words, and reconstructing them into a new story, and play?

I also am giving thanks for Dr. Greens flexibility with the remote session!

20 minutes session start.

Recollecting stories…as we were prompted about the stories we’d shared last week, the prompt and even what I said escaped me, but the secondary summary was sufficient for me to recall. The prompt: “Practicing Resurrection”. What did my classmates mention? I am grasping for anything… the totems and titles would have made this remembering process easier, but they came after this material was due.

[A] I remember my own and the given title: “Barbell Jesus”. I am also recalling Esa’s story (if this was his story at all). He was a child, adopted, and watching a documentary on the Discovery channel, a predator hunting and killing a prey. His emotional response were tears. I recall how strange it was that he described how his mother laughed at him, and there was a real dissonance in the moment, and separation first caused by the media. First, his mother likely would have had a different emotional response to being more directly near what was happening. Second, her emotional response was striking to me. Laughter to a child’s tears seemed inappropriate. I then thought about my own emotional responses to certain things, and wondered how I too might have lacked empathy in moments of my own life? The resurrection in this moment was missing, as the prey was consumed. Though, there is a cyclical aspect of being integrated into another being.

[B] My story, wasn’t much of one! Mostly just random connection to fitness, crucifixion, and assumed genetic or cultural heritage. What I will do in this instance is ask ChatGPT to review the following prompt:

Help me to write a story around the topic: “Resurrection”. My resonances with this terms are largely associated with Viking Music by Amon Amarth, that I listen to when exercising. In that place, I have a sense of carrying my war like and strong, courageous, forefathers – though I can’t be sure that my own family members didn’t hide away… I also carry an aspect of the crucifixion of Jesus. Whenever I am in that place, hanging on a pull up bar to train my back and core, there are moments where I feel like the thief on the cross…. these sessions of exercise heavily underlined by moments when I am exercising that I feel “the spirit of God on me”…. a heaviness, almost to the point of passing out.

AI created a powerful, story! Which I will read and attach.
” Resurrection of the Warrior

The weight of the iron was a familiar enemy. His hands, raw and callused, gripped the bar with the same ferocity he had gripped life itself. Each pull, a battle. Each breath, a war cry. His body strained against the gravity of the world, but his mind—his soul—was elsewhere.

It was always like this, when he trained. A ritual. As the cold steel bore down on his flesh, his thoughts shifted into the rhythm of war drums. The music of the North echoed in his ears, the thundering guitar riffs and chanting vocals stirring something deep within him, a connection to ancient ancestors. He could almost hear the roar of Viking ships crashing through stormy seas, the clash of swords in battle, the roar of warriors marching to their doom. His ancestors—brave, fearless—had never known the meaning of surrender. Nor did he.

But today… today something was different.

His muscles burned, his body screamed in agony, but there was something in the air, something thick and oppressive, heavy with power. He clenched his teeth and pulled himself up again. Higher, until his chin met the bar. And as he held himself there, suspended in time and space, he could feel it. A presence.

A spirit.

It wasn’t just the weight of the metal anymore. The moment stretched, and in the darkness of his eyes closed tightly, he could see it—the figure of a warrior, drenched in blood, standing tall, defiant, and unbroken. A Viking. His chest heaving with each breath, but his spirit unyielding. The war cries of the Norsemen faded into a soft murmur, and the voice of a man in pain, on the verge of death, echoed in his mind. The thief. The one who had been crucified beside Jesus. His body hanging by nails, blood pouring out of his body, but his spirit—stronger than death itself.

“Remember me,” the thief whispered to the figure beside him, to the God who was not of this world.

And the God did remember. He didn’t die. He rose.

A flash of lightning cracked the air inside his mind. The spirit of his ancestors, the warriors of old, surged through him. He felt their strength. The strength of warriors who knew they might fall in battle, but would rise again in Valhalla, reborn in glory. They had fought for something larger than themselves—something eternal.

Currently In the midst of overload. Clock set to 20 minutes. Focus.

Given my present experience, my attention feels extremely frayed. I open the link, and hit play, but in this moment there’s so many competing stiumuli, that I can only consume the visuals.

I mute the audio, and pretend to be deaf. As I’m watching the play:
~2:30 strikes me. Ezel howling at the moon. He’s in a camp, not a home; and I though I can’t hear the words, I inscribe meaning, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness.” 4:20, Ezel strikes the air with a knife. Why? His isolation is striking. Who is he talking to – himself, God? 9:00, An object other than a knife. Is this the mask? Is he reliving his childhood here. I am deaf, and can’t hear. I can only perceive. Is he burying the mask? 11:00, a memorial stone. 13:00, a transmitter. The mask is gone, but there is still in his hand. 19:00, clothing. Something of his, and something of a child’s.
25:00, draw-string and a booby trap. Something for a warning. 26:00, a large dear-skin map with drawings. 34:00, another element. Something metallic, like it’s used to breach a door; maybe this is for breaching the ground? 42:00, resting – hiding – dreaming in a crevasse. 47:00, a rope, and a tree. What’s he pulling up, graves? 56:00, another person! She carrying a plant. Where is the audience going?

Setting up a 20 minute focus session.

As I reflect this morning, on Bobbies presentation this week, I find that my notes have scattered to the wind, but what remains: a print out of Ezel Ballad of the Landman, and a reflection.

I reflect to that dark room, and the imagery of hard labor comes to my mind. Living in a mountainous place, quite, disconnected from civilization? There aren’t buildings, only the trees.

I think about the deep intelligence that responded to the proposal of the Landman as he pitched an offer. I think about what it means to own land, and I long for the lived experience of my grandfather’s wisdom that dug out basements. I’ve always told people that he could build a house from the ground up, but wasn’t all I saw an basement unfinished? Maybe, but not exactly – their surely was more.

What is the main questions in this play? Should these people sell their land to companies seeking to do fracking in the area? How will they survive if they don’t? What is civilization apart from money lenders and debt?

I think about the remarks from The 11 convention of the southern Christian leadership conference.
What number are we on today in 2025?

I fear the racial tensions that still seem to resonate following the assassination of a man like Martin Luther King, though I consider was there no parity and the death of Kennedy? Yet, how does a man or a society break the universal law: ‘Thou Shall Not Murder’ and expect to avoid the tumult produced thereby?

Again I thought about the cold and how natural gas is used to heat our homes and cook our food. I thought about the Native American who collected Ginsing, and slept in caves facing east for warmth.

I wondered about this whole effort, who has the intelligence and the capacity to effectively engage in such a sweeping industrial effort as Fracking? Are such things good for America, particularly in light of the formation and agitation of the Far East?

I think about Iraq and our relationships to the Middle East, about how deeply underlined these wars were by energy the need for energy, but after perhaps for power?

I consider this thing to be a manifestation of power in American, as the quote from Martin Luther King remains in front of me, “that power without love is reckless and abusive… (Does the land man really love the land its people?) … that love without power is sentimental and anemic.” (Is this land sentimental and anemic, do its people struggle for substance sustenance.)

What is salvation?

The first story circle was interesting to me. As I tried to capture the essence of what the other student’s were talking about, our difference of experience became very apparent to me, though the snow was a unifying thread. I’ve since lost the notes from that moment, but I felt closely connected to the story about the girl who explored and fell into the river. My own experience doing a polar plunge produce a strong connect to that, though hers was in all ways more natural, accidental – deadly; my story was regulated, monitored, and in a large group of other people with strongly competing egos.

I remember Atlas, and perceived how little she seemed to really enjoy the snow. That a comfortable, and warm distance was preferred by her. Independence seemed to really shine through in her portion.

I remember Angels story, as one of deep community – energy, and work.

I remember the man from Ohio’s story, as connected strongly to her Christian faith, and the story of the last judgement, angels, as he quotes the Scripture ascribed to Jesus, ” I was naked, and you clothed me..”

I remember the African American man who felt lost, and scarred as a child.

I wondered about the nature of memory, and suffering. As I walked home, and felt the coldness on me – I imagined being left out in it (much like the soldier of Ukraine and Russia; or the children of Palestine). I wondered what it meant to embrace the snow?