Sample Journal reflecting on the assigned reading:
Julie Barak
Journal on Chapter 2
I read two of the essays from this chapter: “A Chase” by Annie Dillard and “100 Miles per Hour, Upside Down and Sideways” by Rick Bragg. What they both have in common that I appreciate in a piece of writing is a theme that I can identify with – they teach me something about life, about how to succeed in life. But it’s a theme I have to work to find. They don’t come right out and tell me what they want me to get out of the reading, but they certainly don’t hide their themes either.
The theme of Annie Dillard’s essay is that you must commit yourself fully to any task you take on. The man who chases after the kids is sainted and heroic because, even though he’s not a kid, he can still throw himself into the “game” like he is one – no holds barred. No worrying about wet pant cuffs, about getting lost, about falling down, about time. He just dives into the task he wants to accomplish and goes for it. He earns Dillard’s eternal respect because he’s kept this ability into his adulthood. His telling them off is anti-climactic to the chase.
There are several different possibilities for theme for Bragg’s essay. It could be “Good things don’t last.” Or, it could be “You can’t buy cool.” Or, maybe the theme is “Using stuff means using it up; sometimes it’s better to just show it off.” I take all these messages away from my reading. He gets me to meditate on all these messages not by preaching, though, but by heaping up great details and lots of action in order to put me into the scenes. I feel like I’ve been there and learned the lesson through experience.
The sources for both Bragg and Dillard are personal experiences. They tell us about something that happened to them when they were young. The story is told, however, not from the point of view of the young person they were, but from the point of view of the older, wiser person they are now. I particularly like this approach because it helps me to think back to similar experiences of my own and meditate on what I can learn from them. We all learn something from every experience we have, but we don’t often solidify the message and share it with others. Or, if we do, we tend to do it without the story, which makes it a much less interesting lesson – one that doesn’t provoke self-reflection.
One of the best reasons for reading autobiography isn’t to find out about somebody else, but to find out about you. I have very rarely written anything autobiographical unless I’ve been assigned to do so. But there are a couple of pieces I’ve worked with for several years – one about how sex and religion were intertwined in my high school years and one about my relationship with my mother, in particular, about how I feel about becoming more and more like my mom. Dillard and Bragg’s essays make me realize that one of the reasons I can never quite give up on these pieces is because they’re never finished. As I get older, the meanings of the pieces evolve. Every experience I have reshapes my response to the events that are a part of the stories I have to tell. Telling a story about who I was when I was 10 tells me more about who I am at nearly 50 than it does about who I was back then. That’s one of the remarkable things about writing stuff down; it forces you to reflect, to grow, to learn, to change.