For me, Agee’s writing introduced another layer of depth and humanity to Walker’s subjects. When I first saw the pictures, I was not quite sure what to think. As Kat noted, it felt like their unsmiling, stony visages added to the piece a sense of stasis that was hard to shake. However, Agee’s writing helped to dissolve the feeling that all of this was happening in a vacuum. His writing takes the moments of these subjects’ lives and zooms in on them greatly, treating them as individual families instead of a small part of this massive system of disparity and disenfranchisement.

His writing also felt considerate in a way that Walker’s photography just didn’t. When Agee details his feelings regarding the African American couple and the way that he had expected Walker to act toward them, I found myself considering the way that the men’s respective crafts played out in their respective behaviors. Walker’s unbridled willingness to insert himself into situations without thought for all of his subjects’ many aspects felt rather characteristic to photography. The thought pattern that I’m gathering from him feels like it suffers from the same narrowness of consideration as his camera lens. The camera captures still moments, but it only really captures the surface. From the pictures that are presented in the beginning of this work, I know little about the subjects’ true selves, only that they are poorer and have [seemingly] been dealt a less-than-lovely hand in life.

Agee, however, both in the moment with the African American couple and in his writing, seems to focus so much on the depth of the subjects. He pays greater attention to who they are and what they’ve experienced rather than what consumers can glean from outer appearance. However, I did appreciate that Agee also considered the ways in which his craft is inconsiderate of its subjects. He picks apart his subjects’ lives though words and, although he is able to capture a more comprehensive picture of them (no pun intended), he is forced to interact with them in a way that can leave a greater impact than the snapshots that Walker provides. His craft is prying in a way that is hard to ignore.

To be in a Time of Inadequate Healthcare…

To be dropped from your parents’ health plan, to walk to your computer, to begin the search for your own, to stare at the many options, but to truly have none. To look at your bank account, to remember your student loans, to glance at grocery list on the fridge. To decide another day. To avoid those who are sick, to self-medicate on Nyquil, to drink tea, to say I’m fine. To ignore your friend’s nonchalant comment to just go to the doctor. To think of the bill. To sleep instead, take another dose of Nyquil. To go to class, to listen to the droning of your professor, to leave for work. To rush to dinner with your friends.

To rise with the sun, to stretch your arms, to feel a bit better. To be relieved. To brew your coffee, to glance at your to-do list. To sigh, to feed your cat, to run to the train station. To put on your headphones, to turn on your favorite podcast, to listen to the attacks on Obamacare. To wonder if “Free Healthcare for All” is the answer. To know you can’t put it off any longer. But to get off on the next stop. To enjoy the sunlight as you walk the two blocks to work. To take your lunch, to ask the waiter for a salad, to discuss the daily gossip with your coworker. To head home, to login to Twitter, to see people discussing the approaching election. To feel a pit forming in your stomach. To watch Netflix before bed. Collapsing into oblivion.

To wake up with a sore throat, to fix a cup of tea with lemon before beginning the day, to open Twitter, to see a debate happening tonight, to bundle up tight before heading outside. To sit at your desk with a stuffy nose. To desire a nap, but to work afterwards. To take a dose of Dayquil. To call your mom. To try her suggested home remedy, to pray that it just a cold. To return home to watch the debate. To hear candidates shouting about healthcare. People dying over absurd insulin costs. Feeling cold. A promise to look into health insurance tomorrow.

To wake up, to feel your sore throat still here, to call off work, to feel anxious as you talk to a healthcare representative. To consider cutting out coffee for a few months, to pick up extra hours at work…just to sign up for a plan you can’t truly afford. To feel no relief. To head to sleep. To wait a month until the plan goes into effect.

To feel better, but not completely restored, to go to class, to avoid the coffee shop. Being tired, unable to concentrate. To wake day by day anxious about your health. Finally, being able to schedule a doctor’s appointment. To be told you have a virus, to be handed a prescription, to walk to the pharmacy. To still have to use a coupon to pay. Anxiety today, tomorrow. Anxiety for the next week as you check the mail, to see the dreaded bill, to look at it another day.

Writer’s Notes: I decided to explore the topic of inadequate healthcare, which is related to my chosen topic of African American women experiencing higher rates of complications after birth. I wanted, however, to go broader by looking at the system. This of course made me think of the issue of healthcare not being available for a large number of people, which is a common topic in American politics right now. My goal was to start by focusing on a young adult having to find health insurance, but not being able to afford it, therefore choosing to avoid choosing a plan. I tried to show this avoidance by focusing on everyday activities like Adnan did with “To Be in a Time of War.” However, I wanted to show that it is unavoidable to avoid getting ill and the struggles people without insurance go through to avoid going to the hospital and being billed. Eventually, one is faced with having to opt into a plan that one cannot afford, having to pay out of pocket, or suffering health wise. It is an endless cycle of worry. I wanted to show this lack of relief at the end by the young adult avoiding looking at the bill. I found it challenging when determining where to end each line. The method I used when doing this was ending on a word or idea that I wanted to emphasize. Overall, this assignment made me pay more attention to word choice and lingering in the small details…both of which are very important.

In the House (that wasn’t our first house, but the house) I Grew Up In

House

It’s the one on the corner with the flagless flagpole. The sides are wonky with bricks poking out this way and that. It seems the architect had taken artistic liberty. It’s okay, my cat likes to climb the bricks and sunbathe. A stone moat surrounds the castle as weeds sparsely break the surface only to be uprooted and thrown into the trash. Years ago I actually had to shovel that driveway around this time of year. It’s sunny right now, so you can’t see through the windows. The lights won’t be on at night either. 

Sounds

It’s quieter now that (s)he’s gone. Less arguing. It makes going to sleep easier. Sometimes at night I hear the *clack* *clack* of my dog’s claws as she slumps across the kitchen tile in search of a cooler place to lay. 

Holidays

We can’t light the fireplace, gas is too expensive. My sister wants to, she says it’s part of the spirit. How can a fireplace put us back into the spirit? Especially since the window’s have been open since (s)he left. 

Temperature

Have you ever turned the hot water on so hot that it started to feel cold?

Meals

I eat on the couch. My left arm drapes over the side as my right manipulates the fork. My cat sits next to me purring as I feed him a piece of my dinner. I hit the clicker. It’s the episode when Dwight pretends to be recyclops and destroys the office. This is the third time I’ve watched The Office all the way through. The first time was the best because we all watched it together. I remember your laugh. 

Sleep

It’s funny how silence can be so loud and make you sweat. I need to open a window. 

Process Notes:

I guess I have settled on climate change as my topic for this quarter. With that being said, it is still a weekly struggle for me to find ways to make the issue seem relatable to me, let alone the reader. For this assignment I tried to leave climate change in the background. This was done to not only make the reading a little more personable, but also to highlight exactly how climate change is affecting the Earth. Everyone goes through trials and tribulations, some big and some small, that may take up all of our attention. Everyday, while we are distracted, there is a terminal illness that is looming over all of us that few people choose to give mind too.

I took two years of photography classes in high school and I still get out and shoot as much as possible, so this is something I’ve actually thought about a lot, especially in the realms of street photography and documentary photography. Growing up in DC and now living in Chicago, I’ve lived very comfortably while being in very close proximity to, as this prompt says, “deplorable circumstances.” One thing I’ve always found intriguing is people’s abilities to try to make the best of bad situations: how people decorate totally run-down houses, people’s panhandling strategies, and the way homeless people interact with people who ignore them (much like Mikey’s writing assignment last week). Additionally, both of these cities have very large non-white populations in segregated areas,and a topic that has interested me is attempting to capture white people’s reactions to non-white people in “white areas” and vice versa.

Shooting in either of these scenarios can create a high degree of tension between the photographer and the subject, something Agee addresses in great detail. I have felt uncomfortable at times, often pointing my camera towards people in situations I will never experience. However, a photographer must juxtapose this dynamic with the dynamic that legendary photographer Edward Steichen explained, that “a portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.” In order to successfully create a photograph, a photographer must simultaneously engage with the scene he or she wishes to capture and avoid interfering in the scene. Agee addresses this dynamic on page 31, writing about Evans’ subjects “I had been sick in the knowledge that they were here at our demand… in a perversion of self-torture… I gave their leader fifty cents… and said I was sorry we had held them up and that I hoped they would not be late; and he thanked me for them in a dead voice, not looking me in the eye, and they walked away.” This dynamic is crucial: you can either take snapshots in passing and feel like an invader, or work with the subject, in which case you might severely inconvenience them or make their lives more difficult. Agee does a very good job addressing this.

To Be In A Time of Good; Or To Be In a Time of Evil; Or To Be In A Time of Evil

To wake up at 6:10 to lug a cooler of water and Coke Zero to the bus to be kind. To leave to be in Iowa by 9:30.

To plan to sleep on the bus, only to find it impossible as the bus bounces along the not-quite-smooth highways across the state as my heart beats along with the bus. To find myself, instead, scrolling through the four social media I check, rotating from one to the other to the other to the other.

To find hope in this hopeless and pointless perusal, to find myself smiling as I remember “Big Structural Bailey,” and to prehydrate; to find myself parched while speaking to caucusgoers would mean a lack of preparation on my part.

To converse cordially with the canvassers around me: to remark on their and my candidates’ chances, to ridicule others, and to agree: we’re all here for the right reasons.

To mock “Vote Blue No Matter Who!” but to know that all of us, at least, will follow the maxim to the letter.

To settle in to my seat, to ride two hours more, to be in it for the long haul. To be in this for the long haul.

To wake up at 6:10 to lug a cooler of water and Coke Zero to the bus to be kind. To leave to be in Iowa by 9:30.

To plan to sleep on the bus, only to find it impossible as the bus bounces along the not-quite-smooth highways across the state as your heart beats along with the bus. To find yourself, instead, scrolling through the four social media you check, rotating from one to the other to the other to the other.

To find motivation in this pointed perusal, to smirkingly recall “Big Structural Bailey,” and to prehydrate; to find yourself parched while speaking to caucusgoers would mean a lack of preparation on your part.

To tensely plan with the canvassers around you: to remark on your candidate’s chance, to ridicule others, and to think you’re here for the right reasons.

To mock “Vote Blue No Matter Who!”

To settle in to your seat, to ride two hours more, to be in it for the long haul.

To wake up at 6:10 to lug a cooler of water and Coke Zero to the bus. To leave to be in Iowa by 9:30.

To plan to sleep on the bus, only to find it impossible as the bus bounces along the not-quite-smooth highways across the corrupt state. To find yourself, instead, scrolling through the four social media bubbles you inhabit, rotating from one to the other to the other to the other.

To sink your hope into this hopeless and pointless perusal and to drink water; to find yourself parched while speaking to caucusgoers would be pretty dumb on your part.

To ignore the canvassers around you: to remark on your candidates’ ridiculous chances, to ridicule others.

To mock “Vote Blue No Matter Who!”

To settle in to your seat, to ride two hours more, to be in it for the long haul.

Process Notes:

I decided to focus on what was essentially a moment in time, sitting on the bus this past Sunday on my way to Iowa to canvass for Elizabeth Warren. What was so significant about this moment, to me, was the fact that I was travelling there with people from the Warren, Sanders, Buttigieg, and Bennet campaigns, and we were friendly and cordial the whole time. In a world so devoid of nuance that I selected its absence as my subject for this class, every conversation I had was full of it – people were willing to acknowledge our chosen candidates’ flaws and their opponents’ strengths. For this reason, I chose to write about this moment from my perspective. That is the first version, the real version, the “this is a ‘Time of Good’” version. The following two are from the perspective of a Democrat who hates other candidates, and the second is from the perspective of Republicans who hates all Democrats. I tried to keep as much of the language as possible the same, but changing enough to change both the tone and the message.

TO BE IN A TIME OF GASLIGHTING

(CW: mentions of sexual assault)

To sip from a soggy paper straw. To dump the foamy dregs before recycling the cup. To sit and work at a round, sticky wooden table. To peek at her screen and ask, what of? To gaze blankly at the huge portraits of white men all around us while reading. To read about white men, written by white men. To walk out the big room together. To shed how they loom over us — like (a) brittle exoskeleton(s).

To chat around the kitchen isle. To have a white male roommate. To have a guy over on a Saturday night. To get the text: “can you make him leave?” To reconvene the next day over the kitchen isle. To feel gross for having a guy over on a Saturday night. To remember, your roommate doesn’t have people over, he sleeps by midnight every night (except when he doesn’t), he lives what I should already know to be an ideal lifestyle (except when he doesn’t). To establish better ground rules, boundaries, for next time. To apologize for making your roommate feel “not seen.” To feel worse after, for it. 

To skinny dip in the lake with friends. To keep your underwear on because you have a boyfriend now. To wish he were here. To smoke weed from a small glass pipe with the curious design of rainbow marble ribbons. To feel your youth come alive with the vapors in your throat. To feel his head rest on your lap as he stretches out on the couch. To realize — he is not your boyfriend — he owns this house, where your friends are staying for the night. To feel his hand creep under your shirt. To arrive too slow at it; to prevent it from groping your breast. To stand. To fall over onto the soggy carpet. To say nothing, because he said to chill, it was no big deal, nothing even happened. To drive back home with your friends. To have a head that aches. 

To shake the orange pill bottle because it is new and makes new sounds. To push down the orange tab. To shake out a capsule. To look up at your roommate who has just woken up (it’s noon, except when it isn’t). To tell him, it’s my anti-depressant, Prozac, when he asks what of. To admit it’s new, you just started this week. To nod when he says I seem more anxious than depressed. To swallow when he starts talking of how the snow will be slushy, today.

PROCESS NOTES

Gaslighting in the modern day has taken on an entirely different form because of what is considered okay or “politically correct” to say about women. The way people get around overtly gaslighting others is much more subtle but just as nefarious in the allostatic load it takes on one’s perception of their own sanity. The looming latency of modern gaslighting is represented by the first paragraph, involving the room full of portraits of white men. There is very little said, but everything felt, and much needed to be cleansed of despite an objectively uneventful experience. The following paragraph about the roommate is drawn from both personal experience and the experiences of those around me, who have been similarly oppressed by the idea of a “healthy lifestyle” or the “right way to do things.” Subtle slutshaming, in conjunction with the irony of a man not feeling seen (despite the undeniable female experience of constantly being othered) are expressed in the “acceptable” channel of a roommate — a snake literally living in the garden. The third paragraph discusses an experience with sexual assault that so many women grapple with in retrospect — specifically, when the sexual assault has no physical proof and is brushed off / minimized by the aggressor, leaving the victim questioning their own reaction to the assault and making it more difficult for them to process what happened. The final paragraph embodies a modern form of gaslighting — in which a woman’s experience is not only exposed and picked apart, but invalidated by external observations / opinions, specifically from those who feel obliged to having a say. The pain of having one’s experience bulldozed so nonchalantly, both figuratively and literally having to swallow the pill of this microaggression, is meant to communicate through the last stanza.

Agee’s writing imparts a dignity not found in the photos taken by Walker in a near-apology. His writing is necessarily by nature a reaction to Walker’s photographs, as the photos represent the initial image one encounters upon meeting these families and individuals. Agee’s prose, then, supplements an exalted aura surrounding these people, functioning similarly to the *footnotes in Keene’s much more intimate description of Carmen. After all, the humanization of these subjects — ironically, often via his descriptions of them as angry and full of hatred given their wretched situations — cannot be communicated in the snapshots taken by Walker. The photos alone impart the sense of dreadful poverty and ramshackle disarray, displaying families for which the holes in their clothing are outnumbered only by their children, whom the viewers come to pity. None of the subjects are smiling — which would at least be a semblance of movement, contraction — imparting a further sense of suffocating stasis. Agee’s writing, however, reshapes the reader’s understanding of the subjects, imparting context to their situations — the sick steed, for example — redefining the depiction of the families from simply wretched (or even deserving of blame, for the seeming state of the children) to one of compassion and regret at the lot they’ve been served.  Agee subtly emphasizes the limited scope of the camera lens in his encounter with the African-American couple walking to church. He comments that he “had no doubt Walker would do what he wanted ‘whether he had permission or not, but I wanted to be on hand,” chasing after the couple and giving them quite a fright in the process. In his commentary on Walker’s disregard, Agee simultaneously comments on the role of photography — which unflinchingly depicts the surface value without requesting permission in the form of considerate contextual background or sympathetic retakes. However, Agee is unsparing in his depiction of himself as an utterly ignorant white man, given his lack of foresight in chasing after the couple and scaring them horribly. The role of a writer, he communicates, is not innocent either — although perhaps more well-mannered in its necessary communication with the subjects, it requires a surgical invasiveness that leaves its subjects marred in different ways than does photography. 

A Song

Some songs do more than get stuck in my head. They seep into my memory until they become a part of my mental picture. The lyrics taste like the memories- the fervor of the sports competition my class cheered for in middle school, the shriek of my best friend on her surprise birthday party, tears welling up in my eyes after failing an exam…

Like a kid lying on her back picking her favorite cloud in the sky, I scoop one song from my fishbowl of memories.

I hum along to the melody and then I stop with a jerk.

I remember that the singer, a member of a popular boy band anyone my age would sing along to, owned a club that drugged and assaulted women.

A Sound

It makes me feel even more self-conscious, as if I need more awkwardness in my life.

In English the onomatopoeia for the camera-sound is “click,” although I’m pretty sure the sound is far more obnoxious. It’s especially irritating when I come across something in a museum that I want to photograph and the camera on my phone makes the loudest sound possible, tearing up the peaceful ripple of voices talking courteously in a low voice.

My roommate says she’ll buy a new phone while she’s in the U.S.

It’s unfair that only Korea and Japan forces phones to make clicking sounds. I know, they’re there to prevent illegal photographing. But it’s not like I take them, right?

A Secret

I was obsessed with secrets as a twelve-year-old. Perhaps because puberty struck me pretty early and I did not know how to deal with stuff happening to my body. Partly because I was beginning to resent “adults” for the first time and wanted to feel like a deviant. Hence began my treasure box of secrets- diaries with tiny locks on them, pens that need a special flashlight to see the ink, texts with my best friend that I would never dare let my parents read… and even googling the word “secret.” This directed me to a flashy article- “My Deepest Secrets Revealed? Gasp!”

I clicked on this article about Miss B, who recently broke up with her boyfriend. When she asked why, he sent her a link. The link was connected to a porn site with Miss B’s video that barely blurred out her face. The article described the video as “embarrassing” and I was too little to know the euphemism. But I thought the article was pretty useless- what am I supposed to take away from this? Be scared that this could happen to me?

It was the first article I read about revenge porn. I did not tell my parents about it.

Working notes: Similar to “To Be in a Time of War,” I wanted to convey how social problems permeate into everyday life. I tried to start from specific, mundane details and connect them to the problem I wanted to address. I wonder if the three paragraphs were formed too similarly, but I think this best portrays how I am continuously reminded of digital sexual assault that is prevalent in our society, even when I am doing something completely irrelevant in my life.

To be in a Time of Incommensurability  

To sleep in your childhood bed for 14 hours the first night you get home, drugged with exhaustion. To leave your room at 2 PM. To check the fridge a few times, between trips for coffee. To hear your mother tell you to clean your room – family is coming soon. Family is coming soon. To feel exhausted again. To stay up even later in hopes of sleeping most of the next morning away. To wake up to the sound of shouting aunts and uncles. To wonder why everything has to be so large, so loud, for them. To creep out of your room to the bathroom, knowing you won’t be heard under the sound of their shrieks. 

To come downstairs and laugh barely as they joke about your ability to sleep the day away. To sleep them away. To feel other. To feel like a brat teenager. To hear your mother’s voice change. To roll your eyes when they spew “political facts.” To feel your face warm when they yell about “illegals” and China and who Jesus loves — but mostly who he doesn’t. To wish you even knew where to start. To pull out your laptop and pull up studies on immigration and crime and employment and show the table the graphics. To feel correct. To glare at your mother for not speaking up. To not be heard over the shouting and the wine and the Turkey in the oven. 

“You don’t know what it means to live in this world, little girl. To really live. I don’t need to hear your facts, I’ve got my own facts. I know the truth and I’ve seen it. I see it everyday.”

To feel small. To swallow disgust. To retreat. To sleep late.

To feel less at home at home. To return to your school and feel warmed by a cold city. To forget, soon, about the distance, the disgust, you felt for your aunties and uncles. 

Process Notes

I was most drawn to Adnan’s ability to transition from everyday happenings to dark, weighty topics in a process that seemed so natural and reflective of the way minds work, the way they forget and remember. I tried to emulate this progression from the everyday to the more weighty content. I was trying to be as accurate to my everyday experience of coming home and facing political differences I feel strongly and struggle to communicate with my family. I wasn’t sure whether I was incorporating enough irony in the description, but I wanted to prioritize being as accurate and precise to my experience as possible. I originally titled the piece “To Be in a Time of Political Polarization,” but I was not sure “political polarization” was exactly what I meant. I wanted to also capture more generally the incommensurability of my experience with my extended family’s, and the way that gap prevents us from stepping into each other’s worlds and mental processes. Thus, I changed the title to “To Be in a Time of Incommensurability,” which felt more fitting. 

Don’t think about me when I’m gone. He commands, as elbows cross to drag the shirt off shoulders. Cotton is translucent at night, but he is the silhouette behind the translucence and he is a sunburnt image inside half-looking eyes. Wind blows moonlight across my barren chest. Coarse palms roll through the landscape of the night.

Yet—I thought of him often. At the first shadows of bloating doubt, inside the blank after “father’s name”. I thought about how scrupulously he leaves no trace—smoothing out the sheets, drawing up the curtains.

They never tell you—no one ever told me—the Pill is actually two separate pills. One for delivery, the other redemption.

First is mifepristone. A minuscule dot encapsulated—carried in expansive plastic. Could it be the pharmaceutical’s smirk?—their way of saying—that whatever you’re getting rid of—it too deserves the dignity—the dignity of excess, of books and crystals, Sunday rituals, flowers and crowns.

Flood runs red with the second pill. Walls, tunnels, scrapes and wholes—out you go—onto the carpet and porcelain floor—where the roommate finds soft legs and tears—and drag them into a bed hastily made.

I knew because there are teary Youtubers—telling a story “a while back”, “some years before”, “a long long time ago”.

Still, I nodded and blandly stood, when the man in white recited his medical book. Still, I smiled when he said it’s early and safe—don’t worry—you’ll recover soon.

I smiled as if I was awarded a golden star, for saving the day, for fixing a broken part. I am not disgraced, not broken, not down and out. As if I never wondered what he’d say, where the fuck he’d gone.

I shuffled through layers of tissues and drenched napkins, in hope for something special for all the pain. A disfigured shadow of what could have been—an emblem for double massacre—an another to testify, to cohabitate—the drilling, the tearing parts apart. Yet between the goo and the dripping peels, all I could find was my body, and my choice.

The sun weighs slyly in the horizon, shooting stealthy shadows into the tiny room—chamber of receding and beckoning pain. I wrap my arms around myself. Cold fingers roll through landscape of dusking grey, mapping a sacred territory where embers blaze.

Writing notes:

It took me a lot of reading over to smooth the rhythm of this “poetic prose” into one that flows somewhat naturally. The tempo I had in mind while writing doesn’t even always get picked up by me when I read it, so I added a lot of signs and punctuations for clarification. Also, I had to find a truce between precision/accuracy and lyrical grace. That was also slightly difficult. I found my self beginning to actually rhyme in the second half, but the more uniform, short pace comes off as almost cheerful, which doesn’t quite harmonize with the content. It was also challenging to adjudicate that.