88.

[on finding thoughts many months removed.]

why do i want to write about my experiences in the South? is a question I asked myself many months back.

here's what i answered:

there exists a number of disparities in our understandings of intelligence - or mine anyway.

our generation, more specifically the sub-section that i am in the throes of in New England where Ivy is King, we forget to honor other types of intelligences. maybe its that we ignore the value of these other, less formal, less bookish, types of intelligence (or wisdom as i sometimes call it) because the honor has been stripped from them. years of fanning the flames of the academic institutions and progress have colored our perceptions. they deserve to have the value reassigned in an honest way - because there is no other way. these other intelligences that i am not naming and talking around are themselves honest representations our engagement with life and the living of it. southern stories, personal and published, taught me what it means to be smart - to have smarts. long, long before these formal forms of smarts rushed in.

i want to write to honor the south, its journey, my family's, and my own.

***

i leave in 13 days to attend my first ever "real" writing workshop.

it's on telling the family story. this page in my moleskin was a welcome visitor in the heat of the summer day.