Curiosidades

When I was in college, I took a course from DePaul’s visiting writer, Ana Castillo, who told me that part of her writing process included storing items in a folder entitled “Curiosidades” – curiosities for the non-spanish speaking populace. I don’t remember, ahora mismo, the name of the class or anything else she said, but that small fact stuck in my head. Such a simple thing – a collection of facts, articles, and items which a person finds interesting. I, of course, started this folder of curiosidades – for a short amount of time. Then it was lost in the stacks of papers and other remembrances not-at-all-filed away in a storage room.

My spontaneous and rare desire to organize crept up on me over the past weekend, and I was delighted to find my little folder of curiosities stuck way down in the bottom of a desk drawer underneath an Ansel Adams calendar from 2002, two folders from Gold’s Gym containing receipts for money not well spent, a notebook containing partial outlines for two stories I never wrote, and about 50 empty hanging files.

Looking through the folder, I found:

- A few pieces of paper with notes from George Orwell’s 1984 including: “1984 p52 newspeak is the destruction of words which limits thought by limiting means of expression,” “1984 p27 nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull,” 1984 p27 He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken,” “1984 p35 To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was possible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment it was needed, and then promptly forget it again…doublethink”
- A piece of paper with the following phrases separated by lovely squiggly underlines on it: “sites of death as tourist attractions” “2 essays next week + Quiz: 1 from article – Don’t have to turn in, 1 from On Being An American. Both are fragment essays.” “The question you start out with is not the question you end up answering” “1) nose bleeds – I’ll have them but don’t worry 2) passing out – it’ll happen but don’t worry”
- A small green piece of paper with these words written in blue ink: I feel like I am driving into lightning.
- A diary like entry: Narcissistic Guilt is the apparent title. Then, numbered short entries. 1. driving in car after class – eating my dinner – a frosted strawberry poptart listening to the Moulin Rouge sndtrk (unclear word) the day I decided it would be a good idea to work and go to school in Chicago but live two hours south of the city – people don’t have food. 2. looking in the mirror and hating the way I look. Wishing I had thinner hair, thinner legs, thinner stomach, blond(er) hair, tan(ner) skin, thinner physique, smaller breasts, nicer nails, longer eyelashes – list goes on and on – healthy. 3. Descriptive story of starving children. Very Factual. 4. story of severely obese person. Factual. 5. Story of person w/ severe facial deformity. 6. excerpts from my diaries. 7. Guilt – psychological explanation. 8. Court/law definition. 9. nothing written
- A 1-800-SKYDIVE bumper sticker
- A list of Job Hunting websites and Career Aptitude test sites
- An email from DePaul’s library suggesting I submit an interlibrary loan request for the books and articles I want, but reminding me that dissertations are not permitted to be sent off campus.
- My Course History Report through the 2003-2004 school year
- A list entitled “Disappearing Acts” which has Chinese Soldiers Nanking 1939, Mayans (copan, piedra negras, Palenque) 610 ad, and Roanoke on it.
- A grocery list with the following written on the back: What would life be like if we lost our connection to the past? No more museums, history classes, historical sites, family photo albums, history movies, historical books,
- A letter from Children International where Lei Orioste, the director of the field project that provides vital assistance to my sponsored child, Cayser, says thanks or salamat po as they say in the Philipines. I wrote Unusual Suspects on the letter and circled Cayser.
- A large piece of paper with only the following on it: Concentrate on multiple interpretations versus accepted literary critic interpretations
- The list of songs my family and I put together for my wedding
- A note: A man got on the elevator today pulling a briefcase on wheels. It was black, the briefcase and the cart it was strapped to. He walked into the elevator with the contraption dragging behind him. He gave it a little spin so that the briefcase was facing forward and pushed the button for floor 23. And then he sat on it. On the top of the briefcase.
- A poem: I live the machine/And hate my living/ I move my legs in soundless time/ I beat my fists on the metal that holds me in/ Tightening them even as I rage/ My mouth moves/ Automaton/ My mind screams
- Notes from a Class: periphrastic do – neg + interrog construction. Derivational – pre-or suffixes that change pos or meaning. Inflectional – suffixes change neither pos or meaning (NP<-s plural, possessive; V<-s 3rd person, -ed past, -ing progressive, -en past participle; ADJ/ADV<-er,-est). Allomorphs: -in, -im, ir, il are all versions of –in. This goes on for four pages.
- A list of hotels in Vegas with a few positives and negatives of each written under the name
- A print out from the message board entitled “Access of Evil” by Richard Garriot with the following portions highlighted: Blackthorn’s Code of Chaos or basically Anarcy, many forbid contact between young people of the opposite gender, which can in fact be hazardous, tradition is not enough, Worse yet though imagine a society who’s code of conduct was based on pure survival of the strongest, ethics describes the limits put on one’s hedonistic tendencies to allow others to pursue their happiness as well.

There were a few other items in the folder, but I’m getting tired of typing. Clearly, this folder began as a collection of curiosidades and then was changed into merely a folder collecting scraps of paper that had nowhere else to go. Perhaps I will start up the folder again and use it for its true purpose.