keep me on the go
1 - Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
2 - I will respond; I'll ask you five questions.
3 - You'll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
4 - You'll include this explanation.
5 - You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.
the questions are from ginoushka
1. tell me the story of your name. (i love hearing how people got their names.)
my mother's grandmother was named susanna, and my father's was named celia, so i'm susanna celia. my mom knew she would have a daughter named susanna long before she even met my dad, and when she was pregnant, she was so sure that i was a girl that she didn't even think of any boy's names. my great-grandmother was the most important mother figure in my mom's life, and besides, she just loved the name.
2. i know that we've talked about this before, but how is queer life at urban these days?
the honest answer is that i'm not exactly sure. i feel sort of fundamentally out of touch with the school in some ways, since i'm still in the process of coming back. i do know that it feels different than it used to, and that that is mostly due to my own internal changes. i have grown into myself in a way that i no longer need to assert myself as a queer kid every five minutes. or actually, i never exactly felt the need to do that, but now it seems even stranger to me when other kids do. but: visibility is always good, and i'm doing my very best to respect everyone's process. i'm also working out some odd gsa leadership issues, which mostly entail me having just come back, and the other leaders either not wanting responsibility, or being overcommitted. silly stuff, but it gets surprisingly messy. i'll think of a better answer later.
3. what are you thinking you want to do post-high school?
this is what i assume, what i hope: that i will go to college, that i'll travel and work for a year first, that i'll eventually find something that i love with every breath and somehow make money off of it. i want to write, to travel, to teach (but not in a classroom), to awaken some kind of conscience or consciousness in the people i try to reach. i am just starting to think about college for real, and it doesn't worry me yet. it will all work out, because i will work hard and the rest will happen on its own. i am planning on taking a year off between high school and what comes next, but i don't know exactly what i'm going to do with it. i feel like i need to, in order to get some context for my education. an extremely high percentage of my remembered life has taken place within a school, and i want to know what is beyond that before i continue with it.
4. what was it like to grow up in bernal heights? it's such an intense, lovely little neighborhood. i'm endlessly jealous of people who live there, esp. sf kids who grew up there.
i don't have much patriotism to speak of, and i've never had any school sprit, but i have such neighborhood pride. i love bernal heights so so much. i remember one spring when the kids on my block formed a sort of gang. i must have been nine at the time, and i was the second-oldest of us. we'd run up and down our block after dinner each night, and set up lemonade stands on the weekends and hold court on the mason kids' front steps whenever there was a disagreement. we disbanded pretty soon after it started, but my neighborhood is still a lot like a family. we have thanksgiving down the street along with about five other bernal families. each one brings their kids and their traditional dishes and there are always about ten pies. we knock on each other's doors when we need milk or have locked ourselves out, and we go to each other's school plays. my extended family lives continents away, but i have a family in my neighborhood. bernal heights is alive: crooked streets, flower draped fences, grinning dogs and strangers who just aren't friends yet. it scares me that my neigborhood is getting slightly gentrified. i feel so possessive, like i am holding onto something very precious.
5. tell me a story about your family -- chosen and/or blood.
this is a story i wrote for a class, but it was inspired by this question:
Maybe
Furrows in the snow glow blue and the trees shiver in the wind. I am graceless but capable on my rented skis- shuffling, gliding, almost falling. In spite of myself, I’m enjoying this. The motion is in my body, in my DNA- this is what my people were made for.
“Du kommer til og elske det,” my mom told me the first time I went skiing.
I didn’t love it. I didn’t love being cold or wet or falling down all the time. I didn’t love the swishy, sweaty layers of clothes or how easily my parents moved over the glittering whiteness. I was only six, but I was certain that this was not a good thing.
“Du er Norsk,” my mom insisted when I fell down for the fifth time in three minutes. You’re Norwegian, as if that explained something.
At this point, I didn’t care. I hated skiing, I hated soccer and I was bad at cutting bread. I sat down in the snow and refused to move.
This is what my mom brings up jokingly when we sit with the family in Norway. We are a family without secrets. We sit on red sofas around pine coffee tables and drink dark liquid from white, rounded cups. We talk about the weather. I say we not because I drink coffee or discuss the clouds but because I am one of them, though you have to squint to see it. I am dark and round where they are fair and squarely built. I wear strange clothing and don’t eat meat.
At my cousin’s twelve hour wedding reception I was seated with the cousins and friends who fell just on either side of the dividing line between the children and the grownups. I concentrated on my water glass and counted the light fixtures in the room. When the trays of hearty, steaming food came around, I carefully extracted some carrots, potatoes and cabbage before passing it on.
“Kosjen lever du uten og spise kjott?” a cousin’s boyfriend asked loudly- how do you survive without eating meat?
“Well,” I answered slowly, “I eat everything but meat.”
He was still confused, but after answering questions for a while I resolved to talk only with the young German goldsmith directly across from me. She was a friend of the bride and seemed happy to have gained the companionship of an attitudinal fourteen-year-old. She asked me earnest questions about my life plans and smiled me when she looked up from her soup.
“I think you underestimate them,” my mom says, an edge beginning to creep into her voice.
“Maybe. But you won’t have to deal with them looking at you funny.”
This is just another conversation like the dozens that have come before it.
My knee is aching and my shoulders are sore. My lips are chapped, my face is slightly sun burnt. I have spent most of the weekend finding creative ways to fall down and laughing about it when I get my face out of the snow. But when my dad asks me if I had fun, I grin and say yes. Yes because of stars and hills and trees and car rides and talking about love and god. Yes because when I finally got down and around the obstacles and stopped without falling, Derek said jokingly Oh, you’d make your Norwegian ancestors proud! And I thought, ok. Maybe.
Eg prøver og skrive på Norsk fordig ed kan. Eg kan latte som om eg høre til med et land annet en det eg sitter i. Eg kan håpe at eg har en plass i det lande, eller at eg kan lage en. Eg kan håpe at det fins en plass for ei jente med lila hår og regnbuer på vannflaska si. Kansje en sann plass fins. Kansje.
2 - I will respond; I'll ask you five questions.
3 - You'll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
4 - You'll include this explanation.
5 - You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.
the questions are from ginoushka
1. tell me the story of your name. (i love hearing how people got their names.)
my mother's grandmother was named susanna, and my father's was named celia, so i'm susanna celia. my mom knew she would have a daughter named susanna long before she even met my dad, and when she was pregnant, she was so sure that i was a girl that she didn't even think of any boy's names. my great-grandmother was the most important mother figure in my mom's life, and besides, she just loved the name.
2. i know that we've talked about this before, but how is queer life at urban these days?
the honest answer is that i'm not exactly sure. i feel sort of fundamentally out of touch with the school in some ways, since i'm still in the process of coming back. i do know that it feels different than it used to, and that that is mostly due to my own internal changes. i have grown into myself in a way that i no longer need to assert myself as a queer kid every five minutes. or actually, i never exactly felt the need to do that, but now it seems even stranger to me when other kids do. but: visibility is always good, and i'm doing my very best to respect everyone's process. i'm also working out some odd gsa leadership issues, which mostly entail me having just come back, and the other leaders either not wanting responsibility, or being overcommitted. silly stuff, but it gets surprisingly messy. i'll think of a better answer later.
3. what are you thinking you want to do post-high school?
this is what i assume, what i hope: that i will go to college, that i'll travel and work for a year first, that i'll eventually find something that i love with every breath and somehow make money off of it. i want to write, to travel, to teach (but not in a classroom), to awaken some kind of conscience or consciousness in the people i try to reach. i am just starting to think about college for real, and it doesn't worry me yet. it will all work out, because i will work hard and the rest will happen on its own. i am planning on taking a year off between high school and what comes next, but i don't know exactly what i'm going to do with it. i feel like i need to, in order to get some context for my education. an extremely high percentage of my remembered life has taken place within a school, and i want to know what is beyond that before i continue with it.
4. what was it like to grow up in bernal heights? it's such an intense, lovely little neighborhood. i'm endlessly jealous of people who live there, esp. sf kids who grew up there.
i don't have much patriotism to speak of, and i've never had any school sprit, but i have such neighborhood pride. i love bernal heights so so much. i remember one spring when the kids on my block formed a sort of gang. i must have been nine at the time, and i was the second-oldest of us. we'd run up and down our block after dinner each night, and set up lemonade stands on the weekends and hold court on the mason kids' front steps whenever there was a disagreement. we disbanded pretty soon after it started, but my neighborhood is still a lot like a family. we have thanksgiving down the street along with about five other bernal families. each one brings their kids and their traditional dishes and there are always about ten pies. we knock on each other's doors when we need milk or have locked ourselves out, and we go to each other's school plays. my extended family lives continents away, but i have a family in my neighborhood. bernal heights is alive: crooked streets, flower draped fences, grinning dogs and strangers who just aren't friends yet. it scares me that my neigborhood is getting slightly gentrified. i feel so possessive, like i am holding onto something very precious.
5. tell me a story about your family -- chosen and/or blood.
this is a story i wrote for a class, but it was inspired by this question:
Maybe
Furrows in the snow glow blue and the trees shiver in the wind. I am graceless but capable on my rented skis- shuffling, gliding, almost falling. In spite of myself, I’m enjoying this. The motion is in my body, in my DNA- this is what my people were made for.
“Du kommer til og elske det,” my mom told me the first time I went skiing.
I didn’t love it. I didn’t love being cold or wet or falling down all the time. I didn’t love the swishy, sweaty layers of clothes or how easily my parents moved over the glittering whiteness. I was only six, but I was certain that this was not a good thing.
“Du er Norsk,” my mom insisted when I fell down for the fifth time in three minutes. You’re Norwegian, as if that explained something.
At this point, I didn’t care. I hated skiing, I hated soccer and I was bad at cutting bread. I sat down in the snow and refused to move.
This is what my mom brings up jokingly when we sit with the family in Norway. We are a family without secrets. We sit on red sofas around pine coffee tables and drink dark liquid from white, rounded cups. We talk about the weather. I say we not because I drink coffee or discuss the clouds but because I am one of them, though you have to squint to see it. I am dark and round where they are fair and squarely built. I wear strange clothing and don’t eat meat.
At my cousin’s twelve hour wedding reception I was seated with the cousins and friends who fell just on either side of the dividing line between the children and the grownups. I concentrated on my water glass and counted the light fixtures in the room. When the trays of hearty, steaming food came around, I carefully extracted some carrots, potatoes and cabbage before passing it on.
“Kosjen lever du uten og spise kjott?” a cousin’s boyfriend asked loudly- how do you survive without eating meat?
“Well,” I answered slowly, “I eat everything but meat.”
He was still confused, but after answering questions for a while I resolved to talk only with the young German goldsmith directly across from me. She was a friend of the bride and seemed happy to have gained the companionship of an attitudinal fourteen-year-old. She asked me earnest questions about my life plans and smiled me when she looked up from her soup.
“I think you underestimate them,” my mom says, an edge beginning to creep into her voice.
“Maybe. But you won’t have to deal with them looking at you funny.”
This is just another conversation like the dozens that have come before it.
My knee is aching and my shoulders are sore. My lips are chapped, my face is slightly sun burnt. I have spent most of the weekend finding creative ways to fall down and laughing about it when I get my face out of the snow. But when my dad asks me if I had fun, I grin and say yes. Yes because of stars and hills and trees and car rides and talking about love and god. Yes because when I finally got down and around the obstacles and stopped without falling, Derek said jokingly Oh, you’d make your Norwegian ancestors proud! And I thought, ok. Maybe.
Eg prøver og skrive på Norsk fordig ed kan. Eg kan latte som om eg høre til med et land annet en det eg sitter i. Eg kan håpe at eg har en plass i det lande, eller at eg kan lage en. Eg kan håpe at det fins en plass for ei jente med lila hår og regnbuer på vannflaska si. Kansje en sann plass fins. Kansje.