Arrow Math by Katherine Hawke

This is the most academical thing I've been forced to write in a while. I'm not saying that's bad I'm just saying. But if reading this causes you, my faithful reader, to fall asleep in your chair, which in turn causes your mouth to hang open, from which drool pours forth, and this drool happens to land on your keyboard, which causes an electrical shortage, which causes your computer to crash, which causes you to lose the infinitely more interesting blog you were in the middle of writing, i'm truly sorry. I'll understand if you stop reading now.

You have been warned. So Arrow math. Where to start? The interesting thing about this piece is the way it read as a story, even though it isn't really, though the author would most likely disagree. It would probally also read as a story if it we're jumbled, and put back together in a different order. That's the fascinating thing about this. It isn't a linear, feed-forward story, but a puzzle of the memories, thoughts, and projections of the protagonist. Yet, it does tell a story because as we read we are able to fit the pieces together: Who are Wyn and Larry and Linda and what do they have to do with the protagonist? But memory of history is present tense, so is this really just a confusing exposition? Or could the turning point be the point at which the reader has fit all the pieces together and the rising action is the deeper involvement in the characters the more intimate the reader becomes with them?

I have looked long and hard for another more conventional turning point. It's like playing where's Waldo. The thing is, we expect Waldo to be anywhere, or rather we don't expect him to be anywhere particular. But we do expect the turning point to occur sometime in the last third of the story. But since this story isn't feed-forward that doesn't apply. If we deconstructed the story and put it back together "in order" we would have many potential turning points. The abortion, Wyn leaving the protagonist for Linda, Larry's encounter with the Greenpeace hippie, Larry and Linda visiting the mountain, etc. The turning point that we are expecting is of the protagonists encounter with Linda and/or Larry sometime in the present, beyond the time in which the italicized voice is occuring. This doesn't occur, or maybe it occur's in the words she has figured out that she will tell little Larry. Or perhaps she intended for it not to occur, like her meditation on closure. Maybe I just didn't get it. Who knows?

I think it would be an interesting experiment with this piece to see how crucial the particular arrangement of the numbered puzzle pieces is to the readers interpretation of the characters and the story. If I had started out reading the story by learning that Linda collects makeup and has her nails done I mightn't have liked her so much But then again, I pretty much stopped liking her with this information, so maybe the order is irrelevant?

I also thing the italicized sections were crucial to this piece. Like a mother coaching the me the reader along, begging me to "get it". This voice helped me step back from the piece, and gave me a different, more involved vantage point to view it from. It would have been hard for me to read otherwise. Maybe someone older and wiser would cringe at the well-meaning, but overbearing hand of the author pointing her intentions out. I for one, wouldn't have gotten the metaphor without her gentle, persistent help. It was a metaphor, wasn't it?