Flow Out of My Chart

Now that I've been hidden away in Provincetown, I can tell you what I've been meaning to tell you. I've been making poster-sized flow charts on poser board leftover from my teaching days. When you make a flow chart, you can think about three things at once, like being able to eat, read, and write at the same time. (Did you try to do that when you were younger?)

A friend of mine asked me to write an essay for his journal and I was super nervous because I'd never done that before. I wanted to write about gurlesque poetry, but instead chose the topic, On Being Gross. When my friend asked me how the essay was coming along, this is what I sent. He inevitably asked me to write on someone else, which is good because I think the flow chart basically became the essay.

I've done two more since then, one on the folk singer Laura Marling (for Poets off Poetry) and one on my family. I love drawing the lines to connect the boxes, getting my pen stuck in a tight spot. In the first and last charts, all the major thinking, all the deductions are on the outer rim of the chart, but I mixed it up with the Laura Marling chart and the arrived-to thinking forms a sort of labyrinth on the chart. It's fun trying to find the end of the line.

The "getting to" thinking is sort of the main point, seeing how far I can come away or how much thinking I can do about a subject until I can't think on it anymore. For example, in the gross chart I was making notes about the differences between men being gross versus women, thinking about artistic situations besides poetry that highlight this, finally contrasting Samurai films with Buffy. During the chart about my family, I began to think about anxiety and whether or not anxiety is something that is a result of having goals.

I have some wall space in my apartment that I'd love to cover with butcher paper and just go to town. The space is by the bath tub, so holy shit if I do that, I'd be reading, writing, thinking, and taking a bath at the same time...