“So a random set of meanings has softly gathered around the word the way lint collects. The mind does that.” from On Being Blue by William Gass.
Quotes always seem to strike me in ways that they aren’t intended to, but my first thought when I read this on the first page of Joyce’s Twelve Blue was “wow, that’s so true.” But of course, in my mind “the word” was read as “The Word.” The way I saw the statement to be true is really because I have a couple friends that are extreme chronic over thinkers (meanwhile I’m just the chronic over thinker). I’m always helping them sort through their thoughts because how I’ve adapted to deal with the overwhelming quantity of thoughts in my own mind: compartmentalizing it all. These two still struggle with letting the dust sit and collect around the Word that reminds them constantly of how loved and cared for they are. Everyone struggles with that though whether we realize it or not; we too often get stuck in our own thoughts or the negative opinions of others that we forget to do something with that. The way I’ve been phrasing it lately:
The only difference between guilt and conviction is that guilt will only let the dust pile up; conviction means you’re cleaning up your act. They feel the same to start, but have very different endings.
And maybe that might seem like it has so little to do with the piece at hand, but with the outlook I typically have on life it did seem relevant that Twelve Blue opened with this quote. It gave this tone over the entirety what I read of this piece much like Solomon gives in the book of Ecclesiastes– that all we do seems to be in vain. Depending on the translation, the key phrase throughout that book tended to be “all is vanity,” (which can also e translated as “mere breath” or “vapor”) and “everything is meaningless.” I mean it’s hard not to have that outlook on life when even from Genesis it’s pointed out that we were once made from dust, and to dust we shall return (Gen. 3:19).
“Follow me.”
I clicked on the first hyperlink below the image on the starting page of this hypertext fiction and found it funny how this phrase came up so often. I almost felt like some modern day Nicodemus that wanted to go along with the story, but simultaneously didn’t want to. (The obvious difference being that I did continue through the story for some time though). While the story itself was interesting and I could appreciate it for the art it is, there were details on every page that made me uneasy. Believe me, with a testimony like mine I am no prude, but when a story says something like “a girl will leave stale candy for a hard man,” or “a girl will slip out of arabesques for a priestly man,” I’ll get a bit uneasy– especially considering this part of the hypertext had mentioned both a 15-year-old girl and a full grown woman.
This was not a story I quite wanted to continue to follow at that point because I wasn’t entirely sure whether this was talking about two different situations, or how one young girl’s habits change as she grows. With it being more clear on the latter, I would have felt a bit more comfortable continuing than I did. But that just wasn’t the case. So I put some big girl pants on and kept going.
Things that were blue tally:
- blueberry cotton candy
- thief’s indigo eyes (if indigo counts as blue?)
- dim cobalt sconce lights
- dark blue veins of his manicured fingers
- thin blue snow
- The evening star is icy phosphor
- I’ll have a blue, blue, blue [Christmas]
“Follow me before the choices disappear.” lead me to another short narrative about September’s embers. This slice of the story was probably my favorite to be honest, likely because I’m more of a poet that loves to play with sounds that seem to slide off the tongue. I this part of the piece was also relatable; periods aren’t the most fun, after all, especially when you have to ask to go to the bathroom in class and you feel like you have to explain why even though you don’t.
I’ll be honest though, I was wondering what “blood begin[ning]” really meant until I got to the whispers to Mother Superior asking for that “lavatory pass.” I thought maybe it had to do with people itching for Halloween as the end of September approaches (a sentiment to which I personally cannot relate). Once I read that line though, it just felt like one of those major *facepalm* type moments.
I also just couldn’t get over the use of the phrase “river of air” in this piece. There really wasn’t a reason for bringing this point up besides the fact that it was just so poetic. I love that.
And this part of the hypertext ended with another hyperlink on the sentences ““So young…” she sighs. As if the seasons were whose fault?”
Things that were blue tally:
- blueberry cotton candy
- thief’s indigo eyes (if indigo counts as blue?)
- dim cobalt sconce lights
- dark blue veins of his manicured fingers
- thin blue snow
- The evening star is icy phosphor
- I’ll have a blue, blue, blue [Christmas]
- new blue leather Mary Janes
- bottle of blue polish
I didn’t think to look at the names of the tabs before this one, but the next story’s title, though not shown on the page itself, is cornflowers.
Something else I hadn’t noted about the first part of this hypertext fiction is that there was a seemingly random detail at the end that “There’s a rumor someone drowned in the river.” And maybe that’s where the “river of air” also came from on the second page this story led me to. I hadn’t gathered the two details until the narrator mentions Samantha wanting to invite “Javier’s daughter, the girl whose boyfriend drowned in the creek” to some sort of tea party. The discomfort I’d felt on the first page had evaporated at this point for me: loss is heavy on anyone, and I could honestly say that Samantha was trying to do right by Javier’s poor daughter. It’s so easy to isolate when you lose someone, and having someone reach out can mean the world and then some to someone dealing with that kind of trauma.
I’ll be honest though, I didn’t analyze this part of the text too much because I got sidetracked by the fact there have apparently been a few hyperlinks in the image on the left side of the page this whole time. So I realized there was a choice beyond the starting page on where I went with this story after all. But how do I choose? I can tell there are words in the image that make the hyperlinks there, but they’re so small I can’t quite read what they say without zooming in. The one hyperlink in the text says “wake from one dream into another…” which is a lot of what life’s been feeling like for me lately. So I zoomed in on the image only to realize they weren’t words after all. Disappointing.
I wanted to click on the words because they were relatable, but the image really piqued my interest, so I clicked on the very bottom edge of the image and…
Things that were blue tally:
- blueberry cotton candy
- thief’s indigo eyes (if indigo counts as blue?)
- dim cobalt sconce lights
- dark blue veins of his manicured fingers
- thin blue snow
- The evening star is icy phosphor
- I’ll have a blue, blue, blue [Christmas]
- new blue leather Mary Janes
- bottle of blue polish
- (none added)
It lead me back to the part of the story that made me feel uncomfortable in the beginning. Underwhelming.
I noticed this time though that the title of this slice of the story is How she knew. Knew what?
But I guess that’s something I wasn’t meant to find out in an hour in the world of Twelve Blue. With the nonlinear nature of hypertext, I found the parts of the narrative a bit more difficult to comprehend, but given that each part os short (I just took a long time analyzing it), it wasn’t hard to connect details as they came. I continued a bit past the hour assigned for class and continued to find the same questions come up of “What connects this and the previous parts?” and “Why Twelve Blue and not some other number?” The latter question I never quite got an answer to, but I have a few guesses as to what that might be.
Write 2 Disciple 
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