First Pass
August 26, 2025

[TUS] First Pass - August 26

VIEW RECORDING - 70 mins (No highlights)

@1:03 - Esmé Weijun Wang (Esmé Weijun Wang • 汪蔚君)

I see Armando in here. Hello. It is good to see you and just share this space with you. I have a feeling that a lot of people will be coming in at the last minute.

Classic. Hey, hey. A store I liked seems to have had a really big sale on their bows. Recently. So I bought one.

Like four or five bows. This is one of them. You can probably see me out and about with these bows.

I'm even thinking of getting more bows from the sail because I do not know when they will next have a sail and who can have too many bows?

Certainly not me. Today we're going to be doing our first pass. And it's going to be the last first pass of our beautiful cohort.

We will be having a little get together after this. So I think we're just calling it like a closing call or something like that.

It's in the calendar. So we could be having some reflections and an opportunity for you to tell us what you would like to see in the academy, etc.

Anything that you thought was not useful. We have a lot of plans for the academy in the next few months.

So we'll say more about it at the closing call. While I do the random selection again, you know what?

I was actually thinking of doing something phenomenally wild and ridiculous. I thought I might try to do everyone's excerpts since it's the last day.

I reserve the right to not do all of them, but I'm going to try. So, Armando, you're definitely going to get an opportunity because you're the first one.

So, hello. Hi, Lindsay, a.k.a. also Esmé Weijun Wang. Oh, that's so funny. That always happens. I don't know why, but you can just change it like by renaming yourself.

Hi, Isabel. Hi, Julia. Hello.

@4:52 - Julia Barclay-Morton
Hi.

@4:54 - Isabel Walter
So good to see you all.

@5:00 - Esmé Weijun Wang (Esmé Weijun Wang • 汪蔚君)
My little friends.

@5:03 - Julia Barclay-Morton
How are you doing? Are you doing okay?

@5:07 - Esmé Weijun Wang (Esmé Weijun Wang • 汪蔚君)
Um, I'm doing okay. I just got a lot of blood work done. I'm sure many of you can relate to this.

@5:15 - Julia Barclay-Morton
Oh, I do.

@5:17 - Esmé Weijun Wang (Esmé Weijun Wang • 汪蔚君)
I feel like I've gone through this many times in the last like 10 years. So I just got a lot of blood work done.

Unfortunately, none of it seems to be informative in any way as to, like, my issues. So after this, um, after this first pass, I'm gonna, um, message my doctor and see if she has any thoughts.

So, um, Armando was asking if I was gonna do the random selection again. And I was saying that I was gonna try to do something really wild and do everyone's today.

Um. wow. Oh, Oh, So I reserve the right to not do all of them if I start feeling unwell, because then you won't want my thoughts anyway at that point.

But I'm going to do my very best to do all of them. Hello, Helen. So nice to see everyone.

@6:23 - Julia Barclay-Morton
Mine still says June on mine because it was the same one.

@6:29 - Esmé Weijun Wang (Esmé Weijun Wang • 汪蔚君)

I know. It's hard to figure out how to do this evenly when there's limited time and limited me's. Hi, Christina.

Oh, I'm going to have to turn off my Do Not Disturb. Okay, so today I'm going to try to do all of them.

Let's go. Let's go. Let's go, team. Esmé, do you want me to press record right now? Go ahead. And do that, I have something that's recording, I think, unless it disappeared.

Yeah, I saw the, I think it was the transcribers at the Otter AIs? Yeah. Well, there are a lot of apps that are recording.

Yes, says your Fathom is recording. Okay, good. Wow. Okay, so the Fathom has been recording, but it's okay to have something else recording just because I always am afraid that the recording will disappear, so we might as well have a backup.

Okay. Awesome, thank And if you, if you do, do mind, thank you.

@7:37 - Armando Batista (he/his)
I'm just going to stay off camera because I have two babies that I'm working with, so. Okay.

@7:43 - Esmé Weijun Wang (Esmé Weijun Wang • 汪蔚君)
Okay.

@7:44 - Armando Batista (he/his)
But I appreciate it. Yeah, of course.

@7:48 - Esmé Weijun Wang (Esmé Weijun Wang • 汪蔚君)
Okay, so we're going to go with Arondo. Let's see. So remember, I have not seen these before. These are, this is the first time I've seen them.

So, and also, this is the first time. So, context. This may be the beginning of the first section of my travel memoir slash travelogue.

The first section will span the time I spent living and traveling throughout the Dominican Republic, my ancestral homeland. The idea is to flash back from here to when I landed on the island.

When we come back to the scene later, I will reveal what happened prior to here and what happened next.

This sounds like a really interesting construction. I'm already curious about whether this section is going to be about the first.

Don't say anything, Armando, or like don't answer my question. I'm just saying like my thoughts as I'm first seeing it.

So you don't get to tell me what you actually were trying to say if it's not on the page.

But anyway, so the first section will span the time I spent living and traveling throughout So this. I'm like hmm was this like your first time going did you go a lot growing up is the very yeah is this the 15th time you've gone why is this time important okay so here we go you're stuck in paradise oh man what a great opener that's such a great sentence everybody just just marvel in awe at that first sentence okay you're stuck You're stuck in a cushy sofa chair in a pre furnished beachside apartment overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

This is an interesting sentence because it manages to get across a kind of blandness that is not that interesting to me.

I don't know if all readers would read that sentence and kind of think to themselves this doesn't seem like a great place to hang

It's not that I don't like cushy sofas or furnished apartments, but it does really beautifully get across, at least for me, kind of blandness to the situation, even though, again, it's in paradise.

Your friend, he's not your friend, more like a mentor, is watching TV. Okay, so now we introduce, like, a new person.

So now we're thinking, okay, the narrator is in the Dominican Republic and he's there with a mentor. Okay. He asks you if you're okay, but you don't answer, not till later.

Interesting. Okay, so now we are thinking forward because now we have something to look for. We know that later we're going to find out if the narrator is okay, but right now we don't know.

For now, you're stuck in that chair. Actually, you're stuck in a quicksand of regrets and repressions as you go down, down, down, the undesirable eyes.

Okay, interesting. I'm trying to decide whether it bothers me that you use the word stuck twice. It seems, it feels to me, okay, so usually I try to tell people to avoid using the same verb or whatever word within this, uh, a few sentences of each other, certainly like two sentences in a row.

But because this is so much about ennui and so much about a situation where you're you can't escape it kind of makes sense that you're using the same language I am 36 and mildly delusional about the hopes of repairing an already disintegrated love work relationship a failed professional actor dropped out of two grad school programs broke like medicaid can't aid me broke like the poverty line is my event horizon a semi-plosited bisexual christian cult trauma survivor student loan debt could buy a single family home at market rate with the amount of debt I own how the did I let it get this bad can't see the force for self-forgiveness uncompensated disabled vet undiagnosed adhd night terror got ancestral trauma from spanish conquistadors trafficking and and disappearing africans black atlantic real via diaspora but not black enough to warrant that self-hatey dominican race.

Racism on my brown , speaking Spanish like a fat-tongued pretender, Americanized, and hated for that Willy Wonka get-out-of-jail-free US passport calling myself a published writer when the only poems I've ever published was on Facebook and the only book I've ever sold was to two sympathetic friends you don't mind waiting for a book that will never come while I'm alive, a lie to my decomposing childish grandeur, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can't, I can't, can't, get up, out of this sinkhole of a chair, I can't, get out of my own way, wait, wait, but just give me some, some, some, some, mmm.

Paradise? More like purgatory, but you ain't dead yet. Okay, wow. Okay. So this paragraph, this graph, like, has, you know, like a kind of slam poetry vibe to it.

I'm positive that you I have read it better than I did. I'm very sorry to have, you know, I did not do it justice.

So I'm, I'm apologizing. I'm apologizing for that. What I find interesting about blocks of texts like this is that our eye tends to want to skip them on the page.

So if you're reading a book and you come across this block of text or any block of text or any your eye will tend to want to skip it.

And so knowing that you have to either be at peace with that to just be like, okay, like 88% of my readers are going to skip this paragraph and they're not going to read it.

Or you can give yourself the challenge of making that paragraph paragraph. Enticing enough to pull a reader all the way through these sentences even though the text is like one kind of one one chunk that is kind of pushing the reader away so let me see I feel like there there is a lot of stream of consciousness which um is great and is is one of the ways of writing that we talk about in the pathway um I do wonder why the sentences are in this order and I wonder why the sentences are why the

Functuation is the way it is so okay let's see punctuation wise there is no punctuation until the end okay so um I didn't know that for sure while I was reading it okay um so because there's one big block there's only one bit of punctuation at the very end these are supposed to read it through breathlessly without taking a breath um and so I think that that taking it's just such a challenge you've given yourself a lot of challenges here I gotta stay with this paragraph um the challenge of like the big block of text the challenge of it being one paragraph that only has one uh period in it um the the kind of uh stream of consciousness where you're trying to have one thing like one thing into another in a way that um

And so I'm not saying that that's not working but I what I would recommend is for you to go back and read it out loud and see if you feel yourself see if you feel your own mind drifting a little bit while you're reading it out loud because I I feel like sometimes when I read up my own stuff out loud I'll find my mind drifting and that's when I I need to like stop and make a mark.

on the paper and go like okay my mind was drifting right there because if your mind was drifting then certainly it's it's this is gonna cause somebody else's mind to drift so I would recommend you kind of read through this paragraph kind of think about why you've structured it this way not the whole like Yeah

But just in terms of like, why do you start with being an actor and then move into like, Medicaid?

Anyway, it's just an example, but like, or another example of an exercise I would like you to do is to take a highlighter and highlight like the main topics in this chunk.

And then just to read through the highlighted parts. So like, I would highlight here like, failed professional actor, dropped out of two graduate school programs, Medicaid can't aid me, etc.

So I would go through and kind of like, highlight the main topics and then go through and see if they thread nicely.

See if like, they're in the order you want them to be. light and exposure I Okay? Yes. I think 213 003

I love that the chair came back at the end. Has anyone here seen the the TV show that had Margot Qualley in it that made that was based on the Stephanie Land memoir?

Does anyone know that? Okay, so. Yes. Okay. Thank you. I haven't watched it, but there I've watched the scene where Margot Qualley is very depressed and she's lying on her sofa and she is so depressed and she kind of like becomes almost flat and she slides like through the sofa and under the cushions and into the floor and I think that's what this chair is doing.

This chair is really doing a lot of work here. And I hope it comes back. All right. Thank you, Armando.

I'm going to move on now. Thank you, Esmé.

@19:58 - Armando Batista (he/his)
Appreciate it.

@19:59 - Esmé Weijun Wang (Esmé Weijun Wang • 汪蔚君)
I'm going on Thank you. I don't know if that was helpful at all. No, it totally was.

@20:04 - Armando Batista (he/his)
I really appreciate what you were talking about with the structure of the paragraph, even though like I was inspired by T Madden and doing like the kind of run on sentence, you know, instead of playing at the anxiety of that, but I appreciate what you're saying of like how people can sort of like, you know, sort of go over it and not engage it too.

@20:22 - Esmé Weijun Wang (Esmé Weijun Wang • 汪蔚君)
Yeah, because when you do a challenge like that, you really have to like, earn the readers trust. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. Okay, so now I'm gonna, oh no, did I lose my page of, did I close my page of first past things?

Sorry. Lindsay, would you mind DMing me the link to, or I'll just go to Google Drive, I guess. Sorry, everyone. slide. right one. Okay, Thank all, No Actually yeah could you just sorry Lindsay can you DM me the link?

Why did I do that? Did you do it yet? I was on mute yes I just uh private message do the link.

Okay um why can't I see it? Oh here wow they changed their formatting for chat and DMs. Okay thank you.

Okay so now we're going to do Christina Lee. All right excerpt. Where I rest is the place which calls me back.

My cardiologist gives me two new diagnoses and I walk out with two new prescriptions into the streets of a New York auditorium.

Okay, I like this kind of, this balance. You got two new diagnoses and two new prescriptions. It does seem very interesting from the jump for me because I always, when I get new diagnoses, get like five new prescriptions for each one.

But anyway. And of course, the New York August thing. Okay, so my one suggestion for this sentence, is that most, uh, most writing about New York summers mentions that it's very humid, um, and hot.

And, and some authors have managed to make that more interesting, uh, by saying something like, uh, a New York August was like being on the inside of a hot, wet mouth or something like that.

So, So I would just kind of challenge you gently to take this heavy with humidity and be a little playful with it.

I feel as if I'm in a haze. When I return to my home, I feel the pull of the bed dragging me up the steps to my apartment, and I collapse there for weeks, maybe months.

I feel this pull of the bed all the time. This appointment becomes the last time I leave the house without my body weakening under each step.

The medications don't help, but I go outside for a walk anyway. Wait a minute. Okay, so now I'm a little bit confused.

So it seems like the cardiologist's appointment, which gave the author two diagnoses and two prescriptions, that appointment was the last time the narrator leaves the house.

It's without the author's body weakening which made me think makes me think like oh the cardiologist clearly gave some medications that are helpful but then right here it says the medications don't help so I'm not I'm already like a little bit confused in terms of why like was it helpful actually and if it's if the medications aren't helpful and why did that appointment what was it about that appointment that enabled the narrator to not experience symptoms like a weakening body so that's the question I have by the time I'm here in the first paragraph stepping back out into the stickiness making only three buildings down before I must turn around the bed beckons me back yes okay I'm

I also relate to this and I'm sure many of you can as well but this yeah aside from the medications don't help part and and how that's a little bit confusing I like this part of the sentence that takes us from inside the hopefully air-conditioned apartment or like you have fans or something into the stickiness I would maybe put in one detail here uh like are there kids playing outside is there like a food truck of some kind I would love to because you meant simply because you mentioned it's in New York I would just love a little detail about New York in that sentence the last appointment I have with her she asks me if it might be time for a wheelchair but she says it like if you have why put over.

If a wheelchair you might be able to go out more often. It'd be good for you. And she offers no further support in prescribing said wheelchair or in navigating insurance as if a wheelchair might magically appear and increase my mobility tomorrow.

I'm too ill to use a wheelchair anyway. The bed grabs at my limbs, entrapping me in the sheets. The hum of an AC runs in the background.

Oh, I was right! There's an AC in there. Okay, I memorize it soon. Oh, what a great sentence. I love this sentence.

I memorize it soon. So, uh, you know, an AC does make very interesting sounds and to use tune in here is kind of bringing some music into a situation that feels pretty bumbly.

Um, this is great. Um, I think a lot of people who aren't disabled don't think about this. love... I think a lot of doctors who say things like this don't think about it.

It is hard to find a wheelchair and also like there are lots of different kinds of wheelchairs anyway and navigating insurance all of that so I love this part and I wonder if it will come back in the third paragraph.

The rheumatologist I see tells me that his daughter has what I have too, to which I internally pray that means he might treat me with more compassion.

I tell him I cannot leave the bed, that we have become one, except to take 10 steps to the bathroom.

He tells me he reviews labs while watching basketball on Sundays. He orders lab after lab, pulling 17 vials from my veins, and says my labs are stunningly clean.

is She has a So terrible. Wow, what a coincidence. 17 vials is also the most vials I've ever had pulled.

And my labs also tend to come out clear, as I mentioned at the beginning of this session. Anyway, just like sick people's things you can relate to.

Okay, so what I am interested in here is the choice to not mention the illness. Honestly, I think this is a good choice.

I don't know if the author will let this, how much more the author will let this continue. Like throughout an entire book that I imagine is in large part about illness, it may be hard to keep this up to not mention the illness.

But I do like this beginning point. about myself my father. am am And Not giving us the name of the illness because I think when you get and this is also what I did with the border of paradise my first book was to not give a diagnosis because I think when you give a diagnosis that one word thing or in this case two words two diagnoses or diagnoses is more than one word you get the sense of like all the things that you might know about it like you may have seen like a commercial that mentioned it or you might have heard like your uncle mentioned someone that he knows being diagnosed with it and without those words without those very powerful words that are telling us what illnesses are present we can then kind of sink into symptoms and symptoms are ways of being instead of this like Thank

That is just a made up word to indicate what a bunch of ways of being are. Um, I hope that makes sense.

Uh, yeah, I think this is a really good start. Um, it has a lot of, I think, very relatable things that I bet a lot of people, both in the academy and also, uh, out there in the wide world who are waiting to read this will be able to relate to.

And so, um, yeah, I think this is great. And, uh, thank you for sharing it with us. Thank you for reading.

My pleasure. Okay, Helen. Okay. you. Let's see. Okay, here's the context. The below excerpt appears in the middle of an essay, which begins with SA slash rate, and the rest of the essay explores how, as my position as always the friend, provided me with a false sense of security.

I'm also braiding in my experience of internalizing via the expectations at a young age that led me to vulnerable and risk these situations.

Okay. Um, I think that, uh, this context here, um, already a lot of people will understand, uh, what you're talking about.

So I'm, you know, uh, I'm a little nervous to read this. Here we go. From a young age, I knew I wasn't pretty, or rather I was never told I was pretty.

Korean Ajumas would say that I looked, I'm sorry, I cannot pronounce this, I'm not going to butcher it. Anyway, I don't want to do an injustice to the Korean language, so I'm sorry, I'm not going to be able to pronounce that.

Unique instead of pretty. Again, this word is here. It's also interesting to see the difference between having these words spelled out as opposed to using hangul, which I know some writers like to do.

Having it this way does allow the reader to kind of like try to pronounce them or try to spell them out, sound them out.

Whereas the hangul, like if you don't know Korean, it's you know, impenetrable, Same way with Chinese, I used some Chinese characters in my first book and second book, and I used some of the way that things are written out.

Sorry, I'm having some pretty bad brain fog today, and I'm sorry, I'm sure you can notice. Also, our brain frog stickers arrived.

And we've been shipping them out to people who ordered. So we have a lot of brain frog stickers going on.

Okay, sorry, I genuinely am having brain fog right now. Okay. I didn't understand the word, but I recognized the intent, a consolation prize, a way to comfort me for somehow falling short of something.

of what what I did not know. Okay, interesting. So unique is this is very funny because I actually didn't know this happens in in Korean like there is also a word like this unique in Chinese instead of pretty I also was never called pretty and I was instead called the unique word but my mom would always say like that word.

is like you'll you know, Shang-Chi or whatever it was is better than being pretty because anyone can be pretty.

Anyway, I didn't realize there was that parallel in the cultures. One day in response my mother offhandedly said she could get a nose job when she gets older if she wants.

My mom said the same thing when I was Kid. Anyway so okay going through these first three sentences we are getting the sense of like a childhood in which prettiness is both wanted as like something desirable and something you want and if you're not pretty then who knows what will happen to you like uh so far we don't get in this first three sentences like what will happen to you like did the adults say you're never gonna find someone to marry or like uh if you're not pretty uh people won't like you um so i i am a little bit curious in terms of in these uh in this childhood it are there warnings about not being pretty or is it more just like being pretty is really good and and you should always try to be better than you are which is a subtle difference but it is a difference um her smile was disarming reassuring me that the choice was entirely up to me and not an expectation of hers yeah oh my gosh okay this is a great sentence i love the kind of emphasis on the smile mother smile being disarming um because it takes this very small kind of facial expression and it gives us all the things behind it like it gives us the the kind of like weird reverse psychology that's happening where the mother is like clearly you would want a nose job when you get older right like obviously um and again this is reminding me of what we were just talking i was just talking about in terms of we we have still haven't been told but why Moisture 깊isah田 wanted me to Mount and crying

Being pretty is good but because a nose job to become prettier supposedly is associated with like smiles and like good good happy things it's still kind of like emphasizing that being pretty equals good thing as opposed to being pretty not being pretty is bad so i am curious whether um whether it could be um interesting to i i don't know how this i'll i'll bring this up later if it doesn't come up but i do want to say something about possibly talking about whether pretty a lack of prettiness could be mentioned in this um in these paragraphs as something that is uh dangerous or bad okay Despite

I was confused because I had heard my mother call my nose a buck-cull, a lucky nose, but apparently luck had nothing to do with beauty.

At the time, I hadn't yet fully grasped nor appreciated the nuances of my face that were uniquely mine. After my confusion, realization set in.

The very features that set me apart rendered me less desirable." Okay, here we go. So there's this realization of like, oh, like, not being pretty according to society means that I'm less desirable.

And here it also doesn't get into like desire in terms of, because I don't know, are we still in like childhood childhood, like young childhood?

Have we entered teenagerhood? And if so, where, like, at what age are you going When you are realizing that you are less desirable?

Is it around the time when... We are going through puberty. That day I understood that unique meant not pretty and not pretty meant I had failed to meet impossible expectations set by people I did not know.

I didn't know all this then. Then I just thought I had failed. That is tough. Okay. If I learned I wasn't the pretty one as a young child, I learned that I was at least the fun one as as an adult.

In my twenties, I spent a lot of my time planning. I planned birthday parties, trips, and of course, weekend plans.

My weekends usually consisted of two parts. Drinks and drugs at a club or bar, and more drinks and drugs at an after-hours Korean karaoke room that served drinks until 5am, way past the 2 o'clock cutoff.

I was off in the Kheri Thank I last girl standing at the end of the night, and I wore this fact that I could drink like the boys, party like the boys, be like the boys, like armor.

As I planned these events where I was an integral part of my friends' social lives, my worth was built into my ability to have and be a good time.

I can really relate to this. Um, one thing I'm really wondering, uh, given this paragraph, and so I'm going to look at this context again.

Um, so, because beauty expectations are going to be abrade in this essay, you may have already included what I'm about to say in the rest of it.

That's not here. But, um, I know that when I step into like a Taiwanese department store everywhere is like whitening stuff to make your skin whiter.

And, you know, there's all that, uh, there are all these surgeries that can... They give you the double lid instead of the monolid and the percentages of people who get those in Korea are much higher than in other East Asian countries and so I do wonder if you want to like include cultural elements into what is considered pretty because I think right now you not talking about a lot of the things for regarding culture and what culture has to do with being considered pretty makes it seem like prettiness is just this like abstract concept that exists as you said like created by people I don't know whereas it does come from somewhere it does come from in large part culture so I am do and I would be really interested to learn about the history of this word. I don't know if you'd be able to research it, but I would be really curious to know where this word came from.

Why did people make up this word? Anyway, was it is was it meant to be kind of like a consolatory word?

Like, sorry, you're not pretty, but at least you're unique. I'd be really interested in that. And the other things that I have questions about, just like one more thing, is that in this, in the in this first paragraph, you're talking a lot about you and your

I do wonder when you're a child who is pretty in your life like is it pop stars you know is it like watching k-pop like and you're like oh these people are pretty or do you have like a neighbor child that your mom says oh this person is really pretty or like who are the people who are modeling beauty?

For you when you're a child I do have my mom in here as a reference of being pretty because she is conventionally pretty and I don't look like her so I was trying to do that but it seemed like I don't know it seemed like hard to marry yes yeah yeah and maybe that can come in like a later part of the braid it's just interesting for me to think about and I am curious to know because I think like a lot of I

So families do is if you have some kind of undesirable characteristic they're always going to compare you to like some other member of the family who has the the characteristic that is desirable so okay and in terms of creating an identity for yourself as an adult is a very real thing.

And so this thing about planning is really interesting to me because I have never heard of a person describe themselves as a person who spent a lot of time planning in their 20s.

Like I know people who are very into like planners and like bullet journaling and like that kind of planning, but not so much like planning birthday parties and trips and weekend plans.

I think that's so It's so cool. It's so fascinating. This is incredibly unique to me and I really want to hear more about it.

I want to know, did you make itineraries? What was it about planning that was interesting to you? Do you just like being really organized?

Do you like to know how you're spending every minute of the day when you're on vacation? That's something that I personally just had never seen before.

There's a phrase that people use to describe this situation, but yeah, I mean, I very much was that kind of girl in a lot of ways, like wanting to be the cool girl who could like drink with the boys, out drink the boys, like,

So this planning idea is so interesting because it's like you're planning, you're creating the situations in which you can be seen as, as the fun one.

So, yeah, I really love that. Thank you for sharing this. Thank you.

@46:26 - Helen Rhee

Thank you. Okay.

 - Esmé Weijun Wang (Esmé Weijun Wang • 汪蔚君)
Isabel, here we go. Okay. There's a fiber on the pillow, a light in the sun. It quivers. When I breathe out, stills, quivers again.

I'm not watching it. The movement just exists within my visual field. Its feeble repetitiveness starts to grate like a hangnail, like a car alarm, like the hour after hour of the after boredom of a child.

And I don't have the strength to roll over or brush it away. So I closed my eyes. Okay. So when I read the first paragraph, I immediately thought about illness.

Like I thought about being in bed, being stuck in bed, like you can't move, you can't really think and all you can do is just like look at this fiber right there.

That's like moving a little bit. And that's your whole day, pretty much. Although it didn't say anything about illness.

So I was interested in how this was going to go. So yeah. And then at the end of this, this fragment, it's like, I don't have the strength to roll over, brush it away.

Okay. So then that's when I'm like, oh, here's where the illness part comes in. And I think and the concept. Dealing with this level of fatigue and weakness. I think it's a really enlightening way of writing about that element, because I don't think those people can imagine a situation in which a fiber on the pillow could be like your whole world.

So I think this is a really interesting opening. It's a simple story. I caught a virus and never recovered.

More than a decade later, the same symptoms echo through me still, the same nausea and weakness, the same fevers and exhaustion and pain, as if this illness were no more than memory itself.

Okay. Okay. Okay. So the concept of illness. So the concept of illness is here and it's a virus and

It's also symptoms. We were talking about this earlier in another piece that we went through. The symptoms are listed here.

And this last line is I'm trying to fully understand what this last line means. I think I know, but I'm not sure if I'm getting it wrong.

So I'm thinking illness is no more than memory. memory itself. I'm guessing that is supposed to mean that all of your memories are of illness.

And so that is what is happening. However, if that's the case, that's not what the sentence means. Like the sentence, it is, it needs to be written differently.

So I'm wondering, I'm wondering if I'm getting it wrong. So I'm trying, I am trying to think of what this is.

I means but at this moment it's a little hard for me to grasp both because of the brain fog and because it is a little bit of a challenging sentence to parse to begin with.

I have beside me a small pile of mismatched notebooks soft with age, the kind of journal I began to keep after 18 months.

The first is fat, cloth-bound, and narrow-lined. Its earliest entries fill a page or more, dense with my tiny, tightly-knotted script.

But over time, the entries shrink. Pages dwindle to paragraphs, paragraphs to a handful of notes. Dates are spaced further and further apart.

The book becomes an instrument to chart my failing health, a way to watch time and life pass me by.

In three years, I fill just a third of those pages. The rest are blank. I abandoned the notebook and started another though I don't remember why perhaps I was daunted by all the empty pages ahead of me the years they might take to fill oh this is just such a powerful paragraph I also like how you're compared it's being compared to the fiber on the pillow because when you're sick and you're looking at the fiber on the pillow you're not nothing is being created it's a moment and then the fiber will get blown away or something and you're still there you're still experiencing your symptoms but here even though there is there are a lot of challenges to what what you're doing here which is writing you are able to chronicle your life which is much more than watching a fiber move of these things to on your pillow. And it's not to say that you can't reach enlightenment by staring at a fiber on a pillow.

I think that Buddha would probably say you could if you were simply mindful enough. But I love how here you can you can still you're still there and you're still really you're still really present because of the writing.

At my sickest for a year I only wrote two words in my journal. The first was Ruling, the second Birdsong.

Oh, what a great, what a great fragment here. Now I want the title of the book to be Ruling, Birdsong.

Doesn't even have any idea is Ruling, Birdsong. the book to Ruling, Birdsong. Don't And this last, I feel like I don't need to comment that much on this sentence on this part because it's just so great.

I do want to say one quick thing, which is that saying that you only wrote two words in your journal for a year is a great, great way to get your reader to be instantly compelled because they're going to wonder what the two words were.

Like, is it like fish and pizza or, you know, is it like kettle and fart? Like it could be anything.

So that is a really great way to get the reader to come along with you on this ride. I caught a virus.

It's a strange turn of phrase as if the illness were the thing that's trapped. Oh my gosh. Just like all of these statements are all of these fragments are so cool.

I really I'm not sure what the project will look like but I wonder if it can be a memoir with maybe like a few like this part on one page and then this part of one page and I also think that like I had never thought of this before but I caught a virus is also very much like to me reminds me of like I caught a fish and that's considered like a victory like you caught something that you can eat later but I caught a virus is not a victory.

Yeah, it is a very strange turn a phrase. Oh my gosh, thank you so much. That was really. It and powerful.

Thank you.

@55:02 - Isabel Walter
Thank you, Esmé. Thank you.

@55:08 - Esmé Weijun Wang (Esmé Weijun Wang • 汪蔚君)
Okay. So, Julia. Okay. This is an excerpt from notes I wrote when considering first chapter and may become part of the process.

So I'm now curious how it lands to an outside reader. She is born without skin. She doesn't know this.

Neither does anyone else. It's not a conspiracy. No one knows. There is, of course, more to this going on in the background, in the larger culture.

But no one in her foreground, a.k.a. family, has a clue. But here's what it's like. Everything hurts, except when it doesn't.

The ocean feels good. The sound of the waves breaking on the beach is soothing. Her mother's touch is not.
Until A pillow soothes her, unless it's a feather pillow, which is itchy. Clothes are itchy mostly. Bright lights are painful.

Okay, yeah. This first sentence, she is born without skin. I, as an outside reader, I know a little bit about you just because of being in the academy with you.

But if I were reading this as an outside reader without knowing anything, I would wonder, oh, is this a condition where you don't have like an epidermis?

So that's why it's so interesting to get pulled into it and to be like, oh, it's something else. Because if it were that, like not having an epidermis, it would not be the case that no one knows.

So then the next paragraph, when you're talking about about it. Okay. what it's like, that's how we understand that she is born without skin is referring to all of these things that are triggering discomfort and unpleasantness or pain.

So her parents fighting makes her hold her breath until she turns blue when they notice they stop fighting. I think that's a really, that's something that we don't talk enough about, which is, the, the power that children have, um, because children don't actually have a lot of power and, uh, the, often the things that children do have power over are things that hurt themselves.

Looking now in 2025 at the sand and hearing the ocean in Westray, the North Sea this time, the echo of the Atlantic audible from the other side of the promontory.

Love. love. love. This is a really beautiful sentence. I think it sounds really good when you read it out loud.

It's fun to read out loud. That's my comment about that sentence. So I have the gift of my skin back, or knowledge of its absence, not sure which.

But knowing who I am, writing from here, I tell you this, you don't have to hold your breath throughout.

Know that there is a way out and through, but it's not linear. And it never was. And neither am I, and this will not be either.

It's really interesting because what all of the em dashes remind me of, and kind of like the structure of this, reminds me a lot of Emily Dickinson.

Like I, I, and I think Emily Dickinson wrote so many incredibly dense and, and just like these puzzles of language that really, people. At the same time spoke to what it was like what it's like to be alive and so I really I think there's kind of like an inheritance of Emily Dickinson here.

I'm afraid all writing is masking somehow but we'll try anyway to ray the inarticulate to paraphrase Elliot that odd mix of joy and extreme sensitivity to everything that is autistic experience like being a human divining rod quivering in response to each shift in energy the world's yours mine the oceans the air the sand the wind the fate of an animal or even a bug concern for tiny spiders yeah I I love this um it I think I would define this as lyric essay um which yeah that's in the pathway um I would to find it.

This lyric essay, you don't have to define it as anything, but I think this is really beautiful and I would happily read a book, a whole book like this.

So thank you, Julia.

@1:00:15 - Julia Barclay-Morton
Thank you so much. The Emily Dickinson thing practically made me cry. don't want to take too much time because you want to get to the last person, but I'll, I'll send you a note about why it's, that's kind of intense for a million reasons.

 - Esmé Weijun Wang (Esmé Weijun Wang • 汪蔚君)
But anyway, I'll tell you later. Okay. Amazing. So Shannon Rose, here we go. You're the last one. Okay. Like Moses, I too once found God at the base of a burning bush.

Instead of a mountain, my bush was nestled between two thighs. Wow. Okay. That's so powerful. And I'm like, what can possibly come after that?

Okay. Okay. We were not even in the desert. We were I in a room full of moans and giggles of pleasure.

The myriad of bodies and experiences all faded into the background as my lover laid back, popped up on their elbows, and smirked at me as they slowly parted their legs." This is interesting because this starts out with, like, we were not in the desert, which automatically makes us think, where were you?

So then the author says we were in a room full of moans But what I think is interesting is that there are no descriptions of the room, otherwise, besides the fact that there are moans and giggles of pleasure.

And I like that decision. I like the decision of choosing to centralize what is happening with these bodies instead of being like, and then there was a lamp over there and the carpet was orange and such.

Like, we don't I don't necessarily need to know those things. What we are learning is about this like room-like situation where there are all these like feelings I'm not sure what I was expecting only that it was not what unfolded.

In my own arousal and eagerness I was ready to dive into their body to devour them with my mouth and fingers but my anticipation caught in my throat as I beheld what the displayed so lavishly before me and then this this whole paragraph is a great example of like how to create tension um and to to kind of create uh a big question marks that the reader is like okay what what's gonna happen and then we have a sentence it's a sentence that that only gets its own line and it says a glorious thick hairy bush that knew knew no end.

Hey, was And I think like this is such a beautiful experience for me so far because I think that, you know, because of the taboo against just like body hair in general, this I'm already feeling like, oh, I'm so glad this is this.

I'm going to keep going. It was the most magnificent head of pubic hair I'd ever seen. So much that seemed to have a life of its own.

My partner lay back still and relaxed as their brush continued to unfold, like styrofoam packing peanuts that had been restrained in the cardboard box for far too long.

It grew and grew until it seemed to encompass the entire room. So it's kind of like becoming this surreal imagery.

And I also think it's interesting. And to use the word head to describe the most magnificent head of pubic hair I've ever seen because it's

It's not that's I've actually never heard a word that's used to describe pubic hair like what what is you know you have like a murder of crows, or like a you know, and so you have a head of pubic hair.

I don't know if I've read that before. I tentatively reached forward, gently caressing the luscious hairs between my thumb and forefinger.

The silken coarseness of it sent a tingle down my spine. I dared to bring myself closer, allowing myself to breathe in the deep, sensual must of it all.

It smelled like something richer than earth itself. And just like that, poised with my nose a sliver away and my eyes partly closed in reverie, something sparked.

Out of the corner of my eye, I swear I saw the fire of a shooting star in the depths of this bodily misery.

Oh, I almost said misery. Mystery. Wow, okay. So um this is really beautifully poetic that and then I think I do want to talk a little bit about this last line because it's about a shooting star and you are in a room or at least we we know you're in a room because the second paragraph.

Um so to suddenly say that you see a shooting star as kind of the culmination of the wonder of like you know this experience um you're either saying well there are a lot of things you could be saying that like you could be saying like this was such an extraordinary experience that it transcended time and space.

Like we I saw a shooting star even though we were in a room but what I worry is about is that the reader will

I there are things that you could say instead of Shooting Star that would still maintain that like wonder and beauty but not make the reader think have to like think about the practicalities of things like oh aren't we in a room why did you see a shooting star was there a window like did you see the shooting star out the window.

Um anyway uh but otherwise uh this is I just think this is a really magnificent piece so thank you so much for sharing it with us all right um wow we're perfectly at three o'clock um well this is our last first pass together and I want to say thank you to everyone who submitted.

Um um um um um um um um um And we're going to be have our last thing together is going to be the the kind of the closing call.

And that's going to be for everybody in the Academy. There will be a little surprises. We're going to talk about like what we learned or, you know, things that we could do better as as the stewards of the Academy and just we're just going to love on you a lot.

So, um, anyway, but that's coming up. Thank you all so much for being here today. And I will put up the recording and all that.

So does anyone have any questions? Yeah. Did anyone have any questions?

@1:07:52 - Julia Barclay-Morton
I was just, I'm sure you'll, you'll tell us next time about the, the, the cell class. Oh, yeah.

@1:08:01 - Esmé Weijun Wang (Esmé Weijun Wang • 汪蔚君)
The cell method. Uh, yeah, that's, um, that you'll get that as a member.

@1:08:07 - Julia Barclay-Morton
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

@1:08:08 - Esmé Weijun Wang (Esmé Weijun Wang • 汪蔚君)
Whatever. Yeah.

@1:08:08 - Julia Barclay-Morton
I just was curious whether we, yeah, what good. Yeah. You will get it. Yeah. It looks good.

@1:08:15 - Esmé Weijun Wang (Esmé Weijun Wang • 汪蔚君)
I have to keep trying to like come up with these things that are like interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

@1:08:22 - Julia Barclay-Morton
But they are, they all are. And I think all the different ways of going about it are really interesting.

@1:08:28 - Esmé Weijun Wang (Esmé Weijun Wang • 汪蔚君)
Um, you know, many people, people thought Emily Dickinson was autistic by the way. Oh, really? I didn't know that.

@1:08:35 - Julia Barclay-Morton
Yeah. And I mean that, that, but actually the thing that was so amazing about it is I did a whole workshop about her and went to her house when I was a teen and I directed a play, the one woman show with my best friend as my senior project.

And I'm kind of obsessed with her. So like, it's just, and I didn't, and it's so echolalia, right? So like, I'm not even trying.

It's an autistic thing. I think, I don't know. Anyway. So like, I I just love that you caught that.

I didn't really, I didn't even think of it. As soon as you said it, I was like, oh, , that makes a lot of sense.

@1:09:07 - Esmé Weijun Wang (Esmé Weijun Wang • 汪蔚君)
I would never think, I would never read it and go like, oh, here's an author who's trying to imitate Emily Dickinson.

@1:09:13 - Julia Barclay-Morton
Oh, thank God. I feel like you did it pretty subtly.

@1:09:16 - Esmé Weijun Wang (Esmé Weijun Wang • 汪蔚君)
I feel like you did it pretty subtly. And I might not have caught it, if not for the fact that I, yeah.

@1:09:22 - Julia Barclay-Morton
And I wasn't trying to be a, I mean, who, you know, that would be a silly thing to do, but, um, yeah, no, but I just, it was just interesting because there's a whole bunch of things, but it's there with that, that makes it really interesting.

And, um, yeah. So if you happen to be from New England, she looms large.

@1:09:42 - Esmé Weijun Wang (Esmé Weijun Wang • 汪蔚君)
Yeah. I have a friend who went to Mount Holyoke and did like a special project. Oh, thank you, Isabel.

Okay. All right. I'm going to go to, thank you, everyone.

@1:09:55 - Julia Barclay-Morton
was really good to hope you get some answers to the things, even though blood. It does usually come up with a bunch of question marks.

Good luck. you. Bye.