Bitches with Stitches

I realllllly like how this was written. Yes, the language is "flowery", but can't a girl showoff her talents? Writing should be intended to showoff its beautiful madness. I think her mind rushes faster than she can comprehend and her maniacal artist alter-ego takes the reigns. If you let your language take control, it will serve you, never conquer you. I can relate to the way Shelley writes because I am crazy and the descriptions that come into my head require flowery language that I'm not quite capable of; touche to Shelley for getting it all out. Yeah, it's hard to follow, Yeah, it's completely wild. But I dig that the most.

Referring to herself in third person really drags me in. The confusing-ness of it is what makes it all the better; you have to step out of your box and take a step back from your perfectly written novel and just take it all in. Not every sentence has to be pointed out immediately, but rather, you should wait till the end to decipher it's meaning (if it even has one). Hahaha. She is the monster and the monster is a her. That's a good one. And now she's on a mission to capture her own self. Completely nuts.

"No, I am the monster herself"

"Shelley Jackson, that imposter, I'm going to get her."

And now the story goes apeshit: she sews together mixed up notebook papers and the paragraphs are not in the original order. Shelley also relates hypertext as a Frankenstein-like body being created; random pieces being sewn together, much like the what she did with the paragraphs. The first sentences of each subtitle are indescribable; I love them. I'm not sure how they make me feel or even if they make me feel at all, all I know is, just those few little words make me want to think very deeply on what her take is on each and maybe write a little something of my own.

"We're not who we say we are."

"You're not where you think you are."

"I'm not where you say I am."

"You won't get where you think you're going."

"It's not what we wish it were."

"We don't think what we think we think."

"It's not what it says it is."

"She's not what he says she is."

"I'm not what you think I am."

"We don't say what we mean to say."

"We are not who we wish we were."

"It's not all you think it is."

"It was not how they said it was."

And now my computer is going to die. I have a lot more thoughts on this. I'll be back.

Okay, I'm back. Shelley perceives hypertext to occur all at once and really have no idea where it will end up or in what direction it is headed in. She makes the comparison of birth and death being alike; hospitals (birth) and cemeteries (death). By this, I think she is saying that hypertext is a place where writing goes through the circle of life; it is born and progresses to death (yes, progresses, not digresses). The white, rectangular hospital bed, the white, rectangular headstone, and the blank, white, rectangular piece of paper are all synonymous. Although she drags death into the picture, she states, hypertext never really has an ending; nothing is ever clear. Hypertext is a bunch of things that collage together and, like I said before, it all must be taken in at once to walk away with something from it. There are not things just spelled out for you to take away and feel like you got something out of it. Most of the time, you can't figure out what is important and what isn't, so you have to ponder it as a whole.

"Go write your own text. Go paint a mural. You must change your life. I want piratical readers, plagiarists and opportunists, who take what they want from my ideas and knot it into their own arguments. Or even their own novels. From which, possibly, I'll steal it back."

So now we're back to the plagiarizing issue. As you can see, IT IS OKAY! Art is transferrable and one should be honored if someone bases their ideas off of your original thought.