Home is not a location to me. I’ve lived in far too many places to consider my home as a specific location. Yet, the place where I live becomes my home. What I consider to be an intangible concept of home becomes tangible once I settle in a location, whether this is chosen by me or not. Sometimes, though, this location is never quite able to absorb the qualities that make it home.

I have never thought about it before, but moving was a constant in my life. In my childhood, we moved because of my father’s job as he searched for a better job and a place that we could all call home. My first move happened when I was barely a year old. We picked up everything from our small trailer in Prince George, a place where I was not yet aware enough to call home, to settle in Vancouver with family. As quickly as we moved to Vancouver, we again moved everything to Vancouver Island, in the town of Campbell River.

In Campbell River, we moved twice. It was the second house that I came to call home. This house was located across from a river and surrounded by tall, green trees. All my friends lived on the same street as me, making it possible to go and explore the forest that our house was placed beside. I remember going down to the river to attempt to fish even though my parents had warned me against it because the currents were so swift. I remember not being able to go to school because there was a bear monopolizing the bus stop. This is where my sense of home began to take on its own unique qualities. To this day, I feel at home walking in the forest with my shoes getting damp because I didn’t listen to my mother telling me to wear proper shoes. I’m comforted by the smells of the forest and the river, and I leave my window open to lull myself to sleep with the sound of falling rain.

When I was 10, we moved to the Okanagan Valley. My family settled in Coldstream, which is a small community just outside of Vernon. Again, we moved twice in Coldstream. For a very long time, our first home there didn’t feel like my concept of home. There were no close forests for me to roam around. We had a small creek in the backyard, but it wasn’t the same. As me and my sister settled into our new school, we began to make friends with kids both at school and along our street. This is when it finally began to feel like home. While I was never as good of friends with the kids on my street as my new school friends, running up and down the cul-de-sac tickled the part of my brain that was nostalgic for Campbell River. As long as I had friends that I could spend my time with, Coldstream could be bearable.

I didn’t move again until my second year of college. I was beginning to feel cramped in my childhood home. The friends I was now making at college all lived in Vernon and my job was there as well. So, I moved into Vernon by myself. I lived there for two years before I decided to move back in with my parents when I started going to university full time. It was during this time that I discovered what it was about my home in Vernon that made it home to me. This factor was independence. I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted, when I wanted. Though I was older and my parents never tried control my schedule like in high school, all of a sudden I had chores and had to work around their lives. The home that I had once called my home was no longer comfortable anymore.

This summer, I moved to Kelowna in order to be closer to university for my last year. It was a nightmare to find a place to live for both myself, my sister and her cat. When we finally found the place, I felt certain that this would just be a temporary stop in my search for my new home. I would have to suffer with living in a small room that didn’t have nearly enough room for all my things. My feelings to this new location were ambivalent as the boxes crowded around my room, monopolizing any free space. Though, as I began to fall to asleep, I realized that this could be my home. There were no parents there, I already had plans to visit my friends the next day, and I would eventually find the space for all my things. I could make this place comfortable. I slid the window open and fell asleep to the sound of the rain falling on my new home.

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Hey, everyone! I hope you enjoyed my short story about what home means to me. I had a lot of fun writing it and remembering all the places where I used to live. I couldn’t really find many places to insert hyperlinks within the story, so I thought I would point out the Meaning of Home Contest here. Habitat for Humanity runs a contest asking for children from grades 4-6 to write an essay on what home means to them, with the money going towards a Habitat for Humanity build as well as the school they go to. They have some postings from the current and past winners that you may want to take a look at.

Works Cited

Campbell River. Heritage River Inn, 2016, http://www.heritageriverinn.com/images/campbellriver1-b.jpg. JPEG file.

The Meaning of Home. Habitat for Humanity, 2016, www.meaningofhome.ca. Accessed 26 September 2016.

“Relaxing Sounds of Rain and Thunder in Woods – The Sounds of Nature 16.” YouTube, uploaded by KMYMedia, 13 September 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6OhIZODLDs.

“I am going to tell you a story,” says the man.

“What is it about?” The boy asks.

“This story is about stories,” the man says, “Back in the old days, when the world still believed in magic, there were those that could wield that power. They used these powers for good, to heal and to help. They would also use their magic for games and contests. They would meet in the woods with the light shining down on them as it always did, for evil  and darkness had not yet touched the world. That day, they competed to see who could be the scariest of them. This was all done in jest, of course. They shifted their appearance, brewed potions and cast spells until one stranger stepped forward. No one had ever seen this stranger, who appeared neither man or woman, but all listened as the stranger told its story. Tales of death, plague, and hate tumbled from the stranger’s mouth. As they listened, the sky began to darken and the woods stood silent, until they were standing in complete darkness. One of them, braver than the others, stepped forward to speak to the stranger.

‘What have you done?’ The brave healer asked. The stranger stood in silence, already seeming to fade into the darkness itself. Another stepped forward.

‘Take back your story!’ The other pleaded, desperation in their voice. Everyone began to cry, knowing at the bottom of their hearts that the story could not be taken back. The stranger had brought evil into the world.”

“Why couldn’t the story be taken back?” The boy asks.

“Because once a story has been loosed in the world, it cannot be taken back. A story is not something tangible that can be caught and hidden once the first storyteller has told it. That is both the curse and the gift of the story.”

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For my version of this story, I chose to pair it with a framing device of a man passing this knowledge down to a boy. The story that Thomas King tells about how evil came into the world is not about evil, but about the power that stories hold. The story only become tragic in this instance because it is evil being loosed into the world. However, stories can also function to deliver good, or even happiness, depending on the subject matter. The story within a story within a story also appealed to me. I also removed the fact that they were all witches, as I find that witches has a very negative connotation. Instead, I chose to make them simply practitioners of magic. I also accentuated the ominous quality of the storyteller within the story by giving them the title of stranger.

After memorizing my story, I chose to relay my story to three different groups. For this assignment, I thought it would be interesting to tell my story to groups that I had varying degrees of comfort with. First, I told my story to my sister, who I live with. Because we spend so much time together, my delivery of the story was fairly confident and stayed pretty well in line with the written version of my story. Next, I took my story to a close group of friends. I told my story in the public library this time, so, while I was comfortable with my group of friends, I did feel a little unease that other people might overhear us. I also noticed that this time, my story started to waver from the written version with small details changing. I think this was because I was more nervous performing (if we can call it that) for my friends than for my sister and our cat. Finally, while I did not solicit strangers to hear my story, I did ask a new friend that I am not quite comfortable with. This made me even more nervous because, even though he agreed to hear it, the situation almost felt awkward because we do not know each other very well.

I am very shy in many situations, so I was surprised I was even able to finish telling the story at all. I wonder how many people had this experience in retelling their story? Did you begin to deviate from your written version as you were forced to use your memory? Now, I am beginning to see why stories that originate from oral storytelling appear to have so many versions that go from changing small details to larger details.

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After further reflection and my dialogue with Kaylie in the comment section, it occurs to me that part of my influence came from the Sandman graphic novel. If you are interested in reading the whole volume, this comes from Volume 2, The Doll’s House. I highly recommend reading the entire series, though. There are so many interesting references to literature, mythology, etc. Also, Neil Gaiman is a fantastic writer. I am posting images of the first two pages of The Doll’s House, which contain some interesting dialogue on storytelling.

Works Cited

Gaiman, Neil, writer. Dringenburg, Mike and Malcolm Jones III, artists. The Doll’s House. Vertigo, 1990, pp. 1, vol. 2 of The Sandman, http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/perpetual/17950093/52685/52685_original.jpg. Accessed Oct. 2016.

Gaiman, Neil, writer. Dringenburg, Mike and Malcolm Jones III, artists. The Doll’s House. Vertigo, 1990, pp. 2, vol. 2 of The Sandman, http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/perpetual/17950093/74406/74406_original.jpg. Accessed Oct. 2016.

7. At the beginning of this lesson I pointed to the idea that technological advances in communication tools have been part of the impetus to rethink the divisive and hierarchical categorizing of literature and orality, and suggested that this is happening for a number of reasons.  I’d like you to consider two aspects of digital literature: 1) social media tools that enable widespread publication, without publishers, and 2) Hypertext, which is the name for the text that lies beyond the text you are reading, until you click. How do you think these capabilities might be impacting literature and story?

I would first like to address the importance of widespread publication through the use of social media tools, as I believe that this is one of the more important aspects of the digital technology on literature. Throughout this response, I will be using the term ‘user’ to refer towards the people who are consuming the literature and digital content that is being offered through digital platforms from the author.

In many of my courses, we have discussed the invention of the internet as having a profound impact on expanding what users are able to see as well as offering a platform where users can find content that deviates from what a publisher believes should be visible. Not only this, users and authors can offer unique viewpoints that publishers or broadcasters cannot access, especially in the case of news broadcasting. Online platforms have done much for literature, as well as film and television with online websites such as Netflix offering unique content. Avoiding publishers through self-publication on the internet allows an author to present a large audience with their work, as well as presenting the user with stories that may not have been presented by publishers. Self-publication gives voice to storytellers that may otherwise remain invisible towards both the publisher and user.

Hypertext is also important in online documents because it provides the user with even more options. Hypertext is not required to be clicked on, but when it is utilized, the user is given access to a wider amount of knowledge. It can also lead the user towards similar content, if they so chose, or content that is supported by the author.  The use of these links create a web that comes from the main story and threads out to other content that is linked by the author. The web grows as user submitted content is linked to by authors and shared by the user, spreading stories across the internet in a way that is not possible with traditional publication.

The most important thing about hypertext, in my opinion, is that is gives a certain amount of agency back towards the user that is not offered in traditional ink and paper publications. In fact, the main advantages of digital technology on literature are focused on the agency of both the user and the author. It also provides visibility to a multitude of voices, whether it is the always baffling dinosaur erotica or fan fiction turned bestseller, it also expands the choices that the user has when it comes to consuming the content. The user is not confined to the bestseller list or what is offered by the publisher. At this time, I can only think of advantages towards online content, though I am sure there are some disadvantages. For the time being, I remain optimistic about the future of online literature and self-publishing, in that the exposure to a multitude of stories can lead to an enriching experience for both the user and the author.

Works Cited

Taken by the T-Rex (Dinosaur Erotica). Amazon, https://www.amazon.ca/Taken-T-Rex-Dinosaur-Erotica-Christie-ebook/dp/B00FI9JFFO. Accessed September 2016.

Bertrand, Natasha. “‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ started out as ‘Twilight’ fan fiction before becoming an international phenomenon.” Business Insider, 17 Feb. 2015, www.businessinsider.com/fifty-shades-of-grey-started-out-as-twilight-fan-fiction-2015-2. Accessed 17 September 2016.

Cobben, Ingrid. “Social media: The leading source of breaking news video.” The Media Online, 5 Sept. 2016, http://themediaonline.co.za/2016/09/social-media-the-leading-source-of-breaking-news-video. Accessed 17 September 2016.

Wright, Alex. “The Secret History of Hypertext.” The Atlantic, 22 May 2014,  www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/in-search-of-the-proto-memex/371385. Accessed 17 September 2016.