Linking Assignment #1 – Jon Gock
https://blogs.ubc.ca/jgock87/weekly-tasks/I’ve chosen to reply to Jon Gock’s post as my first linking assignment for this course for a couple of reasons. First, I’ve worked with Jon in a previous course together and had a connection, (entirely digital as we only met via Zoom and Slack). Second, the topic of his manual entry connected with some of my own experiences raising children and learning about some of the wonders and restrictions that becomes part of life during this time.
I could commiserate with Jon about the trials and tribulations of raising a child, (mine are 9 and 3, so his experience with a newborn is not entirely foreign to me), I’ll focus on a couple of aspects of his writing that intrigued me.
The first thing that stood out was the format of his manual entry. I have never seen any notebook that featured regular dots along the ruled lines. Ruled line notebooks are abundantly common, but the fifteen, evenly spaced dots are new to me. And they clearly contribute to the nature of Jon’s writing, or at least, my interpretation of it. For example, on line 1 “A day in my life”, likely a title, was read in my mind with an interrupted cadence, as in “A. Day. In. My. Life”. I know that the dots were not periods, but since each word in the title was directly correlated with the dot, that is how it came out as I read silently. It took a few lines before I could ignore the dots and the effect they had on my initial reading.
My wonder is around the purpose of such a notebook format? Is it a hybrid grid-lined notepad? Or does it have cultural purpose that I’m not aware of. The ‘date’ section in the top right is in a traditional western format, but there are, (I’m assuming, perhaps incorrectly), Chinese characters in the top left as well. I couldn’t find a similar note book in a quick online search, so if anyone has any insights, please let me know.
The other thing that stood out to me in Jon’s post was the structure of his narrative. As I slowly learn about more different cultures and how the concept of time is culturally unique in different circumstances and contexts, I also notice the way that narratives are often constructed in English speaking cultures. Jon’s story of his daughter is very ‘western’ in that sense. He begins with life prior to his daughter, and ends with speculation about how life may go back, in some ways, to that normality as she grows. He then dives in to his day in a ‘beginning to end’ format; what happens in the morning, afternoon, and right into bedtime.
I imagine that, in many interpretations, this would make sense from a eurocentric perspective, and I also wonder how someone from a non-western culture may have written this narrative in a different way.
I also connected with Jon’s own analysis of his manual entry in a few ways. The speed of word processing when compared to handwriting, (or, even better, voice to text), the satisfactory feeling of pen and ‘good quality’ pens, and the challenge around revision.